Improving at old age

I have a client who is 60 years old. He has been lifting with me for around 8 months. He first came to me to lose weight, we have shed 20kg, and managed to increase his strength a tad.

Tonight he was lifting with Hyjak and Aussieballer off this forum. I really pushed James tonight, and this is what he managed at 60 with 8 months training.

Squat........... 120kg....deep
Bench press.... 80kg
Powerclean..... 60kg...we didnt max this out
Push press...... 50kg
Deadlift......... 150kg

This guy didnt take up weightlifting till he was 59. When he started he was convinced there was no chance of improvement at his age.

He has managed to do this while on a calorie restricted diet.

Its never too late

PTC said:

I have a client who is 60 years old. He has been lifting with me for around 8 months. He first came to me to lose weight, we have shed 20kg, and managed to increase his strength a tad.

Tonight he was lifting with Hyjak and Aussieballer off this forum. I really pushed James tonight, and this is what he managed at 60 with 8 months training.

Squat........... 120kg....deep
Bench press.... 80kg
Powerclean..... 60kg...we didnt max this out
Push press...... 50kg
Deadlift......... 150kg

This guy didnt take up weightlifting till he was 59. When he started he was convinced there was no chance of improvement at his age.

He has managed to do this while on a calorie restricted diet.

Its never too late

Click to expand...

Very inspirational. Thank you for sharing Markos.


Fadi.

That's excellent, congratulations to him!

It brings to mind what you (Markos) said about people who take up physical training for the first time after 40 never sticking to it. Does the guy have a history of some training in earlier years? Or sports or something?

I'm wondering if that might help - surely it must. Just knowing that you were strong and fit once years ago must help you get through hard training today. It's easier to achieve something if you know you can, if you know what I mean.

That is awesome! Give him a pat on the back for me.

He doesn't even look 60.

I have to show this to my dad

he winges about having a bad back so wont squat.

He said his chiro told him to that human body is not made ot lift overly heavy wieghts so we should never do it.

I wanted to head bunt the ****.

So he has it in his head now that its bad for him.

James came to PTC with a really bad back. He was very concerned about lifting weights. He has a friend who trains at PTC, they bench 60kg, squat 100kg and deadlift 135kg. Her name is Amanda. She talked James into coming to see me.

I fixed his back, obviously. Thats why I HATE stupid moronic pricks who make comment about PTC from 1000kms away, they have no idea what I do there.

James rowed and ran in school, thats the extent of his sporting prowess. He has had to overcome MASSIVE issues in his life that should never be discussed on a forum.

He is doing extremely well.

That doctor is a perfect example why I am wary of lab coats and book taught people. Once they pass whatever course they are doing, the learning stops. This is obviously not true with all of them, but it should not be true with ANY of them.

your dads doctor went to school for a million years and earns a million dollars, and I didnt finish high school and earn a pitence compared to him, yet I solved James problem while the doctor brushed your father off.

too common.

Man, that is exactly the same as my old man.

I need to show him this.

When I was 20 the 30 y.o.`s would say "You are so young,I am old"

When I was 30 the 40 y.o.`s would say "You are so young,I am old"

Now I am about to hit 40 and the 50y.o.`s say it.

I am a lot slower,have a lot less stamina and have a few aches and pains but other wise I am probably in the best shape of my life (even though the fattest too!).

Old guys like him inspire me and wipe those other idiots from my mind.
And kudos to you Markos for showing these people the way.

Im starting to think they put steroids in the water at frankston.

n00bs, the atmosphere at a place makes a big difference. You rise to your competition, your mates encourage you.

The gym I go to regularly, nobody deadlifts, the women avoid the free weights. If you don't even try then you don't get stronger.

At PTC I saw an attractive woman in her 30s, hair nicely done and wearing comfortable clothes but not grungy workout gear, not obviously muscular or superfit, saw her deadlift almost twice her bodyweight. You just wouldn't pick it seeing her on the street, you'd think she was healthy, but wouldn't know she was so strong.

At a mainstream gym people would stop to look at that lift, and talk about it for weeks afterwards. Hell, they stop to look at my unimpressive overhead presses and bent over rows. A woman doing it there, people would let her know she was unusual and remarkable.

I don't think Markos tells them they're unusual. It reminds me of when Flo Jo had won some women's sprinting race, they asked her how she felt about her world record. She said, "I would have run faster if I were running against Carl Lewis."

At a mainstream gym there's not much competition. If you squat or deadlift at all you're in the strongest 10% of the gym membership. Plus it's larger and you're more on your own - most of us know that we lift heavier if we have a trainer or training partner. In a garage gym with others you're never on your own, always someone to encourage and push you.

Atmosphere, the company you keep in the gym, that makes a big difference. That's why I'd like a training partner at my gym. But they all have excuses... "My back... my hip... my knee... my shoulder..." They should have a sort of personals board or something

Kyle Aaron said:

the atmosphere at a place makes a big difference. You rise to your competition, your mates encourage you.

Click to expand...

I couldn't agree with you more Kyle. Well done mate.

The right atmosphere instills a new fire in the belly that propels one to soar; without having to even think about it. Testosterone rises and adrenalin pumps become your two most consistent training partners.


Fadi.

Atmosphere we know helps in the mental part, perhaps it translates to the neural part, too. That is, the nerves connecting brain and muscles.

One interesting thing I've learned in my course is that the nervous system is believed to hold back a lot of the muscles' capacity. When you exert force with them, they are under tension. The body fears that too much tension will tear them, so it responds by turning them off! You try to contract them more but you just can't.

This is the factor that's used to help in PNF stretching.


You're stretched, someone pushes the limb and you push back, contracting your muscles, then relaxing them, and the muscles respond to this high tension, this stress, by relaxing more - so they can be stretched more.

Back to lifting, this is why it may happen that if given an extremely heavy load, far more than you normally lift, you don't strain yourself and tear muscles and tendons - you just collapse.

As you lift progressively more weight, your body adapts, learning that it can have X amount of tension without the muscles tearing. So it's believed that in the first months of resistance training, most of the adaptations are neural, your body learning that it doesn't have to hold back. But it's always a factor, even for people ten years training or more.

It's also believed this explains why people have been able to lift hugely more than normal in crisis situations, like the story of the woman whose son was crushed by the car he was working on, she... lifted it up and pulled him out. In time of stress, the neural holding back stops.

Obviously if you have spotters around you will feel secure in your lifts - "even if I drop it, I won't get squashed." And if you have people encouraging you, that I think can make it like a crisis situation - your body doesn't hold back so much, that enormous reserve of strength you have comes out.

None of this changes the simple fact that atmosphere and training partners and mates in lifting make a big difference, you do much better than you would alone or with people putting you down, etc. I just find it fascinating to explore just why...

James trained again today, tuning up for the comp on Saturday. This was his previous best


Squat........... 120kg....deep
Bench press.... 80kg
Powerclean..... 60kg...we didnt max this out
Push press...... 50kg
Deadlift......... 150kg

Today he easily squatted 120kg, will be his opener on Saturday, he then benched 80kg, another opener.

He then powercleaned 70kg and push pressed 62.5kg, not a bad improvement.

His total is now 482.5kg, seriously, how good is that, 60 years old with less than 12 months lifetime training.

Well done James, well done!


Fadi.

Tonight James benched 82.5kg and powercleaned 75kg.

His total is 497.5kg.

Far out, go hard James!

It's never too old to start!
74-Year Old Ageless Wonder Wins Bodybuilding Competition: Burn The Fat Blog

"
After you check out this video of a 74-year old championship winning bodybuilder, I don’t EVER want to hear the excuse “I’m too old” ever again!
Tsutomo Tosaka didn’t start training until he was in his 40’s and today is winning masters bodybuilding championships. His most recent win at the Japanese National Championships made international news this week."

Far out, that dude is in awesome shape! How about those calves. I have seen quite a few of those old dude BB comps and they usually look pretty average. He looks like he could give someone half his age a run!