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5 Age-Defying Training Strategies I’m Using in my Workouts

I’m 41, nearly 42. I don’t want to look, feel and perform like a 40-odd year old though. I want to be fit, strong and powerful, so I’ve switched my training. Here’s 5 age-defying training strategies I’m using to keep my health and fitness at a good level…

Over the years, my workout focus has changed. In my late teens and twenties, my workouts were a mixture of vanity-based, and trying to make myself more athletic.

In my mid-twenties, I was more about performance. Training was goal-centred, and based around maximising my capacity. I was training to support fitness events I was undertaking, and wanted to be as strong as possible in the gym.

Now I’m in my 40s, and frankly I’m not willing to surrender any form of athleticism. I still want to be making improvements in my health, fitness and conditioning. I’ve been inspired by lots of people on social media still working hard and maintaining excellent levels of fitness long into their 40s, 50s and beyond.

I want to be one of them.

There’s an acceptance of certain inevitable truths around physiology though. Recovery takes longer. Functional range of movement, coupled with tissue elasticity begins to decline. That’s not to say you don’t train as hard, you just do things differently.

So here’s 5 age-defying training strategies I’m using in my workouts to keep my health and fitness high, and my injury risk low…

Maintain Power Movements in Workouts

A much bigger issue than muscle size loss is muscle function loss – in particular muscle power. Without effective training, the decline in muscle power is rapid and leads to significant loss in function and capacity.

A meta-analysis titled Effectiveness of power training compared to strength training in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis was published in 2022, and having assessed 15 trials using nearly 600 participants, the researchers concluded…

Power training offers more potential for improving muscle power and performance on activity tests in older adults compared to strength training.

With this in mind I look to include power training several times per week in my workouts. This takes the form of olympic weightlifting movements, plyometrics, sprints and kettlebell work. I tend to stick to rep ranges of 3-8, but for the kettlebells and plyometrics I’ll increase this.

Here’s an example of a power movement – fast, powerful, explosive exercises such as the power row…

Range of Movement Training

A big deal for me is maintaining movement quality. If you don’t maintain the range of movement in your hips and shoulders in particular, you’ll suffer from stiffness, weakness and eventually, injury.

There’s a couple of ways to train range of movement…

  1. Stretching
  2. End range resistance training

Both of these are effective, but I prefer the end range resistance training because it kills two birds with one stone. Exercises such as push ups on handles, end-range dips, dead-hang pull ups, stiff-legged deadlifts, kettlebell swings and Bulgarian split squats all combine strength training with stretching.

The effectiveness of resistance training as a mobility tool was investigated in 2023. The study Resistance Training Induces Improvements in Range of Motion: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis looked at 55 investigations and concluded…

As resistance training with external loads can improve range of motion, stretching prior to or after resistance training may not be necessary to enhance flexibility.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t stretch the traditional way – it absolutely has its place, I just prefer doing as much as I can with resistance training first. If I can’t stretch a muscle with weight training exercises, then I’ll use traditional stretches.

Efficient Cardio Workouts

I tend to look at cardio workouts like a barbell – plenty of work at both ends of the continuum, and not much in the middle. In practice, it looks like this…

If we have a sliding scale of intensity from low intensity such as walking to super high intensity such as sprinting, with jogging in the middle, I think you get the most value at either end. There’s certainly benefits to the middle, but you lose out from a training efficiency point of view.

With low intensity, long duration cardio you have effective calorie burn coupled with a low injury risk and easy post-workout recovery. With a short, high intensity cardio workout you also have the high calorie burn, efficient cardio improvement and enhance athletic capability.

In the middle, you have higher injury risk, less athletic improvement at the top end, and an altogether less efficient workout.

To this end, I tend to make my cardio workouts either longer and lower intensity, or shorter, sharper and higher intensity. I also make use of swimming and cycling as workout options due to their lower injury risk.

Improving your cardiovascular fitness is certainly one of the best age-defying training strategies we have.

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Use Accessory Exercises

Accessory exercises are the unglamorous exercises that grow in importance the older you get. When you’re young they’re an inconvenience, but when you’re older they’re the things that keep you out of the physio’s room!

I now make sure that at least a couple of times per week I perform exercises such as dumbbell reverse flies, calf raises, eccentric bicep curls, hyperextensions, side planks and the like. Whilst they aren’t ‘cool’, they are important and they help to keep my body in good working order.

We all have different accessories that we need depending on our physiology, injury history, training habits etc – the list above are mine, but other people might have different ones. See what your injuries are and make a plan to work accessories into your workouts. It’s one of the most effective age-defying training strategies when it comes to injury prevention I know.

Frequency Over Duration – For Physical and Mental Health

As we age, our recovery ability reduces. With that in mind, it’s more sensible to prioritise training frequency over duration. By splitting a training week across 5 shorter workouts rather than 3 or 4 longer, more intense workouts we enable better recovery.

You can still keep a significant training volume if you spread it out. There’s also an argument that more frequent stimulation of muscles and the cardiovascular system is more effective anyway.

There’s suggestions and evidence that frequency is better than duration anyway when it comes to training. From a mental health point of view, frequency of exercise appears to be an effective barrier to anxiety and depression symptoms. Researchers in this study concluded…

Higher frequency and intensity of MS (muscle strengthening) activities may protect against anxiety and depression symptoms.

A further study, titled Relationship Between Training Frequency and Training Session Duration on Vitality in Recreational Runners: A Cross-Sectional Study was published in 2024. The researchers concluded that…

“There is a dose–response relationship between both weekly training frequency and training session duration, and mental health benefits in recreational runners.”

As we get older we often take on a higher level of stress thanks to more senior careers, mortgages, family stresses etc. If more frequent exercise helps to reduce stress and improve our mental health, then it’s a huge win. Stress is ageing, so doing what we can to keep it at bay is a powerful age-defying training strategy.

Using the Age-Defying Training Strategies

So there you have it – 5 age-defying training strategies I’m using to keep my health and vitality as I march into my 40’s. I’ve got no intention of being the old fat guy with a sore everything! Use these approaches and you’ll gain/maintain fitness for life!

You don’t have to make dramatic changes to put these in your routine. A few easy tweaks and they’ll fit in with what you’re doing. Take a look at your training week and you’ll be able to make the changes you need to.

If you want to follow me and my life in more detail, come and catch me on Instagram

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HoylesFitness

Owner of www.hoylesfitness.com. Personal Trainer, Father and fitness copy writer. Working hard making the world fitter and healthier!

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