Question of Strength 64

Ask: How does a 50+ year old lifter improve their lower body if heavy squats and deadlifts are no longer an option due to injuries?

Difficult to answer without knowing exactly what those injuries are. But if squats and deads are all you can’t do, and you can still perform leg presses, hack squats, pendulum squats, leg extensions, leg curls, split squats, etc., there’s no excuse not to train. the lower part of the body.

In fact, if we talk about hypertrophy, the squat and dead weight they’re not even the best lower body options for most! If you can do any of the exercises mentioned above, even if you can only do two of them, such as squats and seated leg curls, you will still be able to develop your lower body quite optimally.

Even if you can only do one of the listed quad exercises and one of the hamstring exercises, you can still make solid gains if you do 6-10 working sets of those two exercises. It can be a bit boring, but it will work.

Your situation would be more problematic if you couldn’t do any of the exercises listed without pain. If that’s the case, a good option might be to use the Prowler or a sled to train your lower body.

A few years ago, a 63-year-old former bodybuilder came to me for help because he couldn’t train his lower body with any traditional exercises. What we did was use the Prowler and the sled, made in various ways, to build the lower body of him. It worked! In fact, it worked so well that he decided to enter a bodybuilding competition. He beat men 30-40 years younger, and his legs were the best part of his body!

Here’s the thing though: building legs this way isn’t enjoyable because the length/distance of the sets required to stimulate growth will put you in a state of severe lactic acid buildup and can be challenging for your lungs.

Since it doesn’t have a loaded eccentric, it also means you have to do it more often (to build up more volume) for it to work. He did it three days a week. But the fact that it doesn’t cause muscle damage actually allows you to recover quickly enough to do it that often.

When it comes to charged carries and sled work, I typically use the “10 meter = 1 rep” equivalencies:

• If you’re using it to build muscle, this means sets that cover 60 to 100 meters.
• If you’re using it for strength, think 10 to 50 meters.

You must use a load that makes it difficult to finish the prescribed distance. This distance is NOT done running. You must use a “gait speed” to produce the muscle tension necessary to trigger hypertrophy.

Try 2 to 4 pushing or pulling strokes for 3 to 5 sets each, then rest 2 to 3 minutes between sets.

For example:

• Low Handles Prowler Thrust (Hips Higher Than Shoulders) – Glute Focus
• Sled Drag Back to Half Squat Depth: Quad Focus
• Mid-Stance Marauder Thrust (Hips and Shoulders in Line) – Focus on Hamstrings
• Lateral sled drag: focus on adductors and abductors