Redefining Fitness At 50 And Beyond

As both a sport and an industry, fitness as we know it today is quite young – 50 years ago home gyms and commercial gyms were almost unheard of, especially outside major cities. While explosive growth has changed that massively, most fitness programs, routines and ‘truisms’ don’t apply to people trying to get back in shape at 50 and beyond.
The reason for this is that the sport grew by demand from young people, a group always known to be in a hurry with little patience for anything that didn’t provide instant gratification. The young men wanted the biggest muscles – today. The young women wanted that bikini body – yesterday. Oh, and for both, please don’t let it take much time from my busy social schedule either. This led to the ‘Build Bigger Muscles FAST!‘ and ‘Lose 20 Pounds THIS WEEK‘ headlines in the magazines, fueling the drive that much more.
Fast forward to today and those same ideas persist, many of them in spite of current science. And if you’re approaching 50, are 50 or over 50 years of age, you may well still be clinging to those attitudes like they were carved in stone. Compounding the problem, fitness writers and most personal trainers tend to be younger and treat baby boomers in one of two ways – either they try to use the exact same routines and schedules on every client regardless of age, or they feel those in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s should stick to cardio with a bit of light-weight work on machines for higher reps.
Not only does that miss the mark, but those issues can also cause a lot of mature people to avoid the gym for fear of being intimidated or ridiculed. Equally damaging, many try to jump straight into full-blown exercise regimes or crossfit-style workouts using the same body they’ve over-fed and under-utilized for the previous 10, 20 or 30 years.