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Stronger After 50! - a conversation with author Dave Durell
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The New Rules of Strength Training After Fifty.
Dave Durell is a life-long fitness professional who has written The New Rules of Strength Training After Fifty.
Dave has over 40-years of experience as a personal trainer and fitness studio owner, college and NFL strength and conditioning coach. He has also been a licensed physical therapist assistant for more than 29 years.
In this episode of the Abeceder health and wellbeing podcast Fit For My Age Dave, describes his experience and the inspiration for writing The New Rules of Strength Training After Fifty.
Michael and Dave agree that the ageing process is not properly understood by the medical profession, and we only get to know what it is like when we realise that we have aged.
In a wide-ranging discussion Dave offers practical advice about how to enjoy using the gym when you are over fifty years old.
Michael and Dave compare notes on what a good gym for over fifties is like.
Find out more about Michael Millward and Dave Durell at Abeceder.co.uk.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Fit for My Age' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Hello and welcome to Fit for My Age, the health and well-being podcast from Abysida. I am your host, Michael Middleward, Managing Director of Abysida.
Strength After 50 with Dave Jarrell
00:00:20
Speaker
to Today, Dave Jarrell from Strength After 50 is going to explain to me how I can be stronger after 50. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Fit for My Age is made on Zencastr.
00:00:35
Speaker
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to all of the platforms. Zencastr really does make making podcasts so easy.
00:00:50
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my author code, Abysida. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:01:05
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to. Very importantly, on Fit For My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
Dave Jarrell's Fitness Journey and Focus after 50
00:01:19
Speaker
Today, my guest, who I met on Matchmaker.fm, is Dave Jarrell, the author of The New Rules of Strength Training After 50. Dave is based in Clearwater, Florida, United States of America.
00:01:34
Speaker
If you are planning to a visit anywhere in Florida, the United States or anywhere else in the world, do as I would do and make your travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where you can access trade prices on flights, hotels and holidays.
00:01:51
Speaker
You'll find a discounted link in the description. Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make an episode of Fit for My Age. Hello, Dave. Hello, Michael.
00:02:02
Speaker
Nice to be with you this morning. Well, thank you very much. I'm i'm looking forward to it. You are a career fitness professional. This is not something that you've taken up recently. You've spent you know decades in the in the fitness industry.
00:02:17
Speaker
Tell me about some of the things that you've done in fitness. Well, I started, Michael, when in 1982, actually, when I graduated college. So I got ah ah thought I was going to college to be a physical education teacher, you know, a school teacher.
00:02:33
Speaker
But when I got out in the state I lived in at the time, Connecticut, there were exactly zero physical education teaching jobs there. available. So I took a job in a local gym, which I guess I did a good job. It quickly went up the ladder and became the manager of the facility, and then the manager of two facilities.
00:02:55
Speaker
And I really liked it. So I no longer pursued a teaching career. I just stuck with the fitness business. I really liked the feedback of telling someone what to do, showing them what to do and having them get great results. So it just kind of stuck with me. And,
00:03:14
Speaker
have continued that ever since in some different forms, including the commercial gym, as I mentioned. I've also owned two personal training studios in my career.
00:03:28
Speaker
I worked for 30 years as a licensed physical therapist assistant, working with rehabilitation patients. And I also, for a brief period of time, worked in the National Football League as a professional strength and conditioning coach. So got a variety of experience, experience which serves me well now to have worked with all those different populations now that I specialize in working with people over 50. Why specialize with people over 50?
00:04:00
Speaker
I am over 50 myself by, at this point, quite a wide margin. I'm actually 66 now. Once I got over 50 myself, I've always worked with all age groups, but it's not until you get over 50 that you really come to understand what people over 50 are going through in terms of the changes, physical changes that take place via the aging process.
00:04:27
Speaker
You've got a situation called sarcopenia, which is a fancy word for age-related muscle wasting, which means through no fault of your own, you're losing muscle tissue every single year just as a natural part of the aging process.
00:04:42
Speaker
You've got aches and pains that you never felt before from the crazy things you did as a kid coming back to remind you about those crazy things. That is one of the things that's motivated me to do fit for my age.
00:04:56
Speaker
When we are younger, we are indestructible and can do all sorts of various different things. And then you hit this this age, this day, when you go to the doctors, your general practitioner, you're describing the symptoms.
00:05:14
Speaker
There's this look on the doctor's face and then the words come out. And of course it's your age. Yeah. You're like, what do you mean my age? Then you realize that actually some of the things that are now your age were actually the consequence of decisions that you made 20 years ago, which are just coming back to haunt you. But no one...
00:05:37
Speaker
told you, or if they did tell you, you didn't hear it, that if you do X, Y, Z, there will be a consequence many years further down the line. And I think one of the reasons for that is that we don't actually understand very much about the aging process.
00:05:57
Speaker
that That's really true. I mean, they're learning more and more you know recently, but yeah, that's a big thing, especially sports activity, right? When you're when you're young, you many people want to engage in sports or other you know physically active pursuits.
00:06:16
Speaker
And with those pursuits in return for the value you get from the activity, there's a high risk of injury. And when you're young, you're willing to accept that. You know you want to be on the rugby team, the football team, the basketball team with your friends and do all those things. And if you get hurt, you get hurt. Well, like you said, the problem is when you're 57 years old, you start to realize that that knee injury you got in school now has a lot more mileage on it than it did back then. And things have worn out a bit more and now it hurts.
00:06:50
Speaker
So you go to the gym and you're like, I can't really do that routine anymore that I used to do because my knee hurts now. So we have to make these types of adjustments. And that whole picture just fascinated me to the point where I had to, number one, adapt my own training tactics for my personal workouts now that I was over 50.
00:07:13
Speaker
And I just decided, you know what? This age group, strength training is the most important for this 50 plus age group. They stand to gain the most from it.
00:07:24
Speaker
And since I'm in that group now, that's what I'm going to focus on from here on out. When you talk about the muscle wastage, that is when the muscle is reducing in size, but the skin that around the muscle doesn't quite keep up with the with the muscle, does it?
00:07:41
Speaker
You can end up looking very saggy. That is absolutely true. And that's in addition to your comment about going to the doctor and he just blames things on aging. That's another disconcerting aspect of aging. You look in the mirror and you're like,
00:07:57
Speaker
why does my belly look like that? Did I get fat overnight or something? And it's and you realize it's just skin. Like what you're seeing on your waist used to be in your chest, but now it's yeah just drooping down. You know, things are changing. So if and if we don't do something about it, that train just keeps rolling.
00:08:16
Speaker
That always reminds me of a conversation that I had with one of the trainers at the the gym that I go to, which is true personal training in in Weatherby in Yorkshire. And one the trainers there, Jess, was saying, so what are your what's going to be your next set of objectives? And I sort of like paused for a moment, put my ah hands on my on my so abdomen and said, I want some of this to move up to so up to my chest.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, we want to yeah or reverse gravity somehow and push it back up where it started from. Yeah, I totally get it. Yes. And it's like, felt so we're working on it. And I have to say that Jess has put together a great program for me. And, you know this morning, I was doing squats at my body weight, which is something I don't think I've ever ever done before.
00:09:02
Speaker
But we've we've gave me a program, trust the program. All of a sudden I'm doing these things which I never quite imagined would be possible. It's taken a while.
00:09:13
Speaker
i think that you need to be committed to do it, to do it consistently and to so say, OK, I might not be able to do everything that someone half my age can do, but I will get it done. I might not just do it as quickly as them.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, one one saying that I learned in the NFL was that we prepare, we don't compare. And that is now a good strategy to have once we're over 50. What we want to do is prepare ourselves for the physical activities we want to continue to do in our lives and not compare ourselves, number one, to others and number two, to our 25-year-old selves, because those things are meaningless comparisons. You just want to make sure you're better this week than you were last week. That's the only comparison you need to make.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yes, that you can see improvements. And I suppose in some ways, it's accepting the fact that you are older, that your body is going to be different, that it's going to change in different ways.
00:10:17
Speaker
Managing that change or having contributing into making sure that you do it your way rather than waking up one morning thinking like, what happened? Yeah, definitely. You know, it's there's a ah line in the Desderada that says, you know, we need to kindly accept the Council of the Years gracefully surrendering the things of youth. And I think that includes our exercise program and physical abilities as well.
00:10:47
Speaker
That is a really graceful way to lead me into my next question, which is the book is entitled the new rules. So what are some of the new
New Rules for Strength Training Over 50
00:10:57
Speaker
rules? How many rules are there for strength training over 50?
00:11:01
Speaker
Well, there, there are only five Michael. So it's a simple thing to do. And I tried to set it up in such a way that these are, these are five things that people can implement.
00:11:13
Speaker
immediately, um you know, the next time that they work out or if they haven't worked out ever or in a long time, the first time they get back to working out. For example, the number one rule, the first rule is the new rule of rep speed, where when you're 20 years old and lifting weights, you don't probably pay too much attention to how quickly you're lifting weights.
00:11:38
Speaker
wait You just kind of throw it up and you kind of drop it. And if you're a guy like you and i you just care about how much you're lifting and that it's more than all your friends. But as we get older, those that's not the best way to do it. We don't want to do it that way because if you lift the weights quickly, you're incorporating momentum.
00:11:59
Speaker
which increases the force on your joints, and that's detrimental and also less effective. So what we want to do is move the weight through the force of muscular contraction alone. And that means moving it slowly, making sure your muscles are the only thing moving that weight.
00:12:19
Speaker
Doing it that way makes it hard on your muscles and easy on your joints, which is exactly what we want. When I say slow, we're talking about lifting the weight in two seconds, taking two seconds to lift it all the way.
00:12:33
Speaker
and taking four seconds to lower the weight all the way. Nothing herky-jerky, nothing explosive, just a smooth, controlled lifting and lowering, keeping tensions on the muscles at all times. This is the safe way that people, whether they're 55 or 85, can continue strength training and get the most out of the activity without getting hurt or wasting time.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah, because the strength training is about maintaining muscle and the maintaining the muscle then strengthens both the bones and the joints.
00:13:09
Speaker
And that can mean that you don't suffer as much with rheumatism or arthritis or all those sorts of ah strength or joint-related injuries.
00:13:20
Speaker
Absolutely true. Not to mention you are bolstering yourself against falls. You're improving your fall risk by increasing your muscular strength. So as people get older, fall risk increases and falls can be devastating for an older person.
00:13:36
Speaker
Definitely. Totally agree with you there. But this idea, this rule number one is essentially that you do you lift the weights by using your muscles, not the momentum of youve you can almost spring back type of thing.
00:13:51
Speaker
Like doing a bicep curl, you lift the weight up, you let it drop down. If your arms go too far back, you're actually building up momentum, which I'm doing this exercise now I'm talking to you. There you go.
00:14:05
Speaker
But if you if you take your arms too far back, you will have momentum that you can use to bring the weights back up again. And it's much better to stop when they're in the vertical position and pause and then start again.
00:14:17
Speaker
It's harder because you've got no momentum. You're lifting a dead weight, but it's actually better for you. one hundred percent 100%. So don't don't throw it, don't drop it. Lift it smoothly, lower it slowly.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yes, no dramatic throwing the weights around. Exactly. So we've got that. I mean, um there's much more information about all of these in in the book, but which is the the rule that people find easiest to take on?
00:14:44
Speaker
I think that first one, no matter what routine... They're using, you know, whether it's a ah workout, my strength after 50 workout programs are probably different than what you are doing in the gym. But the point is, either of us could immediately implement that slower rep speed and immediately improve exercise.
00:15:05
Speaker
our workout program immediately improve the results we're getting by keeping constant tension on our muscles yes that's a really good one yes and I think it's a very easy one to deal with as well because know doing pull-ups banded pull-ups um always make sure that you don't just like pull yourself up and then spring back down again keep yourself in the pulled up position for a couple of seconds and then go down slowly, and but don't spring back up again.
00:15:36
Speaker
And I'm sure you don't need to do quite as much in order to get a bigger impact than if you're just bouncing around. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, and you mentioned curls earlier. If you can get and a better, more effective bicep workout using 60 pounds than the old workout of throwing it up and dropping it down with 75 pounds, that's that's going to be better.
00:16:00
Speaker
That's less impact force and you're you're helping your muscles more and saving your joints more. It's just better all the way around. Yeah. Although if I could do a bicep curl was 75 pounds, which would be around about six, uh, Ooh, getting close to 40 kilograms.
00:16:19
Speaker
I'd be just so happy if I could do a bicep curl. Those are the dumbbells at the far end of the rack, you know, Dave. that's ah Yeah, that's your aspiration right there.
00:16:30
Speaker
There you go. i I believe in you. You're going to get to them. I haven't been to that end of the rack yet. They let me go down there to so like dust off the the weights down that end of the rack, you know.
00:16:42
Speaker
it's But it is it is really good, solid advice. What other sorts of rules are there? Well, the other one we mentioned are aches and pains that have crept back up on us over the years. So the second rule kind of deals with that one, which is the new rule of range of motion.
00:16:58
Speaker
So, you know, if let's say this comes into play a lot with like squatting type movements, the squat or leg press, anything where you're bending your knees,
00:17:09
Speaker
Um, sometimes people have knee injuries from the past, or maybe they've had a knee replacement, some type of knee surgery at this point. We've always been told, you know, do a full range of motion. You don't want to just squat down one inch and then back up. That doesn't do much for you.
00:17:26
Speaker
But squatting down all the way at this point might be painful on your knees or your low back or wherever. So what we want to change that rule to is use the fullest pain free range of motion possible.
00:17:39
Speaker
And that'll be different for different people. depending on their history and different for different body parts. Yes. For example, i can, i have some knee issues. I just squat down to 90 degrees. I can do that. No problem. I have clients online coaching clients that cannot do that.
00:17:58
Speaker
So they just go as far as they can and we adjust the weight accordingly. Same thing with shoulders. This is a common thing with shoulders. You don't want to overstretch on, in particular, your chest exercises.
00:18:11
Speaker
So pushups or ah dumbbell chest press, these types of movements. There's no need to stretch too far. There's no added value that's worth the risk of injuring your shoulder joints.
00:18:25
Speaker
So, you know limit the stretch to whatever is comfortable and focus on the other end of the movement, which is the contraction. As you brought up earlier, the top of the curl or the top of the chin up movement, that's what we call the fully contracted position. That's where the most muscle fibers are fully shortened or contracted, which is how muscles produce movement.
00:18:48
Speaker
So it makes sense to stay in that position an extra couple seconds and get a little more benefit. from that position. So that's the the end of the repetition to focus on not the stretch. Don't worry about the stretch. Don't do anything that hurts.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, don't do anything that hurts as ah I'm often being told, listen to your body. Absolutely. Your body will tell you when to stop. And there is a difference between I think at least there is a difference between the muscle burn that shows that you're working your muscles and muscle pain, which means stop Yes, 100%. You're going to expect some muscular discomfort from the activity that you're doing. That just means you're working hard. But I believe most people, if they are involved in the activity, can tell the difference between
00:19:40
Speaker
injury pain and the muscular discomfort that comes with exercising. So if there's pain in a joint, for example, that's not good. There's no muscle inside your joint.
00:19:51
Speaker
There's just connective tissue in a joint. So if your joints hurt, that's bad. If the middle of your muscle hurts, the middle of your bicep, let's say, that's muscular fatigue. That's you're going to get that.
00:20:03
Speaker
If you don't get that, you're probably not working hard enough, but there should be no sharp stabbing pain of any kind, you know, as I like to say, strength training is supposed to help you not hurt you. So, um, all this, no pain, no gain stuff is out the window. We're going to switch that to no strain, no gain instead of no pain, no gain. Yeah.
00:20:23
Speaker
It's bad. I say listening to your body, working out how far you can push it and not pushing yourself beyond the safe place, I suppose. Yes. Safety first, always.
00:20:37
Speaker
That is ah an eternal rule. Safety first. And goes back to the comparing yeah part. You know, don't look at what the 35-year-old bodybuilder in the gym, how he does it.
00:20:48
Speaker
Do it the way it feels right to you because your body's different than his. You see, now, I don't look at that and sort of think like, oh, what can they do? But I have had comments. One guy said to me, well, if you can do that at your age, I should be able to do it at my age.
00:21:05
Speaker
And I thought, you're in the wrong place, mate. I thought, you're in the wrong place. That's not what it's about. That's not what it's about. But he did he did make my day. He did make my day.
00:21:15
Speaker
you know Yeah, be you know it's fine to be inspired by others, but don't try to duplicate what they're doing because you don't know their background compared to yours. So it might be all wrong for you. We're all on our own journey, really are on our own journey, I suppose.
00:21:30
Speaker
mean, one of the things that interests me is that there are some lots of different gyms around. They all attract different crowds, but if you If you are someone who is approaching 50 or just over, what do you think are the things that make a gym successful for people who are over 50? That is a great question.
00:21:50
Speaker
Number one thing, if there is a large variety of equipment, is helpful for sustainability purposes. In other words, if they have free weights and they have ah line of machines or maybe some different variations of different machines so that there's more than one leg press, for example, that type of thing.
00:22:14
Speaker
I think that's beneficial because, you know, if you have to do the same exercise with the same piece of equipment for the next 30 years, which I don't want you to ever stop strength training. I want you to keep doing it as long as possibly can. That could get a little boring and that could kind of disturb your motivation at some point.
00:22:34
Speaker
Whereas if there's a variety of equipment, you can change it up and go do this exercise instead of that one and get just as much benefit. And I think that's fantastic.
00:22:45
Speaker
yep And then the other thing I would say is there are certain gyms, I'm not going to name any, I'm going to stay out of trouble, where the the culture is such that, or the underlying philosophy of training is such that there is a lot of the types of exercises that involve what we were talking about earlier, explosive type movements, jumping, throwing things, um these types of activities.
00:23:16
Speaker
So I would say to avoid those types of things. They're fun to do. They will get you stronger, but the risk of injury is not worth the reward. There's a much safer way to do things differently.
00:23:30
Speaker
And I believe for older adults, especially, that's the slow controlled way we were speaking of earlier. So if you walk into a gym and everybody's heaving things and throwing things and no it it kind of looks like the world's strongest man contest is taking place, that's probably not the best environment.
Community and Environment in Fitness
00:23:48
Speaker
yeah one of the reasons why i like the gym that i go to which is true personal training in in weatherby is there are no mirrors so and it sounds like a strange thing to say and people some people will say you need the mirrors in order to check your technique there are enough trainers in true personal training to make sure that there is always a trainer who's got their eye on you and is there to tell you very nicely, very politely that you're doing it wrong or you could improve your technique, but you don't need the mirrors to do that.
00:24:21
Speaker
And i think also when I first arrived, it was clear that there were other people my age there as well. ah just It is a very friendly, sociable type of place as well. And I think that helps when you get older is you don't want the people being competitive. You just want to be able to have a laugh with people and yeah look what I've done.
00:24:45
Speaker
100%. Yeah, those are both great points. There are many gyms, I'm sure your gym included, that that's by design. They didn't just... arbitrarily not be able to afford mirrors. That's by design. They don't want you. They want you listening to your coach, not watching yourself in the mirror.
00:25:04
Speaker
And the, the demographics of the gym, that is big. That's really big. I mean, I have two different gyms that I go to. And one of them is, uh, YMCA, which is yeahp it's an organization that kind of caters to perhaps an older population. And the environment is just way friendlier, like you said. So again, in the interest of consistency and sustainability, if you're going to keep going and keep going regularly, if you feel intimidated every time you walk in, that's probably not going to be the best ah thing for your motivation.
00:25:38
Speaker
Not at all. No.
Accessing 'The New Rules of Strength Training After 50'
00:25:40
Speaker
This book that you've written, New Rules of Strength Training After 50, where can people get it? They can get it on my website, actually. It's strengthafter50.com.
00:25:52
Speaker
And right on the homepage, as soon as they arrive at the website, they will see a blue rectangular box, a button in the upper right-hand corner.
00:26:04
Speaker
that says get your your free ebook and they just hit that button and put in some information and boom, they get the book. Brilliant. I was going to ask you what the price was and you've preempted me and said, this is a great book and it's free.
00:26:18
Speaker
It's an easy read and it's written by someone who's been there, done it and has got years of experience. And I really do appreciate Dave, the opportunity to talk to you about it and to learn some more.
00:26:29
Speaker
Really do but value your time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. I've had a blast and I hope your listeners gotten a couple of tips that they can utilize. And I always love speaking to podcasters with this type of subject matter as their topic.
00:26:46
Speaker
Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with Dave Jarrell, author of the new The New Rules of Strength Training After 50.
00:27:03
Speaker
You'll find more information about both of us at abbasida.co.uk and links to Dave's website as well. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Dave.
00:27:16
Speaker
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if, like Dave, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where great hosts and great guests are matched and great podcasts are hatched.
00:27:29
Speaker
There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. At Fit for My Age, our aim is proactive positive aging. Knowing the risks early is an important part of maintaining good health.
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00:27:43
Speaker
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00:27:58
Speaker
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00:28:12
Speaker
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00:28:28
Speaker
There is a link and a discount code in the description, which means that description is well worth reading.
Podcast Conclusion and Engagement Reminder
00:28:35
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Fit For My Age as much as Dave and I have enjoyed making it So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:28:47
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. And remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abysida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:29:01
Speaker
Until the next episode of Fit for My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.