Your 50-Plus Fitness Program Balance Checklist
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 18
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 20
Dan's exercise Physiology/Sports Nutrition education, NSCA Strength and Conditioning background, and work with a wide variety of active older adults since 1998 make him the ideal guide to help navigate the muddy waters of optimal eating and training strategies for the over-50 athlete and fitness seeker.
When was the last time you ran your fitness program through a multi-point checklist for optimal operation and performance? Have you done that more recently for your car than your body? You’re in a popular club, so don’t feel alone. We older fitness fanatics usually are long on discipline but short on curiosity about current ideal training strategies. The perfect mix of elements for a mature athlete more interested in peak movement and force capacity rather than muscles primarily for display (which is fine for some but not for most multisport, varied-sport, or lifestyle athletes) is, conceptually, simple. But the ingredients must strike a balance between them so that weak spots are minimized and complementary effects are maximized. Read on to discover those critical areas to balance.
What are common areas of imbalance?
Areas I often see out of balance in the mature athlete’s training program include:
Work/rest ratios, especially when it’s chronic, long-term, and there are sleep disruptions as well
Imbalances between various training modes such as resistance training (RT), endurance, range of motion (ROM), core stability, agility, and anaerobic power or sprint capacity
Muscle strength imbalances, such as push and pull, including other antagonists like biceps and triceps, hamstrings and quadriceps, upper and lower body, dominant and non-dominant side strength, joint ROM end-point weaknesses, and large muscle group versus assisting muscle with improperly uneven strength relationships
What causes training imbalances?
Like any collaboration of efforts, there are points of peak effectiveness beyond which you run into a worsening condition of diminishing returns. A competitive bodybuilder might spend 45 minutes once weekly to hammer her biceps, achieving that small but significant incremental increase in thickness, while a rock climber is likely to get peak performance from high-repetition work two to three times weekly for that muscle group, in conjunction with compound pull work that also recruits the upper back and rear deltoids, consuming no more than twelve minutes in total for that body part alone. Why? Because they use the biceps as an assisting pull muscle and need to fully recover that group on Monday and Thursday to perform optimally on that long Saturday morning climb.
The plot thickens when you factor in all the sports skills you need for your fitness pursuits, including pickup basketball, mountain biking, mixed martial arts, or even Frisbee with your teenage grandchildren at the beach. The more complex the movement, force production, and acute recovery demands are in your applications, the more delicate the ideal balance will be.
What are the disadvantages and risks of training imbalances?
The most obvious results of training imbalances are overtraining, burnout, and increased risk of injury. My experience with this group is that we can be short-sighted and easily overlook the likelihood of injury based on our unique mix of imbalances combined with the rigors of our fitness applications. We tend to be driven, to favor the familiar, and to stubbornly resist evaluating our program and application combination objectively. Quite frankly, most of us don’t have the expertise or objectivity to do that effectively. That’s why certain qualifications and experience are invaluable for keeping the path clear. What is it worth to you to avoid a catastrophic injury that could take you out for several months or even permanently? That same value may also significantly enhance your sports performance capacity.
The 5 top-level balance checkpoints I prioritize for over-50 athletes
Here are the issues I see that are both most detrimental to optimal, injury-free performance and are most common in my experience:
Exercise mode balance: Does the program marry the tipping point for diminishing returns for anaerobic/VO₂-max capacity and functional strength, or does one or both modes encroach on the other?
Work-to-rest (W:R) ratios: Is adequate recovery time tested using various work-to-rest ratios and performance measured with each and compared?
Mobility and flexibility: Can the athlete’s body move easily through a full sphere of function and shift suddenly in any direction without overloading joint range limitations?
Movement quality over volume, fluidity over speed: Is execution of strength movements engineered to maximize sport- or function-related performance capacity while optimally protecting joints and connective tissue?
Continual program, training, and application effectiveness evaluation: Is there a clear, measurable practice to periodically and broadly reassess the athlete’s program relative to performance and injury risk under ideal conditions?
Common examples of specific imbalances and appropriate corrective programming responses
Chronic restless sleep and sluggishness in training sessions: The response is to experiment with more rest days, especially if currently training more than four primarily non-consecutive days, varying intensity and duration on different days using undulating periodization, then reassess and fine-tune as necessary.
Stronger and shorter biceps muscles as compared to shoulder muscles (contributing to poor static and dynamic posture and significantly raising the risk of shoulder injuries, especially acute impingement): Chronically undertrain biceps and train shoulders to maximum intensity until you can surpass biceps curl load and volume with military shoulder press load and volume.
Limitations on ROM when lifting or performing a sports movement like a sudden deceleration or pivot in a soccer game: Exploit full-range carefully with slow, controlled transitions during RT (especially ankle dorsiflexion and extension in the example given) as well as involve multi-directional training like sandbag X-pattern drills, and most importantly, do daily static stretches that sustain elongation for 30 seconds or more each.
Address your imbalances starting today
One of the most rewarding pieces of feedback I get from my over-50 athletes, once we have had some training time to remedy these shortfalls, is that they wish they had started this work earlier. The fact is that, as we age, our bones and joints lose some structural integrity, and our connective tissues become more rigid and vulnerable to stress. So if maintaining your athleticism and avoiding injury are priorities, now is the time to act. The 50+ Hybrid Athlete subscription program is built around the fundamentals covered in this and my other articles in this six-part series. You can unsubscribe at any time (but you’ll miss the ongoing helpful guidance and the time-released, astoundingly valuable bonus products that you get as a subscriber).
Read more from Dan Taylor, MS, CSCS
Dan Taylor, MS, CSCS, 50+ Fitness and Nutrition Expert
Dan left a career in high-tech corporate finance in 1998 to pursue his mission of leading others in elevating and simplifying the art of physical aging through the best fitness and eating practices for the mature athlete (and the aspiring athlete). His online subscription program provides a clear and simple pathway to achieve peak performance while lowering disease and injury risk, adopting powerful and principled eating practices that effectively support the training framework, and developing an individualized, manageable, and adaptable template for both.
