STRENGTH TRAINING IN YOUR 70s

ANCHOR POINTE, The Faith and Fitness Podcast

Faith, Diet, Exercise, Attitude, Positive Imagery, Music and Research

TRANSCRIPT

Charlotte (00:00):

This is the XBHS Radio Network.

Skip Orem (00:03):
Hi, everybody. From Nashville, I’m Skip Orem, and this is the Anchor Pointe Podcast. (
00:16):

Hi everybody, and welcome to this mid-January episode of the Anchor Pointe Podcast. Anchor Pointe: your faith and fitness podcast, designed especially for us older folks in our 60s and 70s and beyond. And we use the seven elements of the Anchor Pointe disease fighting and fitness model to stay healthy, fight disease, and live long, healthy, and happy lives. Those seven elements, by the way: faith, diet, exercise, attitude, positive imagery, music, and research.

(00:55):

I’m Skip Orem and I’m recording the podcast today at the XBHS Radio studios, here on Printers Alley in Nashville, Tennessee. The major focus of today’s episode is strength training for us older folks. I titled the episode, “Strength Training in Your 70s”, but we’re really talking about folks in our 60s, 70s, and beyond even. We’re talking about strength training today because it’s so important for us older folks to build muscle strength. And then later in the podcast today, since we’re still kind of early in January of 2023, I will be focusing on the need for all of us to let last year go. 2023 is your new beginning, everybody.

(01:52):

Before we get started, I wanted to take a minute to thank all of you who wrote emails to me about last week’s guided imagery session, “Guided Imagery to Fight the Winter Blues”. So many of you wrote to tell me how much that episode helped you deal with the winter blues this January. Many of you have listened to it several times already. I’m so happy to hear that. And if you haven’t listened to “Guided Imagery to Fight the Winter Blues”, I want to let you know that it’s available along with all of our Anchor Pointe episodes at the website, theanchorpointe.com. You can listen to it whenever you want. And don’t forget, when you search on the web for the website, theanchorpointe.com, we spell Anchor Pointe with an E. The Anchor Pointe website address, T-H-E-A-N-C-H-O-R-P-O-I-N-T-E .com.

(02:53):

This is the Anchor Pointe’s medical news for seniors. The headline today is, if you didn’t know this, our older bodies, they’re constantly changing as we age, our metabolism is getting slower, we’re getting a decrease in muscle mass and strength, an increase in body fat, our bone density is reducing, and we’re getting stiffer joints. Really bad news today. Here is the good news, it is never too late to reap the benefits of exercise. And strength training can help us build muscle mass and limit or significantly reduce the problems caused by the lack of bone density as we age. According to the Mayo Clinic, strength training can reduce body fat, increase lean muscle mass, help you lose weight, help you burn more calories, protect your joints from injury, help your balance, and overall increase your quality of life. In our 60s and 70s and beyond everybody, strength training needs to be a part of our total fitness plan. And that everybody, is your Anchor Pointe medical news for seniors for today.

(04:20):

Our regular listeners know that a key component of the Anchor Pointe disease fighting and fitness model is exercise. That exercise element though has two equal parts; heart rate training and strength training. Several of the upcoming Anchor Pointe episodes this year will focus on heart rate training, but on this week’s episode, the focus is strength training. As we mentioned in our medical news for seniors

as we get older, our muscle mass decreases. And that decrease in muscle mass, it can cause us some serious health problems. Not the least of which is that it puts us at a greater risk of falling and then incurring bone fractures. And this is important because I want you to know this, strength training, it doesn’t add weight in terms of weight gain, muscle mass burns fat causing you to actually lose weight. As we age and we continue to lose muscle mass and strength, we need to do everything we can in our 50s and 60s, 70s and beyond, to keep strengthening our muscles and guarding against muscle mass loss.

(05:47):

As we try to build back aging muscles, it’s important for us to focus on age specific strengthening exercise. That means exercising your muscles against some type of resistance; think exercise machines, free weights, resistance bands, barbells, dumbbells. And then of course, as you continue and grow strong with your strength training program, you want to increase the amount of resistance as your muscles continue to get stronger.

(06:21):

Us older folks, we want to start our strength training with very light resistance. My recommendation is to not start strength training by yourself. The ideal situation would be to have a personal coach or trainer. Most of us can’t afford that. But there are classes available in most communities where folks our age can work together with an expert coach to help us build strength. There are also some good videos out there. But I want you to remember everybody, you are not 35 anymore. Start light and increase the resistance as you get stronger. Make sure that you know how to do the exercises. If you’re doing exercises wrong, especially with strength training, it can cause injury. And starting with weight or resistance that’s too heavy, it can also cause injuries. And try real hard to do your strength training with a partner, a coach, or in a group.

(07:28):

On future episodes, I’m going to get into more detail on the different methods of strength training. But I encourage you to investigate what type of strength training might be best for you. I’ve used the resistance bands before. I’ve used weight machines. And by the way, I think weight machines may be the safest way to do strength training. Those machines make it real hard to do the exercise incorrectly. The problem with machines though is you have to go to the gym to use the machines and sometimes there are lines. But machines are indeed a very effective way to do strength training. Most gyms, they have people who will, without any kind of fee, they’ll show you how to use the machines. Most of the machines I’ve used in the past have very clear, well-written, including diagrams, instructions right there printed on the machine.

(08:26):

For a number of reasons, right now I’m doing my strength training at home. So I’m using two very compact little dumbbells and then I also do planks. My personal strength training with dumbbells is focused on my chest, my arms, and dumbbells work great for that. And then I do planks to exercise my core muscles; those muscles of the stomach, lower back, and hips. That’s my routine, but choose whatever method you want. Just be sure that strength training is part of your overall exercise routine.

(09:05):

Again, I want to emphasize this point. It’s so important as we age to make sure that we can maintain muscle strength. My personal plan is to do heart rate training and then strength training on alternate days. But you need to develop your own plan, your own personal plan for how you want to do heart rate training and strength training. Remember two things everybody: strength training is important as we age, and muscles burn fat

(09:44):

Right now everybody, I want to follow up just a little more about the importance of letting any bad things that happened in 2022, letting them go, so that you will be free to focus all your energy on this exciting new year of 2023. Here’s a challenge right now for each of you. Think about yourself this time last year and then think about yourself right now, mid-January 2023. Reflect on who you were then and who you are now. You discover this, you are much stronger now than you were at this time last year. Everything that happened last year, the good and the bad, it made you stronger. And let me ask you this, have you thanked God for the strength that he gave to you to weather any storms that might have come your way last year? Because everybody, you know this, it’s through the grace of God that you’re here today.

(11:24):

Faith is the first and most important element of the Anchor Pointe disease fighting and fitness model. Faith and prayer. They’re the vitamins for the soul. You can’t live a healthy life without them. Remember that dark year of 2020? A real difficult year for most of us. But going through that year, all the troubles, all the trials we went through, it made us all stronger. Longtime listeners to this podcast, they know my story, they know what I went through in 2020. I’m going to tell that story again on next week’s Anchor Pointe Podcast. The short version, what came to destroy me, brought me back to God. As we start this new year, 2023, I urge you to think about your relationship with God, and thank him for everything that happened last year; the good things and the bad things. Every challenge that God put before you last year was put there for a reason. And during those challenging times that might have come your way last year, you were never alone. God was always with you.

(13:00):

The poem, “Footprints in the Sand”, many of you know it. It describes how God is always there for us. The poem’s setting is a person our age walking along the beach alone, thinking about their life. Most of us who have been fortunate enough to be on a beach at some point in our older age, we’ve done that walk. Walking along the beach looking back and reflecting upon our life. The person in the poem, “Footprints in the Sand”, pretend it’s you. You’re walking along the sand near the ocean on the beach there, and you’re looking back on your life thinking about both the good and the bad times. And as you are looking back at your life, you turn around and you look back at the beach along the path you’ve been walking and what you see are footprints on the sand where you’ve been walking.

(14:26):

Most of the time, you see that there were two sets of footprints. One of those sets of footprints belongs to you, and then the other set belong to God. He was walking with you during your life. You also notice that during the bad times in your life, the most difficult times you’ve faced during your life, maybe especially during last year, you notice during those times there’s only one set of footprints. It seems you were walking alone. Had God left you? This seems strange, so you stop right there and you pray to God and you say in your prayer, “Father, when I was going through so much trouble during my life, why weren’t you walking with me?” God answers you, “My child, I loved you before I even placed you in your mother’s womb, and I will always love you. During those times of trouble, sadness, suffering, when you could see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

(16:21):

Next week’s Anchor Pointe episode, it’ll be released on Friday, January 27th, will be a special episode, as I share with you the reasons why I started the Anchor Pointe and why faith and fitness are so important to me. That’ll be next week. And then the following week, we focus on the music element of the Anchor Pointe disease fighting and fitness model. Why is music so important for good health as we age? Fo

now though, for the XBHS Radio Network, the Anchor Pointe Podcast, from Nashville, I’m Skip Orem.

Bye, everybody.

Charlotte (17:02):
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