Active Aging: 10 Rules for the Over 40s

Active aging is a strategy to optimize one's health, participation, and security as we age. The primary goal is simply not to live a long life, but rather to live a quality life. Active aging is a pluridimensional concept in which the physical, mental, spiritual, social, and economic aspects of aging are all connected.

The truth is, we are never going to stop the effects of aging, but we can certainly slow the pace. For those who value health and are looking to stay younger and vibrant through their 40s, 50s, 60s, and well beyond, there is a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating the significant benefits of strength training for all age groups.

Those who engage in moderately-intense strength training can expect: improved muscle and bone health, improved body composition, reduced muscle loss rate, body fat loss, improved energy and mood, and prevention of chronic diseases.

10 Rules for Training Over 40

1. Stay Clear of Injury. Recovering from an injury in your 20s was easy, but not so much when you are in your 40s. Sustaining any type of injury in your 40s will take much longer to recover from — so it's important to avoid risks in the gym. The goal is to keep training well into your golden years. Avoid ego lifts.

2. Perform Mixed Training. One of the best things you can do is to rotate through a variety of disciplines. Incorporate kettlebell, resistance band training, and bodyweight disciplines with compound movement. Calisthenics is a great way to keep the body functioning while reducing the load impact on joints.

3. Increase Your Accumulation Phase. An accumulation phase is a period in training whereby the goal is to increase volume (sets and reps) while keeping the load weight at a minimum. This method will help protect the joints over time.

4. Increase Time Under Tension (TOT). One of the best ways to train as you age is to increase time under tension on your muscles. Changing your lift tempo to a 3-2-1 can be difficult but very effective. Different lifting tempos reduce joint stress while delivering a greater muscle-building stimulus.

5. Reduce Spinal Load Frequency. Grouping lower back-intensive exercises into one day a week can be a great way to allow recovery for the often-vulnerable lower back. If training legs every three to five days, an example rotation: do a squat or deadlift variation one workout, and train predominantly with unilateral and machine exercises on the next, before going back to a squat or deadlift workout.

6. Stabilize First. When encountering new clients — especially those without an athletic background in their 40s and 50s — one of the key issues we see is lower extremity instability. We focus on calisthenics for the first 6 to 12 weeks to strengthen the lower extremities.

7. Quality Is Job One. For beginner clients above 50, focusing on four to five exercises per workout at maximum is all that's needed. Pick an upper body push and pull session and a lower body push and pull session, rotate, and keep an eye on quality.

8. Warm Up Properly. Spending the first 5 to 10 minutes on warm-up (treadmill, assault bike, SkiErg, rower, or spin bike) is a great way to get the body prepared for work. Another 5 minutes on mobility and flexibility follows. For clients in their 40s and 50s, this is critical — the ability to "get away with" poor posture and technique diminishes significantly with age.

9. Build Your Conditioning Base. One thing that all our new clients (those 40 and up) have in common is subpar cardiovascular health. We spend time on improving work capacity so that we can better enhance the sensitivity of the muscle hypertrophy signaling pathways.

10. Stay Active and Enjoy the Process. Simply staying active outside of the gym is vital, and often overlooked. A daily walk can play huge dividends on improving many of the factors that contribute to anabolic resistance — the muscle's reduced ability to respond to an anabolic stimulus, which worsens as you age. Find an activity and sport you love and can enjoy with others.

Training over 40 requires a thoughtful, experienced coach. [See our programs built for every stage of life →](/pricing)