It all started with one Pilates class at my local recreation centre. There, the brainstorm hit me: why not go to the gym after class and maximize my strength-building efforts?
Now that might sound spontaneous, but I must admit I’d been influenced by several articles I’d recently read emphasizing the importance of weight training as we age. Everyone from the government of Canada to Oprah was saying so, and I was getting the message that by the time we reach our 50s, it’s important to spend time weight training, in addition to cardio.
Cathy Potkins, clinical exercise physiologist registered with the American College of Sports Medicine, recommends some form of cardio exercise every day, and 2-3 days of weight training per week.
“Cardio is important for the heart and prevention of other chronic diseases, as well as to help maintain bone density,” she says. “If you’re a smaller-framed person and have a leaner build, or if you do your cardio in water, weight training is a particularly important addition to your routine. Unfortunately, for both men and women, bone density starts to decline as early as age 35, with most women’s bone density declining 0.5 to 1 per cent per year until menopause. Through menopause, this can accelerate to a 2-5 per cent bone loss for a 10-year period due to the decline in estrogen production. For men, this acceleration is delayed until 65.”
I hadn’t been to the gym in years, so I thought it would be prudent to arrange a consult with the in-house gym tech, who showed me proper positioning, appropriate weights to start with and how to move with the correct range of motion, as she helped me set up a reasonable workout to target each of the muscle groups in my body.
According to Potkins, “In Canada, most gyms use a PAR-Q (a physical activity readiness questionnaire) as a measure of whether you should see your doctor before starting at the gym. It is recommended you see your physician if you have any heart or blood pressure issues, experience chest pains, issues with balance or dizziness, chronic health conditions, take medications for chronic conditions, or if you have significant bone or soft tissue issues. However, usually it is far more detrimental to your health not to exercise than to get started on a well-designed program.”
The day after my first workout, I could definitely feel each of my muscle groups, but in a good way. After a couple of weeks of starting on the lowest weights, I was able to increase the weights for all groups, except the bench press and chest press, where I seem to be interminably stuck. I find myself machine-stalking to see what others are lifting, and it’s often more than me.
I find this discouraging, but Potkins reassures: “Remember, the size of the muscle matters. If you look at a muscle like a bicep or your leg muscles, they are quite big. They will get stronger faster than smaller muscles. Women generally have smaller muscles to begin with and areas such as the chest are made up of a lot of smaller fibres; they will get stronger, but you have to be patient.”
Beware, if your goal for weight training is to shed a few pounds, muscle is denser than fat. That means those three pounds I gained a few weeks into my routine were due to the new muscle being denser than my existing fat. But the result was a loss of inches. I’m trying to stay focused on Potkins’ advice of concentrating on how I feel, how my clothes fit and whether I feel stronger.
Now, I’m not going to lie, it’s been difficult to stick to a regular gym routine. Out-of-town vacation travel, a busy life and, sometimes, well, downright laziness have threatened to take my workouts off track. Because I am hooked on the good feeling, a schedule disruption can cause a “can’t-wait-to-get-back-to-the-gym” thought, but another part of me finds it hard to get going again.
Potkins has suggestions for this: “Before you go away, write your return to the gym date on the calendar or put it in your phone. Add a note about how good you feel when you go. Set a time to meet someone at the gym or let someone know you’re returning to your routine. Accountability helps. I also find it is important to set a time to exercise and write it into your schedule. This helps to ensure it doesn’t get bumped by the day-to-day business of life.”
But sometimes our best laid plans go awry, like while I was in Mexico for a couple of weeks this winter. We were staying only a couple of blocks from a gym, and every day I said I would go — but I never did. Even while enjoying sun, sand and margaritas, there was a niggling guilt stirring within me — was I going to lose the muscle mass I’d already worked so hard to gain?
“How quickly you lose muscle mass depends on how fit and strong you were to begin with,” says Potkins, “and how active you are even though you aren’t at the gym. We may lose muscle a bit faster as we age, but the good news is that we tend to regain it a bit faster than the first time we started to the gym.”
Back home, and back at it, I haven’t yet reached my goal of going to the gym three times a week. But I do figure gym workouts are here to stay for me. The plentiful benefits like preventing loss of muscle mass and strength, improving mood and sleep, reducing the risk of osteoporosis, and improving balance which will help prevent falls are just too important to ignore. And, in the end, I love that amazing feeling I have after a workout.
SIDEBAR:
5 Tips from Cathy Potkins, Registered Clinical Exercise Physiologist, on Getting Started With a Workout Routine:
- Choose something you will enjoy, so you will be more likely to stick with it.
- Keep it simple. The internet is full of fancy, complicated exercises with often high risk for return.
- Ask for help; get the gym tech to demonstrate the machine before you use it. Consider a personal training session, as they can help you choose an appropriate routine and ensure you are doing the exercises correctly. Personal trainers are less expensive than physiotherapists and chiropractors!
- Look at your improvements, not other’s successes. Gyms can be very intimidating when you first start. There isn’t a lot of value in comparing your first session with the guy/gal who has been coming for 10 years. Write down your weight and reps and don’t forget to look back in a few weeks to see how you’re improving.
- Be patient. Generally, 8 to 12 reps provide you with both strength and endurance gains. I like to do two sets of each exercise, although there are lots of different programs. Start with lower weights and more repetitions. Better than doing too much and having to take a week off because you’re too sore to go back. Remember, you want to enjoy the experience.
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