A common schedule for beginning weightlifters is to train the entire body every other day, three times a week.
As a beginner progresses and needs more intensity and volume, it makes sense to split the body into two parts and train them on separate days. Advanced trainers often divide the body into three or four parts as they move towards heavier and longer sessions. This reduces training frequency to twice a week (unless you train more than once per day).
I’m 53, and in my serious lifting days, I would train this way, or even less frequently - adding in separate sessions of cardio-only would stretch the cycle to 5 or 6 days. It seemed to make sense back then: those really intense sessions of squatting or deadlifting took a long time to recover from.
I can’t handle workouts that intense any more, and I wonder if it’s been less than ideal to train with such long, 5 or 6 day cycles.
Recently, I started doing shorter cycles - dividing the body into at most three parts, and/or sometimes doing cardio and lifting in the same session. So that I can complete an entire cycle in three days or less on average. The weight workouts generally have fewer sets, and more of the body gets worked. E.g., instead of doing legs and back in separate workouts, I do them both in one session, and do less total sets. (I also sometimes get in two sessions in one day, schedule permitting).
The result has been encouraging so far: I seem to be recovering better and improving.
I’m wondering if, for an older person, waiting beyond the time needed to recover allows the muscles to start getting weak? So unless you need longer cycles to recover from really heavy exercise, it makes sense to do cycles of no more than three days?
Any other old-timers who’ve experimented with weight training frequency in this way? TIA.
FWIW, I think what you describe is probably good for all ages. Emphasis on compound moves (i.e. more of the body), fewer sets but more variety, hitting multiple muscles, hitting the same muscles, in a variety of ways. Every other day complete body with a cardio day in between. 5 to 6 days before hitting a body part again seems a bit long to me to get the most bang for your buck.
I apologize if I missed this, but what are your goals? I think before any training program can be critiqued or assessed, the goals need to be clearly defined.
When I was younger, I was a competitive bodybuilder. Today, I have zero interest in that. I mainly want to keep my basic strength up, but there’s still a little residual interest in looking good.
I am 56, and just trying to maintain my back (I have disc issues), and keep in shape and look reasonably well-preserved.
I work out three days a week, and do a rotating two-and-one split where I work each body part five times in two weeks. That is, I skip one body part each workout, and switch the exercises every workout so I am hitting the muscles in different ways or from different angles.
But yes, recovery is slower as I get older. This is both in the sense of being able to go heavy more than once a week and still recover, and also getting back into the groove after an enforced layoff due to illness or work or travel. Back when I was 30, I could go heavy two or three times a week, and still be fresh on Mondays. And take two weeks off, and hit my normal weights the first workout back. Now it takes me eight or nine days to recover, and I can’t hit my target weights for a week or two after a layoff.
It’s tough to get old, but it beats the alternative.
You know I considered asking that question, knew it would be coming from someone, but didn’t ask it mainly because I have a hard time answering it myself.
For fitness? But what does that mean?
I’m a short Jewish 52 year old man. My youngest is my 10 year old daughter. I have diabetes and heart disease in my family.
I want to keep my insulin sensitivity high and body fat percent low for general health purposes.
If my daughter gets married in her late 20’s, when I am near 70, I don’t only want to be able to have the endurance to dance at her wedding all night long and to still be able to do that Russian Katzinski dance (or whatever it is really called,the kicking out legs thing); I want her to feel secure knowing that I will be one of the four holding up a leg of her chair during that chair dance, her husband’s chair and even her overweight mother-in-law’s chair. Without fear.
To try to give some more information pertinent to the op -
Well 50s aint elderly but some start getting sarcopenia even then (hence why my personal long term goals are served by working on more focus on strength and muscle mass now than I used to have, previously being more interested in distance running and half ironman triathloning). In that regard it appears that timing of protein matters even more as we age.
And there is something to the story that we recover differently, but it is not clear how that should translate to practice, other than to avoid injury.
Back in my serious training days, I adopted the practice of taking one week off from weightlifting every month (cardio exercise would continue.) Bodybuilding trainer/author Vince Gironda advocated this - he claimed that heavy weight training took a toll on the central nervous system that led to fatigue, which these breaks are supposed to mitigate.
I tried it, found it rejuvenating, and continue to take one week off every month.
What I’m wondering now is whether it’s still a good idea at my age. For the same reasons cited in the OP (an older person takes longer to recover from a layoff, and the lighter workouts might not take this supposed toll).
I’d like to hear from trainers around my age who take time off like this, as well as those who don’t.
DSeid, thanks for the info on protein. I must admit that it’s over my head. Do you know if it indicates that taking amino acids right after a workout (which I used to a long time ago) might be advisable?
No idea on your slightly different question. At least not as relating specifically to aging. Let’s face it, even for the young athlete recommendations are all over the place and relatively less research is done on how to optimize the older individual’s exercise response. Personally I plan on sticking with my current plan: variety variety variety.
In terms of the second, it means that decent quality protein (be it in the more expensive amino acids form, whey, soy protein, a yogurt, a glass of milk, whatever), always a good idea either before, during, or after a work-out, is more important as we get over 50 than it was when we were younger. It also means that those foods that trendy nutrition experts call “anti-inflammatory” may turn out to be beneficial in gaining, or at least preventing loss of muscle mass as we age. That means a diet high in omega threes such as those in fish oil, lots of different colored vegetables and fruits, spices like turmeric, and MUFA and PUFA sources like avocado, nuts and seeds, and low in highly processed food-like substances. Not bad advice for other reasons as well, of course.
And sorry for any jargon use. “Sarcopenia” is just the typical loss of muscle mass associated with aging. It often starts in the 50s and is very often in progress by early 60s.