The 30-Something Wake-Up Call

When’s the ideal time to start thinking about body strength? Yesterday. By the time many people start thinking about it, they’re already behind.

“What people don’t realize is that we start losing muscle in our thirties,” says Andrew (Avishai) Weiss, COMT, DPT, physical therapist and spine specialist in Boca Raton, Florida. “The rate increases in our sixties, but the process has already begun much earlier — which means the work to combat it needs to start earlier, too.”

For women, this is critically important. Women naturally have less muscle mass, so they’re at higher risk of becoming frail and getting injured as they age. When women hit their forties, it’s often bone health that gets a lot of attention — as it should. But the hormonal changes associated with that decade also accelerate muscle breakdown and loss of lean muscle mass. That’s why, alongside calcium and vitamin D, women need to take proactive steps to build strength.

The challenge with waiting too long to strengthen your body is that, at a certain age, you’re playing defense. If you’re already dealing with osteoporosis or fragility, stressing your body can become more dangerous than no strength training. People in this situation are forced to choose the lesser of two evils — little movement, little risk of injury — but allowing your body to simply get weaker isn’t a good option.

“You can’t box yourself in to those two options,” warns Andrew. “You need to give yourself a way out by strengthening yourself in your thirties, forties, and fifties.”
That said, if you’ve already hit your upper decades, it’s not too late. “Just start. Build strength training into a habit,” says Andrew. “Make it a non-negotiable value — the same way you brush your teeth and maintain your body in every other way.”

The #1 Factor

While most of us think about preserving mobility, what we actually want to preserve is strength. “When it comes to being able to move as you get older, the number one, most important factor is strength,” says Andrew.

Let’s get some definitions straight: Mobility is simply the range of motion of a joint. “Can you straighten your arm? Bend at the elbow? That’s mobility,” Andrew says. “Someone who is stiff won’t be able to fully extend [straighten] and fully flex [bend] their elbow.”

Strength is what makes motion meaningful. It’s your ability to move a weight over some distance, whether that’s a bag of groceries, a squirmy toddler, or your own body. “It’s not just how much weight you can hold in one place,” Andrew says. “Strength is what you can do with it: lift it, push it, move it. The heavier the item you can move — and the farther you can move it — the stronger you are.”

Strength is also the invisible power behind balance, that is, your ability to stay upright and stable. Standing on one leg — assuming a normal, healthy vestibular system with no neurological condition — requires strength. “You need glute strength to prevent your hip from dropping, quadriceps strength to catch a buckling knee, and a strong psoas muscle to swing a leg forward,” says Andrew.

Every step you take requires balancing on one leg as you shift to the other foot. “If people fail to maintain their balance as they age, it changes how they walk. They’ll start to take smaller and smaller steps and eventually barely lift their foot off the floor,” says Andrew. “In a stumble, many older people instinctively reach for support instead of relying on their muscles. But if there’s nothing to grab — they fall.”

And falls, as we know, are often the beginning of a much steeper decline.

No Pain, No Gain­?

To build strength, your muscles must work hard. “It may seem counterintuitive, but the way to nourish your musculoskeletal system is by giving it stress,” says Andrew. “Microtrauma to the muscle is what results in gains in strength.”

When you apply weight or resistance, with control, the muscle becomes damaged. It responds by rebuilding itself larger and stronger. And with each rep — and each session — the process repeats itself, gradually progressing your strength.

“We always recommend doing a movement until ‘fatigue,’” says Andrew. “That means those last few movements are hard. It’s a challenge to complete them. You’re tired — it feels like you can barely finish the rep. That’s the signal that it’s working. If an exercise feels too easy, it’s probably time to increase the resistance, weight, or number of reps.”

Pushing yourself is a fundamental part of the process, but don’t take the adage “no pain, no gain” literally. “You should not be in pain when you’re strength training,” Andrew stresses. “If you feel pain, stop. It means something is wrong.”

Muscle Amnesia

Now here’s the tricky part: Just because you’re moving your muscles doesn’t mean you’re moving the right muscles. You can even sweat through a run or Pilates class without strengthening your target muscles. How is that possible?

“The body seeks the path of least resistance, even when it’s not the most efficient or safest route,” Andrew explains. Weak or “forgotten” muscles get bypassed while others compensate.

Take older adults and hip joints, for instance. Using your hip muscles requires serious energy and strength. It’s hard, so people start to avoid it, using other muscles to seemingly do the same thing. Instead of, say, squatting down using hip power, they bend the knee or the spine. “It feels easier, so that’s how they move,” says Andrew.

Stair-climbing can reveal a similar pattern. Rather than loading the hip, flexing then extending, many older people whip their knees or excessively bend their trunk, using spine muscles instead of glutes.

That leads to gluteal amnesia, Andrew reports. “I tell clients to squeeze their glutes — and they can’t,” says Andrew. “They’ve lost their awareness of these muscles. They’ve literally forgotten how to activate their glutes.”

Forgetting muscles leads to damage on two fronts:

Overuse injuries. When the wrong muscle handles a load it wasn’t designed for — like the spine muscles for climbing stairs — it puts excessive stress on those joints, leading to injury and breakdown.

Underuse weakness. The intended muscles — the hips and glutes — become weaker and weaker, due to neglect. Movements become inefficient, endurance drops, and simple tasks like climbing stairs feel harder and harder.

The good news: Your body adapts remarkably well. You can retrain muscles to work effectively with focused, deliberate effort.

If you haven’t done strength training in a while (or ever), the key is to start small — but just start. “Ideally, you want to perform strength-training exercises at least two to three times a week. To build it into a consistent habit, set up a schedule; that’s what will lead to lasting results.

“Many people are surprised about this,” Andrew continues, “but once you get past the initial learning curve, exercise becomes enjoyable. It’s like an acquired taste. When you start feeling stronger, more stable, and more capable in your daily life, you’ll actually look forward to your strength-training regimen and miss it on the days you skip it.”

Andrew (Avishai) Weiss COMT, DPT, has a private practice serving the greater Palm Beach County, FL area, offering physical therapy, manual therapy, bodywork, and craniosacral therapy. He can be contacted through Mishpacha.

I’m 50 and (please don’t judge me) never exercise. How risky is it for a newbie like me to start strength training?

“Strength training can be safe if you start smart and listen to your body, specifically in these three areas,” says Andrew.

Form: People underestimate the importance of proper form. This is your number one protection against injury. Form means the precise way you perform the exercise: the body position, movement pattern, and technique.

With strength training, how you perform the movement is generally more important than how many reps you do. Focus on getting it right rather than doing it fast — quality versus quantity. For instance, if you bust through leg lifts quickly, you’re probably using momentum rather than muscle. It’s better to take a long time doing five reps, spending a second at each point of the range, than flinging your leg up and down just to get to a higher number of reps.

It’s a good idea to work with a qualified professional when you’re starting out with a new strength-training program. They can observe your form and give you key suggestions to make sure you’re doing it right— or to modify the movement so you can do it more easily with good form. This is crucial because, with poor form, you may not even activate the right muscle groups.

Gradual buildup: In relatively healthy adults, one common mistake is trying to do too much, too quickly. Think “weekend warriors” who sit at a desk all week but want to train hard on the weekend. Problem is, they sometimes end up sidelined for weeks (or more) because they get injured. They lose momentum and get discouraged; some never return to strength training. The goal here is slow and steady. Start with low weights and a few reps. As movements become easier, gradually work yourself up.

Modified program: Most older people are dealing with some form of injury or degeneration, like arthritis in the knee or a disc problem in the back. This doesn’t mean they can’t strength train; it means they need a program that works around their limitations. For example, doing chair squats instead of a traditional squat or using resistance bands instead of weights. A trained professional like a physical therapist is invaluable here in creating a safe, tailored program that can meet specific needs and goals.

I’m super busy but I’d like to fit strength training into my life. What’s a quick routine that can make a big impact?

Here’s a starter set of five core strength exercises that Andrew often gives clients. Go through the whole set, with one minute of rest in between, a total of three times.

Bridges

Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor.

Squeeze your glutes and lift your hips.

Goal: Do 30 reps.

Front Plank Hold

Lie on your stomach, propping up your upper body with your elbows. Tuck your toes under, lift knees off the floor, and hold that position. (If it’s too hard, drop to your knees.)

Your body should be in a straight line from head to heels, with your stomach pulled in and core engaged.

Goal: Hold for one minute.

Side Plank (both sides)

Lie on your side with one elbow on the ground, stacking your feet. (If it’s too hard, drop your bottom knee to the ground.)

Lift your hips and raise your top arm toward the ceiling.

Goal: Hold for one minute on each side.

Common mistake: letting your body lean backward. Make sure to shift your chest slightly forward and engage your lower back.

Modified Sit-Up (McGill Curl-Up)

Lie on your back with one leg bent and the other straight.

Place both hands in the hollow of your lower back.

Press elbows into the floor and lift your head/shoulders slightly off the ground, hold for five seconds, then return to the ground.

Goal: Do 10 reps.

Bird Dog Hold

Start on all fours, hands under shoulders and knees under hips.

Lift the opposite arm and leg (e.g., right arm, left leg). Hold position parallel to ground, keeping back flat and hips at the same level.

Goal: Hold for one minute, then switch sides.

Tip: To make sure your spine stays in a neutral position, imagine there’s a bowl of soup on your back that you don’t want to spill.

WHAT’S THE RIGHT WAY TO…

Wash Dishes Without Hurting Your Back?

At the sink, most people instinctively round their back and lean forward, relying on their lower back to support the weight of their upper body as they reach down and scrub. In that position, gravity pulls the head and upper body downward, so the lower back muscles are constantly working to hold that posture. When muscles are overworked, they release lactic acid, which can cause a burning or aching sensation.

At the same time, this position creates what’s known as “shear force”: Your upper body is pressing forward and down, while your lower spine is working against that pull to keep you stable. This causes the discs to slide horizontally on each other, putting extra strain on the facet joints (the joints between the vertebrae).

The key to preventing pain is fixing the position of your back. You don’t want to extend it; you want to keep it straighter and hinge forward from the hip. One simple fix is to put one foot up on a stepstool in front of you. If you find that cumbersome, open the cabinet door under the sink and use that as a step.

With one leg up, instead of the load taxing your back muscles, it shifts to the bigger muscles of your leg — your quad and your glutes, which can handle it better. Switch up your legs every few minutes. This strengthens your legs as you save your back.

Go from Lying Down to Sitting Up?

If you rely heavily on momentum — flinging your arms or jerking your torso forward — you might be compensating for weak postural or stabilizing muscles in your back and core.

A more controlled and strength-driven method of sitting up looks like this:

Roll slightly to one side.

Dig your elbow into the surface (bed or floor).

Use your triceps to extend the elbow while pressing your palm down.

Engage your core and mid-back muscles to lift your torso up smoothly into a seated position.

Pick Something Up from the Floor? 

Next time you’re bringing in a 40-pack of water from the car, pay attention to your form: Are you shrugging your shoulders? Arching your back? These are clues that you’re not using your lifting muscles (biceps + mid-back) for strength and are at risk for injury.

You don’t want the spine to do heavy lifting. Ideally, keep your back straight and push your hips back with your glutes, lowering your body. Toward the end of the movement, bend slightly at the knees to get close to the floor. This position moves the load from your back to your hamstrings and glutes— large muscle groups that can handle it.

Before you pick anything up, get as close to it as possible. Reaching out to lift something relies on your back. Same thing when you’re carrying the object — keep it close to your body. Another tip: Widen your legs like a sumo wrestler as you bend; this allows you to squat deeper in the hip before needing to activate your spine.

Want the full toolkit? Scan the QR code, visit www.mishpacha.com/strengthtest, or email familyfirst@mishpacha.com to get a bonus self-assessment — 14 quick tests that show exactly where to focus.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 975)