Quick Tip #2 Lots of ideas and little time means you will get a quick tip with each PR Friday post.
Set 9 hours aside in your schedule solely for sleep. Everybody knows sleep is important, but it’s usually the recovery component that lifters willingly sacrifice. The irony is that it’s arguably the most important aspect of getting stronger.
Getting at least 8 hours of actual sleep spurns hormonal processes that aid recovery and create an efficient body. It not only helps your last recovery session, but it’s preparing you to perform optimally in the next session. As I explain in “Importance of Sleep“, you can’t just oversleep in a single night to make up for several nights of poor sleep. Get it in your head that “recovery components” like macro nutrient intake, hydration, mobility, and sleep need to be implemented chronically to reap their true benefit. Start this weekend by fully resting, and when your school or work week starts, manage your time to have nyyyyyyne hours of pillow time.
Here, two puppies demonstrate how to sleep.
Discuss your training week and highlight your recent PR’s in the comments.
Here’s a quick note amidst a busy week. I typically see hard training lifters or athletes breaking down when faced with a decision of what to eat. They’ll often pick an unhealthy choice because it tastes better. If you have to eat out during the week, then focus on hitting your macros instead of getting the tastiest item on the menu.
Macronutrients are protein, carbs, and fat. You should have an understanding of how many you need to eat in a day. If you don’t have a clue, search the 70’s Big site history. If you want my comprehensive methodology, check out Paleo for Lifters. The premise is eating enough protein to maintain or build lean body mass (i.e. muscle), enough carbs to fuel your activity level, and enough fat to recover. There’s some discrepancy or ambiguity on how much of a given macro that a type of athlete will need, but I’ve covered that on the site and in the book.
In any case, hit your macros consistently. The chronic intake is more important than the daily timing, and actually hitting the requirements is more important to recovery than it is to have a tasty, yet not as healthy meal. Does that mean you should pass on a brisket meal with a baked potato? No, but your goals will make that decision.
This doesn’t mean you should be eating bland meals, because “healthy” or “paleo-ish” meals can be very tasty if you use your brain and put some effort into them. We’ll talk more about this in the near future.
Strength and conditioning is a “now” kind of thing. What goals do you have rightnow?What do you want to achieve soon? What can you do today to work towards your goals? Sure, we do things with foresight in mind like mobility or sleeping well, but we hardly consider the big picture: life.
And the outlook is dim. Our future, if we are so lucky to get there, will involve slowing down, getting weaker, and pooping our pants. Two of those things are very unpleasant.
Well my friends, training is the way to stave off the inevitable shit show that is aging. Strength training will keep the structures from falling apart, conditioning will help keep the cardiovascular and respiratory functional, and mobility work will keep everything pliable, safe, and prevent injury. This comprehensive training approach will help maintain neuromuscular efficiency, or how well your nervous system innervates muscles. Being efficient would be a symphony of fluid, beautiful movement, and being inefficient would look like a spasmodic Frankenstein ejaculation.
The Olympic lifts can augment training programs for older gents.
Have you seen an old person lately? I’m talking about a person that makes you think, “That guy is old as fuck.” How does that guy move? He’s probably hunched over, using a cane, and shuffling along slower than Mike Tyson’s intellect. He’s not efficient. He doesn’t have kinesthetic sense (the ability to control one’s body through space). That’s what happens, and it’ll happen to all of us, so we need to hang onto what physical ability we do have for as long as we can.
Losing neuromuscular efficiency and kinesthetic sense is a big deal to the elderly. It’s the difference between falling down a flight of stairs or visiting family. We know that intelligent training will keep us spry, but I also think regularly performing the Olympic lifts in a comprehensive training program will help maintain kinesthetic sense more so than not doing them. Here’s why.
1. Olympic lifting provides a different structural stress than the regular strength lifts.
How often do you guys do anything other than stand on your two feet and squat, press, or pull a weight? Some of you do a bit of conditioning, fewer of you compete in a non-lifting sport, and I’d bet that hardly any of you do any agility work. Olympic lifting is essentially jumping around with a barbell (ignoring discrepancies in coaching styles). The ankles, knees, hips, torso, shoulders, elbows, and wrists will experience and transmit force in a different way than slower strength lifts. This will keep you prepared for non-lifting activity (like going up for a rebound), but it will keep your joints adapted to explosive forces as you age.
I know some guys that can barely get into a squat position in their house, much less with a barbell on their back. Having a shitty end range of motion in your 20s and 30s means that you’ll at least have that deficiency going into old age. By working on the Olympic lifts regularly now, it’ll encourage or force non-mobile people to fix their shit so they can hit a decent front squat rack or overhead squat. Well executed weightlifting will help maintain joint and muscle ROM.
3. The explosive nature of Olympic lifting maintains or improves neuromuscular efficiency and coordination.
Lifting weights fast recruits more motor units compared to lifting slow. More motor unit recruitment practice increases the neuromuscular efficiency overall, which essentially helps you stay “coordinated” as you get older. This is the most important reason that the Olympic lifts should used with aging trainees. Combine the “lifting fast” with the complicated movement patterns inherent in Olympic lifting, and it definitely helps total body coordination. For example, when starting a clean, the hips are flexed or closed. As the trainee jumps, their hips extend or open. Lastly, the hips flex or close again as the trainee receives the weight in the squat position. It’s a complicated movement that requires coordination.
Some coaches would argue that the “pounding” nature of the snatch or clean would be injurious to an older trainee, I would argue that even doing the lifts with light weight, and therefore avoiding the pounding, would be enough to result in maintaining coordination and efficiency. Note the two keys here: 1) large amounts of weight aren’t necessary in geriatric populations and 2) including the Olympic lifts, even with light weight, will help maintain coordination with each passing decade.
Considerations
Keeping or adding the Olympic lifts in a program of someone approaching their 50s or 60s does have a few considerations. First, if the lifts hurt them, then they obviously shouldn’t do them. Second, they shouldn’t belligerently perform the lifts if their mobility or technique are very poor. And lastly, variations can be used. Would it be nice if a 60 year old guy could stroke a light snatch with perfect positioning? Yeah, but instead, you might need to emulate the close-open-close hip movement with another implement or exercise if he can’t use a barbell or has crappy mobility. Power variations can be used if deep squat positions are unrealistic.
Parting Words
At the end of the day, if an aging trainee is exercising, they will have better longevity and quality of life over non-exercising populations. If the aging trainee actually performs a comprehensive training program that includes strength training, conditioning, and mobility work, then they’ll be way ahead of the curve. I’m just suggesting that the inclusion of the Olympic lifts will augment their efforts in having a happy, healthy life into old age. But I’m also suggesting that if some of you youngsters currently can’t do the Olympic lifts, then start working on ways to include them. If your mobility sucks, then fix it! If you snatch like a dope, stop smoking it and work on your technique. Or you can just wait until we are all 50 years old and hormone therapy is regularly used; we’ll probably live to be 150 years old regardless if you start snatching now.
Quick Tip #1 Lots of ideas and little time means you will get a quick tip with each PR Friday post.
Consider adding an agility work into your program, especially if you aren’t signed up for any competitions or meets. Since you aren’t locked into peaking for an event, you can afford to add training to develop non-strength physical attributes.
In FIT we define fitness as strength, mobility, and endurance (this is also the foundation for performance). Navigating your body through space is an element of mobility, and it shouldn’t be ignored. The easiest way to throw it in is part of your warm-up. Add some tuck jumps, carioca, side shuffles, and power skips into your warm-up and you’ll get a little dose of explosiveness and lateral movement. Will it turn you into an athlete? No. Will it help make you a bit more athletic if you’re a goon? Yeah. More importantly it will let your joints and structures in the legs adapt to some non-lifting and non-linear activity. Joints that are able to withstand explosive forces are less prone to injury, something that will be a key in longevity (more on this next week). The basic movements above are not invasive, easy to do, and don’t take a lot of time if you do a few sets of each. If you don’t have great joint mobility (range of motion), then use movement prep instead of agility work to help rehab your body.
Ladder work is another great agility tool.
Discuss your training week and highlight your weekly Personal Records in the comments.
