Why don’t you lift weights?

[DSeid]

@filmore

there is increased risk of injury compared to younger people

In real world contexts, I don’t think so. Mainly because people who lift when they are older, either continuing to, or starting to, aren’t as frequently doing it stupidly. There is something to be said for maturity.

In support of that:

The Epidemiology of Injuries Across the Weight-Training Sports - PubMed

Very few significant differences in any of the injury outcomes were observed as a function of age, sex, competitive standard, or bodyweight class.

That said, definitely true that a person new to lifting at any age is wise to learn and be careful to follow good form, and to progress gradually enough to minimize risk of injury.

And the aging serious lifter has to accept that they may not be able to lift what they could at 35. In the context of my 40 year old weightlifter son, yeah I am hoping he successfully adjusts his goals. And I personally am of the belief that healthspan benefits most from having strength being one dimension of a complete plan. A little goes a long way.

Which brings me to this part of what you wrote:

@filmore

I would say that I am doing weight based workouts rather than weightlifting. I’m not using weights with the goal of continually adding reps and using heavier weights as would be typical with weightlifting. Rather, I’m using weights to stress my muscles so that they don’t lose the strength they have. In no way am I saying that old people can’t work out. Rather, I’m saying that weightlifting type workouts are probably not the best kinds of workouts for older people. It’s the same as saying light jogging is better for old people rather than marathon training.

I understand your distinction. Still, the newish to lifting individual can still benefit from progression. Even maintaining current strength and power isn’t going to happen if the tasks are too easy, without imposed stress. What level that stress happens at is a very individual thing.

And that is true for the cardio side as well. Only light jogging is better than no training, but a mix that includes some occasional faster paces is better yet. And there are diminishing returns.

[HoneyBadgerDC]

@DSeid

I understand your distinction. Still, the newish to lifting individual can still benefit from progression. Even maintaining current strength and power isn’t going to happen if the tasks are too easy, without imposed stress. What level that stress happens at is a very individual thing.

This is not necessarily true even though in most cases it would be. With adaptive resistance, you can actually increase the load from what you would be using with imposed resistance. You can greatly increase the time under tension ratio at a higher rate of tension.

[Dr_Paprika]

When lifting heavy weights, the best warmup is to lift lighter ones and increase them in subsequent sets. As a result, one gets feel for the heaviness one might use based on how the lighter sets feel.

I reached my maximum physical strength at age thirty eight. However, many of my best efforts occurred well beyond that. For a dedicated lifter, I would expect little difference between age 35 and 40. I would expect perhaps a 10% decline at age 50; likely less than you think. Injury is largely avoidable through choice of exercise, use of spotters and common sense.