“I got my first set of dumbbells for my 9th birthday and have never looked back,” says Landers, who was named NSCA Personal Trainer of the Year in 2018 and also owns PUSH Private Fitness.
You only have to look at Landers and his clients to see that he may be on to something. In a world full of quick fixes, flashy training tricks and a magic elixir salesman, his long-term approach to strength and conditioning stands out as a beacon among all the short-term fads. But he didn’t stop there with the release of his new book, Building strength and muscle after 50 years. His longevity love letter to Generation
Lander’s journey from powerhouse to gym owner
Every kid who grew up in the early ’80s on a steady diet of action movies starring Arnold, Sly, and Van Damme wanted to look just like them, and Chad Landers was no different.
“I had declared that when I grew up I wanted to be a ‘muscle man,’” Landers says. These action heroes took Landers’ passion for muscle to new heights. He graduated from his dumbbells to his first model sofa from Sears. But he soon outgrew them and continued his journey at a small, hardcore powerlifting gym called “Brad’s Gym” in Galesburg, IL.
Then, in the fall of 1986, Landers discovered he could study kinesiology at the University of Illinois, but he wasn’t sure he could make a career out of it. “I had no idea how I would make a living with a physiology degree, but it combined my love of sports and science, and I loved it.”
During his studies, he worked at the reception of The Body Firm gym, where he became a gym manager. But looking for further growth, Landers moved to Las Vegas, where he continued his work in gyms. There he met a colleague who was opening a private studio in LA and told him about a job. Landers didn’t hesitate, and in April 1993, he began his 33-year career as a one-on-one personal trainer in Hollywood, CA – one of America’s most competitive markets for personal trainers.
Being good at his job was not enough for Landers. In the fall of 2002, he visited and closed an empty commercial space near his home that had once been a small, independent gym, and in November 2002, PUSH Private Fitness was born.
How he went from watching stars to training them
PUSH Private Fitness is a 2,200 square foot facility located in Toluca Lake, an affluent area of LA, close to Universal Studios, Warner Bros. and Disney. Location and being incredible at what he does started his journey as a celebrity trainer, Landers explains.
“The location helped attract some of the first actors I worked with. I believe the first was Douglas Smith, who was starring in an HBO series at the time called ‘Big Love’. Doug referred me to other actors, like Lyndsy Fonseca.”
Then word got out about him, which led to coaching actors and musicians like Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan (who also wrote the foreword for Landers’ book), William Zabka (The Karate Kid, Cobra Kai), Marilyn Manson, Steve Perry (Reis), Jerry Cantrell (Alice In Chains) and Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction).
What do all these stars have in common? They’re all over 50, and they’re all still going strong, thanks to Landers.
What is Landers’ training blueprint for longevity?
Landers, 57, has been lifting for more than 48 years. Many of his clients over fifty have never lifted a weight before, but have turned back the clock to look better than ever. The key, according to Landers, is to be aware of the aging Big 3.
They are
- Metabolic Decline: Decrease in your metabolism. It doesn’t buzz like it used to.
- Sarcopenia: Age-related muscle loss.
- Osteoporosis: Bone loss can occur at any age, but is especially concerning for women after menopause.
“Strength training is a stimulus for the growth and maintenance of muscles,” Landers explains. “But the tension that strength training places on the bone through the tendons is also the best stimulus for adding and maintaining bone.”
That is Wolff’s lawwhich explains why bone adapts to the loads it is exposed to, becoming stronger and thicker with increased stress (such as strength training) and weaker when the stress decreases. Being stronger not only means stronger bones, but also better balance and coordination, which reduces the risk of falls.
Regardless of age, it is useful to remain upright, without injuries and with all your bones intact.
Lift smart, recover hard and stay strong
But the biggest reason you’ll want to continue picking up and putting down weights is muscle mass. Muscle not only looks good at any age, but is also an active tissue that helps prevent the metabolic decline that occurs from age 50 and older.
Muscles are the original fountain of youth, strengthening your bones and keeping your metabolism going. The trick is to stick with it long term, but after 50 years the older body has different needs, even though strength training is still great.
“Recovery is the biggest problem,” says Landers. “We can still get and stay stronger than people half our age, but we need to be much more aware of good sleep, good nutrition and stress reduction if we want to recover between workouts.”
Landers explains in his book that medications and orthopedic problems influence training and recovery.
“The biggest problem most people over 50 face is joint pain,” he says. “Bad shoulders, worn out knees, sore hips, even early arthritis. While strength training is necessary for the muscles, our joints may not like a particular exercise or range of motion.”
Does this mean you have to say goodbye to heavy lifting after age 50? Not so fast, says Landers.
“I think older trainees need to be aware of the risk/reward of doing certain ‘riskier’ exercises and/or doing max weights for low reps,” says Landers. He is not against heavy lifting. Landers owns a 336-pound squat, 303-pound bench press, and 402-pound deadlift. He coached Barbara Garmon to a World Bench Press title at age 70, after she survived a battle with breast cancer, suffered a debilitating arm fracture from a fall, and at the same time had her doctors advise her not to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds.
“As long as you consistently push yourself to get stronger, you don’t need a one-rep max to prove it,” Landers explains. “I keep most clients in the 8 to 15 rep zone.”
The keys to longevity
As we get older, we need to avoid being the person who spends 15 minutes on the treadmill and calls it a workout. It’s tempting, especially when joints ache and heavy lifting seems impossible.
If Landers’ customers are bothered by this, he shares this advice with them.
“Some days are diamonds, some days are coal,” he says. “On a ‘coal day’ we may be lucky to be able to match the weight and reps from the previous workout, and we may even need to lighten things up a bit to avoid a higher risk of injury.” Diamond days are all systems go.
When we are younger it is easy to treat every workout as if we are going to war, but for the over 50s this attitude is dangerous. “I always say, one rep isn’t going to make you any progress,” Landers said. “But one rep can definitely break your progress.”
Landers likes his clients to leave one or two reps in the tank, depending on the exercise. But with machines he makes his clients fail in a final set if they have maintained their good form. He tries to find the balance between progress and avoiding injuries.
“Pain is a real phenomenon that many of us experience in our 50s,” says Landers. “Joints wear out, we don’t recover from training like we used to, but that doesn’t mean we have to avoid workouts. Usually there is SOMETHING we can do in the gym.”
Between going all out all the time or simply finding something to do at the gym when the body isn’t cooperating, training smarter is paramount.
Here are Landers’ keys to consistency in the gym routine.
- If an exercise causes sharp pain, avoid it. Even if it just “doesn’t feel right,” stop. You may need to adjust your grip or positioning to do it pain-free, or as previously mentioned, you may need to go lighter or find an alternative.
- Avoid excessive warm-ups. Warm up as often as YOU need to feel ready. At least a few minutes of general warm-up, but you may need some mobility work and/or a few warm-up sets.
- Use a higher rep range to lighten the load, or use other strategies such as pre-exhaust techniques, blood flow restriction, or whatever you need to do to get higher intensity and stimulus from a lighter load.
- Train as hard as you can, but in higher rep ranges. Focus on recovery, sleep, nutrition and stress management. Consistency rules: It doesn’t matter whether you need to decrease the intensity or frequency of training, but if you don’t train consistently, the downward spiral will accelerate.
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