Miscellanea: Pumping iron for geezers.
Three months ago, having not set foot in a gym for almost a decade, I decided to get back into weightlifting, and three months later, having slowly and patiently cleared the cobwebs from the recesses of my joints, I am able to make some observations, in re: how pumping iron at age fifty compares to how it felt at thirty, or twenty. Others in similar situations—either taking up once again an old sport, or perhaps making a first-time middle-aged foray into physical training—might find these observations interesting, if not useful.
The basic problem: The basic problem with pumping iron in middle-age and beyond is being middle-aged. People who state fatuously age is just a number or you’re as young as you are at heart are filthy liars! The ageing process is a downward thermodynamic spiral from which there is no return. As you accumulate years, you will lose strength, flexibility, and endurance, not to mention eyesight, hearing, hair, and teeth. Resign yourself to this fact, if you are planning to do any serious exercise later in life; it will save you pining after that sweet bird of youth.
Physiological double vision: Training in middle age is very much like standing in two worlds, or like being two people in one body. After warming up, with my my juices flowing and my sweat working up nicely, I feel the same magical rush of endorphins as I did training at thirty-five, or twenty-five; I feel like time has stood still, like I am every bit as powerful, limber, and quick as I was twenty years ago. Between sets, however, if I should bend down to pick up a piece of paper, or sit down, or get up again after sitting down, I realise ah yes, that’s right, I’m an old man now, I forgot. It is a strange sensation, feeling simultaneously strong and frail.
Use it or lose it: Physical decay proceeds quietly in the background, its extent not being felt until we make a sudden change in routine. Take flexibility: I was never as supple as a gymnast, but for most of my life I could at least touch my toes. Imagine my surprise (horror) upon taking a physical inventory and discovering that far from being able to touch my toes, I could barely reach past my knees! Since then, with some diligent flexibility training, and a lot of profanity, I can now just about grasp my ankles. Moral: unless you are deliberately planning to spend your twilight years tooling around the food court on one of those motorised chair-scooters, stay active.
Meeting old friends and making new ones: In and out of the gym I now often find myself revisited by the aching ghosts of injuries past. I incurred these mainly in the spinal area, always having lifted as heavy as possible in my twenties and thirties, and not always with the best form. Additionally, I have made the unwelcome discovery that it is possible, at age fifty, to pull and strain entirely new sets of muscles and tendons in novel and exciting ways. A long lay-off exacerbates not only loss of flexibility, but progressive muscle imbalance as well. We all naturally favour one side or the other in our daily activities, leading to one side becoming strength-dominant over time. These imbalances must be patiently corrected or any training progress will be sub-optimal. Related to these old and new aches and pains is general muscle soreness. Sore muscles are a natural consequence of hard training, but I find middle-aged soreness to be qualitatively different, of longer duration, and affecting unexpected places—I certainly never used to get sore glutes. Thus, although I knew enough not simply to go balls-out the first day back in the gym, I have learned to proceed with additional caution. However slowly and carefully you are easing yourself back into training, take it even slower; your connective tissue will thank you.
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? The algorithms ticking away inside the cardio equipment inform me that an appropriate target heart rate for a man of my age is 137-139 beats per minute, which I find both a little insulting and a little sad. 139 beats per minute does not feel particularly taxing, and I am always motivated to lie to the machines about my age. Of course, if I lie too ambitiously the machines offer a level of resistance inducing a heart rate of 150+, whereupon I feel like I am going to die. Thus I now err on the side of not incurring a fatal heart attack simply to assuage my wounded pride.
Need a new set of wheels: I have heard many times the classic adage, covering all manner of athletic endeavour—the legs are the first to go—but only now do I appreciate it all the way down to my knee caps. I may enjoy bashing away at the weights every bit as much as I used to, but there is no denying that my legs have disappeared, by which I mean, in the big, leg-intense lifts like squat and dead-lift, I am pushing not just a few pounds less than previously, but several hundred pounds less. Of all of my ageing muscle groups, the legs have been the most stubborn to to respond to training. I suppose this is why we do not see many middle-aged gold-medal Olympians.
To someone considering a mid-life return to training this may all sound very discouraging, but there are some positives. I quite like not feeling the pressure of having to ego-lift all the time, for example. And since I am always mindful of surviving a given workout without having my spine explode, I now do every exercise with textbook form—much more slowly and controlled than I ever did previously; the result is a much more intense pump and burn in every exercise. In fact, I wish I had always trained this carefully; I would have achieved more while saving myself a lot of pain. The point is that even though you will not catch up with yourself circa twenty or thirty years ago, there are benefits to physical training, at any age. Just make sure to mind the inevitable physiological changes and set reasonable and attainable goals. I understand I will likely never be as big and strong as I was at age thirty, but nonetheless in three months I have gained back five pounds of muscle, about which I have no complaints. I think of my time in the gym now as an ongoing experiment: what kind of shape can I knock myself into at age fifty, and beyond? It beats just sitting around and waiting for the grim reaper, at any rate.