I vaguely recall Jordan (IIRC) mentioning that he typically drops power cleans for adults +40 in one of the old “Starting Strength” recommendation threads. I could be completely making that up, but it did get me thinking:
Are there any age-related reasons to avoid basic “speed” capacity work in the non-athletic (casually training), 35+ population, especially those who have a prior history of knee tendinopathy or similar? What about the 60+ population? I’m not thinking anything overly strenuous like a max effort snatch from the floor, but box jumps, med ball throws, etc, progressed in a typically training-age-appropriate and sensible way. Think “training to survive playing sports with their kids” rather that anything overly sport-specific. Thanks in advance!
Yea, I don’t think that’s something I said exactly, though I don’t really program power cleans anyway.
To answer your questions, the answer is no. Older individuals don’t need to avoid power work, though there are many ways to program this. Neither the power clean or snatch would be my first choice in someone who wasn’t already proficient in the movements and/or deeply invested in them. Individuals with existing injuries may require an individualized approach.
I don’t think you personally need to do direct power training for health.
Would you generally avoid Olympic movements due to the complexity of the lift?
Power movements may not be necessary for health per se, but would you consider them an important component for “life capacity” in terms of increasing resilience for the aforementioned activities? Perhaps strength movements would get one closer, but I would think having someone used to at least some fast movements would be more useful than not, at least from the perspective of novelty pertaining to injury risk, unless keeping bar speed relatively high takes care of that?
Not necessarily the complexity itself, as many exercises are “complex”. Rather, I think most people don’t have access to good equipment, as well as other barriers to training the movement hard (compared to other, equivalent exercises).
I do not think directly training power movements as important for anything you mentioned here. Yes, one could make the case that ballistic exercise -not just high speed, but high impact- would better prepare an individual for other ballistic activities. However, that would be more sports specific training than “life” training. I think a good strength training program will cover all of this and then some, even if the bar speed is low.