Many of us are still searching for the fountain of youth, but most look in the wrong places. However, Chad Landers has gone in a completely different direction. Everything about the coach and trainer embodies longevity, from his coaching to his business and his relationships with both his A-List and regular Joe clients.
“I received my first set of dumbbells for my 9th birthday and never looked back,” says Landers, who in 2018 was named NSCA Personal Trainer of the Year and is also owner of PUSH Private Fitness.
You only need to look at Landers and his clients to see that he may be on to something. In a world full of quick fixes, flashy training tricks, and a magic elixir salesman, his long-term approach to strength and conditioning stands out like a beacon among all the short-term fads. But he hasn’t stopped there with the release of his new book, Building Strength and Muscle After 50. His longevity love letter to Generation X taps into this fitness-based fountain of youth with the right intensity, frequency, and exercise choices for longevity.
Lander’s Journey From Muscle Man To Gym Owner
Every boy who grew up in the early ’80s on a steady diet of action movies starring Arnold, Sly, and Van Damme wanted to look just like them, and Chad Landers was no different.
“I’d declared that when I grew up, I wanted to be a ‘muscle man,’” says Landers. Those action heroes kicked Landers’ passion for muscle to new heights. He graduated from his dumbbells to his first model bench from Sears. But he soon outgrew them and continued his journey at a small, hardcore powerlifting gym called “Brad’s Gym” in Galesburg, IL.
Then, in the fall of 1986, Landers discovered he could study kinesiology at the University of Illinois, but was unsure whether he could make it a career. “I had no idea how I would make a living with a kines degree, but it combined my love of sports and science, and I loved it.”
During his studies, he worked at the front desk of The Body Firm gym, where he advanced to become a gym manager. But seeking further growth, Landers moved to Las Vegas, continuing his work in gyms. There, he met a colleague who was opening a private studio in LA and told him about a job opportunity. Landers didn’t hesitate and, in April of 93, he began his 33-year career as a one-on-one personal trainer in Hollywood, CA — one of America’s most competitive markets for personal trainers.
Being great at his craft wasn’t enough for Landers. In the fall of 2002, he visited and closed on an empty commercial space near his home that had once been a small, independent gym, and by November 2002, PUSH Private Fitness was born.
How He Went From Watching Stars to Training Them
PUSH Private Fitness is a 2,200-square-foot facility located in Toluca Lake, an affluent area of LA close to Universal Studios, Warner Bros., and Disney. Location and being incredible at what he does began his journey as a celebrity trainer, explains Landers.
“Its location helped attract some of the first actors I worked with. I believe the first was Douglas Smith, who was in an HBO series called “Big Love” at the time. Doug referred me to other actors, such as Lyndsy Fonseca.”
Then the word got out about him, which led to coaching actors and musicians such as Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan (who also wrote the foreword to Landers’ book), William Zabka (The Karate Kid, Cobra Kai), Marilyn Manson, Steve Perry (Journey), Jerry Cantrell (Alice In Chains), and Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction).
What do all these stars have in common? They’re all over 50, and all are still going strong, thanks to Landers.
What is Landers’ Training Blueprint for Longevity?
Landers, 57, has been lifting for over 48 years. Many of his clients over 50 have never lifted a weight before, but have rewound the clock to look better than ever—the key, according to Landers, is to be aware of the aging Big 3.
They are
- Metabolic Decline: Reduction in your metabolic rate. It doesn’t hum as it used to.
- Sarcopenia: Age-related muscle loss.
- Osteoporosis: Bone loss that can happen at any age, but it is particularly worrisome for post-menopausal women.
“Weight training is a stimulus for growth and maintenance of muscle,” explains Landers. “But the tension that weight training places on bone via the tendons is also the best stimulus for adding and maintaining bone.”
That’s Wolff’s Law, which explains that bone adapts to the loads it’s subjected to, becoming stronger and thicker with increased stress (like strength training) and weaker when stress decreases. Being stronger not only means having stronger bones but also improved balance and coordination, which reduces the risk of falls.
Regardless of age, it is convenient to stay upright, injury-free, and with all of your bones intact.
Lift Smart, Recover Hard & Stay Strong
But the biggest reason you want to continue picking up weights and putting them down is muscle. Muscle not only looks good at any age, but it’s an active tissue that helps stave off the metabolic decline seen from age 50 and beyond.
Muscle is the original fountain of youth, strengthens your bones, and keeps your metabolism humming. The trick is to keep it going for the long haul, but after 50, although strength training still rocks, the older body has different needs.
“Recovery is the biggest issue,” says Landers. “We can still get and stay stronger than people half our age, but we have to be much more aware of proper sleep, good nutrition, and stress reduction if we want to recover between workouts.”
Landers explains in his book that medications and orthopedic issues influence the workouts and recovery.
“The biggest issue most people deal with over 50 is joint pain,” he says. “ Bad shoulders, worn-out knees, painful hips, even early arthritis. While strength training for the muscles is needed, our joints may not like a particular exercise or range of motion.”
So, does that mean saying goodbye to heavy lifting after 50? Not so fast, says Landers.
“I think older trainees need to be aware of the risk/reward ratio of doing certain ‘riskier’ exercises and/or doing maximal weights for low reps,” says Landers. He is not against heavy lifting. Landers owns a 336-pound squat, a 303-pound bench press, and a 402-pound deadlift. He coached Barbara Garmon, to a World Bench Press title at age 70, after she survived a bout with breast cancer, had a debilitating arm fracture after a fall, and at the same time having her doctors advise her not to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds.
“As long as you’re consistently pushing yourself to get stronger, you don’t need a 1-rep max to prove it,” Landers explains. “I keep most clients in the 8- to 15-rep zone.”
The Keys To Strength Longevity
As we age, we need to avoid being the person who spends 15 minutes on the treadmill and calls it a workout. It’s tempting, especially when joints ache and lifting heavy feels impossible.
When Landers’ clients feel like this, he shares this advice with them.
“Some days are diamonds, some days are coal,” he says. “On a ‘coal day,’ we may be lucky to match the previous workout’s weight and reps, and we may even need to lighten things up a bit to avoid a higher risk of injury.” Diamond days are all systems go.
When we are younger, it’s easy to treat every workout like we’re going to war, but for the over-50 lifter, this attitude is dangerous. “I always say, one rep isn’t going to make your progress,” says Landers. “But one rep can definitely break your progress”.
Landers likes his clients to leave a rep or two in the tank, depending on the exercise. But with machines, he lets his clients go to failure on a final set if they’ve maintained good form. He tries to find that sweet spot between progress and avoiding injury.
“Pain is a real thing many of us experience in our 50s,” says Landers. “Joints wear out, we don’t recover from training as we used to, but that doesn’t mean we should avoid training. Most of the time, there is SOMETHING we can do in the gym.”
Between going all out all the time or simply finding something to do in the gym when the body isn’t cooperating, training smarter is paramount.
Here are Landers’ keys for gym routine consistency.
- If an exercise causes sharp pain, avoid doing it. Even if it just “doesn’t feel right,” stop. You might need to adjust your grip or positioning to do it pain-free, or as mentioned before, you may need to go lighter or find an alternative.
- Avoid overextended warmups. Warm up as much as YOU need to feel ready. At least a few minutes of general warmup, but you may need a bit of mobility work, and/or a warmup set or two.
- Use a higher rep range to lighten the load, or employ other strategies like pre-exhaust techniques, blood flow restriction, or whatever you need to do to get a higher intensity and stimulus from a lighter load.
- Train as heavy as you can, but in higher rep ranges. Focus on recovery, sleep, nutrition, and stress management. Consistency rules: It’s no big deal if you need to lower the intensity or frequency of training, but if you aren’t consistently training, the downward spiral will accelerate.
