 Our first question is from Hans Mama's, New York. My head trainer states that as you get older you should use a lighter weight and higher reps to help prevent injury from going too heavy. Is there any truth to that? I think there's a little bit of truth to it. It's not entirely true. At the end of the day, of course, it all boils down to the individual. But the truth that this statement contains really has to do more with the risk factors associated. With lifting heavy, the heavier you lift, the more, you know, when you're training the low rep ranges, just because you're handling heavier weight, the risk of injury can be higher in regards to poor form. So if your form is off by a little bit and you're using light weight, the risk of injury is lower than if your form is off a little bit with heavy weight. For obvious reasons, right? If I'm overhead pressing a weight that I can only do five reps with and my form goes off a little bit, the compensation that's needed to correct my form right in the moment is much higher. I think for when you first start with an older client, I think this is a really good advice. Let's say someone comes in and they're 60 years old and never really weight trained. I might train this way for quite a while to get the reps, the practice, because I don't want to take that much risk. Although I know that eventually getting them to where I'm making them lift heavy, heavy enough to where it's challenging for five reps is going to be extremely beneficial. But if I had a client who hires me and they're 60 but they've been weight training for five years this way, light weight, they've probably put a lot of practice. They probably squat pretty decent. They probably shoulder press pretty decent because if they've been doing it for five years and high repetitions, they've got a lot of practice with those movements. And then I would feel a lot safer with progressing them to heavier weight if that makes sense. The operative term here is appropriate. So should older people not do any agility training at all because agility training is higher risk? Well, no, they just have to do appropriate agility training. That may look like hopping in place a little bit. So heavy weight, low reps as a trainer form has got to be perfect and it has to be appropriate to the client because here's the benefits of lifting heavy. Obviously, if it's a new way of lifting for the person, they're going to build more muscle, gain more strength, but there's also a skill involved with lifting a weight that's heavy. You have to learn how to summon that kind of strength and there's a lot of beneficial carryover, but it has to be done appropriately. So I think when anytime you're training someone who's older, you have to place special care on being maybe a little bit more meticulous about perfect form and listening to their body. So if I'm training a 20-year-old and they're telling me, like, my hip felt a little funny after last week's squat, I'm going to treat that differently than if my 65-year-old client says that. My 65-year-old client says that I'm going to err way more on the side of safety than with somebody who's 20 years old or whatever. So appropriate is the key term here. Absolutely. And I totally agree with all that. I think if we're going into aging, if we're looking at somebody that's prepping towards how can I sort of slow down the aging process and look more towards obviously strength is one of those things that we're going to highlight is the utmost importance. One thing I've been convinced of lately even more so is the need and the necessity for fast twitch type movements and to be able to maintain and sustain that ability, mainly because these quick reactive type movements are things in real life. These are things that have the most potential for injuries to occur. And so to be able to maintain just that ability to the appropriate amount, just like you said, Sal, it could just look like I'm kind of hopping in place. It could look like a very controlled light kettlebell, but I'm getting that snap. I'm expressing that fast twitch movement, but it's something that I really do need to maintain within everything else strength-wise. When I've trained older people who are rehabbing an injury, oftentimes, more often than not, the injury came from like, oh, I was in the shower, I slipped a little bit, didn't fall, but I had to catch myself, boom, pull the muscle or tore something. Or I was dropping something and I went down to grab it real quick and I hurt myself. Well, this is also why I think stability training became so popular, too, was for this, because when that started coming, when all the studies around the benefits of that started coming out, this is where I think it was most applicable as far as what clients you were training, right? The client that this would benefit me, I remember doing stuff where they would be standing on both feet, just hop just to the side, laterally, and then stabilize on one foot and hop to the other side. And something that's so basic and simple like that could be huge for a client like this that we're talking about. So someone who gives this advice as a head trainer who's probably, I'm always trying to put myself in their shoes and I'm telling my staff this, I might be telling my staff that because I'm cautioning them like I might have seen two or three of my trainers squatting with their new client like heavy load and their form was off and terrible. And so I'm like trying to correct you and say, hey, you need to do lighter weight, more reps, more practice with this client before you go load her with 130 pounds on her back and try and do a barbell squat like she's just not the prerequisites aren't there for that person. So I give a general statement like this. I see the value in that. I see the value of not as, you know, when you're managing a team or a staff of people of giving something a general topic like that. But the truth is we want to train and work any client no matter what age they are to a place where they can do strength training. And that to them like I have a client right now who's in her fifties and you know, just the bar 45 pounds on her back. That's challenging for five reps controlled slow and deep and like focusing on that's really challenging. She could do body weight squats till she's booing the face. But as soon as I load it with about 45 pounds on her back and she's got to stabilize that bar and we're barefoot and focusing on the way we're staying on there. Man, that's and slowing the tempo down. I can make those five reps and incredibly intense for her. Yeah. One of the biggest lessons you'll learn or I learned as a trainer was what appropriate actually meant, you know, it could literally be oftentimes and this is, you know, later on in my career when I started training people at advanced age, I could be training someone. And today's leg workout is you sitting down in a chair and standing up. That's your that's your squats for today. But I remember as a new trainer, I would see something like that and be like, Oh, that's not enough. You're wasting your time. We need to put you on the leg press. We need to get you to really feel sore and whatever. No, no, really appropriate is that's the thing you got to focus on. And what is appropriate for this person if this person is older and deconditioned or they're only used to one way of training, you just move two degrees over to another direction. And that's it. That's enough. There's no need for you to go any further. And what you think is not enough is probably enough. Oftentimes this took me so long to really appreciate and figure out. Once I got to this point, I became so effective at training people in this age category because I really started to appreciate what that meant. What is what is appropriate mean? Well, that means today, you know, you know, one of the first exercise I would do with someone in this age group is we'd sit on a bench and I wouldn't have them stand up and sit down. In fact, one of the first things I'd have them do is a leg extension with no weight, one leg. They'd sit there, lift their knee up and just extend their leg and come down. And they'd come back to me the next day and be like, Oh, I was a little sore. Yeah. You know, so always err on that side and you should be okay. But here's the deal. Heavy weight, perfect form is even more important than it is with lightweight. So that's why there's some truth to what this, you know, this question.