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5th Exercise Rule to Break After 50: Some Exercises Are Just for “Old People" · Making Muscle Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: In this final episode of the five exercise rules that you're allowed to throw out after the age of 50, I am tackling the idea that certain exercises are for old people and that they're not going to give us any benefit going forward.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 years of work in the fitness industry, I have learned that real strength isn't just built through exercise, but through experience.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I will share with you some of the science as well as the stories that have shaped my work.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: We are all building muscle memories.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: One rep, one story, and one day at a time.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Making Muscle Memories Podcast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Lauren Erk and I will be your host.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, over the past four episodes, this being the fifth, I've been talking about some exercise rules that I hear about all the time, and I've and I've probably been guilty of saying them myself, that I really feel like we need to throw out.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And these are important ideas that we have really embedded into our culture, and this surrounds the field of exercise.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: The first rule that I talked about was the idea was that there should be no pain, no gain, everything should hurt.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: The second rule we talked about is that we all need to keep up with a certain pace, and if you can't keep up, somehow you're falling behind.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: The third rule was that a workout has to be hard, we have to be sweaty, beat up for it to actually have been a benefit.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth episode, we talked about the idea that modifications and making a modification automatically makes me a beginner.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: In this final episode, I want to talk a lot with you about the idea that certain things belong to an old person and certain things belongs to a younger person.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that this exercise looks like it's for old people, so it just doesn't want to benefit me.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I've definitely been guilty of this.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about what do we think of when we think of aging?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes when we when we look at aging, it's something that we don't want to see, right?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I know for myself, looking at myself in the mirror, look at my face, my body in the mirror, I definitely notice things about myself that are new every day.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, hmm, what's going on with my neck?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with my skin?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with my eyes?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with my hair?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with my athletic ability?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all the things that go along with aging.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I I think there's a reason why some people say, you know, aging isn't for sissies.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I can remember my younger self looking at certain people that I was training with and thinking to myself, oh, that those old people, like as if I wasn't end up gonna end up like that.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: As if my body wasn't eventually going to go there, you know.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at people that are really touted in our culture for their magnificent, magnificent bodies and face.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I always feel sorry for models or um athletes because they're so celebrated when they're younger.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we look at their bodies as the benchmark, you know, and they're not allowed to really age.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I it's so sad when you go to the grocery and you see these before pictures and after pictures about how people are aging, you know, like I'm not gonna call it any names, but you see some woman celebrity, and you know, we thought of her as the sex symbol.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she was on some television show that was surrounded in that.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that any of these people, but you know, what are some of the television shows that we looked at, you know, Baywatch or something?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then we look at some pictures of them, you know, down the road, and they're like, oh, she's really let herself go, and she's like pictured with a bikini on with some cellulite, or she has no makeup on, or maybe she didn't get her hair colored, or whatever it is.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or men, that they were maybe they were an action figure at one point, but now they're pictured on the beat with beach with their wives and they're in a pair of you know swimming trunks, and you can see that they have you know less muscle in their legs or something like that.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, certain things about aging are are definitely going to have to be um accepted, but I've always maintained the idea that as long as we remain consistent, we don't necessarily have to age in the way that you think.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can retain a lot of muscle as we age.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to lose some, but we can retain a lot of muscle.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to think about the way that we're training to get there.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the biggest problems that I see with our culture right now is that we we've we we frame exercise in a specific way.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I hate the way that we've always put exercises in categories, you know, like these are the intense kinds of training, like HIIT training is intense, running marathons is intense, you know, lifting, crossfit, intense, and they are intense, they are intense.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: But does that make them better than something else?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Does does doing Pilates, and I'm just gonna put that out there because Pilates is so popular right now as I'm filming this, does doing Pilates make me less strong than me going and walking into a fitness center and lifting weights?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are my muscles going to respond to both of these things?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now we all know the rules about muscle.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: We know that we need to use progressive overload.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have to continuously putting progressive stress on our muscular system for our body to give to have a reason to build muscle.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Muscle is expensive architecture.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Our body is going to utilize it for, you know, get rid of it if we're not going to use it.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to utilize it when we have a lot of loads put against us.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the idea that use it or lose it is very, very true.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I do think that this is a big problem.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: People start when they're younger, they're active, they go through a period of their life when they're not active, and then when their body starts falling apart, they try to become active again, thinking that they could train the same way that they were in their 20.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to talk with you about something that's really important.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: What about the people, and I've talked about this in other ways in this in this series.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: What about the people that won't let go of the idea that an exercise, because of how it looks from the naked eye, is less cool than something else, right?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about that?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: What do we what do we want to do when we're younger?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: What are the things that we're going after?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: When we're younger, and this is everybody, right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to date people, we're trying to look good, we're trying to be popular when you're younger.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: When you're younger, it's like this is my body, look what it can do, and you're just totally focused on that.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we focus on, for instance, like my appearance.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I want to make sure my outfits were on point.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure my adeltoids were real strong.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So when I wore a tank top, I was impressive out in the real world, you know.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: We were focused on our looks, you know, putting on makeup, doing our hair when we're coming out, where we're doing things in public.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're focused on, you know, burning calories.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're not when we get on the staremster when you're when we're younger, you know, we're we're not focused on whether my my body is, you know, capable of doing the staremaster.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I want to burn a number of calories because I want to look a certain way.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of competition when you're younger.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're keeping up with the Joneses.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to look popular, you're trying to stand out, you're trying to like the opposite sex to look at you.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that we do in fitness is about performance, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you go to an exercise class, you don't want to be the one in the back that doesn't know, can't follow along.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to do a modification, you want to be on point, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: You want to have endurance.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: You want to really go to the very end.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: You want to kill yourself.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's really important to you when you're younger.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when you get old when you get older?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some people are still stuck in that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel sorry for those people.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that guy in the bar that still tries to look good or the woman that just won't let go of, you know, the the youthful way of dressing, whatever.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It does look weird, you know, at a certain point.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at a certain point, it's like, eh, maybe you should quit wearing mini skirts.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it just doesn't, it's not that you don't have legs for it.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like it's just not cool anymore, right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, one of the things that we look look for when we get older, we're trying to preserve bone.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to keep our muscle mass.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that different than like how much how long we stay on a stereo master and we're trying to preserve muscle mass?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are trying to create independence.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to depend on somebody else.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's going to be a very different way of training than I'm going to train because I want to do the hardest version of everything, just because why would I not do the hardest version of everything?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to be independent.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to actually have to depend on somebody else.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or what if I'm trying to avoid surgery as I gotten older?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have this problem with my knee that I tweak when I was in my 20s climbing a mountain.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And my goal is to not have surgery.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just making this up, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And my goal is I don't want to have to have surgery.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the way that I train is going to definitely be different than it was when I was in my 20s.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: What about the idea that I'm trying to not fall, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to make something less risky because I'm trying not to fall.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: When I was younger and I would see people modify both in my classes as well as when I was in the gym working with other people, I would always look at them like, you're you're just, you know, you're not as good a shape as I was.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me feel kind of inflated.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to myself, I thought that way.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me feel good about myself that I didn't need to grab a chair.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need to grab these props.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I didn't need to um try to, you know, do a lesser version of an exercise because my body could physically do the hardest.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So why wouldn't I want to do the hardest, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't I want to kill myself?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I would look at these people that would intentionally modify, I was always like, why would you do that?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now as I've gotten older, I get it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I get it because I also spend the bulk of my work healing injuries and helping people come up with divisive ways to get stronger after an injury, preventing an injury, preventing a surgery, whatever it is, trying to avoid muscular imbalances.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I totally understand it now.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we look at an exercise, we have to stop thinking of this as an old person thing.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you have to modify, you're gonna be really depressed.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, you're gonna age, and there's nothing wrong with aging.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Aging is a beautiful thing, it means that you have lived.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not many people get the privilege of aging.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You hear people all the time.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I had a dog, Rufus, he died when he was four.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, gosh, if he was only here now, he should still be here, but he only died at age four.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: If I'd have known this when I first got Rufus as a puppy, knowing that he was gonna die at age four, it would have been very, very different kind of life for me.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I would have been spent an enormous amount of time with him.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: I probably would have taken him to work every day, but I didn't know he was gonna die at age four.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't have a chance to get old.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, having a senior pet is a beautiful thing.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have a cat that is his name is Edward.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Edward has lost, let's see, Leo, he lost Joe, he lost Rufus, he lost Jacob, and he lost Samantha.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: All of those animals, and he's still with me.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's got a little bit of dementia right now.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't move as well.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: But he will just, you know, if you try to grab him, he has this thing where he he he cries out in the middle of the night and I walk down the stairs and I try to get him, and he's like usually he's sitting there in front of a toy, and he wants me to chase him, so he'll run around the room and then he'll just he won't let me grab him, and he'll just kind of go, and run up the stairs.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm always like, good for you, Edward.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he knows he's aging.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess he does, but he he he still does things, and I think that's why he's still around and his predecessors are not.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: He is aged in a great way.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Edward is always, he'll be off in the corner.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: He has this little toy that has like a scratching thing in the middle, and it has a little ball and a track.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: He'll sit in the middle, he'll just boom, boom, boom, and he can just eyeball that ball.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: He'll play that thing for like 20 minutes straight.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the cat's like 19.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at the way he's lived.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he has always embraced new animals as they've come into my home, whether it be a dog or a cat.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: He has always been interactive, he's always been interested, he's always played, he allows himself time for rest, but not too much rest.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: When he doesn't eat, he doesn't want to eat.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's never gotten fat.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, part of that is on me for not making him get fat.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it's his genetics, obviously.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: But when I look at Edward and how he's age, I'm thinking that's how I want to be.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly how I want to be.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to be looking at an exercise as less than thinking that if I do that, I'm suddenly old.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that chair yoga is considered for seniors?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: All the conferences that I ever presented in, chair yoga was for seniors.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I made at a point when I was presenting, I would do chair workouts.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're hard.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't remember what I used to call these workshops, but I I my mission in life was to tell to show people just how much harder a workout could be if I had a chair to hold on to.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: How I could push into a chair, you know, whatever it was.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I reduce range of motion in an exercise, it'll expose a weakness.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: When I add a prop, it allows me to work on control that I wouldn't otherwise have been allowed to work on before.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I use less weight or when I have less of a range of motion of something, it actually can make my muscles more active throughout the range versus only being active through a certain part of the range.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So all these modifications, listen to episode four.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Modifications are absolutely a part of being strong and independent as we age.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about this one exercise as being for old people, let's all stop ourselves.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We know that we have this whole plethora of exercises that we can do.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stop putting exercise into categories and let's think of new rules.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, consistency beats intensity every time.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather see you be consistent with a variety of exercises, harder or easier on the spectrum, to match where you are on a given day and exercise for life so that you never have to stop exercising.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Also, another one is let's work on control, right?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's work on control before we ever work on being complex.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: In anything that we add to something, if I have to work on honing that skill, we have to take that time.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean it's an old person exercise.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just because we slow down does not mean that it's less than or that it's worse or that it's not going to benefit me.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually going to benefit you more.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's investigate pain.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Pain is information.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just because an exercise causes me pain, or I'm seeing someone doing something different because of pain, they're being smart.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're investigating something about their body, and that time that they take to investigate something over that period of time is going to allow them to potentially do something more aggressive in the future.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Progression is definitely something that we all hope for, but sometimes to progress in one area, we have to regress in another area.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: That does not mean that I've fallen backwards.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that I've suddenly become old.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: It means that I'm smarter.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Work smarter, not always harder, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's another great rule.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I want to say this for everyone that's out there, and I hope that everyone's enjoyed this whole series.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't have to always prove yourself that you're young all the time.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Who cares?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a class and you're having to modify something, or you're in the gym and you're modifying something, or if you're by yourself looking at yourself and modifying something, your goal at this point should be I want to exercise for life.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I see so many people, if I had to give you any any pearls of wisdom from me to you, do you know how many people that I have worked with that because of the stupid decisions that they have made in their exercise history, wanting to keep up with the Joneses, wanting to make everything hard, wanting to exercise the same way that they did when they were 15, 19, 20, whatever, they now can't exercise at all.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're having multiple joint replacements, they're dealing with chronic pain, their spine is a mess, they can't even do the half the things that they wanted to before.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's throw out some of these things, right?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's try to exercise for life.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you do this, if you honor your body for what it needs on any given day and show up for your body every day, whatever it needs.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, it's you versus you.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Whether I'm working with someone online, whether I'm working with someone on person, whether I'm having a conversation with somebody on the street, my message is always the same.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what I think.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: What matters is what you think.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: What matters is where your body is.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to help you meet the needs of your body.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 plus years of training in this industry, I feel like that is my goal in life.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want to help people authenticate themselves.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so tired of seeing everybody compare themselves with other people.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are that type of person, please stop exercising in groups.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Get online and do something, or do something in private for a while, or get on with get up with a one-on-one coach, and hopefully that coach has the ability to modify exercises for you.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: You are not alone in feeling behind.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: We all feel this way.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Even the most high-level skilled athletes feel that way.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, you're all going to age.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: What you can control is how you're going to age.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this episode helped you.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this series has helped you.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to hear from you if you're listening to this on YouTube.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And also, please feel free to check out my platform, FIS on Demand, if you would like some help.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I do some coaching inside of my platform, and I have a lot of progressive routines and programs that can help you.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, my goal in this whole episode is just to help.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to do.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to help people avoid the stupid mistakes that I have made.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.