Sunday With Blackthorn - Adapt To Your Situation

 The short piece below comes from a fitness/strength instructor in New Zealand who runs a gym only for over 40 adults. I paid for a program what included a PDF and links to numerous videos. Nothing unusual, but solid material. One of the things he stresses in the weekly emails is that even if you have old chronic injuries, you can still maintain your strength and fitness. 

You just have to be smarter about it.

 

 Let me tell you the thing I am quietly best at, and it is probably not what you would guess.  It is not fancy programming. It is not clever workouts. It is modifications.

A modification is simply a standard exercise done slightly differently, so it fits the body you have today instead of the body you had at 25.

Here is what I mean. A younger person drops into a deep squat and thinks nothing of it. You go to do the same and your knees or hips say no. Most people take that as a signal to stop. I take it as a signal to adjust. We turn the toes out a touch, we raise the depth, we sit down to a chair and stand back up, and suddenly you are squatting again, building real strength, with zero pain.

That is the whole game after 40. Not gritting your teeth and pushing through pain, and not sitting on the sidelines either. It is finding the version of the movement that works for your body right now.

And I mean anybody. In my gym I have people training strong around knee replacements, spinal fusions, frozen shoulders, and hips that have seen better days. It genuinely does not matter what has happened to you. There is almost always a way to keep building strength with the ability you have, and finding that way is exactly what I do.

Three things I want you to take from this:

1. A modification is not the lesser version. It is the right version for your body today. Done well it builds the exact same strength, just without the pain tax.

2. Pain is information, not a stop sign. When something hurts, that is your body asking for a small adjustment, not telling you to quit. Adjust, and keep the strength coming.

3. You do not need a perfect, pain-free body to start. You need the right tweak. I have never met a body I could not work with, and yours is no different.


Keep moving,
Gavyn