Every time this comes up, someone shows up to say it doesn’t matter what exercise program you follow. That’s not correct.

There’s a big difference between someone lifting weights somewhere near their genetic capacity and someone spending many hours per week racking up long, slow distance on the road. Or someone spending a few hours waving one pound dumbbells around.

If you want to be able to get out of your chair at 95 and not develop osteoporosis, you need to engage in load bearing exercise. If you want to add cardio to that - do it faster. You’ll get your HR to 80%, no problem.

I’m 80. I lift about twice a week for about 90 min each time. On the off days, I walk for an hour, usually over hills, since walking on the flat doesn’t get my HR up enough, and I don’t want to stress my knees by jogging.

I think the lady looks great, probably a lot better than she would if she was a runner.

Can't upvote this enough. Also, you don't need to wait until old age to see that this is true. I am half your age and even though I thought I was "fit", chronic pain from years of sitting jobs revealed when I got to physical therapy that I had weaknesses in multiple muscles, many of which absolutely needed to be worked directly in order to reduce the pain, and my gym and calisthenics habits weren't doing it. Our peak species health as hunter/gatherers had us doing a wide variety of strength maintaining movements that physiology and rehab medicine is only just starting to understand. It's unbelievable for example how there are guys who can squat over 250 lbs. deeply but can't do a single one legged squat even near the same depth. Glad I got my wake up call before I got too old to do much about it.

Relative to TFA, _any_ consistent movement and activity is a net gain. In that perspective, it really does not matter what program you follow as long as it gets you moving.

This wasn't about optimal. If you ask me personally what I think optimal is, I think it's 5 sets of 5 with big weights, squats deads and bench. Mix in some other cardio activity 1-2 times a week, and you'll be a relative superhero.

But we're talking about people who have health problems and no history of exercise activity. For them, just starting to move is a huge step forward.

This lady probably wouldn't have reached 80 if she had continued on her current path. If we tell people like this, "you must lift weights", we will lost most of them. I have taught a few women to lift, even tiny ones, and of course they can learn and be very strong. But there's a serious stigma when it comes to weight lifting and women. They either think it's impossible, or they think they will end up looking like the woman in the article. Now I'm a fan of built women, but most women seem to really NOT want to look like that.

Kind of side topic, but - do you think 5x5 is a good idea for 80+ year olds?

From what I know, at an older age, the chance of injury, not to mention the danger of injury, is way higher. The standard advice afaik is therefore to aim for lower weight / higher reps, because the risk of injury is therefore greatly reduced.

Not saying that 5x5 is necessarily incorrect, just that I would imagine a 8-10 rep based routine would be better for purposes of injury reduction (while still improving muscle conditioning, obviously).

I don’t follow 5x5, I recommend startingstrength.com. I use three sets of five following a good warmup.

Look at The Barbell Prescription book for more details - it’s about strength training after 40. Good form is important, and a trained coach can help with that.

Your regimen sounds great. Agreed, it's hard to get people going, but once they're going, they should be encouraged to advance.

Running is mostly a solitary sport. Lifting can be communal.

Slow and steady does it. If you hurt yourself by overdoing it when you are getting old, it will take much longer to recover.

That’s why it’s important to stop miseducating them that all popular forms of exercise are roughly equivalent. It’s too easy to choose the easier/least embarrassing option if the stark differences in outcomes aren’t apparent.

Running, done properly, builds muscle, joint, and bone strength (it seems you are implying that it doesn't). Of course, there is plenty wrong in the world of casual running where runners try to rack up mileage without ever looking at pace or their running form. Serious runners won't disagree with you there.

But the same dynamic exists in other sports, including weightlifting. Plenty of causal weight lifters focus on the weight they are pushing exclusively and never consider their bodyfat, go on "dirty bulks" or permanently injure themselves with poor form or pushing it too far (also see CrossFit).

For most people, having a couple of different and reasonably different physical activities, and sticking to them, is going to be enough. The most important thing is that people actually use their bodies into old age. Exercise isn't the rocket science people make it out to be.

I have nothing against running as a form of exercise, but let's not pretend it builds muscle optimally or is in any way, shape or form conductive to good joint health. It's a repetitive, low-ROM, impact-based sport. It's fun and rewarding and good for your circulation or burning massive amounts of calories, but that's it.

Bodybuilding (done properly) is about as close to perfect for maintaining a functioning body into old age as you can design an activity: It's easily scalable from zero to infinity, has regression and progression to your abilities built in, and huge benefits from even the smallest investment. It can be performed with basically no impact. It improves joint health. It helps you train to perform every day activities. It can easily be modified to cope with injuries, missing limbs, whatever limitation you have. It benefits you hormonally in a massive way. etc etc

I'm 36. I do about 14 hours of tennis/surf every week, plus maybe 2 hours of gym work and lots of moving around during the day for my construction work. I love my sports but my body would be a wreck if it weren't for the resistance exercise I do to prepare/rehabilitate it. I would do a lot more of it if I were smart.

Depends on what kind of running are you doing. HIT all-out interval sprinting is truly extraordinary for weight-loss and muscle gain. I find it far, far more fun than lifting weights. But then I prefer to exercise outdoors after sitting at a desk all day.

Running is super difficult to get right because most surfaces are too hard and runners seldomly have a proper form.

My dad was an elite athlete who ran for the national team. By age 50, many of his cartilages were worn out and he experienced extreme pain while doing daily chores.

He says you should only jog on grass or sand.

Some real Nassim Taleb style advice right here. As a guy in his mid-30s, I'm glad to have come across this kind of advice early on so I can keep up healthy habits for the later decades (assuming I'm not hit by a meteor first).

It if were Nassim Taleb advice, it'd use 10x the number of words, and glorify Nassim Taleb's advice given by Nassim Taleb.

> Nassim Taleb style advice

what does that mean

He's a popular author that offers very similar advice as far as lifting and walking.

Yep. I'm fifty and lifting just so I can still do activities like skiing and windsurfing at a level I'm happy about.

> I walk for an hour, usually over hills, since walking on the flat doesn’t get my HR up enough, and I don’t want to stress my knees by jogging

>usually over hills

Are you sure that's also not stressing your knees?

It’s comparable to walking on the flat.

But, you have to be really careful on the downhill parts - that’s what gets the knees. I was surprised to notice that it takes me longer to go down than up - and I think that’s good.

Jogging is different. I tried that a few years ago and my knees started acting up.

Try hiking sticks, it takes the pressure off the knees for the downhills.

Have you had a look at kneesovertoesguy? He's a trainer specialised in knee rehab, specifically helping athletes who've had multiple injuries/surgeries recover strength and range of motiong. I've done his programs for a while and learned lots of new things - big surprise as I had been lifting for 15 years before. For the first time in my life I have an easy ass-to-grass squat and massively reduced my knee pain.

When I was in my early 70s, I thought I'd work up to jogging again. Started easy, walk, jog, walk, jog, etc. This went on for about six months, until I got to about 50%. I was using a minimalist shoe. My knees started to bother me to the point where I finally had to stop.

The pain and stiffness didn't go away. It got to the point where I was picking up my left leg with my hand to get it into the car like some old geezer! I started searching the web and came up with a supplement containing glucosamine and condroitin, along with a small amount of inflammatories to promote healing. Got gradually better, and in six months the stiffness vanished. I stopped using it, and have been fine since. Sometimes I think about a 5K ;-)

A few years ago, my wife developed pain in her hip and knee joints. I suggested she try the same stuff, and, sure enough, the pains went away. She's still using it.

This is all anecdotal, of course. I've never had an actual injury, just joint issues.

> glucosamine and condroitin

Along with MSM - is great. I have taken it few times to get rid of pain induced by - I believe - prolonged sitting and workouts

Try getting rid of the padded shoes. They are an abomination. Invented by Nike to make money, but they had no idea what they were doing and that they would ruin everybody’s knees.

Also....

Your primary goal (IMO) should be "I will want to do it again tomorrow," not a performance goal. Those are secondary. Go hard enough to feel achievement, but not so much that your are sore or worn out, either physically or mentally. Everything emanates from not quitting anyway, and quitting is the reason most people don't achieve what they want. Willpower is a scarce resource, don't overtax it.

That's a good point. And then if you find something you love so much that you want to go (and go hard) every day, get some advice from someone more experienced. Too much is often detrimental, even if you think you feel capable of it.

Ideally you can end up with a mix of weight building activities and cardio activities. As people elsewhere have mentioned, playing sports can be a really fun way to get cardio without "doing cardio". Same goes for dancing or regular good sex.

top advice, the only two things to add is never underestimate the power of some sort of stretching. Before any work out and after the work out (if your doing resistance training also stretch if you can during the recovery ie build phase)

if you do some sort of workout try and make it symmetrical eg if you excercise your chest then do your back otherwise it will give you a hunch

(As far as I understand, the current research is that static stretching specifically-before working out is contraindicated as it will reduce performance and doesn't actually prevent injury.)

I've never done any form of static stretching before an excercise, for resistance training (10+ years) I just warm my muscles up (20 reps) with the lowest weight - but I do static stretching on the area I've worked on the days afterwards

people who are hypermobile may (or will) have issues with out static stretching my friend is seriously hypermobile - she struggles to do anything without proper static stretching - YMMV

I wish I could be motivated to keep doing yoga or pilates

I have read the same. It does seem that modern advice is to just do some warmup movements rather than static stretches.

After, however, stretches are really important. Without proper post-workout stretching, you can wake up with muscles so tight that you can barely stand up. Not only is that hard on joints, it seems to slow the recovery process.

> Go hard enough to feel achievement, but not so much that your are sore or worn out

Why not? I like feeling sore, means I know I'm improving.

I'm 63. I know a lot of people who took up running, ran hard for a couple of years (maybe won a few races), got a lot of injuries, and no longer run. I ran for the first time on Oct 1 1971, and the most recent time is 12 miles this morning.

I'm for sure not saying I am better than them, because I certainly am not. But I am saying that there is something to just enjoying yourself. I have little adventures four times a week, and still like it. I'm rarely really worn; I'm just not going for that. So that is one reason to think to stay away from sore.

(Of course, if what you want is to win races then go for it.)

> there is something to just enjoying yourself. I have little adventures four times a week

That's what people often don't get about outdoor exercise. You can combine physical and mental exercise - exploring new areas, impromptu orienteering, just the sheer focus required to run or bike in complicated terrain is a huge plus and makes it easier to stay engaged.

I’ve been cycling for many years and do a careful mix of:

1) Relaxing recovery rides 2) Long endurance rides (50-100mi) 3) Race pace 1-2 hour rides 4) Intense sprints

I’m usually a little sore after 3 or 4, and take a relaxed day after. That is when progress happens.

A little sore is ok. Too sore to exercise again is not good. There's also a psychological aspect to it. If you push yourself to the limits of your discipline, you'll overtax it and "run out." It's one thing or another. Injuries. Too busy and didn't return. Burnout takes a lot of forms.

There's a sweet spot where you really want to go in and do it again.

Also, beware of pro bodybuilder regimes unless you are one. (1) They're optimising for that elusive last mile (2) They often assume PED use.

I think the problem with people who are new is what's a 'little sore'? A person who has never lifted will have DOMs that is going to feel a lot more than a little sore after their first workout. It's completely normal, and not dangerous. In fact, a 30 minute stationary bike ride will probably clear it up.

It's actually really hard for someone to overtrain. What normally happens is people use it as an excuse to stop training.

What I tell people is that long term training is a grind - and that's a good thing. Accept that fact early on and find your own enjoyment in it however you have to. The discipline that comes to other areas in your life from accepting the training grind is a benefit many people don't even notice.

I disagree. The enemy isn't not training hard enough. The enemy is burnout and quitting. Train to the point where getting back into the gym requires as little discipline as possible.

There is, especially in weight rooms, a danger of doing stuff that's not really exercise. But if you're swimming, running, climbing, squats, pushups, pullups, tennis and such... it's not really a danger. They're all going to put a beginner on a meaningful progression path. Don't worry about being insufficiently intensive unless your progression has halted.

The grind isn't about training hard enough, it's about consistently training. Doesn't matter which mix of exercises someone decides to do (it does, but assuming the opposite is zero), consistency will eventually become a grind.

You're right the main enemy is quitting. When I tell people I workout nearly every day, people have this illusion that it's easy. It's not. I make time for it in my day, I make it a priority. That's what I mean by the grind. Everyone is different, but I find embracing the uncomfortableness easier than looking for ways around it.

As long as you don't mind it, if it feels like you're suffering or martyring yourself you're crossing a line. You can overdo it and end up demotivated (if you're lucky) or injured (if you're not). And depending on the injury, you'll not be able to do that same sport again.

Soreness really only tells you that you've done something new, not that you're improving. Do the same exercise for just a couple of weeks and soreness will rapidly decrease.

Not necessarily. There is such a thing as overtraining. To get consistent results, you have to allow time to recover between sessions. The older you are, the longer it takes. The more advanced you are, the longer it takes. At my age, it takes two days off to recover.

Really depends. If you are competitive chasing numbers can be motivation. And ofc it‘s easier if you enjoy what you‘re doing, but you also have to be able to just pull through at times. Motivation has to turn into disciplin.

IMO establishing physical exercise as a part of your life should be the goal. It’s as essential as brushing your teeth. And a big problem I see is people are always presented with short term solutions. Do this workout for 6 weeks and get a Men’s Health cover body. Yet the reality is you have to eat healthy, consistently work out and keep working out to stay in shape and healthy.

Yes. True.

My advice is for the 90% of us, the serial jan-march gym goers. If you already have that habit, compete, and exercise is a given... don't take advice from me.

That said, I suspect that even for advanced athletes, "Take steps to avoid burnout" is probably still relevant.

It's true that any exercise is better than no exercise.

It isn't true that no form of exercise is better or worse than any other for general health.

If you have to pick one, I strongly recommend compound lifts of free weights. The benefits in terms of bone density, joint health, tendon strength, muscular power, hormone production, are simply irreplaceable with any amount of "cardiovascular" exercise. I put that in quotes because it should be called endurance training, lifting weights will emphatically exercise your cardiovascular system.

I was dancing every weekend and walking a couple miles a day when I started lifting. I started lifting because, in my late 30s, it started to be the case that when I would knock something to the floor, I would hitch up my pants and carefully lower myself down to retrieve it, complete with joint pain in my knees.

I extrapolated where that problem would take me in a couple decades, and decided to do something about it. It worked.

I think yoga might be an alternative for people wanting to maintain their bodies well into the future. I’ve done weightlifting and yoga, I like them both, I think if I was picking one for effectiveness and longevity of practice it’d be yoga.

But why pick one? You can totally mix in some yoga with lifting :)

I've noticed that I lift easier (and it's not a subtle difference) when I do some deep spine-stretching yoga on recovery days.

So I certainly agree! I view stretching (calisthenics, yoga, Pilates, whatever you want to call it) as a natural adjunct of weightlifting, something which most lifters discover is useful, even necessary.

But it's not as obvious to a dedicated yogic practitioner why they might want to lift weights. So in terms of "pick one" I'm going to advocate for the one which naturally points in the direction of both (:

What about some form of HIIT with lighter weights? My concern with heavy lifting is that it trains only one body's energy system out of three..

Sure, just watch out for CrossFit, most of those crews have an unhealthy attitude towards workouts imho.

I deliberately left out the word "heavy" because, while I do favor the powerlifting 5x5 style personally, it's not for everyone. Just: free weights, and compound lifts over isolation exercises.

Putting less weight on the bar and combining it with sprints and burpees makes plenty of sense to me, although it's not my style.

You don't have use that much lighter weights. You can do a 5x5 and superset it with burpees or opposing muscles. I'm on a pull-up kick where I want to do 500 pull-ups over the course of a single workout. So in between sets of my regular workouts, I do pull ups. HIIT basically happens as a side effect...

One rule I have for trying new exercises is to try it five times before giving up. This is particularly true for classes with an instructor.

The first time you have absolutely no idea what’s going on.

The 2nd - 4th times you are starting to get the hang of it and will see the slight derivations across different classes.

By the 5th time you’ve probably gotten enough exposure to be able to say “yeah ok this really isn’t my thing” or “these of the parts of this I really enjoy”.

I agree with other commenters that there is something important about weight lifting, though. Certainly having cardio as your main exercise is fine, but I think diversity of exercise is important, too.

Choice of exercise matters because of our age. For instance, a person will start to lose muscle mass after age 35 or something, and the bone density will decrease as well. Therefore, weight training becomes increasingly crucial as we age because it reduces the rate of reductio of our muscle and bone density and it keeps our remaining muscle strong.

It's kinda sad that this is the top comment. Why would that be true, as in, why would enjoyment mean anything here? Most people enjoy eating cake, I sure do, but it's probably a negative to their long term health and well-being.

For an example, my understanding is that weight lifting is better for weight loss than cardio, contrary to the popular perception... if your goal is to lose weight, you'd better do what works best and not what you enjoy, or at least choose the activity that you enjoy most out of the ones best for the job.

I believe I could sum up the original comment as "perfect is the enemy of good, and enjoyment greatly contributes to something sticking". I do think a lot of people (myself included) get hung up on doing it the Right Way (TM) that we don't do anything it all.

A pathology of our day.

Look at it this way...

(1) Basically any class on offer at your gym, taken daily, will get you fit, sexy & healthy. Pilates, weights, swimming, wall climbing. They all work good, as long as you keep doing them and don't quit.

(2) Quitting is extremely likely. Most of us quit most of the exercise regimes we start.

Given these two points, the only thing worth optimising is "how not to quit." A good start is aiming for that "sweet spot" where you feel satisfaction, but not soreness or burnout. If you have to make yourself take a recovery day, that's a good place to be. Obviously also life stuff. Scheduling, social stuff, etc.

That would be good advice if you are 100% disciplined, which irl usually means that you're under someone else's discipline.

For most people most of the time, running out of discipline and quitting is the failure point. The relative merits of running vs weights vs judo are trivial relative to the merits of continuous exercise habit throughout your life. You'll naturally gravitate towards little optimisations and improvements anyway, if you keep showing up.

If you're a pro athlete, where showing up is a given, then the difference between high rep and low rep matters. Otherwise, it's like premature optimisation.

Even for pros, like professional writers, the most common advice relates to showing up every day.

I'm a huge proponent of weight lifting. I hate cardio. But I do know that if you only do lifting and don't do cardio, stretching, and the other boring stuff, you will get less value from your lifting.

You do the cardio to build more endurance, a stronger heart, and apparently a more efficient use of the oxygen in your blood.

TFA didn't seem to be about weight loss; it was about declining health. And in that case, virtually any consistent exercise would be an improvement. Whatever it is that gets someone off their sofa regularly is a good starting point. If that activity is weight lifting, then perhaps they will enjoy the extra benefits of better strength, higher metabolism, a feeling of more energy, etc.

You will never keep doing something if you don't enjoy it.

So it's better to do something suboptimal that you enjoy, than not do the optimal thing because you hate it.

And cardio definitely helps with weight loss, because all the bodybuilders do it for cutting.

For me it's bodyweight excercises and running. And I don't really care if there would be something else that's better.

And about the cake example, you probably want to replace that with healthy food that you enjoy, not with the most healthy that you detest. Otherwise you will drop out immediately.

1) As for replacing the cake with "healthy food you enjoy", that is exactly my point. You start with what works. Then out of that you can choose what you enjoy. So, you don't eat tons of cake because that's what you enjoy - you first narrow down to what works, then choose e.g. apples, or whatever.

2) The 2nd part about enjoyment vs dropping I just completely disagree with.

2.1) Enjoyment often builds up with confidence and success, especially in the areas where you make rapid progress as a beginner, like weight-lifting or cardio or most PT really.

2.2) In general, this mindset where you only do things as you enjoy and don't try to develop any grit is terrible, especially for people who don't start out with an advantage in a given area (health, financial, smarts, mood, etc). And more so for people who have self-inflicted problems in a given area - the problems that stem from doing what they "enjoy".

I think for 2.2 that I eat veggie soups instead of salads when I want to eat primarily vegetables doesn’t have any correlation on my grit or lack thereof. I think this might be assuming a much more extreme position that was presented. No one is saying “only do things you enjoy”, only “if you’re going to take life choices to improve your health, work on improvements that don’t give you negative reinforcement against improving your health”.

> Once you find it, just keep doing it.

The harder part, IMO, is finding a job in tech industry that will allow the free time to keep doing it.

Weightlifting in particular is extremely beneficial for men, particularly as they age because of the testosterone gains and their affect on mood, weight, muscle building, etc...