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Old 02-09-08, 07:08 PM  
macska
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kathryn
I've never seen anyone discuss this before (in articles or print), but I tend to agree with Cooper. I think as we get older, strength training becomes more and more important.
One more vote for more strength as we age.
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Old 02-09-08, 09:08 PM  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marie1120
The March 4th Woman's Day had an article (Fit for Good) by Kenneth Cooper MD. It was a Q&A format with one question asking if strength training or cardio was more important. His response was both important but that the percentage of each should change as you age. He states that under 40 should be 80% cardio/20% strength. Over 40 strength should be 30%; over 50 increse to 40% and over 60 up to 45%.
I've seen a similar recommendation elsewhere, some time ago, but I don't remember where or even who said it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by KathAL79
I'm not sure I like the implication that we young ones should just go run on a treadmill 4-5 days a week and then pick up a couple of weights one day. I'll do as much strength training as I want, thank you very much!
I agree with this reaction.

Now, I don't think that Cooper intends that implication, but I can definitely see people getting a wrong idea from it, like

(1a) "strength training just doesn't matter for much when you're younger" (BZZZT, wrong answer)
(1b) "if you're under 40, you can skimp on strength training now and try to catch up later, when you're older"
(2a) "if you're under 40 and you do X minutes of strength training, you must do 4X minutes of cardio" (for some mysterious reason )
(2b) "if you're under 40 and you do X minutes of cardio, you should ideally do only X/4 minutes of strength training"
(3) "exercise time is some sort of zero-sum pie; more time doing one thing necessarily means sacrificing another"
(4) "different forms of exercise 'compete' against one another"
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Last edited by hch; 02-11-08 at 08:43 PM. Reason: expanded two reasons: see 1b and 2b
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Old 02-10-08, 10:21 AM  
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Penguin, Redeye, and any others - what kind of weight training are you doing? Or doesn't that matter as much as just increasing the amount of strength training you are doing? Do you feel this is helping you find your metabolism?

Kath - I didn't take it as this is what you have to do when younger as much as making the point that strength training is more important as people age. If you are doing a lot now than you are way ahead of many others. Both are important and have value to our bodies. IMO many women (esp older and those that don't go to a gym) think of cardio as the way to go so this is just emphasizing that strength training is important and in his opinion more important as people age. I am one that has found it easier to let strength training go so posted this to try and explore this statement. Hoping the experiences of others who transitioned from cardio to more strength training in their 40s and 50s can help me do the same.

Would love to hear more thoughts on this and experiences. I'm sure I am like many others that have a limited amount of time to workout in a day/week and want to make the best decision on how to use that time.
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Old 02-10-08, 01:32 PM  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marie1120
Kath - I didn't take it as this is what you have to do when younger as much as making the point that strength training is more important as people age. If you are doing a lot now than you are way ahead of many others. Both are important and have value to our bodies. IMO many women (esp older and those that don't go to a gym) think of cardio as the way to go so this is just emphasizing that strength training is important and in his opinion more important as people age. I am one that has found it easier to let strength training go so posted this to try and explore this statement. Hoping the experiences of others who transitioned from cardio to more strength training in their 40s and 50s can help me do the same.
Oh, I know that. I was just being silly. I know it wasn't the author's intent, but more careful wording should have limited the possibility someone would interpret it as saying strength wasn't important for younger people, too. In fact, I would think it would be just as important, if not more so, to build a good base earlier in life. That's what I've been told by medical professionals and older relatives alike, and that's what I think, anyway.
Still, I think this article is great for encouraging people to focus on strength, especially as they get older. It is nice to know that once the arthritis finally catches up to my bad knee I won't have to kill myself to get in so much cardio in order to stay fit.
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Old 02-10-08, 02:17 PM  
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I didn't read the research but Kenneth Cooper is certainly no fly by night expert so there may be something to what he says. I don't know that his intent was to provide some do or die percentage but a general guideline based on the idea that muscle mass tends to deteriorate with age. It's food for thought, anyway. I might just give it a try since I'm in that "target" group and I've always focused more on cardio than weights.
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Old 02-11-08, 09:29 PM  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KathAL79
Oh, I know that. I was just being silly.
Once again I pretty much agree with your post, except that I wasn't trying to be silly. In other words, I didn't think that you'd taken those numbers literally, and I don't think that anyone else who agreed with you thought so either.

Quote:
I know it wasn't the author's intent, but more careful wording should have limited the possibility someone would interpret it as saying strength wasn't important for younger people, too.
The part that most caught my eye was the same possible misinterpretation. If I could've highlighted only one thing in my post, that possibility would've been it.

I agree that someone, somewhere, just might misread (or even twist) those numbers into something that they were never meant to be, like a Scientifically Precise Figure, a ceiling on exercise time, or something. (I've already seen a similar thing going on with, say, BMI. More than a few people think that there's some wondrously crisp transition from "unhealthy weight!" to "healthy weight!" that occurs when BMI goes from 25.05 to 24.95.)

For example, I imagine that Cooper's "45%" really means "slightly less than half" in some less-than-completely-clearcut way, but I also can't help imagining someone whipping out a calculator.

"Hm, since you're 65 and do 60 minutes of cardio every session, you should do just over 49 minutes of weights."

"Wait! Since you're 39 and you do 30 minutes of cardio per session, you shouldn't do more than 7.5 minutes of weights until you get in more cardio!"

Quote:
In fact, I would think it would be just as important, if not more so, to build a good base earlier in life. That's what I've been told by medical professionals and older relatives alike, and that's what I think, anyway.
Is there a good reason not to build a good base earlier in life?

And doesn't someone's VF signature contain something about building up strength for when you'd older? It compares building up strength to saving money. Before I'd seen it, I'd already thought about the matter in similar terms. Experts don't tell people to skip saving money now and wait until they're older to try to catch up. I'm not going to wait until I'm older to work on my strength.

And don't forget, everyone, that enhanced strength is good for everyone.

Just yesterday, where I was volunteering, a woman whom I've seen from time to time (I don't know her age, but it's probably under 30) was able to help the few people remaining return some heavy furniture to its usual place. As I overheard her talking to another person who was concerned about her lifting heavy furniture , she revealed that she's been lifting weights for five years to help her strength. She was definitely able--she could keep up with the man who was lifting the other side without any shakiness, need to rest her side, or other deficits of ability. All this was after she'd spent some time at other demanding work.

It'd been a long afternoon, and we really appreciated her contributions.

If she'd neglected her strength training for any less-than-necessary reason, like "oh, I'll focus on that when I get older" (or "I don't want to bulk up" ) things would've been that much harder for the rest of us.

Quote:
Still, I think this article is great for encouraging people to focus on strength, especially as they get older.
I agree that about getting people to focus on strength (I just wish that the "80-20" numbers didn't seem to discourage such a focus for younger people as well). Strength is the limiting factor in what some older people in my acquaintance can do.

Quote:
It is nice to know that once the arthritis finally catches up to my bad knee I won't have to kill myself to get in so much cardio in order to stay fit.
I do wonder about the last sentence and "keeping fit"--I wonder in particular how Cooper would turn his numbers into specific recommendations.
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Old 02-12-08, 12:40 AM  
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I don't really understand what the percentages mean. It could mean percentage of time spent, but that wouldn't make sense, because it's about the quality of the activity, not the amount.

Strength-training amount should not change depending on age (in my opinion) and one important reason is that much of bone mass is established during adolescence and in early adulthood, so strength-training is important then. Too much cardio earlier in life with little strength-training could actually decrease bone mass. It's really hard to build up from low bone mass later in life, even with intense strength-training. Intense strength-training (meaning lifting heavy) is helpful to build bone mass later in life, but I think it should be constant throughout life. It's a lot easier for someone to maintain a lifetime of training as opposed to increasing training as she ages.
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Old 02-12-08, 02:57 AM  
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When I asked about "specific recommendations" in my last post, I didn't realize that the article is online (scroll to the last question in the article--not that the other parts can't spawn their own VF threads):

http://www.womansday.com/health/12794/ask-dr-wd.html

You see, when I wrote my last post, I tried the search function on womansday.com, which showed nothing. But when I used Google to search in general (search term: '"woman's day" "kenneth cooper"'), it was the first hit.



If I knew that doing so were completely OK, I'd paste that whole portion here.

The question is worded "What's more important: cardio or strength training?" and his answer does start with "[m]ost of your exercise should be cardio, but strength training also matters," especially with loss of muscle as we age. He doesn't get more specific than percentages.
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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

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Old 02-12-08, 04:02 AM  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbe
I don't really understand what the percentages mean. It could mean percentage of time spent, but that wouldn't make sense, because it's about the quality of the activity, not the amount.
Your question was also my question--hence my asking about "specific" numbers.

After all, I'd quickly remembered that I don't spend a lot of time with weight training but put my energy into it and value it highly. Years ago, I had the time for and was doing long near-daily yoga. I vaguely remember a VF thread from that time asking about percentages of workout time spent in various activities, and I vaguely remember answering it, with explanations of the numbers. If I'd given simple percentages, without context or explanation, I could easily forgive someone for thinking "oh, so he really doesn't value weights very much."

Since the article's advice to me says, "plan to do 80 percent aerobics and 20 percent strength training," I'm still going with time. I'd already gone with the "time" interpretation:
  • I have a hard time imagining percentages in terms of "energy," "intensity," "importance," or other things without some explicit mention
  • "if the article mentions generic percentages"--indeed, it does--then people would probably interpret them as applying to total time
  • people in this thread read the percentages as meaning "time," and no one had corrected them

But I wouldn't mind Dr. Cooper giving us a sample schedule for different ages to clarify what he means.
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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

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Old 02-12-08, 04:28 AM  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbe
Strength-training amount should not change depending on age (in my opinion) and one important reason is that much of bone mass is established during adolescence and in early adulthood, so strength-training is important then. Too much cardio earlier in life with little strength-training could actually decrease bone mass. It's really hard to build up from low bone mass later in life, even with intense strength-training. Intense strength-training (meaning lifting heavy) is helpful to build bone mass later in life, but I think it should be constant throughout life. It's a lot easier for someone to maintain a lifetime of training as opposed to increasing training as she ages.
Again, "is there a good reason not to build a good base earlier in life?"

Or as I might ask everyone, "is there a good 'inherent' reason for someone to vary the amount of strength training by age?" If I have no medical, "life situation," or other restrictions on my time and abilities throughout my life, is there a necessary reason that I shouldn't make strength training a priority earlier in life with my time (or intensity, or energy...)? I can't think of one.

Yes, I do appreciate the focus on strength training as people age, especially as strength is important and as people (especially women) are more into developing it than they used to be. (For example: I've seen multiple exercise books from the 1980s and before where cardio is top dog, flexibility is valuable to avoid injuries from cardio , and strength training is treated as third-rate, negligible, useless, or even worse for health and fitness.)

But someone can point out that focus without implying that people under 40 shouldn't bother so much. I use the "savings account" illustration because most people get it. Most people know (even if they don't practice accordingly) that you don't want to wait until late in life to start saving for retirement, since trying to catch up will be that much harder.

I wonder how Dr. Cooper would reply to our reactions.

P.S.: Fun with percentages

Another interpretation of the changing percentages is varying cardio amounts and constant amounts of weight training through the years. But his wording doesn't suggest such a scheme to me. Most people (including me) would interpret his words in terms of a fairly constant total time and a shift within that total towards strength training.

Even so, that other idea is mathematically possible. If you want specifics, then read the rest of this post.

Here, I assume that the "ideal" amount of strength training is 90 minutes per week (30 minutes, 3 sessions). If you want to plug in different "ideal amounts of strength training" (I don't do 90 minutes myself ), the numbers will vary--but not the principle.

Here's a schedule with a fixed 90 minutes of strength training that also fits his percentages (with sample cardio sessions longer than 30 minutes, another recommendation from the same article):

Age 35: 90 minutes strength training, 360 minutes cardio (for example, 60 minutes, 6 sessions): 450 minutes total

Age 45: 90 minutes strength training, 210 minutes cardio (for example, 35 minutes, 6 sessions): 300 minutes total

Age 55: 90 minutes strength training, 135 minutes cardio (for example, ~34 minutes, 4 sessions): 225 minutes total

Age 65: 90 minutes strength training, 110 minutes cardio (for example, ~37 minutes, 3 sessions): 200 minutes total

This is not (necessarily) an exercise recommendation, though. It's just an interesting take on Dr. Cooper's advice, although it's probably not what he had in mind.
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"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

The Velveteen Rabbit

Last edited by hch; 02-12-08 at 04:32 AM. Reason: reformatted list
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