Do these three things to transform your body at any age

Earlier this month I had a fantastic chat with Dr Brad Schoenfeld, a professor of exercise science at Lehman College in New York. His name sits atop more than 400 research papers, most of them on the topic of strength training, making him one of the world’s leading authorities on all things muscle growth.

During our interview, Dr Schoenfeld gave a clear and concise summary of what makes a successful strength training plan – and it’s beautifully straightforward. The equipment doesn’t matter, nor does where you train or what clothes you wear. It doesn’t have to take more than one per cent of your week either.

Instead, a workout routine’s effectiveness comes down to three simple criteria, which he reveals below.

If you can apply Dr Schoenfeld’s trio of simple standards, you can use any of the plans linked here to build a fit, functional and more resilient body – even at 90, research suggests.

The first thing underpinning any successful strength training plan is consistency. One workout will not make or break your exercise efforts; the results you’re after come from stacking up weeks of regular sessions.

Training for an hour a day and living a puritanical life isn’t necessary, either. Dr Schoenfeld says two 20- to 30-minute workouts each week will deliver “huge improvements” to most people’s health and fitness.

This routine won’t leave you looking like a bodybuilder, he says. But it will forge a body that looks good, feels great and handles most things life throws at it with ease. Under the bonnet, your heart health will soar and your risk of many chronic diseases will plummet.

Dr Schoenfeld’s second prescription is to use your twice-weekly workouts to hit every major muscle group – a somewhat ambiguous term usually encapsulating the chest, back, shoulders, arms, legs and core. All of the plans linked above tick this box, as does Dr Schoenfeld’s dumbbell workout below.

And finally, a strength training workout needs to be challenging to be effective. The changes you are after – more muscle, stronger tissues, myriad better health markers – are the result of your body adapting to get better at the things you consistently ask it to do. If it finds a workout blindingly easy, it has no reason to adapt.

Or, as Dr Schoenfeld puts it: “If you’re lifting a weight, and at the end of your set you could do 10 more repetitions with the weight you’re using, you’re not really going to see much in the way of benefits. The last few repetitions [of each set] need to be difficult to complete.”

However, this last condition comes with a caveat.

“Don’t push yourself really hard during the first few sessions because you will get really sore,” Dr Schoenfeld instructs. “You need to acclimate your muscles to this new training stimulus, and the body will adapt very quickly. Within a couple of sessions, you will be ready to push yourself progressively harder.”

You should instead use your first few strength training sessions to learn the correct technique for the key exercises you are going to be performing, using lighter weights that allow you to focus on your form.

And there we have it: correct technique, consistency, challenge and comprehensive full-body sessions. Hit these three criteria and you will reap the rewards of strength training, whatever your age. Don’t believe me?

In 1990, a group of researchers took 10 frail people aged 90-plus and put them through eight weeks of exercise on a leg extension machine. By the end, gait speed, strength and mobility had shot up across the board. Several participants no longer needed walking sticks, and one person regained the ability to stand up from a chair unsupported. There were no reported injuries or adverse impacts on heart health.

This, to me, shows that everyone has different exercise abilities. But everyone also has the capacity to exercise in some form, and enjoy the many perks that come with it.

Take the nonagenarians above as a case study. Due to their existing mobility issues, squats were out of the question as a leg-strengthening exercise. Yet a machine exercise in a controlled environment still served up transformative effects.

If you don’t have access to exercise machines, simply sitting in a chair and standing up again can have a similar effect. Use your arms to support at first, then stop using them after a few weeks, then progress to a lower seat. As the rules above state, if you are challenging your body by doing this, it will have the impact you’re after.

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