Why Stretching Doesn’t Work After 50 (Unless You Fix These 3 Mistakes)
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Over-50s specialist physio Will Harlow explains the missing knowledge that holds most people back:
How most people err
Three traps to not fall into:
- Not holding long enough: you need at least a 30–60-second hold for each stretch because your Golgi tendon organs desensitize only after around 30 seconds, allowing you to access more range without actually lengthening your muscle fibers.
- Chasing intensity instead of consistency: pushing your stretches to maximum discomfort gives only a short-term benefit, and long-term gains are identical to moderate stretching. In reality, the biggest driver of progress is frequency, such as returning to the same 30-second stretch five times per day so your muscles never fully tighten back to baseline.
- Building flexibility without control: flexibility without strength and control increases injury risk, so every new range should be reinforced with active movement that teaches your body to support that position.
Three exercise do help you do it best:
- Romanian deadlift with a stick: sliding a barbell (or unweighted stick) down your legs while keeping your back straight helps you to improve your hamstring range and the control of your hip hinge by actively using your muscles, rather than relying on passive stretching.
- Wide squat: taking a wide stance and lowering into a comfortable squat improves mobility of your quads and adductors, while also reinforcing strength and control through that deeper range.
- Wall-assisted shoulder lift: walking your hand up a wall, then lightly lifting it off builds mobility and control in your shoulders because you actively move through the range rather than hanging on a passive stretch—and that way you’re much less likely to later injure yourself while getting something from a high shelf!
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Four Habits That Drastically Improve Mobility
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5 Tips For Muscle Growth As A Woman
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Building muscle improves your body composition, as you’ll be leaner even at a higher weight. It supports insulin sensitivity, boosts metabolic health, and helps break through weight loss plateaus while improving overall performance and hormone balance. In short, it’s a very healthful thing to do.
But there are ways people can err, so here’s how to do it best:
Mistakes to avoid
There are five key things to bear in mind:
- Don’t obsess over the scale: your overall bodyweight will probably increase; don’t worry about that; it doesn’t mean you have necessarily put on fat. Indeed, muscle weighs more than fat in any case.
- Don’t worry about eating too much: unless you really go out of your way to overeat, eating larger amounts according to your hunger will not result in overeating. Simply, your body needs more fuel in order to build muscle, and that’s fine and is to be expected.
- Don’t overdo cardio: it’s easy to think “I must stay trim while putting on muscle” and look to cardio to facilitate that, but the reality is that strength training will boost your metabolism anyway, whereas cardio can sap your energy that was needed for muscle-building (and, famously, can result in a metabolic slump)
- Don’t go too easy… or too hard! Lest that seem like a difficult directive to follow, this means: train hard yes, but make sure to get adequate rest also! Both are critical for muscle growth—without hard training, your muscle will have no reason to grow, and without rest, your body will be unable to do more than maintenance at most. So: train hard, rest well.
- Don’t eat junk just to hit calorie/macro goals. Quality still matters, even if the numbers are higher than you’d normally be taking.
For more details on all of this, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
How To Build Muscle (Healthily!)
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Intermittent Fasting for Women Over 50 – by Emma Sanchez
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Intermittent fasting is promoted as a very healthful (evidence-based!) way to trim the fat and slow aging, along with other health benefits. But, physiologically and especially metabolically, the average woman is quite different from the average man! And most resources are aimed at men. So, what’s the difference?
Emma Sanchez gives an overview not just of intermittent fasting, but also, how it goes with specifically female physiology. From hormonal cycles, to different body composition and fat distribution, to how we simply retain energy better—which can be a mixed blessing!
We’re given advice about how to optimize all those things and more.
She also covers issues that many writers on the topic of intermittent fasting will tend to shy away from, such as:
- mood swings
- risk of eating disorder
- impact on cognitive thinking
…and she does this evenly and fairly, making the case for intermittent fasting while acknowledging potential pitfalls that need to be recognized in order to be managed.
Lastly, the “over 50” thing. This is covered in detail quite late in the book, but there are a lot of changes that occur (beyond the obvious!), and once again, Sanchez has tips and tricks for holding back the clock where possible, and working with it rather than against it, when appropriate.
All in all, a great book for any woman over 50, or really also for women under 50, especially if that particular milestone is on the horizon.
Get your copy of Intermittent Fasting for Women over 50 from Amazon today!
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Bridging The Generation Gap Over The Holidays
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Often seen as a time for family connection, this same holiday period is often experienced as a time of family tension. But it doesn’t have to be that way!
Hopefully this will be of benefit to readers of all ages, but we’re going to write with the largest age-group of our readership, which is people who are most likely to have Gen-Z grandkids.
why are we writing about this?
Not only are health and happiness closely linked, and not only is mental health also just health, but… In terms of the healthy longevity secrets of the “Blue Zones”, strong intergenerational connections are usually a feature.
First, the obvious:
Any holiday tensions, of course, don’t usually start with grandkids, and are more likely amongst the adults, but some points of friction can be the same:
- Differences of opinion on political/social/economic issues
- Difference of opinion on parenting/dating choices
- Differences of opinion on life priorities
And yes, by the way, that includes even young teens (and perhaps younger) having opinions on these things—we are living in an information age, and this does mean a lot of information is a lot more accessible than it used to be, including for kids. Problems (at all ages) may occur when someone is only really exposed to views from within a certain “bias bubble”, but for better or worse, most people will have an opinion on most well-known things.
As a general rule of thumb, all of these differences of opinion can be shelved if (and only if) those involved seek to avoid conflict. And while age is no guarantee of maturity, often it’ll be the older person(s) in the strongest position to redirect things. So, have a stack of “safe” topics up your sleeve.
Bonus: you can also have non-conversational distractions up your sleeve! These may be kitchen-related, for example (time to produce something distracting, or if the nascent conflict was only between you and one other person, time to go check on something, thus removing yourself from the situation).
Next, about “family time” and technology
It can be tempting to try to have a “phones away” rule, but this will tend to only exacerbate a younger person’s withdrawal.
Better: ask (with a tone of cheerful curiosity, not accusation) about what captures their attention so. Ask about their favorite YouTubers or TikTokers or whatever it is that it is for them. Learn about that Subreddit.
Or maybe (more likely for Millennials) they were following what is going on in the world via social media, which takes on an intermediary role for the delivery of world news. Hopefully this won’t run into the differences of opinion that we mentioned up top, but it could also be a perfectly good avenue of conversation, and maybe there’s more common ground than you might expect.
Meanwhile, if you’re the older generation present, chances are your own social media use is more about the human element. That’s great, but watch out:
A common faux pas is taking pictures without asking, let alone posting them online without asking. For many people this may seem an odd thing to object to, but generationally speaking, the younger someone is (down to the upper single digits, anyway) the more likely they might feel strongly about this. So, ask first.
The reason, by the way, is that in this age of digital hypervisibility, what we choose to share online can be a deeply personal thing. And, say what you will about the pros or cons of someone carefully curating an image of how they wish to be seen, shortcutting through that for them with a candid photo posted on Facebook will not endear you to them, even if you can’t see anything wrong with the photo in question, for example.
See also: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
Show an interest, but don’t interrogate
This one doesn’t take too much explanation. If people want to share about their lives, they’ll need only the smallest nudge to do so. If someone passes up an opportunity to talk about something you showed an interest in, chances are they have their own reasons for not wanting to talk about it. This might be hurtful if you feel like they’re keeping you out of their life, but the best way to get them to talk to you is just to be a good listener—not an interrogator that they have to dodge.
For some powerful tools on this, see: Listening, Better
Lastly, if things aren’t so good…
43% of people are currently experiencing some sort of familial estrangement, so if that’s you, you’re not on your own.
Sometimes, it really is too late to fix things, but sometimes it isn’t; we put together a guide that might help:
Family Estrangement & How To Fix It
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Open Your Hips With Better Joint Mechanics (Here’s How)
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Most people stretch hips incorrectly, and pushing through painful stretches often leads to little or no progress, which can be discouraging to say the least.
Here’s how to cut through all that and get the results you need:
More than just stretching
Effective hip mobility also requires joint capsule activation, muscle tension release, and nervous system safety. These four exercises meet those needs:
- Banded lunge hip mobilization: in a lunge, loop a resistance band across the hip of your lead leg, extend your back leg, and push your front knee outwards without hip rotation or spinal arching. Hold 15–20 seconds, repeat.
- Weighted butterfly stretch: sit with your feet together, knees out, and rest light/moderate dumbbells on each knee to gently press them down; relax fully, hold 2–3 seconds, repeat 8–10 times.
- Seated hinge with barbell: sit on a bench with your knees bent and your hips open; hold a barbell at your shoulders, brace your core, and hinge forward at hips while keeping your spine neutral; you should feel the stretch in your hips, glutes, and groin. Pause 2–3 seconds, repeat 8–12 times.
- Frog stretch with sliders and weight: hold the “frog” position (knees wide, feet out), for 30–60 seconds; add sliders to move your hips up/down, then rest a plate on your hips and hold another 30–60 seconds.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)
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Gut-Healthy Spaghetti Chermoula
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Chermoula is a Maghreb relish/marinade (it’s used for both purposes); it’s a little like chimichurri but with distinctly N. African flavors. The gut-healthiness starts there (it’s easy to forget that olives—unless fresh—are a fermented food full of probiotic Lactobacillus sp. and thus great for the gut even beyond their fiber content), and continues in the feta, the vegetables, and the wholewheat nature of the pasta. The dish can be enjoyed at any time, but it’s perfect for warm summer evenings—perhaps dining outside, if you’ve place for that.
You will need
- 9oz wholewheat spaghetti (plus low-sodium salt for its water)
- 10oz broccoli, cut into small florets
- 3oz cilantro (unless you have the soap gene)
- 3oz parsley (whether or not you included the cilantro)
- 3oz green olives, pitted, rinsed
- 1 lemon, pickled, rinsed
- 1 bulb garlic
- 3 tbsp pistachios, shelled
- 2 tbsp mixed seeds
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp chili flakes
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- For the garnish: 3oz feta (or plant-based equivalent), crumbled, 3oz sun-dried tomatoes, diced, 1 tsp cracked black pepper
Note: why are we rinsing the things? It’s because while picked foods are great for the gut, the sodium can add up, so there’s no need to bring extra brine with them too. By doing it this way, there’ll be just the right amount for flavor, without overdoing it.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Cook the spaghetti as you normally would, but when it’s a minute or two from being done, add the broccoli in with it. When it’s done, drain and rinse thoroughly to get rid of excess starch and salt, and also because cooling it even temporarily (as in this case) lowers its glycemic index.
2) Put the rest of the ingredients into a food processor (except the olive oil and the garnish), and blitz thoroughly until no large coarse bits remain. When that’s done, add the olive oil, and pulse it a few times to combine. We didn’t add the olive oil previously, because blending it so thoroughly in that state would have aerated it in a way we don’t want.
3) Put ⅔ of the chermoula you just made into the pan you used for cooking the spaghetti, and set it over a medium heat. When it starts bubbling, return the spaghetti and broccoli to the pan, mixing gently but thoroughly. If the pasta threatens to stick, you can add a little more chermoula, but go easy on it. Any leftover chermoula that you didn’t use today, can be kept in the fridge and used later as a pesto.
4) Serve! Add the garnish as you do.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Less Obvious Probiotics Benefits
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- What Matters Most For Your Heart? ← spoiler: this is why, while we do watch the sodium, we care more about the fiber
- All about Olive Oil: Is “Extra Virgin” Worth It?
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
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7 Comprehensive Ab Exercises
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If you train just one motion, you’ll get just one motion’s benefit. Instead, here’s how to get a solidly strong core:
7 Up!
Cori Lefkowitz, of “Strong at Every Age”, advises:
- Weighted crunch (pullover variation): hold a weight overhead, brace your abs to keep your hips tilted towards your ribs; pull the weight down as you crunch your upper body and knees together, then extend back out without relaxing onto the ground.
- Leg lowers plus pelvic raise: squeeze your legs together and lower them slowly towards the ground while bracing your abs; lift them back up using your abs, then curl your pelvis off the floor before repeating.
- Slider body saw: start in a forearm plank on sliders, slide your body backwards into an extended plank without arching your lower back, then pull yourself forwards to the start position while keeping your hips level.
- Dip hold curl-up: support yourself on parallel bars, tuck your pelvis, round your spine, and curl your body upwards as though hollowing out your abs, rather than bending at your hips.
- Incline bench abs: lie on an incline bench holding the top, start with your knees bent; curl your knees towards your elbows by rounding your spine, then lower yourself back down slowly, keeping good control as you do so.
- Ab extensions: kneel with your glutes engaged and your hips tucked, then extend your arms forwards while maintaining a strong brace, and pull your hands back underneath you without letting your spine move.
- Bench V-ups: sit on a bench with your legs straight and hovering, lean backwards with good control, then crunch your torso and legs together by rounding your spine and pulling them towards each other.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Is A Visible Six-Pack Obtainable Regardless Of Genetic Predisposition?
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Don’t Forget…
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