A bit of background: My seventy-something father-in-law has maintained the same exercise routine of 30 minutes on the exercise bike followed by pushups and situps a few times a week for years now, with the exception of a short break when he had a heart valve replacement a couple of years ago. My husband and I have made sporadic attempts over the years to get him interested in lifting weights, without much success. My husband gave him a book on strength training once, and his reaction was, “Oh my god, this is so many words. Just tell me what I need to do!” Though his health is still pretty good, he’s started to look a bit more frail recently. Back in August, he asked me what he should be doing to prevent age-related muscle loss.
My response was that he should lift weights and he asked me if I could be a bit more specific. I suggested that he seek out a qualified personal trainer, and he was really unenthusiastic about that idea. I considered a number of programs to point him to, but they all seemed either too ambitious (much as I would love to see it happen, I can’t see him joining a gym and doing barbell work), or, in the case of programs targeted specifically at older people, under-dosed. (I know he’s capable of much more than doing biceps curls with cans of soup.) So, I ended up writing him a short program that he could do at home with dumbbells and resistance bands with links to Youtube videos demonstrating all the exercises. I added a little information about progressive overload and protein intake. Somewhat to my surprise, he bought the equipment right away, and has been doing the program faithfully since. We’ve had some email exchanges on managing pain and soreness and I seem to have successfully averted a freak out about some minor lower back soreness he had after the first couple of weeks. We have a running joke about how he expects to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger any day now, and he seems to be genuinely enjoying training.
Anyway, I don’t think any of this would have been possible without the information I’ve learned from Barbell Medicine. The exercise program was actually the easy part, but knowing how to frame it in terms of making it relevant to my father-in-law and easing any concerns he might have about injury or just feeling intimidated about lifting was really important. My secret goal is to get him to come to a Barbell Medicine seminar with me some day, but even if that never happens, this counts as a success!
On a more personal note, I’ve been doing the GPP Hypertrophy focus template for the past month. Squatted down to pick something up yesterday morning, and tore my pants. So that’s going great!
