USAWA

AGING AND STRONG

Part VI: Growing Ever Stronger

By Dan Wagman, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.

I hope that most readers of this series of blogs will derive at a new sense of motivation for training and competing. After all, the prognosis for getting older and bending barbells is rather good. Still, I know there are those who will dismiss what they read. After all, everybody sees how, when you get older, you get weaker.

If you hold observation in higher regard than science, why not consider instead your author’s positive observations? At the 2006 USAWA Nationals I claimed to be 35 and hit a 360-pound bench press feet-in-the-air. In 2015, when according to the age adjustment formula I should’ve lost 5% in strength, and while still entering the Open division and claiming no age, I lifted 380-pounds in the same lift for a new Open American Record, exceeding the Open World Record. Similarly, at the 2012 IAWA World Championships, and claiming to be 50, I performed a 104-pound strict reverse curl. At the 2019 Worlds, where I should’ve been 7% weaker due to aging, and accepting to be listed as 39-years old in the Open division, I broke the Open World Record in that lift with 153 pounds. Yes, I’ve been rebelling against agism by claiming to be younger than I am (and proving the age adjustment formula to be absurd). Sure, doing so gives overall placing advantages to other lifters, but they’re based on a fictional formula and I’d prefer to have my ranking based on strength in our strength sport as opposed to being artificially inflated. But I digress…so while I could provide more than just two examples, in the 30+ years I’ve been lifting weights I simply haven’t observed a meaningful decrease in overall strength…some lifts are up, others are down, next mesocycle it’ll be different lifts, just like in my 20’s. So why not generalize from such positive observations?

 

Enter Science

The fact is that the above self-observations constitute conjecture if generalized on to others. It constitutes flawed and lazy thinking to base decisions on simple observation without any controls and statistical analyses. Now, certainly, as it pertains to my strength performance over the years, I could’ve conducted a single-subject design experiment—called ideographic research—for the purpose of generalizing findings onto others. In fact, much of science in the 19^th century was conducted via principles of ideographic research. But investigators learned that generalizing from the individual to groups of people is problematic compared to the reverse. And so in the 20^th century research methods shifted to where groups of individuals were studied—called nomothetic research—so that one could more accurately predict what applies to the individual or, to be more precise, the vast majority of individuals. Therefore, if you want to figure out if chronological age results in reduced muscle strength, by how much, at what rate, and when, you have to turn to nomothetic research instead of just observations.

In Parts I, II, III, IV, and V I shared research demonstrating that muscle strength does not  decline to the extent commonly believed, nor to begin at the chronological age most sports organizations believe this to occur. Even in sedentary but otherwise healthy people, their ability to activate muscles and generate force doesn’t decline to any meaningful extent until around 70 years of age. And for people who lift weights you can expect to make gains until somewhere in the 7^th decade of life. You therefore have a clear and undeniable contradiction between what research discovered and what just about every lifter has observed. So what might explain this contradiction?

 

It’s All About Training

While the observations many lifters have made aren’t wrong, the conclusions generally are. In all the observations about the impact of increasing age on loss in muscle strength, has anyone considered the most important variable in not only maintaining strength, but gaining strength—lifting weights? Is it not obvious that if the primary and most effective way to increase strength revolves around lifting weights, that if your training is performed in a manner that doesn’t maximize your body’s ability to adapt, your strength gains will be inferior, stall, result in overtraining, and/or injury? And since any and all of that can occur at any age, chronological age ought to be but a minor consideration.

When you pump iron a lot more goes on than just muscles contracting and relaxing. Lifting weights impacts all systems in your body: the brain and neurons that connect to muscle fibers, metabolism, the neuroendocrine system, nutrients and stored energy sources, bones, sensory systems, connective tissues…everything, including psychological factors. Within that complex system, just as the medical doctor must consider multiple layers of effects of a particular surgical intervention, drug, etc., so, too, must the strength athlete consider how lifting weights will impact the entire body and how an error, while not as grave as a medical doctor’s mistake, can result in less than optimal strength gains.

If you’re healthy and you’ve observed your strength declining over the years and you haven’t even reached 60, it isn’t your advancing chronological age that’s to blame, rather your training method. Please understand, I’m not suggesting that if you want to maximize your strength gains you need to obtain the equivalent of a medical degree in pumping iron. What I am suggesting is that if you don’t consider the complexity of human physiology and how it responds to your training approach, you can’t leap to the conclusion that losing 100 pounds in your pull is due to aging. Unless there’s an underlying pathology at play, you’ve been training in less than optimal or counterproductive ways. Perhaps you’ve been following training advice based on beliefs rather than evidence. The research has shown that with increasing age things do change in a person’s physiology which result, as an example, in different ways in which muscles not only respond to weight training but also adapt and register gains. Therefore, if you simply follow age-old training wisdoms or new training conjectures, your only expectation can be mediocre gains that’ll fizzle out over time—regardless of age.

 

Entering A New Age

This series of blogs has demonstrated that you can make gains in strength of similar magnitude as young people in to your 60’s. Moreover, consider that the notion of you losing 1% in strength per year once you turn 40 is utter nonsense. In fact, giving lifters a 1% age adjustment is on one hand providing older lifters with an unfair advantage and on the other hand, if these lifters are indeed weaker than what they used to be, rewarding silly and non-productive training practices. How does that constitute fair competition?

If you feel that reason and fairness ought to govern all-round weightlifting, then you cannot support the age adjustment formula nor Masters starting at 40. Simply put, that practice needs to die. Having a Masters division, however, is not entirely unreasonable. But when should it start? Based on research, 65 could be defensible. So who will step forward and lead the fight against agism in all-round? I’ve given you the playbook, go run with it! And if nobody does, or all-round simply won’t accept the evidence, no worries. For all of you barbell benders out there, how you train is the fountain of youth. So how ’bout rejecting agist defeatism, turning to science-based training practices, and taking a dip in to that fountain with me?