Of course I'm kidding, because if you're training you're not really elderly, in the sense that the government uses the term for Medicare Recipients and people on 13 prescriptions. Training keeps this from happening. But it must be said that 70-year-old people cannot approach their training the same way they did when they were 20. The accumulated effects of 70 years on the planet – even if you've been training – must be taken into consideration if you are to benefit from the effort and the work. Your program must be different. Not easier – just different.

Very few 70-year-old trainees are operating with Original Equipment, because life degrades everybody to varying degrees. Most of us have had accidents or disease processes that have “compromised” our abilities under the bar, and even if we've been perfectly safe, 70 is not 20.

As you age, the quality of your connective tissues degrades as their protein composition alters, and they become less elastic and more prone to rupture injuries. You become less efficient at absorbing and utilizing digestive protein. You hormonal profile becomes less “robust.” Your sleep quality degrades, and you generally sleep less for various reasons (more pointless things to worry about). Stupid little injuries accumulate and affect your overall physical ability. Muscular soreness more profoundly impacts your motivation, and further detracts from your sleep. All of this shit adversely affects your training.

The things about age that positively affect your training are the improvements in your judgement and the experience that you have accumulated. You know when to push through and when to wait, when to go for the PR and when to repeat a weight, when to alter a different training variable. You may need to make a major programming adjustment, and when you're 65 it won't be because you read about a new program on a bodybuilding website.

As a result of all these things, training must be approached differently as you age. By that I mean “become older” as in over 55. To not belabor the point, “older” can happen to different people at different ages, and in general is postponed by training under the bar. But if you just started training and you're 65, it is safe to say that you will follow a different program than a younger trainee at the beginning of the program.

We start younger novices with an aggressive loading progression, because they can recover from it and adapt, and if they can, they should. A 20-year-old kid can put 350 pounds on his squat, 150 pounds on his bench, 400 pounds on his deadlift, and 100 pounds on his press in a year and a half, and gain 50 pounds of useful, non-greasy bodyweight, which amounts to a profound physical transformation. An old guy cannot do this, and the attempt will get him hurt.

The kid squats 3 times a week, and the old guy squats twice a week. Both of them add weight each time they train, but the old guy uses smaller jumps. The kid – after a few weeks – alternates deadlifts with power cleans as the pulling exercises, while the old guy doesn't power clean (see the previous connective tissue discussion). The kid drives his deadlift up as fast as it will go, while the old guy takes his time while making sure he is increasing his loads at least every other workout, using a light deadlift day instead of the cleans.

Upper body jumps for the kid might be 5 pounds on the bench and 2.5 for the press, while the old guy might go up 2 or 2.5 on the bench and 1 to 1.5 on the press. Chins are the only real “assistance” exercise in the program, and the kid starts of with 3 sets to failure with 5 minutes between sets. The old guy might have to start with a lat machine and work up to bodyweight.

The most important thing is to remember the basic principles of training: stress, recovery, and adaptation. This is the basis of the method, and it applies to everybody.

Strength is the ability to produce force against an external resistance – the load. Stress is the effect produced by moving a load to which the body is not adapted. Our method uses loads applied to the body during normal human movement patterns, like squatting down and up, picking something up off of the floor, pushing something overhead, pushing something away from you, pulling something toward you, and throwing something up and catching it. The barbell is the best tool we have for applying force to the body against the way it naturally produces force. The load on the bar is used to incrementally increase the amount of force you have to produce to execute the movement pattern.

The exact amount of loading and the exact movement pattern varies with the individual, based on specific ability and limitations. An experienced coach starts with the generally applicable programming for the demographic of the individual and then modifies it to adapt to the specific circumstances, but always working toward optimizing the movement for the production of force. A 20-year-old guy can usually perform force production tasks better than a 70-year-old guy, so that is the initial assumption until proven otherwise. The coach's judgement must be formed by experience with a wide range of demographics, so that the best approach can be synthesized out of all the available options.

The old guy and the kid both squat, press, deadlift, and bench press. The kid will power clean, while the old guy will use a light deadlift day. Both will do their version of chins, either on the bar or the lat machine. An injury history might alter the details, but the process is essentially the same: judiciously locate the limits of your ability on the primary barbell exercises, and then extend those limits incrementally. And I can't tell you exactly what to do – you'll have to figure that out for yourself.

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