Training After 50
Your strength, stamina and waistline stopped cooperating somewhere after fifty, and the program that worked at thirty-five now leaves you sore for days. Here is what changes, and how to train for it.
Craig ChapinNASM Certified Personal Trainer
You are fifty-four. You played something in school, you have lifted on and off most of your life, and you are not out of shape so much as out of practice. But the numbers have drifted: the belt is a notch looser, the stairs feel longer, and the shoulder you tweaked five years ago still has an opinion about anything overhead.
So you went looking for a personal trainer for men over 50 in South Tampa: somebody who will push you without breaking you. Most of what came back was a class with a playlist, or an app that has no idea your left knee exists.
I have spent 20+ years training clients privately, and plenty of them arrived where you are: not starting from zero, but starting again. Here is what changes after fifty, what I do about it, and how to tell whether a trainer knows the difference.
Not everything, and not overnight. Four things shift, and every one of them is a training problem with a training answer:
The answer is not to train less hard. It is to be smarter about where the hard goes. The CDC’s physical activity guidelines (opens in a new tab) call for muscle-strengthening work at least two days a week for every adult, covering every major muscle group. After fifty, that is the main event.
Watch you move before handing you anything heavy. A trainer who loads a bar in the first ten minutes is guessing, and after fifty a wrong guess costs you weeks.
That is what the free first session is for. It includes a free body-fat analysis and a fitness evaluation of four things, and each one tells me something specific about a man over fifty:
The body-fat number gets rechecked as we go, so progress is written down rather than guessed at. Results normally show within four to six weeks of consistent training.
Not a template with your name on it. Two men the same age routinely need opposite things, so the plan is built around your joints, your schedule and what you want back.
If a rep drifts, we stop and fix it then, not next week. Weight goes onto the movements you own, and only after the last session went well. Heavy is the goal. Heavy first is the mistake.
Two sessions leave a lot of week. We talk about what you are eating and how you are sleeping, and I hold you to what you told me. I am not a dietitian: anything medical goes to your doctor.
There are two ways to train with me, or a mix of both, and the full price list is published.
$60 a session
A customized workout built for you that day. The right call for a busy week or one focused goal: arms, legs or core, if you tell me first.
$120 a session
A full hour: full-body strength work, conditioning, and the post-workout stretching most people skip on their own. The better fit when there is a lot to build.
Ask me for the rate
Partner training with a friend you bring, or small-group metabolic conditioning, scaled to you either way. Built so men over fifty can work hard without intimidation. The rate is not published, so ask me.
Packages come as Jump Start (12), Head Start (24) and Transformation (36), at the single-session rate. Transformation is the one that includes nutritional planning free.
HIIT and functional training run through every format, scaled to you. Intervals after fifty mean a sled, a kettlebell or a battle rope rather than box jumps: the heart rate climbs and the landings stay out of it. Functional work means lifts that look like carrying, climbing and getting up off the floor, because that is what the strength is for.
My fitness and personal training philosophy is that if you make small changes every day, it will result in a huge transformation over time.
Karl was 52 when he wrote this. He had worked out with trainers for seven years and was in good shape by any fair standard. What he wanted was more.
“When I began working out with Craig about one year ago, I weighed 221 and just felt I could be doing more. One year later, I am down to 207 and feeling the best I have in years… my diet has never been better as he holds me accountable to what I am eating… My strength and cardio have never been better.”
Look at what he credits: being pushed past where he thought he could go, and being held to his diet. None of that is exotic. It is consistency, watched by somebody. His is one of four stories on the success stories page, and he is not the oldest: Sherry was 65 when she wrote hers.
Behind it is the record. NASM (opens in a new tab) certified since 2004, and 31 continuing-education courses from 2009 to 2019. The largest group, 13 of them, is older-adult training, including “Strength and Conditioning for Seniors” (2017) and “Designing Strength Programs: Exercise the Older Shoulder” (2015). Beside them sit “Good Knee / Bad Knees” (2017), “High Intensity Training: When Less Is More” (2019) and “Lift Weight to Lose Weight” (2019). The full record, with years, is on the About page.
All training is in person at Empire MMA and Fitness, 5006 S MacDill Ave in South Tampa. Sessions run Monday – Sunday, so a standing time is easier to keep than a class timetable. Clients come from South Tampa, Westshore, Brandon and Channelside.
You would be training with me, Craig Chapin: the person who runs your evaluation watches every session after it. If you want a personal trainer for men over 50 in South Tampa who has trained clients through their fifties and sixties, the first session costs nothing. Rather ask first? Call 813-310-4323 or use the contact page.
For the case for lifting at all, read strength training for men. A new knee or hip? The knee-replacement article covers it, and the back-pain article covers a sore back. The rest is on the personal training in South Tampa page.
Start Here
Let me test your balance, strength, coordination and flexibility, and leave with a plan built for the body you have now, not the one you had at thirty. It costs nothing, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
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