Bodybuilding for seniors

Actually I never planned to be a Senior anything,
but on the other hand I didn't plan to die sooner either.
I feel better when I am strong--fewer aches and pains, but also I feel smug when I lift and work out with weights beyond the capacity of many people who are young than I am.

Most of those who read here are already eating and exercise on the side of the angels, these are commendable.
Others are more on angelic since I am vegetarian,but not yet vegan (although I am approaching vegan step ty step).

I eat well and intelligently, I exercise with weights, and I get a hell of a lot of pleasure of being it.

I always think it great when older people are lifting decent weights. If nothing else it gives the younger people hope that they too can be lifting strong well into later life. Personally I want to be hitting big weights for my birthday celebrating reaching 100
As a side note I was with a mate who is the same age as me & this young guy said "Is that your dad" to me His face was priceless

For this week at the college where I teach, the physical ed. department has posted the following:

"Did you know that you probably started losing muscle mass at the age of 25. Many people don’t recognize the loss of muscle mass but they do find themselves getting weaker at certain tasks as they age. How would you like to find out how much muscular strength and endurance you really have compared to others your age? Employees wanting to test their strength and endurance should come to the Fitness Center..."

So of course I signed up. I figure this test should be a shoo-in since most guys my age have been dead for several years.
We'll see.
I'll post the results here.

I'd be interested to see how you get on. I reckon you're going to be in top 5% or so as so many people just accept becoming decrepit as they age. You're going to be a beast would be my guess

Not too shabby... I scored in the 90th Percentile, nearly into the 100th. So if there had been a field of 100 guys competing I would have been among the top nine or ten.

I think I would have done better if I'd known how the event was to be conducted and scored. For instance, one of the challenges was Crunches--how many can you do in one minute? They didn't explain that the goal was twenty-five, that's when the clock stopped. Not knowing that, I cranked out sixty crunches in a minute, but the extra thitry-five didn't count.

On the whole, the game was fun, and I asked the Phys Ed department if they were going to do it again in the Spring. They thought about it for a minute, then said, Sure, why not? But next time I know what to train for!

Hey, hey, not bad! I knew you'd be at the top somewhere & as you said now you know the rules, you'll be within the top 5% I reckon!
Nice goal to train for! It will also give you some outside validation about how your training is going, so awesome.
You blew away their stats doing 60 crunches that's great! Expecting older guys to only do 25! I would like to think I could knock out 1 crunch a second as long as I'm alive! I don't crunch so much these days - if you want bed-time reading read Stuart McGill stuff. He is very anti abdominal flexion (so against doing crunches, sit-ups etc). I actually found that dropping abdominal flexion actually led to my one back issue, so now I don't focus on abdominal flexion, but also include a lot of stuff like planks, rollouts, Turkish get-ups, Russian twists, suitcase carries, even waiter walks, as these all work the core muscles teaching them to resist movement (a primary function of the core), but I do include some stuff like crunches, sit-ups as well as I've found my back likes it & my waist tightens up when they are included.

I usually do three sets of thirty rope-pulldown-crunches. I've rigged a set of ropes for the lat machine. Generally pull about 150 lbs, which isn't as difficult as it might sound--makes a good place to catch your breath between sets of the hard stuff.

I'm not sure how I got on the mailing list for the Harvard Medical School Health News Letter but it comes in my email as an on-line free subscription. Lots of information about health and fitness.
I think this is the sign-up page: http://www.health.harvard.edu/special_health_reports/knees_and_hips?utm_source=focuson&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fitness-2&j=27975309&e=galleryholman@yahoo.com&l=16674337_HTML&u=322428077&mid=148797&jb=0

The current issue discusses tendonitis, which is a subject of interest to me as I work through my recent injury.

"…Injury refers to the loss of function of a body part with or without some visual disruption of the part's structure. The injury may be very obvious. For example, if you rupture your biceps tendon, you will often see an obvious lump in your arm. You will lose power but may have no pain. Or you have pain that decreases function but you can't localize it to one spot. With biceps tendonitis, moving the muscle results in pain around the shoulder and upper arm. Yet looking at the arm and shoulder, everything appears normal.
Whatever the injury, there are three basic phases to getting yourself back to where you were before your injury: Immediate post-injury phase. Recovery period. Functional phase…"

http://view.mail.health.harvard.edu/?j=fe5516777c63017e751d&m=febb15747d630d7a&ls=fdd915707765057c7514787463&l=fe5a15767363007e7613&s=fe2c15747465037e741c79&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe31177277600675751372&r=0

Any of the joint related issues can be annoying, but at least you can fix this, wearing out the hyaline cartilage (the stuff on the end of bones that allow sliding to occur easily) for example can be a tougher hurdle overcome. Robbie Hazeley suffered for years with patella cartilage damage (it was one of the reasons he went vegan), he kept it at bay for over 20 years, but now it looks like it was so damaged that he'll need a new knee...but he did get an extra 20 or more years by a simple dietary change as the docs wanted to whip it out when the guy was a young man! So, at least with some sensible rehab you'll be back to training in no time.

Actually that reminds me I think I'll post some vids I found of a young woman who powerlifts in the training with weights section as she's a real inspiration! Check out this

I have access to a bone and joint doctor (one of the best, I am told), who is seeing my wife. He often comments on my condition since he himself is a runner and appreciates the dedication of workers and lifters.
His advice concerning injuries is the same as ours, continue lifting, but keep it down to reasonable weights that you can do with good form while you recovery from injuries.

That's a rare doctor!!!!!!!!!!!

Ewww! I just glanced back at that illustration...



...it looks like an awkward suicide attempt.

As I've mentioned before, Abs aren't fair, it takes a lot of exercise and diet to produce any noticeable results. I'm not where I want to be yet, but the results are beginning to show.

The stupid man's guide to DIY suicide!

1/ sit on knees
2/ attach noose
3/ lower body & wait to suffocate

Getting abs is hard & gets harder as you age, what a teen can do on beer & snack food, us older guys have to slave to achieve. It always makes me laugh when I see a teen guy trying to tell you how to get abs - I think " You don't know nothing about it yet young man, it's easy to get abs as the hormones kick in & your still growing upwards. Just wait until you can actually grow a beard before you start trying to tell older guys how it's done!". Older guys with abs earned them & any guy over 40 with abs is really a hard worker!