#178: What I'm doing at 55 to be Strong at 90

What do you want your last decade to look like? Can you get yourself out of a chair? Walk without help? Still live in your own house?

I've spent five years building habits that are preparing my body for my 90s. Some of them take zero extra time because I've woven them into things I already do every day. And one of them I stole from my father.

This isn't a life overhaul. It's a stack. And if you're wondering where to start, I share what I did first and why everything else followed from there.

Enjoy the show!

Resources Mentioned:

Fat Loss Formula >

Learn to Lift (10-week strength training program) > 

Membership (monthly progressive programming) >

Transcript

#178: What I'm doing at 55 to be Strong at 90

[00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And that really is my goal. I am here to help you start strength training and to continue strength training, but also with an eye on the rest of our lives It's something that I think about a lot, and where I've done a lot of things, made a lot of changes to my life really over the past four years, five years, that have contributed to ensuring that I'm going to have a great final decade.

I think this is a very useful way to think about it. Like, where do you wanna be? What do you wanna be able to do in your last decade of life? And if you [00:01:00] think about the fact that our bodies naturally decline as we age, they try to get rid of muscle. After age 60, that starts to speed up. Our bones are getting more frail all the time naturally.

Our balance starts to get worse. There are so many things that happen to our bodies as we age, which are kind of naturally leading to our final decade not being so pleasant. And so, in a way, kind of the same way as having a goal of, "Hey, I wanna be able to run a marathon next summer. What do I need to do to get to that point?"

 I think it's useful to think about, so what do you want to be able to do in your last decade, and what does that mean that you need to put into place in order for that to happen? And I'll tell you that when you start thinking [00:02:00] long-term like that, you start adopting habits which actually also make you feel amazing today.

Slim you down, get you more toned, you're more strong, you're more able to cope in life. All these kinds of things I've noticed my life has changed in positive ways when I've started strength training and then set my sights on that last decade. All right. So I wanna get into that a little bit more concretely, but just to kind of set the scene because I think a lot of you are probably thinking about the same things, what you wanna be able to do.

So in my journey, it really started out as being something where I wanted to look better, when I was 49, I noticed that my body changed in what seemed like overnight and then I suddenly just looked blobby, I was working out five days a week, sweating, burning calories, doing what I thought were all the right things and yet I didn't [00:03:00] have much to show for it.

I didn't look lean and fit like I had just a year or two earlier. It was really quite shocking, the change. And so my first focus was really on getting the muscle back, and that led to me focusing on certain things. And I still, as a menopause fitness coach and as somebody who is hyper reading and learning about all of the brain and body health things that we can do for ourselves to age well, I still am firmly of the opinion that strength training is foundational to everything.

And when that becomes sort of your main thing, one of the foundations of your health and wellness, then other things fall into place very, very naturally. So you start [00:04:00] strength training because muscle is so important to us, and I've talked about that in recent episodes, so I can... I'll point to some in the show notes.

And then the act of strength training strengthens more than just your muscles. It's strengthening your entire body, so that's kind of step one, and, and you should get that into your plate. And by the way, I, I wanna also point out that- people say, "Oh, we all have the same 24 hours." I understand.

We do not all have the same 24 hours. But I will tell you that I am working 8 to 10, sometimes 12 hours a day, Monday through Sunday, okay, on this business. So for me, I'm not just this fitness influencer who kind of, "Oh, I can go to the gym. I can spend, hours a day there, and then I go for hour-long walks, and then I, just sleep as much as I want."

[00:05:00] I really have to think about how I fit that in and be really efficient and effective in what I am doing because running this business is taking me more work than it did when I was working a nine-to-five job. Okay, so I have had to, along this whole journey, my view on this is, how can I do this in the most efficient, effective ways where I don't have to keep adding another hour of this and another hour of this and another hour of this?

Because I just don't have those hours. And I don't think you do either, we're, we're pretty busy at this time of our lives. The way I found the time to do that is I cut out other forms of exercise that I was doing. So I left the BodyPump classes.

Anything that was, like, muscly classes, I just dropped. And in fact, in the beginning, I pretty much dropped all my cardio [00:06:00] for a while and then I've brought it back into my life. So strength training became my very foundation. And when you start to focus on building muscle, you start to think of, like, "Okay, so how do I make, the workouts that I'm doing bring me the most results that I can have?"

Well, you need a good program. You also need to make sure you have recovery days. You want to make sure you're sleeping well enough, that you're keeping your stress levels managed. All these things hinder muscle growth, so when you start thinking through the lens of, "How do I build more muscle?"

it's amazing how many good habits you pick up. Oh, and then by the way, protein. You need to be eating protein. And along the way here, I've completely revamped how I eat, and it is so much simpler, less stressful. I know what I'm gonna eat at every meal. I don't have to go downstairs and stare at that fridge and be like, "Oh my gosh, what am I gonna [00:07:00] do now?"

I always have, like, a plan 'cause I have a pretty good system of how I eat. And that I actually learned, when I did a fat loss, 12 weeks, 10 weeks, about a year and a half after I started strength training. And I lost 10 pounds in about 10 weeks by really tracking what I was eating. And in that time, like the discipline, the disciplined system that I used in order to lose that fat taught me ways to deal with meal planning, food selection, cooking bigger batches and eating them for many days, that kind of thing, which I use to this day, and it just makes my life super much easier.

And I teach that all in my Fat Loss Formula. So even though I call it my Fat Loss Formula, and absolutely you can use it to lose fat, but it is also an [00:08:00] amazing way to just structure your eating and plan meals in advance and that kind of thing that makes life a lot, lot easier.

Okay, so strength training has been something that has directed all these things. Now, once I got the strength training under control, where that became very, very familiar, I didn't have a problem going into the weight room. I had my, program that I would go in, follow, doing the progressive overload.

I was recovering enough, because in the beginning you're also trying to figure out, like, how much can I train? How much can I recover from? And you're learning about, how do I make my sleep better? How do I reduce my stress? All these kinds of things. So once you have that under control, and that can take a year, it can take a year and a half, then you can start adding more things.

Actually, I should say that I did add one thing right away into this, and this was actually inspired by my father, who [00:09:00] was also very much into fitness. He's still alive. I don't want to say was . He is in- into fitness, but, now he has Alzheimer's, so maybe not thinking quite the same way as he did before.

But he used to practice standing on one foot in front of the TV, and balance is something he always talked about, like, use it or lose it, just like muscles. Use it or lose it. I think that's a really good principle for all of us to think about in everything, right? Aging is use it or lose it. If you start taking the elevator instead of walking the steps, soon you're not gonna be able to walk up and- up the steps.

Or if you take the elevator down instead of walking down the stairs, you won't be able to walk down the stairs, which is actually a little bit di- more difficult in some respects than walking up the stairs, depending on, like, how- how high the stairs are. But anyway, so balance is another one of those use it or lose it kind of things, and that's something I incorporated into my everyday life 

I [00:10:00] never sit down to get dressed. Okay? I get dressed, I pull on my underwear, my socks, my pants, everything, and I undress from a standing position. This is second nature to me now, but I remember in the beginning it was like, whoo, my balance was not so great, and especially if you get your foot a little bit stuck in a, in a pant leg, and then your balance starts to waver or whatever.

But I absolutely... Like, if there is nothing else that you take away from this episode, start getting dressed and undressed standing up. And, in the beginning it is gonna feel awkward, but just start doing it, and then it'll start to be second nature. I know with , my ex-boyfriend, I got picky at him about this.

I was like, "Hey, you're not practicing your balance in anything, so start getting dressed, like s- without t- sitting down to pull on your socks," and that kind of thing. And, and his [00:11:00] balance definitely improved, and if he stopped doing that, it would go back. So that is something that it is really valuable for you to incorporate into your daily life, and then continue to do it.

Okay. And cardio is important too. I think this gets lost often, especially in social media, because a lot of midlife women are like, "Yes, I'm strength training and I'm walking." Yes, walking is good. Walking is great, and, I think by all means, walk, right? I'm not saying don't walk, but walking is not cardio.

The same way as, these exercise classes with weights is not the same thing as strength training. Okay, walking is a form of cardio. It's zone two cardio. But you also need to do some cardio exercise that actually challenges your cardiovascular system more. So that's why the next thing that I added in was the sprint interval [00:12:00] training.

And, I added it in in small, little bits, My first goal was once every two weeks, I would do one sprint interval training session. And I have a whole episode on sprint interval training, so you can listen to that. But I started with running up stairs. I have, , some stairs at a park near my house, and that was great, s- sprinting up stairs.

Then I've also done it with, spin class, sprint interval training. And the beauty of those sessions is they can be very, very short. In the beginning, like, two or three sprints is plenty, the point is just to challenge your body. So it really didn't add a lot more time to my week, though, even that was hard to incorporate.

So I totally get you if you're thinking, "Oh, my God, where am I gonna fit one more thing?" And I would even say that if you're strength [00:13:00] training more than twice a week, so, like, I strength train four days a week, you could even cut back on your strength training for a little while to... while you get into the habit of whatever the cardio is that you're doing.

Because you also have to take into account recovery, and if you're already, like, strength training, which is a proper workout four days a week, then you add one more, then that's quite a bit more, on your body, and then you gotta think about your whole recovery. And of course, that's so individual.

It's like, okay, so what is your stress situation? Are you like me going through a breakup where, your stress levels are really high, or is this one of those really nice phases in your life where things seem to be flowing nicely? So, you have to do it according to you. And now I have, increased the amount of sprint interval training that I'm doing to be more often.

So once a week is my goal right now, and it may be that I increase that [00:14:00] again at some point. But right now, that once a week seems to be working pretty well for me

The next thing that I'm adding in, and actually this is very new to me, , is power training. So power is basically strength done in explosive way. And for that I've been learning new little exercises, and I've been doing that through participating in these HYROX classes at my gym. They s- they, like, built this HYROX studio.

Now, HYROX as a sport, if you've, ever seen it, so what it is, is, and, and I'm no expert so probably, probably I'm gonna explain part of this wrong, but the point in the HYROX competitions is that you run a distance, which is a kilometer at least here in Europe, and then you have a station that you stop in and you do an exercise at that station.

Then you [00:15:00] run another kilometer, then you do another station and, another kilometer, another station. So it is actually primarily a running race But when I go to these classes, I don't really do the running part, or I pick classes where they're more concentrating on the stations. And so then I'm using those stations, which is things like wall ball, which is, a power move, or, , doing sled pushes, sled pulls, this kind of thing, which is more about power, production.

And then using the equipment that they have to do sprint interval training. So I'm trying to kind of incorporate all these things because I have to say, as a former athlete, I played Division I lacrosse, , at Dartmouth, I've always had a competitive streak in me. And for me, it is very much more motivating to have a [00:16:00] whole bunch of other people also working out around me.

 It just gets me going more. So, and up until now, I've been kind of doing strength training on my own and then doing the sprint interval training kind of on my own, and now this is kind of a, a nice way to do it a little bit differently. So I'll talk more about that later as I get more into that.

But so that's a new thing that I'm doing. And so that is absolutely like , if I go to the HYROX class, it is an hour long. So that is longer than a sprint interval training session, but actually I am I'm not running it like a normal HYROX class. I'm taking it, like, easier on some parts, and then when normally you would do something for two minutes, like you'd go on the, AssaultBike for two minutes or you'd do the, the SkiErg for two minutes, I get on there and I go all out until I hit my wall, and then I just take a break.

So instead of actually doing it for two minutes, which is what you're supposed to do, I do it for, [00:17:00] like, 30 seconds to a minute, and then I hit my wall, and then, then I just recover. so I'm a little bit modifying that. And the reason I'm telling you this is that don't think that when you walk into a HYROX class that you're doing sprint interval training.

You're not. I am doing the HYROX class wrong in order to use it for sprint interval training. Yeah. But luckily, my, my gym doesn't mind. The instructor's like, "Yeah, do whatever you, you want," okay. And then the other thing that I'm adding now, and this is something that I also do not want to have take up more time in my life, is, jump training.

So having the hard landing that you need, to really jar your bones. So just another way of making sure that I am keeping my body strong. And I happen to live in a three-story house, so I'm doing it in the simplest way possible, which is that when I go down the stairs, instead of just walking down the stairs [00:18:00] normally, I will, like, jump down the last two stairs.

That's how I'm starting it, okay? So early days for me. But you see, like, I'm not trying to make it some big deal like, "Oh, now I have to go to jump training class." No, I wanna incorporate it into my daily life. And it may be that, if you're not used to jumping or your knees are not used to it or, you're not so strong, maybe you need to just jump off of the last step, start with.

And like now I have the two steps, but then my ambition is that then it'll be three steps and, like that as I go forward. But I mean, I go up and down the stairs often enough that I can get in the 10 or 20 jumps that I would need in a day. Just like that, just by doing something that most kids probably do just naturally as they're going down the stairs at home.

So I hope this has given you some kind of an idea of [00:19:00] like how you can gradually incorporate things into your life without it having to become this huge life revamp. I think it gets way too difficult to actually do if you think that, "Oh my God, now I'm gonna Take care of my muscles, take care of my bones, take care of my balance.

I'm gonna do everything at once." You don't have to do everything at once. Like, add them in gradually, little habits that you're stacking on top of each other. I mean, for example, the fact that I'm doing my balance exercises in my strength training sessions, or that I'm doing my balance when I'm changing clothes anyway, 

it just becomes part of my life. My jumping is just part of going down the stairs now. And that's how you make these things much, much easier to do. One other thing that you could try if you're at home and you have a pull-up bar, I'm not gonna propose that you do pull-ups, but start doing dead [00:20:00] hangs.

 Just spend a few seconds, just holding onto that bar, and in the beginning, it might feel really, really awkward to let your spine stretch that much. Oh my God, I had so so much trouble with that in the beginning. I had to keep most of my weight on my legs, and then over the weeks, I was able to let my spine stretch more and more.

It was so uncomfortable for me in the beginning. , and then when that feels comfortable for you, then dead hang. In other words, have your whole body hanging, where you're... the only thing really that you're having to tense is your hands. Okay, if your hang-up bar, pull-up bar is so low that you can't...

 That you have to keep your legs bent, then obviously that's gonna be a little bit of effort to keep your legs bent. But in any case, you could add that into your life, and that's really good for building your grip strength. It's also good for your spine and your shoulders. So it's something that I recommend to do after a strength training [00:21:00] session, or any time.

It doesn't have to be part of a workout. You can go dead hang any time. It's gonna be actually much easier to do it just if you're walking past the, pull-up bar and you do a dead hang than after a strength training session when your hands are already somewhat tired from the session. 

Okay, so that is just a peak at my journey, and really it has been, , five years of doing this.

So I started when I was 49, and I'm 55 now, and it has been gradual. So, cut yourself some slack, but keep adding. Once you've got one thing on board and you're feeling comfortable with it, then add the next thing and then the next thing. We don't need to... Rome wasn't built in a day, and our bodies won't be either.

But it is important to get started, especially if you want to be in good shape in your final decade of life, if you wanna be strong enough to get through your days, if you want your [00:22:00] balance to be good so you don't fall, right? That's pretty important. All kinds of things that you need to be able to do.

So let's keep our bodies fit. And if you are under the age of 60, then please get started now because at about age 60, our biology apparently shifts to some degree where building muscle, holding onto muscle changes a little bit. So at least for me, what that's done is it's put a little bit of a fire under my butt to get as much muscle on my body as I can before I turn 60 and of course to keep going after I turn 60.

But it's a good motivator to work on that as much as possible now before the big 6-0. All right. So let me know what you thought of the episode and whether, you have been incorporating things into your life, thinking ahead at your last decade, whether you're even thinking that far ahead, or if next week is already too much [00:23:00] to be thinking about.

I'd love to hear from you. Put some comments in the notes below, or if you're listening on an audio player, then there is the possibility to send me a message. And as always, I'm in Instagram, so I'd love to hear from you there as well. And with that, I leave you until next week and wish you happy training.