Strength Training for Seniors: Increase your Balance, Stability, and Stamina to Rewind the Aging Process
- Автор: Waehner Paige
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Skyhorse
- ISBN: 978-1-5107-5897-1
- Жанр: Спорт
Электронная книга - «Strength Training for Seniors: Increase your Balance, Stability, and Stamina to Rewind the Aging Process». Краткое содержание книги:
1 x 12 reps
Chapter 14
What Happens Next?
However far you made it with the 12-week program, whether you got in every workout or not, the first thing you should do is to celebrate your success. Changing your daily habits and working your body are not easy things to do... if they were, everyone would do it, right?
Just some ideas include:
✓ A weekend getaway
✓ A night out
✓ A spa treatment like a massage
✓ Time reading your favorite book or listening to music
✓ Splurging on some new workout clothes
Celebrating is the way you mark what you’ve done as something worthwhile in your life. Something you’ve stuck with and something that made a difference.
Celebrating should be something that happens throughout the process, whether it’s a small goal or a larger one.
But the real key to using exercise to your advantage involves two things: consistency and momentum.
You may hear people talk about staying motivated, but motivation usually isn’t the first ingredient in the exercise mix. Being consistent with your workouts makes you more disciplined. Your body starts to expect that workout at 7:00 each morning and, as a result, it gets easier to do it.
That discipline adds to the next important ingredient which is momentum. Momentum builds as you increase that consistency and you get on a healthy lifestyle path that makes it easier to stick with.
So, what happens when you get to the end of this program? That doesn’t mean you stop exercising! You have 12 weeks of practice that will help carry you into the future and maintain everything that you’ve gained over time.
First, it helps to get a broad view of the basic principles of strength training so you know exactly how to change your workouts when you’re on your own.
MANIPULATING THE PRINCIPLES OF STRENGTH TRAINING
The underlying principles of strength training are what guide us in choosing every aspect of our workouts, from the exercises we do to the number of reps and sets we choose.
Once you have a broad view of these principles, you can use them to manipulate different elements of your workouts so you can keep making progress and keep things interesting, something you’ll tackle on your own at this point.
THE OVERLOAD PRINCIPLE
You’ve learned that the only way to build strength and get better at something is to give your muscles more than they’re used to handling.
This is important because the more your muscles do, the more they are capable of doing. That’s why our bodies get sore when we change something; they have to adapt to those new challenges.
That means that, once you’ve built a basic foundation and mastered each exercise, as you did in this program, it’s time to shift your focus to elevating your goals.
One important area here is concentrating on the amount of weight you’re lifting. While the beginning of a strength training program is more about building a foundation, the next phase is about progressing and challenging yourself.
Focusing on your weights is where you’ll take the next step, and you do that by this simple rule: Choose a weight that you can only lift for the desired number of reps.
In other words, you should be glad to get to that last rep and you should be able to do it with good form. But, that last rep should be challenging.
One rule of thumb is that, if you can keep going after the last rep of your set, increase your weight by about 5 percent. Since weights come in certain increments, you may not be able to do exactly 5 percent, which is just fine. Just increase the weight by what you have and adjust your reps so that you keep perfect form.
THE PROGRESSION PRINCIPLE
You’ve probably heard of plateaus, and that’s one thing that happens when you don’t change anything about your workouts. One thing you want to do is to continue to change things so that you’re always progressing.
That’s the underlying theme of this 12-week program as you conquer new and more challenging exercises as well as change the number of reps and sets you do over time.
SIMPLE WAYS TO PROGRESS
a.Changing your reps—The rep ranges for your 12-week program generally stay between 12 and 16 reps to give you an easy-to-follow strength training recipe. However, you can progress and change your workouts by a) adding more weight and reducing your reps to around 8 to 10 or b) reduce the weight you’re using and increase reps to 16... beyond that number you won’t see much of an improvement unless you’re doing body weight exercises such as push-ups.
b.Changing your sets—In this program, you do 1 or 2 sets depending on the workout. You can take these workouts to another level by adding a set, taking it up to 3 sets per exercise, making sure you rest in between. When you change to a different workout, you may start with fewer sets and increase over time.
c.Changing the type of resistance—In this program, we use bands and dumbbells for a variety of exercises. You can also use things like medicine balls, gym machines, barbells, or any other type of resistance to change how an exercise feels and how your muscles work.
d.Changing your exercises—Another way to progress is to change the exercises you do, much like in this program. For example, during the first two weeks, you did wall push-ups. Eventually, you progressed to modified push-ups on the floor. You could progress that further by doing push-ups on your toes. Even the simplest change counts, such as standing on one leg while doing a biceps curl or even sitting during an exercise instead of standing.
THE REVERSIBILITY PRINCIPLE
This principle is the very reason for this chapter, because it’s all about the fact that if you don’t use it, you lose it. Research shows that just a month off from exercise can reverse all the good things you achieved, which is why you have to keep using those muscles.
Exercise isn’t just a means to an end, but an ongoing journey, and you should consider it part of your daily lifestyle, just like brushing your teeth or taking a shower. And realize that sometimes, you can exercise on a regular basis and sometimes you can’t.
It could be a physical issue or something that happens in your life but, chances are, it will happen. But you can always start again.
With that in mind, it’s wise to have some ideas of how to keep that momentum going.
THE SPECIFICITY PRINCIPLE
This is probably one of the easier principles to keep in mind because it has to do with what you want to accomplish.
This principle, simply said, is that you do what serves you the best. For example, if I have a client who loves to garden, I focus more attention on those areas: Squatting, bending, pulling, and digging.
Another client might want to run a marathon, which involves an entirely different type of training.
The key is to think about what you want to get out of life every day and specifically the movements those tasks require and then focusing on strengthening those movements.
TIPS TO KEEP GOING
✓ Keep to a schedule—Keep planning your workouts on a regular basis so they’re a part of your life, just like a doctor’s appointment. Plan them out and put them in your calendar.