Note: This post is more for me to sort out what I’m thinking than for my readers. If you’re not interested in fitness and dealing with getting older, you might want to skip it.
I’ve been reading and listening to Mike Boyle as I re-immerse myself into functional training. On a podcast, Mike was a discussing the differences in the training he programs for his athletes (teens through adults training for sport performance) vs. his “general population” clients (over 55 training for general fitness).
When I first starting following Mike Boyle’s in 2008, his work was tailored to athletes. I was in my late 30s and not an athlete. However, I was able to adopt many of his training practices with good results.
Fast forward to today. I’m fit, but as I’ve described before, not like I was 17 years ago. Since I am rebuilding my functional fitness capabilities, Boyle’s insights into training older adults has been particularly helpful to me. Below are some of highlights.
If it hurts don’t do it. Boyle ask his clients if something hurts. If the answer is “yes” you stop doing anything that makes it hurt.
Many of his older clients answer with an explanation: My shoulder/back/knee/xyz always hurts but once I get going I can work through it.” Or “I took an advil/aspirin so it’ll subside in a little while.” Or “It’s minor, I can handle it.”
Boyle says it’s a YES or NO question. If there’s an explanation that comes with it, it’s a YES.
He explains the primary reason is risk minimization and injury prevention. Something that is a minor tweak for a younger athlete that heals in a few days could take 6 months (or more!) for his adult clients to recover from. Instead of irritating them for a few days, it could make their daily activities impossible and they life miserable.
My takeaway – I am this guy. I’ve been working “through” tweaks and injuries my entire life – especially during the past 7 years. I always have an explanation and a coping mechanism (advil, work through it, etc.). The difference is I don’t heal like I did when I was younger. I distinctly remember a tipping point when I reached the age of 30 and it took me a week to recover from minor muscle strains. Now, approaching 60, an injury often takes months to recover from. I need to heed his advice here.
We no longer do bilateral lower body exercises nor any upper barbell exercises with our adult clients. Boyle programs only single leg exercises like lunges, step ups, step backs, one leg squats for all of his clients. He said the risk of injury and the load on the lower back are far too high when he can achieve better results with less back load doing one leg exercises.
My takeaway – I’m already with him here. I bought into this concept from Boyle and Coach Dos back in 2009. I still do some bilateral two leg lower body exercises like kettlebell goblet squats and sandbag squats but never with any weight on my shoulders and never with heavy loads.
What are you trying to accomplish? Boyle returns to this question over and over. He said people fall in love with a particular exercise like they do with a political ideology. They “believe” they must do Bench Press/Squats/Deadlifts, or they must increase the weight every workout, or do Dips because “everyone knows” they are the best upper body exercise, or go to failure every set, or whatever. This persists despite the scientific evidence (and his 48 years of experience) prove otherwise. He says there is a safer alternative to any risky exercise or technique. Being “married” to anything can non-productive and not safe.
My takeaway – Guilty as charged. Once I progress beyond the “plain of suckitude“, I get obsessed and locked into rigidity with my training, exercises and schedule. I don’t want to “lose” anything I’ve gained and I fall into the “more is better” trap. I usually won’t deviate until I’m driven out by injury or unrelenting failure. This time around, I’ve already incurred several injuries while adopting my new program. These have forced me ask myself what are my goals, why are they important and am I moving toward them? As a result, I’ve already eliminated a number of exercises, dropped to using embarrassingly low weights and have reduced my planned workout volumes by more than 50%. I suspect this will be an ongoing challenge for me to avoid rigidity and scope creep since it always has been.
You should leave a workout feeling great. After a workout, you should feel energized, not beaten down. You should be moving fluidly and pain-free. You should not be in pain the next day from overdoing it. You should never be injured by your programming. He uses what he calls the Two Strikes Rule. If an exercise or workout causes a slight pain or results in a minor tweak once, he notes it. If it happens a second time, he eliminates entirely. Period.
He also says a workout should never make you worse or cause an injury.
My takeaway – I cry “Uncle”. I lived with years of nagging shoulder pain punctuated with flare ups ranging from moderate to severe until I finally reached a point where I had to question “What am I doing?” and came back with “I don’t want to live this way, drained, compromised and in pain every day”, before I was finally forced to reevaluate everything I was doing and make a change.
I try to rationalize why I am doing something that causes pain instead of being rational.
I have to stop this.
What worked for you when you were younger will not work for you now. Boyle has trained thousands of athletes from grade school through retirement. He has trained thousands of older adults. He’s trained himself for 50+ years. He says what you could get away with when you were younger you cannot as you age. You can’t train as often, as heavy or as intensely. You can’t eat, sleep or recover the way you used to. You need to spend much more time on mobility, warmups, foam rolling, recovery and injury prevention. Your exercises will need to change. Some things you used to do that gave you great results will now cause you major problems. Focusing on new PRs or competing with your younger self are a fool’s errand. You can’t do it. Your body will break down and you will get injured.
My takeaway – This is my achilles heel. My biggest competition is my younger self. I no longer compete with arbitrary goals from fitness magazines or with feats of strength I see online because I’ve injured myself countless times doing this. Instead, I compete with what I could do before – like when I was 38. I now realize that’s not realistic. I will be 58 this year. Regardless of how fit I am, I cannot handle the volume, frequency and intensity of work I did 20 years ago.
I want to. In my mind, I’m in peak physical shape and it’s a mind-over-matter issue. But in reality, it’s not. I hate cutting my workouts down by 50%. I hate using weights that used to be for my warmups for my working sets. I hate knowing I can push myself to work harder and longer but that is exactly what results in chronic aches, acute injuries or being unable to perform normal daily activities pain-free. it’s annoying as f***k to me. I’m a natural grinder. Intentionally checking myself goes against my nature and everything I’ve done my entire life.
And yet now I know I have to. This is the beginning of the next chapter in my life, whether I want it or not.
Some upbeat notes:
As far as I can tell I have not lost any of the fitness, endurance, balance flexibility or mobility that I gained over the past 7 years despite changing my entire routine and cutting my volume in half. I haven’t gained weight. In fact, I dropped a few pounds of flab and am ripped again.
My devastating shoulder injury from last month appears to be 95% recovered. It’s been so long since I lived with chronic pain I forgot how nice it is to wash dishes, walk the dog, sleep with my arm extended or reach for something with my left hand without sharp pain. It’s amazing I’ve recovered this much in a month. I’m grateful I didn’t need surgery. I’m shocked I got this much better in a month.
Today, I did my shortest, lightest workout in a month follwing Boyle’s guidance. It was 1/2 the weight and volume I planned when I began this program in January. And you know what? I felt great afterward – loose, pain free, and energized.
The evidence that Boyle is right keeps smacking me in the face.
When I started following Boyle again a few weeks ago, I was looking to refresh my knowledge of functional training.
I wasn’t seeking advice of how to deal with getting older. I didn’t think I had a problem or needed help with it.
I was wrong.
Boyle (age 63) and Dan John (age 68), both of whom I followed 17 years years ago for training advice have resurfaced as mentors who are helping guide me into this next chapter of life. It goes far beyond fitness. I’m grateful they are both still around and give so freely online and in podcasts. I’ve got a lot to learn.