Strength training at seventy, week by week

Three sessions a week. Forty minutes each. Five movements, one balance drill, and one thing that makes you move fast.

That's the whole programme. Everything below is detail on how to run it without hurting yourself or quitting in week three.

The goal at seventy isn't a bigger bench press. It's this: get off the floor unaided, carry two bags of shopping up a flight of stairs without stopping, stand up from a low chair without pushing off the arms, and catch yourself when your foot snags on a kerb. Every exercise here earns its place against one of those.

Before the first session, talk to your GP. Not as a formality. Tell them exactly what you plan to do and ask about blood pressure medication, any dizziness when you stand up, any cardiac history, and whether a joint replacement changes what's sensible. If you've had a fall in the last year, ask for a referral to a physiotherapist and get the first month supervised. That's money and time well spent.

The five movements

Sit-to-stand. A squat, but you're standing up from a box or chair. It's the single most useful thing you'll train.

Hinge. Bending at the hips with a flat back. A Romanian deadlift with dumbbells, or a deadlift from blocks. This is the one most men skip and the one that protects your back when you lift a grandchild off the floor.

Push. Dumbbell press, either overhead or on an incline bench. Overhead is better if your shoulders allow it. If they don't, incline.

Pull. A row. Seated cable row, single-arm dumbbell row, or a band row anchored to a door. If you can do assisted chin-ups, do them.

Carry. A dumbbell in each hand, walk. Nothing trains grip, trunk and posture together like it.

The week

Session A

• Warm-up, 8 minutes
• Sit-to-stand: 3 sets of 8
• Dumbbell overhead or incline press: 3 sets of 8
• Single-arm row: 3 sets of 10 per side
• Farmer's carry: 3 trips of about 25 metres
• Single-leg stand: 3 x 30 seconds per leg

Session B

• Warm-up, 8 minutes
• Romanian deadlift: 3 sets of 8
• Step-up onto a low box: 3 sets of 8 per leg
• Assisted chin-up or lat pulldown: 3 sets of 8
• Push-up on a bench or wall: 3 sets of 8
• Tandem stance, heel to toe: 3 x 30 seconds per side

Run A, B, A one week. B, A, B the next. Leave a day between sessions. Monday, Wednesday, Friday works for most men because the weekend stays free.

How heavy

Pick a weight where the last rep of the set is hard but you're confident you had two more in you. Not one more. Two. That margin is what keeps you training next week instead of icing a shoulder.

Progress like this: when all three sets of eight feel like you had three or four reps left, add a small amount. The smallest increment available — a pair of 1kg or 2kg plates, or the next dumbbell up. If the jump between dumbbells is big, add a rep instead. Go from 3x8 to 3x9, then 3x10, then drop back to 3x8 with the heavier pair.

You'll add load faster in the first two months than you ever will again. Enjoy it and don't let it fool you into thinking that pace continues. After six months, adding weight once a month per lift is a genuinely good rate.

The thing most programmes leave out

Strength fades with age. Power fades faster. Power is strength with speed attached, and it's what stops a stumble turning into a fall, because catching yourself is a fast movement, not a strong one.

Train it deliberately. On sit-to-stands and step-ups, drive up as fast as you can while staying in control, then lower slowly over about three seconds. Same weight, same reps, different intent. You're not going to look explosive. Doesn't matter. The instruction to your nervous system is what counts.

Add one more thing once a week: getting off the floor. Sit down on the floor, lie flat, then stand back up any way you can manage. Five times. Use a chair for support at first and wean off it. It's the least glamorous drill in this article and the one you'll be most grateful for.

Warming up properly

Eight minutes, every session, non-negotiable.

Five minutes of easy walking, a bike, or marching on the spot until you're warm and breathing a bit harder. Then ten arm circles each direction, ten slow bodyweight sit-to-stands, ten hip hinges holding a broomstick along your spine, and a set of the first exercise with an empty bar or the lightest dumbbells on the rack.

Tissue at seventy takes longer to get ready than it did at forty. Rushing the warm-up is how men pull things.

What goes wrong in the first month

Doing the whole programme at full effort in week one. You'll be crippled for four days and you'll blame the programme. Run the first two weeks at roughly half the load you think you can handle. Treat it as rehearsal.

Holding your breath. Breathe out on the effort. Straining against a closed throat spikes blood pressure, and if you're on medication for it, that matters. If you see stars or go lightheaded, the weight is too heavy or the breathing is wrong.

Confusing soreness with damage. Dull, symmetrical ache in the muscle belly two days after a session is normal. Sharp pain in a joint, pain on one side only, or anything that gets worse over the following week is not. Stop, and get it looked at.

Skipping the hinge because it feels risky. A well-loaded hinge is what makes your back robust. Learn it light, with a broomstick, under a physio's eye if you can.

Training through a chest infection. Take the week off. Come back at seventy per cent of your previous loads and build up over a fortnight.

Feeding it and resting it

Muscle at this age needs more protein per meal than it did when you were thirty, and most men your age are eating the majority of theirs at dinner. Spread it out. A palm-sized portion of meat, fish, eggs, dairy or pulses at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Breakfast is usually the one that's missing.

Sleep matters more than any supplement you'll be sold. So does walking on the days you don't lift — half an hour, outdoors, hills if you have them.

Every fifth or sixth week, cut the sets by a third and keep the weights the same. Deloading isn't weakness. It's what lets a seventy-year-old still be training at seventy-eight.

What the calendar looks like

Six weeks in, stairs feel different and you'll notice you're standing up from chairs without thinking about it.

Six months in, the shopping is easy and your posture has changed enough that someone will comment on it.

Two years in, you'll be the man in your circle who still carries his own bags, and you'll have stopped noticing that's unusual.

The weights on the rack are the least interesting part of this. The interesting part is that in ten years' time somebody will need you to lift something, or steady them, or get down on the floor and back up with a child. Train so the answer is yes.