Share and Follow
Once you hit your mid-forties, your approach to fitness transforms significantly. Instead of focusing on achieving personal bests and lifting the heaviest weights, the emphasis shifts to building functional strength that safeguards your body and enhances everyday activities. At this stage, true strength is not gauged by how heavy you can lift, but by how effectively your body can stabilize and support your joints in difficult positions. Explore three powerful exercises that will demonstrate whether you’re stronger than most people of your age—and find out how to excel in them.
Your Strength Standards Change After 45
Beyond the age of 45, exercising is less about moving heavy weights and more about your body’s ability to maintain stability, resistance, and joint health. Younger individuals often recover quicker, have greater natural muscle density, and can push themselves harder with less risk compared to those over 45.
Time under tension is the ultimate measure. This concept involves assessing how long your body can withstand gravity while keeping the correct form. It’s an indicator of not only muscle endurance but also of postural strength and resistance to injuries.
3 Positions to Prove Real Strength Over 45
These positions target areas of the body and qualities of the body most people neglect. That includes deep core, unilateral stability, and dynamic balance. If you can hold these three exercises after age 45, you’re performing at a higher level than most of your peers. You’re also protecting your body against common injuries of aging.
The Hollow Body Hold: Your Core Strength Test
The hollow body hold is a staple in all gymnastics training programs. It’s a great exercise because it targets so many muscles, including the rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis, internal and external obliques, as well as the hip flexors.
How to perform the hollow body hold:
- Start by lying on your back
- Raise your arms over your head as far as you can without pain
- Exhale and pull your belly button toward your spine
- Lift your legs and upper body off the ground so they’re both hovering around 6 inches off the ground
- Keep your feet pointed and your glutes engaged
If you’re struggling:
- Try bending your knees to reduce tension on abs and lower back
- Move arms from overhead down to your sides
Standards:
- General fitness: 2 minutes
- Athletic level: 5 minutes (long and brutal!)
This exercise is so effective because it targets all of the core musculature in an isometric fashion. Because it’s an isometric, your chances of injury are greatly reduced and your ability to connect your mind to your muscles is greatly enhanced.
Common mistakes: holding your breath, pushing your head forward, and arching the back.
The Split Stance Isometric Lunge: Your Lower Body Challenge
The split stance isometric lunge challenges the entire lower body. Muscles worked include the glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, tibialis anterior and all the foot muscles. The exercise can also test for the integrity of the knee ligaments, as well as be a little bit of a balance challenge.
How to perform the isometric split stance lunge:
- Begin in a standing position
- Step one foot forward around 2 to 3 feet (longer than your average step)
- Keep your feet about shoulder width apart
- Maintain your trunk tall and aligned over your hips
- Gently bend both knees until you reach around a 90° angle at the knee, hip, and ankle joints
- Hold this position for the allotted time
If you’re struggling:
- Put a hand against the wall to help with balance
- If knees are uncomfortable, lunge to a lesser depth until they become accustomed to the range
Standards:
- General fitness: 2 minutes per leg
- Athletic level: 5 minutes per leg
- Take a rest between legs when testing your endurance
The isometric split stance lunge is so effective because it works all of the lower body muscles while building joint integrity. It also challenges unilateral balance, helping with fall prevention.
Common mistakes: not bending the knees far enough to stimulate the quads and glutes, having too narrow of a base, losing your upright posture, and coming up off the heel on the front leg.
Kneeling on Swiss Ball: Your Balance and Stability Test
The kneeling Swiss ball exercise challenges all of the core musculature, all the proprioceptors, and your vestibular system.
How to perform kneeling on Swiss ball (start slow and safe!):
For beginners:
- Put the ball in a corner of the room
- Place your hands on the wall for support
- With control, place one shin on the Swiss ball and let your weight sink into it
- When comfortable, bring the other leg up so both shins are on the ball
- Keep your hands on the wall and get comfortable for at least 60 seconds
Progressing:
- Once you’ve mastered 60 seconds, slowly take one hand off the wall
- When comfortable, slowly bring the second hand off the wall
- Once mastered against the wall, bring the ball away from the wall and try without support
This exercise is so valuable largely because it tests your vestibular system. Remember, the vestibular system is our inner ear system and is a main component of maintaining balance and avoiding falls. Additionally, this exercise works all of your core muscles in a reactive fashion, which again can really help manage slips and falls.
Standards:
- General fitness: 60 seconds
- Athletic level: 3 minutes
Common mistakes: trying to get up on the ball too fast, not utilizing wall support in the beginning, and making any sudden movements.
How to Track Your Progress
First and foremost, give yourself credit for showing up and putting in the effort. Remember that it takes time for the body to change:
Timeline for body changes:
- Weeks 1-2: Largely neurological and coordination changes
- Weeks 4-8: Generally hypertrophy (muscle growing) phases
- Weeks 9-12 and beyond: Generally ligament and tendon changes
If you can’t achieve the standard fitness times:
- Don’t worry! Simply jot down your time
- Each week try to add around 10 to 15% increase in time
- If you already hit the general fitness standards, practice until you can hit the athletic standards
- Once you can consistently hit the athletic standard, it’s time to increase the difficulty or find new exercises for your program
Looking for more easy ways to lose fat? Here’s How Long Your Walking Workout Should Be To Shrink Belly Fat.
TJ Pierce, BS, LMT, CHEK III, ELDOA
