Training After 60
The stairs feel steeper, your hand finds the railing without asking, and the curb that caught your toe last month is still on your mind. Here is how strength and balance get trained back.
Craig ChapinNASM Certified Personal Trainer
You are seventy-one. You still walk most mornings, you drive yourself everywhere, and nothing is wrong, exactly. But the low sofa takes two tries now, your hand finds the stair rail before you have decided to use it, and last month a curb caught the toe of your shoe. You did not fall. You have thought about it since.
So you went looking for a personal trainer for seniors in South Tampa, or somebody who loves you went looking on your behalf. Most of what came back was a chair class, an app, or a gym full of people forty years younger.
I have spent 20+ years training clients privately, and older-adult training is the deepest part of my continuing education. Here is why strength and balance fade, what a first session should test, and what the training actually looks like.
Getting older changes things. But three of the biggest reasons people feel less steady are training problems, and they have training answers:
It matters because falls are common. According to the CDC (opens in a new tab), more than one in four adults 65 and older falls each year, and the fear of falling can lead people to cut back on everyday activity, which leaves them weaker.
The CDC’s activity guidelines for adults 65 and older (opens in a new tab) call for muscle-strengthening work at least two days a week, plus activities that improve balance, such as walking heel-to-toe or standing up from a seated position. That is the training, in one sentence.
How you move, before anything gets lifted. Loading somebody whose balance has not been checked is guessing, and after sixty a wrong guess costs more than a sore week.
That is what the free first session is for. Alongside a free body-fat analysis, it includes a fitness evaluation of four things, and each one answers a question that matters at seventy:
None of it is pass or fail. It is a starting point, written down, so progress is measured rather than guessed at. Results normally show within four to six weeks of consistent training.
Standing up from a box, step-ups beside something solid, and hip work, starting with body weight. These are the muscles every chair, stair and curb asks for.
A few minutes each time rather than a separate class: heel-to-toe walking, standing on one leg beside a support, stepping in different directions. Practised like any skill, a little and often.
Staying upright, and turning without reaching for the furniture. Two of my courses are about exactly this: “Core Training for Seniors” (2017) and “Standing Tall: Exercise and the Aging Spine” (2019).
Form is corrected inside the set, not next week. Load goes up when the last session went well, and not before. Steady is the goal. Heavy is optional.
Between sessions, the work is mostly walking and the homework we agree on. We talk about what you eat and how you sleep, and I hold you to what you told me. I am not a dietitian, and anything medical goes to your doctor.
My fitness and personal training philosophy is that if you make small changes every day, it will result in a huge transformation over time.
Least of all after sixty. A trainer who is excellent with twenty-five-year-olds can be the wrong person for a seventy-year-old with a stiff hip.
Four questions worth asking any trainer you are considering:
My answers: NASM certified since 2004, 20+ years training clients privately, and 31 continuing-education courses from 2009 to 2019. The largest group, 13 of them, is older-adult training, including “Balance and Fall Prevention” (2015), “Strength and Conditioning for Seniors” (2017), “Essential Functional Exercise for Seniors” (2015) and “A Dozen Practical Exercises for Seniors” (2017). CPR/AED and BLS training are on the record too, and I train every client myself. The full list, with years, is on the About page.
Sherry was 65 when she wrote this, and still working as a hairdresser.
“I am a 65 year old and feel great because you know what you are doing and make me work to my fullest potential and never let me slack off… I am getting stronger.”
Sherry, 65Hairdresser*Individual results may vary. Testimonials from past clients do not represent a guarantee and are not intended to create an expectation of similar results in future clients.Look at what she credits: somebody who knows what they are doing, and who will not let her coast. That is the whole job at sixty-five, and at seventy-five. Hers is one of four stories on the success stories page.
There are two ways to train with me, or a mix of both, and the full price list is published.
$60 a session
A focused session on legs and balance, and easier to fit around a week of appointments.
$120 a session
Strength, balance and the 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 spouse or friend you bring, scaled to each of you. Already active? The small group is metabolic conditioning, scaled to you, and the first group session is free. Ask me for the rate.
Packages come as Jump Start (12), Head Start (24) and Transformation (36), at the single-session rate. Most people start at two sessions a week, which leaves room to recover between them.
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 that suits you is easier to keep than a class timetable. Clients come from South Tampa, Westshore, Brandon and Channelside.
If you want a personal trainer for seniors in South Tampa who tests before loading and stays beside you while you train, the first session costs nothing. Reading this for a parent? It is the easiest way for them to find out. Call 813-310-4323, or ask a question first on the contact page.
Recently had a knee or hip replaced? The knee-replacement article covers training after physical therapy. A sore back has its own article, and so do men in their fifties. 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. It costs nothing, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
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Training After Surgery
Physical therapy has signed you off, your surgeon is pleased, and you still take the stairs down one at a time. Here is how the strength comes back from here, for a new knee or a new hip.
Training After 40
Your back is stiff by three in the afternoon, the last class you tried left you on the floor for two days, and you still want to be strong. Here is the order those things have to happen in.
