old man strength

[globetrotter]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...TL&type=movies

 

[mizanation]

nice article. great points. yeah, gotta give props to the old guys. some of whom are on this forum.

there is such a phenomenon as "old man strength". muscular strength and cardio can peak out at 6 weeks of development--but tendons and ligaments, those get stronger over long periods of time. if you know anyone who spent their childhood working on a farm, you'll notice a huge difference in tendon and ligament strength. maybe we should create the "old man workout?" *EDIT* one guy they forgot to mention is randy "the natural" couture. at over 4 decades in age, he was UFC light-heavyweight champion of the world, regularly beating the snot out of little brats 2 decades his senior. little brats like tito ortiz, vitor belfort and chuck liddell (well, one of the three times).

 

[ang_kangkong]

How do you measure ligament and tendon strength? And how do you build those up?

Where you been miz?

 

[mizanation]

been busy with holiday crap, ang_kangkong.

tendon and ligament strength is something that is built using very heavy resistance. the reason why is you need to overload the muscles so that the tendons and ligaments are necessary to lift the load.

if you only focus on muscle building, you can hurt your tendons or ligaments. that's why anabolic streroid users commonly have connective tissue injuries, because they develop their muscle strength at such a rapid rate.

lifts like deadlifts, squats and benches (using limited range of motion) will increase connective tissue strength. but, you have to lift heavy.

 

[Bradford]

Damn - I wish I'd seen this sooner. I'd like to get my dad one of those "Old Man Strength" t-shirts.

He grew up in a small farm town in Michigan playing every sport in school and working on farms in the summer and even at 65, he's still much stronger than anyone I know.

 

[mizanation]

working on a farm is great exercise, especially tossing hay bales. if you think about it, when you toss a hay bale, you're grabbing it with those bale hooks on both sides, and then doing an explosive movement with your whole body--similar but more dynamic than a clean. probably the closest thing to it might be a kettlebell clean. doing this all day, every day, you can develop incredible core strength.

 

[marc237]

Sorry, but as an "old guy," the article is mostly crap. Most men in their 50s and 60s did not grow up on a farm, didnot push their cars around town, could not beat up Reese Witherspoon, let alone Ryan Phillippe. The simple truth is that the vast majority of us "boomers" are over-weight weekend warriors at best. Cherry-picking a handful of exceptions proves or demonstrates something. The simple truth is that one need only travel the malls of America to see how badly most guys let themselves go by the time they reach the mid-Century mark.

I would also argue that manual labor, farm work, construction, etc., takes a terrible toll on the body and that most men reach middle aged racked with monor injuries from this work. Moreover diet and smoking further reduce the capacity for aerobic and anaerobic work.

The good news is that some middle-inclome and affluent boomers are able to stay in better shape than many other middle-aged and older men. There is a greater ability to work out, use the gym (the quickest growing segment of gym users are boomers), and partake in outdoor physical activity (biking, golf, etc.). However, they are not the majority by any means.

Of course, there are certainly instances of the "old guy" being a powerful, bear. I just think that the article's premise is fundamentally flawed.

 

[mizanation]

i guess another trait of old men is that they can't detect a tongue firmly implanted in the cheek.

anyways, if i were old, i would take the strong old man strength myth and run with it.

 

[coatandthai]

I have middle-age strength. I can do any aerobic-type machine at the gym at max resistance for an hour, easy. I can do 10 reps with the stack on any weight machine. I don't look that strong or muscular. I just endure a lot more pain than most of the young 'uns can.

 

[Steve B.]

bale hooks

Are for p***ys

 

[masqueofhastur]

Originally Posted by mizanation

one guy they forgot to mention is randy "the natural" couture. at over 4 decades in age, he was UFC light-heavyweight champion of the world, regularly beating the snot out of little brats 2 decades his senior. little brats like tito ortiz, vitor belfort and chuck liddell (well, one of the three times).

Chuck Liddell's 5 years younger that Couture.

 

[marc237]

Originally Posted by mizanation

i guess another trait of old men is that they can't detect a tongue firmly implanted in the cheek.

anyways, if i were old, i would take the strong old man strength myth and run with it.

So true, so true, as with most things, satire and tounge-in-cheek was done so much better back in the day. Considering the amount of crap that is needed to fill the Men's Health and other glossies, thought the author might just be serious. Mea culpa.

 

[caelte]

I've been around several decades and I've noticed some changes in men and women as well.

I see alot of guys now who are stronger then their counterparts of the past but the real difference might be the ability to endure pain.

I could run a list but mostly it would be about how, when I was a kid, most of the men in my neighborhood had been in WW2 and/or Korea and later some of them in the Vietnam war as well.

These guys, and there were alot of them, didn't push iron, they smoked and they ate crappy food but they were capable of, "chewing nails and spitting out bullets".
Later on they were tough old guys.

This kind of man still exists in rural areas.

Every once and a while there is a story about some guy who loses an arm in a thresher or some other piece of farm equipment. He gets the arm out and drives himself and the arm to the hospital while applying a tourniquet.

Now, well....., I was watching a guy getting a tat on his perfect arm and he looked like he was going to cry.

 

[ang_kangkong]

Originally Posted by caelte

I see alot of guys now who are stronger then their counterparts of the past but the real difference might be the ability to endure pain.

Every once and a while there is a story about some guy who loses an arm in a thresher or some other piece of farm equipment. He gets the arm out and drives himself and the arm to the hospital while applying a tourniquet.

Now, well....., I was watching a guy getting a tat on his perfect arm and he looked like he was going to cry.

I have an uncle who's got part of his toe placed on his thumb because he lost part of his thumb at his job. Just excused himelf, covered up the stub, kept the arm above heart level and went to the hospital. I think he went back to work as soon as the last suture was placed. He didn't have a car, so I'm guessing he had to wait for public transportation (a jeepney)

Maybe that wasn't what the author of the article meant, but that's still old-man strength right there.

 

[Stazy]

My dad is 55 and loves to work out. I'm 20 and hate hitting the gym. He could kick ****** on any given day.