birba! gotcha man, let me play around with this in my head for a quick while longer and i'll respond to this reply/post asap/soon. i want to organize some ideas that immediately stick out in my mind after both reading your post and question/goal and from previous experience with both what is likely to work, and what you are likely to follow through on.
stay strong!
-49410e.
caution, informal and sometmes krass post. if you're easily offended try not to be. if you're the grammar or spell check police, bit me, it's quick response not a fomral thesis so i tried to get some complicated ideas out quickly with minimal editing, i got extra early for this since it took awhile, let's try to appreicate how much work i gave for free in trying to respond ina productive manner, trying to help. if it doesn't make sense try to see what i was trying to say, i'll fix as many big mistakes as i can with a quick re read or two but won't get them all.
so this is a great question on sooo many level. honestly i could probably start a stand alone blog on this alone, constantly update with lengthy and substantial posts and still have plenty of yummy left overs to talk about , as such i won't make this a treatise on all things health and wellness for aging without getting older, but i'll summarize and i a way come in pretty damn close.
a couple of things, first, this will be somewhat (and purposely) general since the only real and honest answer to questions like this without being able to have face to face time and importantly without my being able to actually see you move and evaluate the quality of your motion and ability to generate force in multiple planes (X,Y,Z coordinates and 'inbetween') limits by ability to really dial in on specifics, so mostly 'it depends' is probably how i'd really answer this, but let's try to be practical here.
2ndly, these are not set in stone guidelines/suggestions honestly many approaches will probably work, more important that this stuff is the boring $hite no one wants to pay attention to (are you eating well, i mean really well, are you sleeping enough, are you managing stress in a healthy way, are you forming and nurturing connections to others you care about and care about you, i know it sounds off track but this krap is way way more important to living a long healthy and happy life that picking up something heavy and setting it down again a few times every so often...which leads to what you actually asked about).
basically what we want to do as we 'age' is 1-add and preserve as much lean body tissue as possible relative to fat mass, WHY? is is the most important thing that keep you young and alive, notice what most of we associate as frailty with old age is really remedied and a direct cause of a loss of muscle in the later years of life. also, we want to increase and preserve range of motion as much as possible, that is establish healthy and vital movement patterns over a wide range so as to keep natural function around, once it's gone, it is really gone and basically for good later in life, again look at what we typically define as 'old', they don't move very well do they?
so for you? oout three years? i'll assume you were not bedridden and can still basically move well (again i'm "blind here" since i haven't assessed you myself), but for the most part we need to assume you start clean/fresh and only basically retain prior knowledge memory of how to execute movments, muscle memory and thus is probably all but wiped out at this point but the nervous system seems to remember thins a bit better.
VIP- goals- in the first few months (notice you mentioned transitioning back in in weeks), i believe is allotting a longer time to re-establish a fitness base and build up work capacity before really stressing systems to cause big changes,-->
TO INCREASE FLEXIBILITY AND HEALTHY FULL RANGE OF MOTION AROUND CRITICAL JOINTS-that is around those key connections that helap transfer force from one region of the body to the next, AND TO GET STRONG, ultimately being stronger and being stronger over greater distance makes eveything work better. period.
so you should every day be doing some basic movement prep (or what i'll call -prehabilitation i.e. better this than 'rehabilitation' later on). make sure you are doing basic things like stretching (not to the point of soreness but a healthy adult should be able to touch their toes without bending their knees), arm swings and trunk and hip rotations to keep 'ball and socket' joints free and so you can easily and painlessly move them in 360 degree patterns of varying size.
this should be done before and after training sessions (save stretching for after the workout) and on days you don't train. we can addresss smaller more critical areas of movement later on.
get strong. this is pretty simple, also you're a dude, so without tits and ovaries the hormone card deck is stacked in your favor, age be dammed, we're old when we decide we are, sure it might be a bit harder slower as we increase in years, but like i said early you decide this, not some imaginary timex in you endocrine control centers.
i believe you should train as often as your body allows you too and your schedule will coop with. make this stuff non optional, best approach? treat our strength training and movement practice (this is what i call it, 'workouts' are little more than physical recreation, we train with a purpose and practice moving with a specfic set of goals in mine, much more productive in the long run). treat this like basic hygiene, that is you don't say 'oh i didn't have time to wipe my fanny today i was too tired too busy....' NO! you pooped so you did you you needed to you didn't walk around with a dirty butt the rest of the day did you?, or you brushed your teeth because the alternative won't be pretty down the line. same thing with exercise, we NEED this stuff of the wheels start falling of the wagon so to speak, this is called 'eustress' or good stress and on a cellular levels you thrive on it or essentially start a slow biochemical death. i'll leave it at that.
how do you get stronger? get better at moving your body weight faster,over more reps with increasing frequency, pick up heavy stuff off the ground , set it back, 'rinse lather repeat...'
begin making a habit of warming up and of 'resting days' getting some kind of body weight work, things like push ups, pull ups, body squats, etc. should be your bread and butter we build on this stuff with external loading on dedicated strength days. so really unless you're sick or beat up to hell, you should be learning what volume you can hande and say doing some push ups, buy a pull up bar and mount it in your house so it's convenient, everytime you walk buy it get few done, really this stuff works, maybe 10 push ups at a time multiple times per day or 50 in a single session whatever works honestly variety here is better so play with it, squats as in bending your knees and lowering you butt all the way down and standing back up, basic stuff like this is key, 'ass to the grass' like a coach of mine use to say.
weights-notice i'm not talking about 'muscles', guess what muscles are stupid they do what you tell them to and our bodies know which ones need to be used in what ration to get the job done without our messing it all up so 99% percent of time speak in terms of movement planes, we organize our strength training with external loadinng like
this:
day I-vertical plane pressing, i.e. we are moving a load away from the body in a y -axis line relative to the midline of the body, for example, a standing military press with a barbell, you are stind up with the bar at shoulder level and you proceed to extend your arms over your head to full lock out position and lower back and repeat.
we focus on big basic compound movements,these are the most metabolically demanding, allow you to handle the most wieght, and generally keep you away from over use issues later.
so day one pick an exercise or two you do this type of pressing, i like to use total load paramters so rather than say you should do sets of 3 reps or 15 reps, let's talk about how much work you actually do , that what you body cares about , total force generated and how much energy you consumed in not fractioanlly/isolated in time. so say you'll prescribe yourself 24 total repititions with a weight as heavy as you can safely handle for at least 2-3 reps, i believe we should be goingvery heavy, like the weight almost scares you heavy, if it takes you 200 reps to get too pooped to poop, you need to go heavier, remember 'strength training' how do we get better, we practice, how do we get stronger? we practice moving something we feel is very heavy.
so day 1 week 1 you could do 2 sets of twelve and be very brierf and unpleasant (if youwent heavy) that 's it you're done. week 2 day 1? maybe 6 sets of two with a heavier load , week three day 1? heck go nuts super heavy and ado 24 single rep s with several minutes recover between, trust me it's hard. but it works.
day II-lets work the other side of the movment (this type of organization takes care of opposing muscles pretty well) so we do vertical pulling movemets, my favorite for this type of work are things like weighted pull ups (you'll get there eventually) but for know at the gym the latttisum muscle pull down machine works, i.e just mimick what you did the day before but move the load/weight in vertical y axis plane towards the body 'pulling' the stuff towards you. simlar to above pick a load and just play with different parametere until you hit a total session work goal.
day iii-lets let the upper body rest a bit and focus on the bottom half. like i like say, the top half is for 'show' the bottom half is for 'go' so these large and powerful muscles are are designed to generate the most force. the best for this? believe it or not quick full effort sprinting. i.e. short distance maximum effort running with a duration lasting anywhere from 10-45 seconds or so. trust me , if you do it correctly, it is on eof the most unpleasant things you will do. the more it sucks,/you hate it? better it works. long cardio /running is over rated and is a WONDERFUL way to get skinny and weak/not strong:
i believe becuase the intense nature of this doing every other lower body session as a sprint day is enough. honestly 5-10 full effort sprints and your done. thats it. trust me you'll be in a world of hurt the few days after, your recover and soreness will improve in time, remember we building a base like i mentioned at the top of this free ramble.
inbetween your war against the ground/distance, do basic exercise for the lower body that work two movement patters, knee dominant, that in you flex at the knee, and hip dominant, that is you flex and hyper extend the hips. teh two main thingsyou'll do for this are full squats with wieght and dead lifts , go heavy, the legs are different animals and need this kind of loading or they tend to knot respond. they're sorta dumb so you need to yell at them or they won't listen. try to shoot for working to at least body weight, so if you weight 160 lbs, eventually try to be able to easily squat and deadlift that amount for safe heavy singles. high er volume is okay so 50-100 total reps is fine.
day 4-we still have don't a horizontal plane, so horizontal pushing , i. bench press or push ups with a heavy back pack are great here. nothing more to say, see above for paramterers.
day 5-horizontal pulling, you need to get creative but things ike weghted body row (thing upside down push up with a plate on your chest or previous heavy back pack wher eyou pull the load towards the body in an x place relative to your mideline ). or barbell rows or the cable seated row (whatever yourgym equipment allows) is fine.
you're basically done. WAIT! no abs? , generally don't go into this till later, if your training these big movements with sufficient loading (i.e heavy weights) trust me your abs are getting trained just fine. remember i said the body knows what to engage when and how much, i find articially super loading 'assistance' muscles can lead to issues later. once you establisha fitness base we address that later.
so SUMMARY-
train heavy, train often, stick to basic movements and balance work loads, rest as needed, repeat. HAVE FUN!
i-
ii-
iii-
and
iv-
v-
final thought, cardio tends to take care of itself if you are working out intensely and quickly, that is you don't need dedicated long time steady 'cardio work' per say for now, if you finish training and are sweating, your heart is beating fast and you are breathing deep and fast, you did cardio. that simple. i would only suggest you find time to do plenty of long walks up to 5 -6 times per week to a minimum of 45 -80 minutes. this stuff works wonders for wittlng away at fat if you're doing the above consistently.
i know this was way more than you asked for i hop you got something out of it, i can't give you a definte concrete program since i am not your trainer and thus it would be irresponsible to give specific prescritptinos but this is part of my thought process if i was going to evaluate you for sucha program with your goals. if you send me a PM or if you give Costicina/marg a ring a ring she has some links to some books on the subest i think you should give a read (they are links to my online file account with downloadable links for PDF files of very good books).
disclaimer-legal speak for non birba types: this information is made the understanding that neither 49410e...or this site is gaurateeing safety and efficacy of said suggestions. since the situations of anyone reading this are fact dependent you should seek the confidence of a competient professional. basically don't (not to offend if you haven't fallen asleep or are already offended) don't be a dumb dumb use common sense, ask for help if/when you need it and think about why are are doing what your doing
Topic: Project Shapety Shape