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Not sure if you’re genuinely asking at the end there, but you’re probably not doing anything wrong!
As someone who is not a doctor (check with one and go with what they say): you’re at the age where sarcopenia starts accelerating rapidly. And from your description it sounds like the most likely cause for your symptoms. It affects basically everyone so this is somewhat of a safe assumption
The good news is you can pretty much totally reverse all the effects with resistance training and a couple diet changes to support your training. What we’ve found is that many people even up into their 80’s can be restored to strength similar to that of an average (untrained) 30 year old. Which is a supermassive win in terms of quality of life and independence
The bad news is that about 90% of people hear “exercise and eat healthy” and just roll their eyes like it’s a cliché, unobtainable ideal that everyone knows they should do but nobody does. Or they think they are already doing it, but they don’t realize they need resistance training specifically. It’s also common for people to believe they have somehow “missed the boat” on training because they aren’t twenty anymore (I’ve even heard 28 year olds say this).
But the therapeutic dose for training is very attainable. Don’t need to become a gym bro. Don’t need to obsess over gains. Like 2x a week, one hour each, could probably get it done in 40 mins once you really know what you’re doing. And it’s very worth doing, you get back the time investment about tenfold just from the increase in energy
But yeah, just wanted to throw it out there for you or for anybody feeling the same way who might end up thinking they want to give training a chance! For disclosure I am a trainer at a local gym but I don’t have an online service or anything to sell on lemmy. As such I’m happy to answer any questions and offer suggestions on how to get started
This is very good, and it's also worth noting that the benefits can also come from aerobic exercise; and if your joints or back are an issue for waking/running, consider cycling or swimming. Ideally, I think one would do a mixture of both resistance training and steady-state cardio; then later, if fit enough, some HIIT. Worth noting I think that when it comes to something as intensive on the body as going through chemotherapy, strong studies suggest pretty big benefits, which would apply to anyone with energy-based issues, presumably.
The beauty of light aerobic is that to get the benefits of increased energy, you can need only do light aerobic activity that is (a) easy to recover from, and (b) increase mitochondria count, and (c) lowers your weight which translates to a myriad of downstream benefits including less energy consumed at baseline throughout your day.
Cardio is good for almost everyone (ramp into it slowly if it’s been many years!). I would note however that while the benefits overlap, they are not the same. I focus my outreach on resistance training (anaerobic exercise) primarily because it’s often overlooked and misunderstood. I would hope nobody walks away from this thinking they can do either resistance training or sessions on an exercise bike and achieve all the same health outcomes
I'd like to suggest they may be more complementary than strictly achieving the same, which seems like why most studies suggest trying to perform a mixture. Of course, something is better than nothing relative to your interest and limitations! (eg, arthritis, joint issues, preexisting conditions etc.)
Speaking only for myself, I definitely feel the best mentally and physically when balancing the two. And if I happen to take a break from both, boy, does my mental state nose-dive within 2 weeks.
Definitely, yeah you didn’t say anything wrong! I just try to aim for max clarity on the point. I hear frequently from trainees IRL and people on various forums that they thought they didn’t need to train lower body because it was already covered by running or whatever.
It’s become a pet peeve of mine so I try to nip it in the bud whenever possible!
Absolutely! I admittedly fell for this for many years as a runner, but these days I do just some light/moderate squats, leg extensions, curls, alongside sprints/inclines, etc. and it's made a big difference! Especially in stability.
Well dude, I looked over your reply, read up on sarcopenia, and made a few decisions.
I don’t feel the type of severe fatigue or weaknesses that I read about, but I can absolutely agree that doing some resistance exercises and adding more protein to my diet would be wise, so I’ll be doing that.
I’ve got therapy bands at home already, so it’s just a matter of finding a set of exercises to get started on. I appreciate the advice.
Right on! Best of luck to you
Again no pressure or expectations or anything, just throwing some stuff out there for whoever may be curious - The basic thing with exercise selection is you want to make sure “the big six” are represented somewhere in your routine each week. These are movement patterns, and not specific exercises with specific implements (you could use bodyweight, or dumbbells, or barbells, or a machine, or rig up one of your resistance bands, or a bucket of water, or a big rock, etc.)
The big six are namely:
Horizontal push (like a bench press, or a chest fly, or pushups)
Horizontal pull (like a seated row)
Vertical push (like an overhead press)
Vertical pull (like pull-ups, or lat pulldowns)
Squat (like goblet squats, or lunges)
Hinge (like deadlifts, RDLs, back extensions, or hip thrusts)
There’s really about a thousand ways to set up for each of these! You’ll notice that any “proven” program you find online will have something from each category. You probably also want to add some core (crunches, leg lifts) and some cardio like the other user suggested. Stuff like bicep curls, leg extensions, and other single joint isolation movements are great if you want to focus a particular area. Not a huge priority though if you’re tight on time
The main thing is, whatever the specific exercises you end up going with - you want these movements to be performed safely, but at the same time still be quite challenging, so make sure to carefully check a technique video if you have any doubts. You also want a way to “scale” the movement over time as you get stronger
Rule of thumb is you want to aim for a resistance you can perform at least ten repetitions with, and when you get strong enough to where you can do like 17 or 18 reps then increase the resistance a little bit and start the process over. Most people will notice this process starts to slow down a lot after a year or two - there’s really no pressure to keep chasing higher numbers after this point unless you just really love pushing yourself!
Oh, and you also probably want to perform 2 or 3 sets of each exercise before moving on to the next.
There’s tons of valid ways to progress but this one is pretty foolproof. After a few months, if you’re very confident with a movement pattern you can start using heavier rep ranges like 8-12 or 6-10. Or you can go lighter if it’s more convenient for your setup. Pretty much any rep range works between 5 and 30
And yeah for food basically just get your veggies, reasonable amount of carbs and fats, and shoot for a decent protein goal, usually like 70-100g per day is plenty, it’s okay to go higher though if that feels better. Eat a little more or a little less food overall if you want your weight to go up or down. Be really really really careful with any nutritional suggestions that are more complicated than that. There’s an unlimited amount of scammers out there, unfortunately, who will try to sell you on various schemes
This person speaks truth