"Never Do These Exercises After 50" Article Response

Jun 22, 2022

Site member Ray Tucker posted this link:

Exercises to Never Do After 50

and then asked if site members agreed. We have been having a nice forum discussion and I thought my answer was article worthy, so here it is.

I agree with the basic premise of the article. In general older clients are not great candidates for many of the exercises they mention in the article.

I do think some of the recommendations are a bit odd.

Although I think adults need to be careful with bench pressing I don't see a rowing machine as a substitute.

With our adult clients we do not do heavy squats, heavy deadlifts or bench presses and many of our adults are under 50.

Beginners do Goblet Squats but, we never progress to back or front versions.

Beginners also do Kettlebell Deadlifts but also never progress to the straight bar or Trap Bar versions.

As for horizontal pressing we tend to use dumbbells with our adults as it is more shoulder friendly.

We will do pushups as long as technique is good but, do regress to modified using a bar or a bench. I'm not a fan of the wall push up. I don't love that the head has no where to go.

I'm also not a fan of chin-ups and pull-ups for adults and do prefer pulldowns for vertical pulls. Most adults lack the shoulder flexion to properly do chin-ups and do tend to strain to try.

From a sprint/ conditioning standpoint I am obviously a HIIT and but almost exclusively on a bike. On the flip side I'm not a fan of running short sprints as this population is prime time for Achilles rupture.

I guess if I was to give the article a score it would be a C+.

Check out the forum discussion here