Training for older individuals

R3VIVE Fitness • February 8, 2024
Man bench presses a barbell, lying on a black bench in a gym.

Let’s begin this topic by addressing some common myths or preconceptions about training that are unhelpful, and end up hurting us in the long run:

“I’m probably going to get hurt”.
You’re more likely to get injured by NOT training than by appropriately training.

“I’ll look like a bodybuilder if I workout”
Training won’t turn you into a jacked bodybuilder anymore than playing 9 holes a few times a week will turn you into Tiger Woods.

“Training is too complicated”
For general health purposes, training can be extremely simple and if followed on a regular basis, can yield great results. You’d be amazed to see what walking just a little everyday can do to your health. Don’t let some influencer tell you otherwise.

“I’m too old to see improvements”
If you are LIVING , you have the ability to improve strength, cardiorespiratory fitness, power, flexibility, quality of life, etc. The list is almost endless.

Great, now that we got those out of the way, let’s dive in.

Why Train?

Time is not our friend…

It’s somewhat obvious that as we age, things start to decline. Below are a few of many aging curves that have been studied. The two I chose to show examine Muscle CSA (cross sectional area) and Bone Mineral Density as we age.

Line graph showing bone mineral density decline with age, comparing men and women.

If we look at the Y axis, we have muscle mass and bone mineral density. These graphs are not reassuring. And with almost every aging curve, we see these trends. So what can we do? We can train.

Observing a typical aging curve:

Graph showing human performance peaking around age 30, then declining with age.

If we can visualize this, we see that our max function peaks around 25-30 years old, we hold on to it until we reach about 40, and then we experience a steady decline as we age, getting more steep after the age of 60.

A Training Aging Curve (Green)

Graph showing performance vs. age. Green line peaks around 30, red line peaks earlier and declines faster.

With training, we have the ability to bend these aging curves in a positive direction. Look at the green curve. We drastically improve our ability to function throughout our lifespan.

Graph showing performance declining with age. Green line shows better performance than red line. An arrow shows performance improvement at age 60.

Take specific note of the two yellow lines. What does this tell us? This tells us a 75 year old who trains has similar function to that of a 55 year old who is untrained. 20 years of a difference !

And it doesn’t stop after 20 years. If you hang around gyms long enough, you will eventually meet 75 year olds who have the fitness of an average 40 year old. How far can you bend your aging curve?

Where do we start?

While we would love for every athlete to start their fitness journey with a dedicated team helping them, we know how much progress people can make just by starting. Just do something . I’ll highlight this point with the graph below. 

Line graph: Mortality rate decreases as daily steps increase. US adults 40+.

This is one of our favorite graphs. This was used to inform the “10k steps a day” recommendation you hear health care professionals shout from the rooftops. The mortality rate of individuals ages 40 or older who walk 2000 steps a day is four times that of individuals ages 40 or older who walk 10,000 steps a day. 4 times! Just by increasing your steps from 2000 to 6000 per day, you more than HALVE your mortality rate. With only about 1 hour a day of walking. 

Ask any lifter that has years under their belt, and they will miss how fast they made progress when they first started. “Newbie gains”, some might say. It’s not uncommon to see rapid progress from lifters new to movements or training in general.

How can R3VIVE help?

At R3vive, we believe everybody has the ability to enjoy and benefit from functional training. Chronological age should never limit somebody to start their fitness journey. Our approach to new athletes allows us to learn about an athlete’s medical & training history to create a program tailored for their unique goals. We strive to offer the most thorough and prescriptive programming to our athletes. Our consultation, movement assessment, and Foundations program are designed specifically to meet the needs of every athlete.

We don’t believe there should be any special considerations for older people based on their age alone. However, we do see an increased emphasis on quality of life and decreased emphasis on competition with our older athletes. For example, using tools in the gym to carry over to real life tasks. Preserving the ability to carry groceries up flights of stairs, picking up and playing with grandchildren, gardening, yard-work, reducing pain and stiffness, etc. Our gym is more than prepared to help aging athletes preserve their function and keep enjoying the things they hold dear.

Getting started with us.

If you’re considering getting started, now comes the part where YOU have control. The first step is registering for your initial consultation using the following link. After that, leave the rest to us to help navigate you.

We look forward to beginning your health and fitness journey with you.

Train to live. Train with purpose.

The post Training for older individuals appeared first on R3VIVE FITNESS.

Apex Training Cycle

By Derek Saffold • December 26, 2025
Hey R3VIVE Athletes, The Apex training cycle, going from January 5th to April 3rd, is our next training cycle! This will be the firt training cycle of the new year! this is a chance to refocus and get in some good work to help you reach your goals! lets all work together to crush this training cycle! Functional Fitness: The Apex Cycle is designed to make your year-long strength work truly functional, focusing on controlled, powerful movements, complexes under fatigue, and mandated touch-and-go reps to prepare you for mixed-modal workouts. Our strength culminates in the classic CrossFit Total and the "R3VIVE Other Total," while conditioning features a wide variety of time domains, movement volume builds (like wall balls, toes-to-bar, and burpees), and regular Friday retests of past workouts to track your progress and ensure you perform your absolute best. Build: Designed to bring together all your training from the past year and prepare you for your strongest performance yet. Our strength work will focus on controlled, powerful movements, building you up to test your limits with both the classic CrossFit Total and the "R3VIVE Other Total," which challenges your skill and strength balance. Expect a well-rounded program including unilateral strength, skill work, and core stability, with dedicated days for deadlifts, squats, gymnastics, and varied accessory work to keep you healthy and constantly progressing. For conditioning, we're tailoring the work to challenge you in new ways, featuring a wide variety of time domains and movements, and a specific volume build on common movements like wall balls, toes-to-bar, and burpees. Instead of a standard test/retest, we'll be performing regular retests of past workouts on Fridays, allowing you to easily track your progress and see how far you've come. Our weekly template balances intensity—with short, fast metcons on Mondays—with recovery, incorporating lower impact endurance work on Thursdays, and a strategic taper toward the end of the week to set you up for success on Friday! Partner workouts will wrap up your week every Saturday, bringing the whole community together.

Ultimus Training Cycle

By Derek Saffold • October 30, 2025
Hey R3VIVE Athletes, The Ultimus training cycle, going from November 10th to January 2nd, is our next training cycle! Functional Fitness will be launching into a blend of olympic lifts and diverse strength progressions. Including more intense conditioning and gymnastic strength and skill development. Functional Fitness: We're taking the solid foundations from all our Machine work (which we know you loved) in the Persist Cycle and launching into a blend of olympic lifts, foundational strength, and diverse strength formats. Prepare for tough but fun challenges, gymnastic strength and skill development, and an intensified focus that will push your limits and build your confidence further than you ever imagined! Build: This Build cycle is your blueprint for forging general strength with a rock-solid, consistent split. While we will have linear progressions of Front Squats, and Bench Press, we will also be embracing varied, dynamic strength orgressions. That will not only keep delivering results but also keep our strength fun. Our gymnastics focus will be on pure, raw strict strength, helping you build capacity with both external loads and the incredible power of your own bodyweight. Prepare to feel incredibly stable and powerful! Conditioning will focus on unleashing your engine, that we built in the Persist Cycle . We will Shift gears to a fastermore intense "for time" AMRAP and Chipper style workouts, moving beyond simple interval work and aerobic base building. These conditioning workouts will rotate dynamically throughout the week to maintain variety and deliver a fun and powerful exeriance. our cycle test, "Super Bario Bros.", is a chipper that will progressively challenge your kettlebell/dumbbell and gymnastics movements, demanding peak intensity and absolute confidence in your strength.

Persist Training Cycle.

By Derek Saffold • September 22, 2025
Hey R3VIVE Athletes, Our next programming cycle runs from September 15th to November 7th. It's an 8-week cycle that will continue to see strength progression carrying from what we did last cycle in Functional fitness. While Pump will begin working unilateral strength progressions. Functional Fitness: This cycle will continue our progression from the skill and lifts from last cycle, while trying to integrate them into more of our conditioning. We will do this by focusing on different portions of the lifts during our strength portion then performing smaller sets of gymnastic skills in our conditioning. You will also see conditioning that is purely focused on our aerobic capacity and working mainly on monostructural elements, such as running, rowing and biking. Build: This A-B week cycle is designed to build foundational strength through consistent progression, with a strong focus on Back Squats and Strict Presses, including variations for balanced weekly training. Conditioning will have some longer aerobic pieces and begin to include more skills like strict Toes-to-Bar, and Pull-ups from last cycle. See the chart below for details.
More Posts