Chances are you played a sport in high school or college. You gained strength for your sport in the weight room, learned the finer points of your sport on the field through daily practice, and Friday was Game Day. Then you graduated from school and everything changed. A full-time job, a wedding, and children to raise. Or maybe you had to get a new business off the ground.
Now you find yourself in a game you’re not fully prepared for. Life after fifty.
You come home from work, eat dinner, and relax in the easy chair while the aches and pains of a hard day’s work subside. You’re starting to feel as though every day is Game Day. For you especially, this need not be so. You’re setting on a gold mine and don’t realize it. You have something that 95% of the population will never have. Muscle memory of days past.
You’re tired not because your daily workload has become more difficult, but because you are doing the work which in the past was being done by 100% of your available muscle. As we age, we naturally lose muscle. At 50 years old you’ve lost 25% of your muscle mass.
You’re pushing your body to pick up that 25% muscle deficit and it’s trying to tell you something. “Either back off the workload or make us strong again”.
As a former athlete possessing muscle memory, getting strong again will be easy for you.
Others, less fortunate, would have to spend a great deal of time just building their muscle
foundation which you had done years ago. Your muscles don’t know how old you are, but they do remember how strong they were.
The return to your former strength would be quick compared to 95% of the population because of your muscle memory, however at your present age there are a few precautions that you must keep in mind. Lifting weights to satisfy your ego or pushing yourself to reach a new PR are something that should be left in the past. You know the process of getting strong, but your reason for getting stronger has changed. You have many years ahead of you and you want them to be productive years.
If you’re over 40 years old take the time to determine roughly how much strength you foresee yourself needing for pushing, pulling, and lifting and try to keep your strength gains in those ranges. You’re no longer competing with your high school teammates; you’re preparing for the many years that lie ahead. When you’re operating at a strength level of 80% to 90% of your potential life once again becomes easy. This applies to all men and women well beyond their fifties as well. Become that barbell weightlifter again doing squats, overhead presses, bench-presses and deadlifts.
Don’t waste your muscle memory. Bring it back to life.
Bob Baker Three 5’s Barbell Strength Training email; [email protected] tele; 419-277-6581
