Anaerobic Performance Is Important For Everyone - Especially Seniors!

Anaerobic forms of exercise are widely disregarded by the vast majority of fitness enthusiasts, especially novices and seniors. There are many possible reasons for this, including the perceived degree of difficulty in technique and workout design (much easier to put on some Peluvas and walk around the park!), and the intimidation factor of delivering near maximum efforts and suffering from intense temporary muscular and cardiovascular fatigue. 

It’s time to reject these flawed assumptions and realize that you can quickly learn to perform safe, low-tech types of anaerobic exercise. Furthermore, performing brief, explosive efforts with extensive rest periods between them is not a suffer fest but a highly invigorating session that is within reach of anyone, regardless of fitness level. Perhaps the intimidation factor emerges because most forms of high intensity exercise are poorly-designed and far too stressful for the average enthusiast. Remember, a novice suffering through a killer HIIT workout in a group cycling class that they are not fit enough to benefit from, then feeling hungry, light-headed, exhausted and depleted afterward, is not what we are talking about here!

With anaerobic exercise, we’re talking about very brief, powerful, crisp explosive efforts performed with excellent technique, with extensive rest periods taken between efforts. Granted, delivering a max effort on a bike, rower, or up a hill or staircase is not a walk in the park. If you’re new to explosive training, it will take a bit of acclimation to feel comfortable with maximum efforts. But a correctly designed workout is in no way exhausting or depleting. Overall, the anaerobic system responds to high intensity, short duration, and low frequency of workouts. In stark contrast is the aerobic system, which responds to low intensity, long duration, and high frequency of workouts. 

It’s critically important to understand these insights and recalibrate your mindset and behavior patterns to train correctly. It’s never about doing “one more rep” for bonus points, sucking it up and finishing a workout when you feel crappy. Instead, it’s about embracing an entirely new paradigm of peak performance, where you harness and focus your competitive instincts to conduct occasional workouts where you really throw down for brief bursts. As I’ve mentioned many times on podcast and in writings, an ideal general template for a sprint workout is to sprint for 10 to 20 seconds, observe a 6:1 recovery to work ratio (e.g. rest 1 minute for a 10 second sprint; rest 2 minutes after a 20 second sprint), and perform only 4-8 reps. Of course these workouts will always include careful warmup, dynamic stretching, wind sprints to prepare for the main set, and gentle cool down period after the main set, but the accumulated time of hard work is minimal. 

While running sprints on flat ground delivers the best benefits for fat reduction and bone density, most people are not ready to jump into true sprinting. Hence, a variety of low- and no-impact sprint workouts can be conducted. You can sprint according to the aforementioned template on stationary bike, rowing machine, other cardio machines, up a set of stairs or a steep hill, or even “sprint” with something like kettlebells swings, burpees or other intense movements that you sustain for only 10-20 seconds before taking a long rest. Welcome to real sprinting! And if you are getting up into the higher age groups and haven’t introduced sprinting into your workout regimen yet, now is the time. 

Preserving anaerobic function, muscular power and explosiveness is what keeps seniors safe from what the CDC calls the number one cause of demise and death in seniors over age 65: falling and adverse related health consequences. Think about it, when you take a misstep and are headed for a potential fall, the attempt to regain your balance is essentially a one-rep max to support your unstable bodyweight. For example, when a young, strong person trips on a rocky trail, she might be propelled into an aggressive deep-lunge step, followed by an awkward sidestep or two, re-stablize her center of gravity, and then be able to resume her normal posture and stride. If an elderly person with diminished mobility and muscular power takes even a tiny misstep - a foot hitting a protruding carpet during a stride, she can easily experience a face plant instead of that aggressive lunge step that prevents a fall. 

Appreciating these insights and including brief, highly explosive efforts in your fitness regimen is going to be a major recalibration for many devoted fitness enthusiasts in the older age groups who are content to achieve good daily step counts and perhaps do a regular circuit of sub-maximal efforts on strength machines in the gym. These are fantastic habits, and anyone devoted to any form of fitness deserves to be congratulated. However, it’s simply not enough to approach one’s longevity and vitality potential. Many novices or seniors seem to be intimated by high intensity exercise due to increased degree of difficulty, perceived injury risk, or complex technique required. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Even if you are starting from a low fitness baseline, you can quickly learn and regularly perform simple, safe forms of explosive sprinting and resistance exercise.