The strength programme to start at seventy

Start with a 12kg kettlebell held against your chest and squat down to a bench. Not a barbell. Not the leg press. If you can manage three sets of eight of those and finish each set with two reps still in you, you've earned the entry ticket to everything below.

If you can't yet, you're not behind. You're just at rep one.

One piece of admin before the programme. If you're on blood pressure medication, have a heart history, or have had a joint replaced, talk to your GP before you load anything heavy, and ask specifically about straining against a held breath. That conversation takes ten minutes and it's the only gatekeeping in this piece.

Two sessions, alternated

Three lifting days a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday works because it gives you a two-day gap before Monday comes round again. You alternate: week one is A, B, A. Week two is B, A, B. Each session runs about fifty minutes including the warm-up.

Session A

• Goblet squat or box squat to a bench, 3 sets of 8
• Dumbbell bench press on a flat bench, 3 sets of 8
• One-arm dumbbell row, 3 sets of 10 each side
• Farmer's carry, 4 lengths of roughly 30 metres
• Dead bug, 2 sets of 8 each side

Session B

• Trap bar deadlift from blocks or a raised setting, 3 sets of 5
• Seated overhead press, 3 sets of 6
• Lat pulldown, 3 sets of 8
• Step-up onto a low box, 2 sets of 8 each leg
• Side plank, 2 sets of 20 seconds each side

That's it. Eleven exercises across two sessions, and you'll be doing the same eleven in a year's time with more weight on them. Resist the urge to add a fourth session or a bicep finisher. The programme works because it's small enough to complete on a bad week.

The trap bar matters more than most of the kit choices. It puts the load either side of you rather than in front, so your lower back isn't doing the job of a crane arm. Most gyms have one now. If yours doesn't, use a Romanian deadlift with dumbbells and keep the range short, stopping at mid-shin.

Warming up without losing twenty minutes

Five minutes on a bike or a rower, enough to feel warm and slightly out of breath. Then ramp the first lift of the session.

Ramping means you do the working weight in stages. If your working set is 60kg on the trap bar, you pull 20kg for five, 40kg for three, then go. Two warm-up sets, no more. You don't need to warm up the bench press separately if you've already warmed up the squat, though a single light set of eight is cheap insurance for the shoulders.

Skip the twenty-minute mobility routine you saw online. It's mostly a delay tactic. Warm joints come from moving under light load, not from lying on a mat rotating your hips.

How to add weight

Double progression, and nothing else.

Pick a weight you can do at the bottom of the rep range with two or three reps left over. For a 3x8 lift, that means eight reps that feel controlled, not eight reps that make your face change colour. Stay at that weight until you can do the top of the range on all three sets. Then add the smallest increment the gym has, usually 2.5kg on a bar or one dumbbell notch up, and drop back to the bottom of the range.

So a 3x8 goblet squat becomes a 3x10, then it's 3x8 with a heavier bell.

Expect to add weight to the trap bar and the squat roughly every two to three weeks in the first few months. The overhead press and the row move slower. You might sit on the same dumbbells for six weeks on the press, and that's normal, not a failure. Upper body gets strong at a crawl at any age.

Never grind a rep. If the bar slows to a stop halfway, that set is over. You're not testing anything. You're accumulating.

Recovery is most of the job

Here's the part that catches men out, and it catches them hard in month two.

At forty, you could train Monday and be fine Tuesday. At seventy, a heavy squat session can leave your legs flat for three days. That isn't weakness. It's just a longer repair window, and the programme has to respect it rather than argue with it.

Practical version: if you're still properly sore on the next lifting day, do the session at eighty per cent of the weight and don't touch the top of the rep range. You'll lose nothing. If two sessions in a row feel like wading, take a deload week. Keep the same weights, cut every exercise to two sets instead of three, go home early. Plan one of those every sixth week whether you feel you need it or not.

Sleep and lifting are the same conversation. A short night before a heavy session will show up on the bar within the first two working sets.

Carries, balance and getting off the floor

The farmer's carry is in there for a reason. Grip strength, trunk bracing and walking under load are the same skill as taking two suitcases up a flight of stairs, and it's the exercise most men skip because it doesn't feel like training.

Add this once a week, at the end of any session. Sit down on the floor, then stand back up without using your hands. If you can't yet, use one hand. Then work towards none. Two or three repetitions, that's all.

A man who can get off the floor unassisted lives a different life from one who can't. You practise it or you lose it.

What goes wrong around month three

Four things, in order of how often I've seen them.

You get keen and add a fourth day. Then your shoulder starts aching and you blame the bench press.

You test your one-rep max on the trap bar because you're curious. Don't. There's nothing in the number for you and there's a fortnight of back trouble in it.

You stop tracking. Without a notebook or an app, you'll drift back to the weight that feels comfortable and stay there for a year. Write down the weight and the reps for every set. Every session.

You catch a cold, miss two weeks, and never restart. The fix is to come back at the weight you were using a month before you stopped, and take four weeks to climb back. Not one session.

Eating enough of the right thing

Getting stronger without enough protein is pushing a car with the handbrake on. Most men over sixty do fine at dinner and badly at breakfast. Toast and jam is not a breakfast for someone who deadlifts on Wednesdays. Eggs, Greek yoghurt, milk, fish, chicken, beans. Put a real protein source in every meal, including the first one.

If you're on a restricted diet for kidney or heart reasons, ask a dietitian for numbers rather than working from a magazine.

The honest trade-off

A barbell-and-dumbbell programme builds more usable strength than a circuit of machines. But if you've got a shoulder that won't tolerate free weights, or you train alone with nobody to spot you, a machine-based version of the same eleven movements is a perfectly sensible choice. Leg press, chest press, seated row, machine shoulder press, lat pulldown, same sets, same double progression. You'll get most of the way there, and most of the way there beats a barbell programme you quit in March.

You won't notice the difference in the gym. You'll notice it in a car park, with a grandchild on one hip and a bag of shopping in the other hand, and it won't occur to you that it used to be difficult.