Since I started training one senior client recently, I want to share what we have been doing to mainly encourage more people to do strength training. If someone over 70 can do it, you can do it, too.
The previous related post here
About my client
She has minor knee and ankle issues and they feel painful sometimes during daily activities. She has never done strength training or even gone to the gym. Her goal is to improve her strength, possibly feel no pain on her knee and ankle. She also wants to be able to do everything by herself in her later life.
Functional Training
She clearly doesn’t need to lift 200lb but our main focus is functional training.
What is functional training?
According to google, Functional training is a term used to describe exercises that help you perform activities in everyday life more easily. These exercises typically use the whole body — definitely multiple muscles — and emphasize core strength and stability.
Compound strength exercises
What are compound exercises? They require multiple muscles to complete the movements. For example, squats require hip and knee joint movements. Therefore they tend to be more functional. So instead of doing lateral raises or other single joint movement exercises, we focus on exercises with multiple joint movements.
Five important movements
Human movement can be broken down to five movements that are
- Push
- Pull
- Squat
- Single leg movement
- Rotational movement
My client has been trying to do strength training for 2 days a week. So I put those movements in our training program.
Fall prevention
At least one single leg exercise is performed for each training session along with balance exercise as well as a little more dynamic movement (but not too vigorous for her).