The Big Three For Senior Strength

18.09.2025

My senior client is on the second session of a three-day training block. Yesterday, he began hour one of this particular 10-hour course. This is due to out-of-gym commitments and demonstrates the benefits of my appointment-based teaching. Greater flexibility ensures that professionals don't miss out on regular training, as I can work around their schedules. In this instance, my client had a fortnight off to manage some serious matters, finishing his last course, and has come back wanting to fit in as many sessions as possible. Timings varied too. Yesterday's class was at 5 pm, today's was at 4 pm, and tomorrow's will be at 1 pm.

Being over 60, my client wishes to ensure he is doing regular fitness training outside of his martial arts work. His chosen discipline is Boxing, which we have stuck to since the beginning of the year. This is due to previous experience in the art and certain other disclosed health issues he felt weren't worth aggravating. Although I have trained clients up and after knee operations, my priority is providing the service my client wishes me to provide. However, we both discussed other areas of fitness that should be factored into regular training, as he often works with me twice a week, and decided that we'd mainly focus on resistance training. Due to muscular decline beginning around 30 and then noticeably deteriorating around 50, it made sense for the focus to mainly be hypertrophy. This type of training does have secondary benefits for strength and endurance, but strict strength training with 4-6 reps aiming for a one rep max is too intensive for this particular client. The risk of injury is too high due to not having a background in strength training and the sessions not being regular enough. Cardiovascular health is largely handled in the Boxing sessions, where he spars multiple rounds in addition to performing heavy bag work, focus mitt work, and some footwork drills.

Another goal for my client is to perform a good set of pull-ups, motivated by various reasons. Part of my client's reasons for booking are to lose weight, and achieving pull-ups provides a good incentive. Another is because pull-ups are widely considered (and rightly so) to be a premier demonstration of upper body strength. Finally, on a personal basis, my client's grown-up daughter is a fitness enthusiast, and he wants to be able to join her in the gym and work alongside her when on holiday.

After warming up, we nearly always start my client's sessions with the pull-up challenge. It makes sense that we ensure he has maximum strength and energy when trying to attempt this goal. We have worked out a routine that best suits him, and the progress is evident. He begins with simple muscle activation hangs from the bar to loosen up the muscles and get them ready to perform the desired exercise. He then performs some scap-pulls. These micro-lifts are great for hitting the bottom of the lats and forming that mind-muscle connection. Next, he goes straight into his main exercise: Swiss grip pull-ups. This type of pull-up is probably the easiest of all the genuine pull-ups and the most ergonomically sound due to the neutral hand position. He is close to performing a full strict form version of this exercise, getting around 3/4 of the movement range for about 3 x 4-6 reps. The exercise is performed to failure. At this point, he performs partial Swiss grip pull-ups, a set from the top position and a set from the bottom position. He then performs 3 x 10-second dead hangs from this grip. This routine is finished with 6 x 10 reps of inverted rows (sometimes called Australian pull-ups) using my Swiss bar. These are performed using a variation with one leg suspended from the ground.

We then moved onto his free weight exercises. Previously, we focused on one particular area of training, such as pulls, presses, squats, or carries. Today, given that this will be his last weights session with me for at least a week, I decided to switch his routine to a more holistic approach. Tri-sets are a great time-efficient way to pack in beneficial resistance training. For this routine, I chose the three major lifts: back squats on the safety squat bar, deadlifts on the hex/trap bar, and dumbbell bench press. He performed 10 reps of each exercise for three sets in total. The session was finished with a gentle stretch to help flush out the lactic acid.

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