there are some major myths out there about exercise for people over 50 and in today's video I'm going to reveal what those myths are so you can safely avoid them and exercise happily if you don't know who I am my name is will harow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT Physio and farum and today we're going to be talking about some of the biggest exercise myths for over 50s and how to overcome them I'm going to show you what these myths are in just a moment but I just want to let
you know first that the advice in this video is not suitable for everyone everyone's individual so do make sure you get checked out by your doctor before you put anything that you hear today into action and if it causes you any extra pain just avoid it anyway let's have a look at the myths and what to do about them the first exercise myth for people over the age of 50 is that it's impossible to build muscle as you get over 50 and I've seen it so many times that I'm convinced it's a myth but I
wanted to prove it to you so I went online and I had a look at another number of different scientific papers and the first one I found showed this so in this paper researchers took a number of adults who are all over the age of 65 years old what did they do they did 10 weeks of resistance training so just over two months not that long and each week they did three times 1 hour sessions after they did this intervention they took all their body measurements and compared it to the before readings and what they
found was that on average these people who were over 65 gained 1.4 kg of muscle mass that's lean muscle tissue they raise their metabolism by an average of 7% which means that just staying alive they now burn 7% more calories which means it's much easier for them to keep fatty tissue off their body and they also lost an average of 1.8 kg of fat at the same time so not bad for people over the age of 65 right and that proves that it is possible to gain muscle over 65 as long as you're engaging in
this kind of a program now resistance training seems to be the key when it comes to building and maintaining muscle and as it shows in this study it will also help you to decrease fat too so prioritize resistance training and you absolutely can gain muscle mass over 50 the second exercise myth for over 50s is that over 50 shouldn't lift heavy weights now I can understand where this advice comes from it comes from people who want to keep you safe because there is a slightly increased risk of injury from lifting heavy weights especially if your
Technique is not good however I would argue that lifting heavy weights becomes more important the older we get let me show you why so this is the research I've done about lifting light weights lift versus lifting heavy weights so we've got four different variables we've got muscle mass so how much muscle you're going to build we've got strength so how much strength you'll get we've got bone mass so how much bone we can regain or prevent the loss of and then we've got the safety aspects here so the thing I see more often than anything
else is that people say older people should only lift light weights and it's true lightweights will help you to build muscle mass if you keep lifting light weights to the point where you're fatigued your muscles will get bigger and the same thing happens with heavy weights as well so that's a tick in both columns however when we move down to strength the relationship breaks apart obviously lifting heavy weights will build your strength which is great and that can have KnockOn effects your Independence as well to make you more mobile and more independent but the jewelry
is still out as to whether lightweights actually really improve your strength if you have to pick up something really heavy and you've only been training with light weights you still aren't going to be able to do it just because you haven't exposed your body to that stimulus so we don't get a check in the light column but we do in the heavy column let's move down to Bone and this is where things get even more interesting so as we get older it's a fact that we lose bone tissue with every passing year past the age
of 50 in fact one in three women and one in one in five men is going to develop osteoporosis which is loss of bone at some point in their lives now heavy weights have been shown to not only slow down the decline of your bone tissue but also to help you rebuild it and they can help you rebuild up to 1 to 3% of your bone with each year that you do it however the same thing is not seen for your light weights we don't build the same amount of bone as we do with heavy
weights when we're just lifting light finally the safety thing we do have to take into consideration so lifting lightweights is pretty safe lifting heavy weights should be safe but your Technique has to be spot on so I put a question mark here because if your Technique is good you're absolutely fine but if it's not quite right you are at risk which is why it's really important to get assessed for your individual circumstances but with all this aside I would say that heavy weights win on the balance of things there's no real reason why older people
shouldn't lift heavy weights it's an absolute myth so next time you're in the gym try and push yourself a little bit more slightly heavier weights as as long as it's safe for you to do so less repetitions and you're going to get these benefits which outweigh this stuff just with the lightweights the third exercise myth for people over 50 is that cardio is the best thing you can do now cardio is things like running cycling swimming things that get the heart and the lungs pumping and I agree this is a great form of exercise but
I wouldn't say it's the most important for people over 50 now the thing that I think is the most important for people of this age group is resistance training and this isn't just my opinion this is backed up by science let's have a look at a couple of variables for your health and compare cardio against resistance training so we've got cardio on this side and resistance training like weights and dumbbells and bars and bands and things like that on this side now we've got the health of your heart the health of your lungs your muscle
mass your strength your bone tissue and your metabolism let's have a look one by one so with cardio obviously it's great for the heart and the lungs so we get two ticks for each of these however when we move down to muscle mass it's actually been shown that cardio cannot build muscle mass and in fact it may contribute to a loss of muscle mass if you do enough cardio that you're burning so many calories and not refeeding enough your body has to get those calories from somewhere so it can actually take it from your muscle
now as a result you don't actually build any strength doing cardio even if you feel stronger that might just be because you've become lighter as a result so cardio doesn't really build strength the Dury is also still out as to whether cardio can help you rebuild bone tissue or stop its decline now if you're running you probably can regain some bone tissue but swimming and cycling those actually make bone tissue go down because they're non-weightbearing activities and there isn't enough of a stimulus to help you relay new bone so maybe cardio helps with bone but
also maybe not but the thing about cardio that I find most scary is what it does to your metabolism over a long period of time obviously when you do cardio like running or cycling you are burning a lot of calories at the time but after a while of doing this your body learns what happens when you do your cardio and as a result it becomes more efficient that means that over time you start to burn less Cal calories at rest than before you did all your running and this is why some people get into a
uh Vicious Circle where they keep doing lots of cardio and they just can't shift any more weight they're trying to eat less and less and less they're doing more and more cardio just to get the same effect because their metabolism has dropped so much so cardio is not bad it does great things for your heart and your lungs and if you want to lose weight in the short term it can help but let's compare it to resistance training so first of all the heart and the lungs do get a benefit from resistance training that's been
proven time and time again it's not as big of a benefit as if you're doing cardio but it is still a benefit so they get a single tick there now resistance training is the classic way to build muscle and strength so two ticks for both of those and it is in fact one of the only ways that's been proven to rebuild lost bone tissue so if you're worried about osteoporosis and you're not resistance training this is quite literally the best thing you can do do to help you regain that lost bone and then finally if
we look at metabolism resistance training has the opposite effect to cardio when we do resistance training we build new muscle which means we have more muscle on our bodies which means we need more calories just to stay at the same weight than we did before that means our metabolism has gone up which means that you're allowed to eat more when you resistance train and you won't put on as much fatty tissue unlike with cardio you have to eat less and less and less over time with resistance training most people find they can eat more and
more and more over time so if you're worried about calorie restriction this is the guy to go for so it's a myth that cardio is the best I don't think it is at all I think resistance training far outweighs it my humble opinion but also backed up by science and hopefully you agree as well before we go any further I just want to tell you about three tip Friday three tip Friday is my weekly email that I send out to my list and it features three of the most interesting things I found that week it
could be a health tip it could be a piece of research I'm reading or it could be a new tool that I found to be really useful for helping people get more mobile it's totally free I just send it out once a week There's No annoying promos inside and you can sign up for it by going down below this video and entering your email in the three tip Friday link the next exercise myth for people over 50 and I see this more often in people over the age of 75 is that walking is enough and
when these people say walking is enough what they really mean is walking is enough to keep my muscle it's enough to keep my bone strong and it's enough to keep me healthy and walking is a fantastic exercise don't get me wrong it's one of my favorite forms of exercise both for myself and my patients and I recommend it to just about everyone however if you want to maintain your muscle and your bone tissue it isn't enough and the research has shown this time and time again people who only walk do suffer from a loss of
muscle mass over time and their bone tissue does also decline over time as well if they're not doing anything else about it now this isn't to say walking is bad it does definitely slow down the rate of loss it's just not enough to prevent it or reverse it now if you combined walking with resistance training in my mind you've got the perfect combination because your walking helps to keep you cardiovas ularly fit and it does send a signal to the body that all of the functional muscles are needed and then you've got your resistance training
which helps you build muscle and new bone you are quite literally knocking out the park if you do both of those things regularly every single week so walking alone is not enough combine it with resistance training however and your results are going to be so much better research has actually shown that walking each week increases the results from your resistance training so it isn't just that walking are nice to have have is also really important it's just that doing it on its own is not quite enough then the final myth for people over the age
of 50 when it comes to exercise is that gyms are a scary place to go now I totally understand this perspective and it seems to me that people over the age of 50 or especially people over 65 have a bit of like an ick when it comes to going into a gym they think oh it's not really for me I feel very uncomfortable everyone's going to be looking at me people are going to be judging me cuz I don't what I'm doing and I just don't want to go there it feels uncomfortable I totally get
it and yes some people do have that experience but I must say over the last 10 years the attitude has changed dramatically and we now see how important this kind of a thing is for people especially people over 50 and in my experience I found Jims to actually be a friendly and inclusive place what you'll probably find is if you see someone looking at you they're thinking can I go over and just offer this person a hand it isn't because they're judging it's because they want you to get the best out of your workout people
in gyms are all there for a shared goal they want to improve themselves they want to improve their health and they don't want to knock other people down generally they aren't interested in judging you and the truth is everyone feels a little bit self-conscious in the gym even the people who you see looking in great shape they're often checking themselves out in the mirror because they want to see that they're still looking as they hope they look and if things look slightly off for them they can start to feel really self-conscious now to me and
you that comes across as someone who's just flexing in the mirror because they love the way they're looking but in reality they're not always as confident as they seem so if you're not that confident please don't let that get in the way of going in one thing that can really help is going in with a partner or going in with someone you trust or someone who's a bit more experienced than you and can show you the ropes and also getting a couple of personal training sessions just to be shown around the equipment just so you
know what you're doing and just so you are sure you're not going to hurt yourself can go a long way to helping you feel more confident so don't let that get in the way of you getting into the gym and getting your exercise done but above all exercise should be fun so if you don't like the gym just because you don't enjoy it do something else feel free to run feel free to cycle feel free to hike or walk or do whatever you want it really doesn't matter as long as you're doing something your still
going to get some benefits so those are the biggest exercise myths for over 50s I hope you found this video useful and educational if you have do drop a comment below and just let me know because it does help me to improve these videos for you in the future and if you want to get more from me there's loads more advice like the stuff you found in today's video in my book it's called thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below it's got loads more advice that I think you'll
find useful anyway thank you so much for watching I really appreciate your time and and I'll speak to you on the next video
