What works for your 20-something dude in the gym is not going to work for a 50-year-old executive. Age is not just a number but a factor that shapes our approach to health and fitness.
Training should be specifically tailored to any pain points, physical needs (imbalances, weak bits, tight bits), or sporting goals.
Today we’re going to dive into the 5 key areas that should be taken into consideration when training older vs younger clients.

Recovery Time Strategy
Not only between exercise sessions but between the sets themselves. Lactic acid buildup occurs during intense exercise, leading to temporary muscle fatigue and a burning sensation. In younger individuals, lactate is cleared efficiently by the liver and muscles. However, older adults, whose livers may be dealing with additional stressors (e.g., from medication, alcohol, processed foods, environmental toxins) may have a reduced capacity to clear lactate, resulting in longer recovery times.
If you’re sore for the next 2 days, that indicates muscle fiber damage - not lactic acid buildup - and is likely to be counterproductive if it impedes recovery.
Likewise, with the exercises themselves, when you change the rest period between exercises, you totally change the exercise outcome:
- 0 – 60 seconds: sarcoplasmic hypertrophy – may not be ideal for older adults
- 1m – 2m: the balance between recovery and reinforcing the benefits of the repetitive action
- 3m – 5m: strength training (myofibrillar hypertrophy). The ideal type of training for older adults.
On top of this, your nutrition, sleep, stress levels, and toxic load (e.g., alcohol, processed foods, polution, drugs etc.) will all affect your recovery time.

Hormones
Male
Men start to lose their testosterone as they age. When you lose your testosterone, you lose your willpower, motivation, energy levels, ability to build muscle and sex drive. Doing exercises that increase your adrenaline and cortisol and rob you of testosterone recovery are counterproductive for men in their 40s and 50s. Examples are long bouts of cardiovascular exercise and bodybuilding routines. Most PT routines in the gym aim for reps between 8 and 12.
No matter what this is called: functional fitness, strength and conditioning, resistance training, this is a bodybuilding routine designed for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, i.e., show muscles. It also requires a lot of eating to maintain that muscle mass.
When the reps are 5 or less, you’re strength training. That keeps your cortisol production to an absolute minimum but focuses on myofibrillar training: increasing muscle strength via muscle fiber density. This means that when you sleep at night, there is minimal cortisol repair, and you can maximise testosterone production.

Female
Female hormones are more complex and more delicately balanced than men’s. Working with a trainer (ideally a female trainer) that understands what you should, and should not do, during your monthly cycle is key. Excessive cardio, HIIT, and the wrong type of gym training will boost cortisol and disrupt your hormones.
When female hormones are disrupted, it becomes very hard to lose fat because adipose tissue acts as a backup endocrine organ that produces estrogen to balance the body’s hormone systems.
Training should align with the menstrual cycle for best results. For example, resistance training during the follicular phase (first half of the cycle) optimises performance, while lighter training during the luteal phase can help reduce stress and avoid hormonal disruption.

Joint and Bone Health
As you get older, your connective tissue, ligaments, and tendons (the stuff that connects muscles to bones) wear down. Now consider this:
- it takes 90 days to turn over all the red blood cells in your muscles
- 200 to 300 days for tendons and ligaments
- bone tissue regenerates fully over a period of about 2 years
It’s easy to build muscle, but if your body’s structure cannot support it, you massively increase the chance of injuries, with the most common in your 40s and 50s being Achilles tendonitis, rotator cuff tears, tennis elbow, meniscal tears, and ACL/MCL injuries.
There should be a focus on long-term joint health, coupled with an understanding of functional movement assessments that ensures that every exercise is safe and effective for older clients, preventing injury while maximizing mobility and recovery.
Supporting joint health also requires attention to diet nutrients like collagen, vitamin C and omega-3s from real food can aid in cartilage and tendon regeneration.

Injury Prevention and Safe Training Practices
Injuries in the gym do happen, but they can mostly be avoided. Throwing the same cookie-cutter 20-year-old’s program at a 50-year-old is going to end in disaster. The key is to bring the body back into balance by strengthening the weak bits, stretching the tight bits, and fixing the imbalances. Once you have rebuilt the foundations, you can start upping the ante and being a bit more aggressive with training variables. But only once the foundations have been rebuilt. We love this process, and often it takes 6 months of twice-weekly corrective exercise sessions. I personally did 2 years of corrective exercise to fix my postural issues before I could start sprinting and deadlifting.

Goals and Motivation
Understanding this is critical. Younger clients tend to focus on aesthetics. Older clients, whilst appreciating aesthetics (who doesn’t want to look good naked?), understand that there are other things to take into consideration as well.
People have 3 reasons why they want to exercise with us:
Chronic or acute pain
They have some kind of pain they want to get out of: back pain, neck and shoulder pain, for example. Pain and recurring injuries are great motivators to do things properly and not seek out unsustainable short-term fixes.
Problems
Structural imbalances, tightness, and stiffness all lead to functional issues that can impact day-to-day activities. For example, the inability to kick a footy around with your kids, run without pain, throw your 25kg luggage on a conveyor belt at the airport, or just maintain energy levels throughout the day at work.
Goals
Sporting goals are a great motivator. Beating your mates in your next triathlon, crushing your colleagues on the tennis court, scoring a goal without tearing your ACL, or [what else to put here].
Having our own proprietary Holistic Health and Fitness Assessment helps us identify the elephant(s) in the room and develop the most targeted programs to help people get out of pain, solve their problems, and achieve their goals in the shortest possible time.

Conclusion: The Bigger Picture of Training for Longevity
Beyond these 5 key areas, other factors critical to consider are:
- Metabolism and Muscle Mass: As mentioned earlier, strength training and nutrition are crucial for maintaining muscle mass and a healthy metabolic rate with age.
- Mental and Cognitive Health: Doing a program that is specifically tailored to your needs, at your age, and explained by a competent coach (our coaches have master’s degrees and published scientific papers) helps motivate you to stay on track and supports brain function and reduces stress, keeping our clients mentally sharp.
- Nutritional Support: Having a full understanding of the difference between eating in your 50s vs eating in your 20s is key, particularly the concept of metabolic typing and adjusting your diet for your genes.
- Stress and Sleep Management: Addressing stress and improving sleep quality is essential for optimal recovery and long-term progress.
By managing these factors, especially for older clients, we integrate a holistic approach that ensures long-term health and performance.
To your health, happiness, and longevity,
The Levitise Team
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Footnotes
Lactate, Not Lactic Acid, is Produced by Skeletal Muscle
American Journal of Physiology
Robergs et al., 2004
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physiol.00033.201
Hormonal Responses and Adaptations to Resistance Exercise and Training
Sports Medicine
Kraemer et al., 1998
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15831061/
Tendon Healing: Repair and Regeneration
Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering
Voleti et al., 2012
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