How does exercise evolve as we age?
In this episode of Aging Forward, lifestyle coach Matt Arnold explores why finding purpose is the key to staying healthy later in life. He also shares expert tips on essential nutrition and strength training exercises, proving that it’s never too late to boost overall health and enhance body function.
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Dr. Chen: This is “Aging Forward,” a podcast from Mayo Clinic about the science behind healthy aging and longevity. Each episode, we explore new ways to take care of our long term health, the health of our loved ones, and our community – so we can all live longer and better. I’m Dr. Christina Chen, a geriatrician and internist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. On this episode, we are talking about lifestyle health with our guest today who is a lifestyle coach, about tips on fitness and nutrition for healthy aging. Matthew Arnold is a multi-talented athlete, health coach, business owner and my personal trainer. Welcome, Matt.
Matt Arnold: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Chen: I’m usually used to seeing you in the gym with you giving me the crackdown and telling me that I’m not jumping high enough in my burpees or something, and just suffering, but you’re the perfect person for our show today. I’m really glad you’re here with us.
Matt Arnold: I really appreciate being here.
Dr. Chen: Matt has been in fitness his entire life. He has been involved in sports and martial arts such as taekwondo and jiu jitsu. In 2014 he founded Detour Athletics, which is a functional fitness gym for people of all ages, sizes, shapes, and backgrounds. We all know that there are general benefits to health, fitness, nutrition, and healthy aging. But in 2020, only 15.3 percent of men and 10.8 percent of women, aged 65 and older, meet CDC guidelines for aerobic and muscle strengthening exercises. That’s concerning. You’ve worked with a lot of people, different age groups, throughout their exercise regimen. How does exercise look different as people age?
Matt Arnold: It becomes more purposeful. That’s the best way to describe how training changes as we get older. When we’re younger, we can kind of do anything. We could push everything really hard. We can bump up the intensity. We’re going to benefit quite a bit because we’re just young. We can recover quickly, right? But as we age, we start recognizing that we can’t push this hard anymore. The intention of how you’re training and why you’re doing it, changes dramatically. A lot of my clients that were former athletes – and high level athletes – no longer have that drive to go and crush themselves anymore. It’s more like, how do I just feel better?
Dr. Chen: I love this concept of purposefulness. Can you expand on that a little bit more? What do you mean by becoming more deliberate and purposeful with your exercise?
Matt Arnold: We all identify with younger versions of ourselves. We get very stuck. People tend to get lost in this aspect of what they used to be versus what they can be now. Right? And so, for example, for myself, I used to be an athlete where I could go run a six minute mile for 11 miles or whatever or compete at a high level in Taekwondo. But trying to have that mindset moving forward as I age to accommodate my current lifestyle and my future lifestyle is not going to be beneficial at all. It’s trying to establish a new purpose of why am I doing this? I want to have more intention of what I’m doing and make sure that that intention is much more purposeful for my long term goals. That’s how I look at it for myself and that’s what I try to communicate with a lot of my clients. It’s great that you have a specific goal. It’s great that you want to lift this much like five, ten years ago, but how about how you feel in five or ten years? How about how you are going to function with your kids or your grandkids in five or ten years? That to me is creating a new sense of purpose.
Dr. Chen: Having that new mindset in place is life-changing for them in a way, where you’re helping them shift their perspective a little bit to have that more purposeful goal setting. It’s like nowadays between strength training, resistance training, cardio – it’s easy to get lost in all that. As we’re trying to help people meet their fitness purposefully, what do you feel like are the most important fitness principles for people, say, age 50 and above?
Matt Arnold: Keep it really simple. What I prescribe now is very much what we’ve been promoting for years. Move more, have some sort of structured strength training and just create better habits. That has not changed. We need to stop over-complicating what health and fitness is and just go back to the basics.
Dr. Chen: The basics, would you say, is heavily emphasizing the strength training aspect of it? Can we talk a little bit more about strength training specifically? How does it benefit older adults?
Matt Arnold: Strength training should be, in my opinion, the priority for anyone aging. Simply just because as we age, what happens? We start losing a lot of muscle mass. For you as a physician, you get to see that with your patients on a day-to-day basis. The way I look at strength training is, it creates freedom for your long term life. The stronger we become, the more resilient we become against injuries, creating stronger bones and more functionality. Also, just from a metabolic standpoint, you’re able to keep your metabolism pretty high. Your body just feels better.
Dr. Chen: Right. In my practice I do see the long-term consequences of muscle wasting and sarcopenia, which is the general muscle shrinkage and loss of muscle mass over time. Often it just almost seems too late. Someone comes in looking pretty frail and they’re feeling weak and they’ve already started falling. How often do you work with people who are frail and who just have very little muscle mass, who are perhaps more limited in their mobility and strength? How do you approach that situation?
Matt Arnold: The biggest thing is one, communicating to them that they can do this. It doesn’t matter if they’re lifting only their body weight and they need assistance or they’re lifting a barbell. I need to reinforce that they can do this. It’s more of a mindset right away. But two, it’s just meeting them where they’re at. I want to be able to push them outside their comfort zone just to the point where it’s beneficial for them, but not to the point where it’s going to be negatively impacting them to injury or just their ego, whatever that might be. Everyone’s gonna be very different.
Dr. Chen: Goal setting, meeting them where they’re at. Simplicity is what I’m hearing because when they feel like they can do it, they feel more empowered that they can move on to the next level.
Matt Arnold: Exactly.
Dr. Chen: I love that. What are some misconceptions about exercise and aging that you often encounter? How do you, I guess, dispel those myths?
Matt Arnold: I can’t do it. That’s the biggest one right there. There’s a lot of individuals out there that are, number one, they’re stubborn. My dad’s stubborn. I know my father-in-law is stubborn. But it’s just this concept that it’s too late for them. What’s so cool about where we’re at in our life, for us especially, and for the individuals that I get to work with, there’s so much more growth. That’s what I’m trying to communicate constantly over and over and over. No, you can do this, and I’m gonna show you how. Once we get past that, it’s just like, this is actually fun. That’s the thing, you have to try to make this kind of stuff fun.
Dr. Chen: Yeah. I feel like the attitude of, I can’t do this, usually starts in the home setting where there’s just sort of sitting there and realizing that there’s not much they can do. It’s not until they get that encouragement either from a caretaker or someone like you and they try something new and they realize, “Oh, I can do it. I can get some of my functions back.” Then they feel like, “All right, let’s take it to the next step.” For someone new to fitness later in life, such as in their 80s and 90s, where should they start?
Matt Arnold: I mean, honestly, they should just try to find some help, right? There’s a lot of fitness centers that actually cater to aging adults. They might be able to get a referral from their doctor. Or just reaching out to a personal trainer to see, “Hey, can you help me? Because at our gym, we also have some 80-year-olds that are working out there with the personal trainers and they have had a lot of success.
Dr. Chen: Are there things that they can do in their home for people who are more homebound, they can’t mobilize much? Sounds like any activity is better than no activity.
Matt Arnold: Yeah, I mean really any activity. It’s just, again, they just need someone to show them different movements that they can do at home. It might be just getting off the couch and doing that repeatedly 10 times. It might be just grabbing their arms and number one, shadow pressing something. Or it might be just nothing, but going through the movement. Because at the end of the day, at that age, they just need to move, right? Someone just needs to be there to help them do this three times a day or whatever and go from there.
Dr. Chen: Do you have a good example of a simple exercise for your clients over the age of 50? One that they can really benefit and one that they can really maintain and try to keep up with?
Matt Arnold: Everyone needs to be able to squat. Everyone needs to be able to deadlift, or pick an object off the ground. Then everyone needs to be able to press, like pressing either their body weight off the floor or off the bed or something like overhead. When you think of functional movements that they need to rely on from a day-to-day basis of being able to function with just their basic necessities of life, squatting to a chair, picking up an object from the floor and then pressing themselves out of bed; or putting a cup or a plate away in the cupboard, those are the simple ones.
Dr. Chen: That’s really good practical advice. Let’s move on to nutrition, because that’s a huge part of musculoskeletal health, getting the nutritional needs to support that. How do you work with your older adult clients when it comes to nutrition?
Dr. Chen: We tend to require more nutrients as we age because our bodies are becoming less efficient in absorbing and utilizing them. What advice have you found particularly helpful for nutritional optimization in older adults?
Matt Arnold: Reinforcing a balanced meal, balanced macronutrients. Making sure that they have enough protein and good complex carbs and then a healthy amount of fat. That being said, again, you have to kind of meet them in the middle, right? You have your individuals that like their specific fast foods or whatever and so you can’t just completely take that away.
What I like to do is say, “Alright, I want you to have one or two extra servings of protein or fruit a day” or, “At night time I want you to stop eating this at this time and see how you feel the next day.” Instead of completely flipping their script of what they typically eat, it’s like adding a little bit, taking a little bit and then gradually changing their complete meal plan over time.
Dr. Chen: Sources of protein: That’s been the bane of my existence. I feel like I’ve been just resorting to eggs, yogurt, edamame and some beef jerky. Like what’s your go to protein sources?
Matt Arnold: I tend to eat a lot of lean animal meat. Obviously you have to vary it as much as possible. Like with protein you can’t just do all vegan style or vegetarian style protein because that does not have the complexity of the branched chain amino acids that you want from animals, but at the same time, if you have too much, say pork belly, protein that’s going carry too much fat, you have to make sure you have a good balance of just a little bit of everything. That way you’re not getting too bored, but also at the same time it’s just beneficial for you.
Dr. Chen: Is there a difference in nutritional need between what the body needs for a strength training day versus cardio day, or is it kind of all the same?
Matt Arnold: For most individuals, they can definitely keep it pretty simple day-to-day. There’s definitely benefits if you decide, if you do have a heavier strength training day, you’re going to have a little bit more protein, and slightly more carbs on a heavier, conditioning cardio day. There’s definitely benefits with playing around with those numbers. But for most individuals, they just need to stick to the same plan day-to-day to see that consistency.
Dr. Chen: In order to do that well would you recommend something like meal planning? Because it sounds very cumbersome to do that.
Matt Arnold: It does. Meal planning when you’re in your 60s and 70s, who wants to do that, right? I want to make sure the people that I work with usually have a set, “here’s my lunch” or “here’s my dinner” and then fill everything else in between. We call that the Tetris method, you have certain meals pre planned, but it’s not overly complicated. Then, as long as you have that, then you can fit this fruit or this pack of peanuts in my meal for today or whatever. That usually works the best.
Dr. Chen: Are there other strategies besides the Tetris strategy?
Matt Arnold: Another strategy a lot of people can utilize as well is just honestly focus on a protein intake. I just love reinforcing this over and over and over, but making sure every single meal you’re always going to ensure that you have this much protein and then you can kind of fill it in with everything else. That’s a pretty successful strategy for a lot of individuals, especially those who are going out to eat or going on vacation — to make sure, “Hey, as long as I meet my protein intake, I’m good.”
Dr. Chen: How can you make sure that people, their protein and their nutrients are balanced? Can you give me an example of a meal that has a good nutrient content that might be easy for someone to make, like a go-to meal prep strategy?
Matt Arnold: To make it really simple for most individuals, they just need to have a palm-size of like protein.Then from there, make sure that they have about a palm-size or so of some sort of vegetables, and then a little bit of carbs, like a baked potato, for example. Something complex like that works really well. But as long as it’s very balanced within the plate, that’s the biggest component. A lot of times people have a plate that’s just full of one specific thing and then not enough of another.
Dr. Chen: Just because I’ve been tracking my meals, I know a palm-sized piece of meat is about four ounces or so, about 25 to 28 grams of protein, depending on what type of meat, and so that makes up a good portion of your protein requirements for the day.
What’s your take on supplements out there — multivitamins or other over the counter items that can maybe play a part in muscle health, joint health?
Matt Arnold: I think supplements are beneficial, but they’re supplements. Most supplements give you around five or 10 percent compared to the food that you eat, as long as your diet is fairly good. There’s benefits with supplements, especially with multivitamins. Fish oil — there’s huge benefits, obviously, from that. Taking calcium, other little things like that, that we typically start lacking as we age.
Dr. Chen: In aging, there’s often a gradual loss of taste and sensation and smell, which can limit food choices for a lot of people and impact the taste of things. Are there any workarounds that you’ve found around that, if food just doesn’t taste good anymore? If you want more salt, but you can’t do that.
Matt Arnold: Not the salt. But for me, for example, I love tacos and I can make tacos fit my macros anytime. I can make different variations of it. It’s playing around with that or making different types of stir fries, making a different burrito bowl, or using different seasonings out there for a piece of chicken that you might use for a quesadilla and putting that in a salad instead.
Changing up the seasoning is the biggest thing, but that’s a hard one. That’s a hard one to try to adjust for, and that’s why I think fast food is so good because they’re able to have all those fillers inside their meals.
Dr. Chen: Right, right. I guess, find a spice that you like.
Matt Arnold: I mean truly it is. But what’s funny is as I’ve aged, I’m recognizing there’s certain foods I don’t like anymore. A lot of vegetables.
Dr. Chen: Oh!
Matt Arnold: Yeah.
Dr. Chen: Do they just taste different now?
Matt Arnold: They taste different and then my body sensitivity to certain foods are starting to definitely become more noticeable. You probably see that pretty commonly in a lot of your patients. I used to love vegetables and now there’s certain vegetables I just can’t have any more, like peppers and cucumbers, that I stay away from.
Dr. Chen: Wow. You’ve developed a vegetable aversion.
Matt Arnold: Yeah. It is very interesting. That’s for sure.
Dr. Chen: Chronic health issues are something that we see a lot. People develop arthritis, low energy, or endurance. They struggle with obesity that’s been, maybe, lifelong and makes it really hard to exercise because it’s easy to become breathless.
What’s your advice for these situations where it’s hard for people to get started and that’s been the source of poor motivation?
Matt Arnold: Again, it’s creating that purpose. The biggest issue people need to recognize is they need to believe in themselves to know that they can do this still. I love to keep things really simple with people when they’re in that state of mind. I’d like to really reinforce— ‘Just start walking.’ Create some sort of support group. I think that’s another big one.
Everyone thinks that they have to do this alone, when they could actually get a group of friends and say, “Hey, let’s start a challenge. Let’s all of us start, you know, walking 10 minutes a day or 15 minutes a day.” You don’t have to do this alone. That’s the biggest thing. And then, believe that you can do this and and the more you’re able to do that, then it’s, like, “Oh, I feel good. I’m emotionally happier again.”
Dr. Chen:That’s something I’ve been trying to work on with encouraging my patients too, because in most situations, they don’t really see anyone else except me. When I have that quick touch-point with them, how do I motivate them to help them realize that they can do this? They’ve struggled with, say, obesity for 30 years, and they feel like “I’ve already done everything that I can.” But if their doctor or their healthcare provider can just give them that little bit of encouragement like, “Okay, I want you to go home, for the next couple months, start a few weight training reps. Come back, let me know how you feel because I feel like you can do this.”
Then, setting those small goals to say, I’m going to try to walk up to a mile. Let that be your homework for the next three months or whatever. You come back, tell me how you did.
Matt Arnold: It’s tough because I feel like once they leave your office, they don’t know where to go. They’re just kind of like, “Huh. Okay, my doctor just told me to start walking more.”
Dr. Chen: That’s why I send them to you. I feel like we need more of you in this world, more lifestyle coaches, not just as a profession, but as a source of inspiration, as either a friend or a family member. Not all of us can afford that.
What would you say to an older person who wants to start improving their fitness and nutrition on their own, particularly if they’re on a budget? I know we mentioned a few things for getting going. But if we don’t have someone like you in their lives, what are some strategies they can do on their own?
Matt Arnold: If they’re tech savvy, there’s a lot of walking apps. You can collaborate with your friends on this walking app that is free. It’s also engaging with each other. You guys can communicate and you can make it a specific goal, like, you know, a leaderboard.
Dr. Chen: Oh, that’s fun.
Matt Arnold: With your friends, they’ll be like, “Hey, I can do this.” Make it a competition. That’s a super cheap option. The other thing is there’s so many apps and fitness trackers and things like that that are out there that do connect us with other people.
Honestly, the other thing too is on social media, like on Facebook, things like that, there’s also a lot of groups that are accommodating people that need to motivate each other quite a bit. There’s that as well. But I mean, you have to find it.
Dr. Chen: And get creative with it. A couple months ago, I had a patient come back to visit with me and again, he was struggling with getting moving and he wants to weight train, but has just never found that motivation or that push to do so. I have this 15 pound weight that I just keep on my floor and my office and I’m like, “Hold on one second.”
I went there, got my weight and I gave it to him and I put a little bow tie around it. I’m like, “Here, this is my gift to you. You take this home, do some reps and use it.” Surprisingly, he started using it and it gave him that incentive. “This is my doctor telling me that and she gave me her personal weight.” It was all ratty and gross,but I think we just have to find these little moments, you know, to encourage our loved ones and people that we care about, too.
Matt Arnold: Yeah, it’s not giving up on them. That’s how I feel with a lot of the people that I work with. I see their potential. They don’t see it yet. I see it, and I’m trying to communicate that quite a bit. And what’s the best way to have them hear you? You have to constantly reinforce, “I believe you can do this and you have to start believing in yourself.”
You know how funny that is? Here’s a 60, 70, 80-year-old, and they’ve lived their entire life doing all the hard stuff, having kids, grandkids, whatever, and then all of a sudden we’re going back, reestablishing this belief system that they forgot they used to have for themselves. For my position, it’s amazing to see that there’s still so much growth. There’s so much growth for these individuals to continue to become a better version of themselves even if they don’t see that yet.
Dr. Chen: Yeah, love that. Do you have any success stories of that? Any stories to share of a client that you’ve worked with who has been able to rediscover their health journey when they had lost hope before?
Matt Arnold: I recently started working with a client. I believe he’s about 70, 72 or so, and likes ballroom dancing. He came to me and was like, “I need to function again. I want to continue to dance.” I started working with him and he’s lost 20 pounds. I think his biggest eye-opener was he was telling me that he was on this little vacation with a friend of his. He saw directly, his friend just unable to function, unable to walk the distances that they were trying to walk and get to these different areas. That inspired him to push through. What I’m doing is working. And it’s super cool to see that just because I remember when I first started working with him, he could barely squat.
Now he’s squatting with 15, 20 pounds in his hands, and doing it in a way where it’s like he never would have thought that he could do that. That seems small to a lot of people, but when you don’t think you can do this anymore, but then all of a sudden, you come back, it’s kind of cool.
Dr. Chen: That makes me really happy to hear. Thanks for sharing that. I feel like for caregivers, they have a lot of opportunity to be that source of empowerment and encouragement as well. For family members who support their loved ones and caregivers, what are some tips you can give to them to help their loved ones explore these new fitness opportunities?
Matt Arnold: Do it with them.
Dr. Chen: Oh, yeah. That’s a great idea.
Matt Arnold: I mean, that’s the biggest thing. I love seeing couples, seniors, elderly, when they’re walking outside with each other.
Dr. Chen: Yeah.
Matt Arnold: If you’re there to support, you should be there to do it with them. Practice what you preach. Doing it together it just creates a stronger, more uniform mindset that you can’t break.
Dr. Chen: Love that.
Dr. Chen: I really want to ask you about this mindset perspective, because certain patients of mine, and I’m sure you’ve had similar clients, will come to me and say, “Look, I just feel so much more limited now that I’m older. I can’t move as much; I’m not as strong as before; and now I have to follow all these new rules of eating and moving, dah dah dah dah dah.” Is there some kind of perspective shift that you’re able to help them realize, where you can say, “Yes, you do have more limitations, but here’s the positive part about getting older.”?
Matt Arnold: When you’re feeling overwhelmed and like, “I can’t do this anymore because it seems like just so incredibly restrictive” — It’s restrictive, but also it’s a new challenge for yourself. Once you recognize this is a challenge, it’s going to make my life more enjoyable; It’s going to empower me more. Let’s do it.
We’re not trying to live life day-to-day staying within our own comfort bubble. We need to challenge ourselves to live. That’s the thing. Even as we age, as we get older, we might be limited. That doesn’t limit us from actually living and challenging ourselves as we move forward.
Dr. Chen: That reminds me of a quote I heard a while ago, it’s “Choose your hard.” There’s two routes, and both routes are going to be hard. At some point, you can choose your “hard” now and try to meet that new challenge of a new exercise and fitness journey, or you can choose your “hard” later by not doing it. Then we have to deal with the consequences later. You “decide” which hard you want to take right now.
Matt Arnold: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Chen: The last question, and we just love to get to know the expert. What do you do, personally, to age well? Outside of your already very active fitness regimen and what you’re already doing.
Matt Arnold: This is a pretty deep one. I just love to be curious. What can I do for myself to make myself better? I do things that I enjoy to have fun. I want to have fun doing whatever is going to make me better, and I think that’s the thing. I used to be very stuck in, “Here’s my program. I need to go hard on this. I’m gonna stick to the reps and the percentage.” Now it’s more like, “This doesn’t feel great. I’m going to try changing this up and do this instead and see how this feels.”
Just be very curious about, “What can I do to maximize my potential?” That’s the biggest thing for me, is just having that mindset constantly. It’s the same thing with how I live my life. I’m always going to be learning and changing.
Dr. Chen: Keep climbing those mountains.
Matt Arnold: Yeah, because that mountain is never going to stop.
Dr. Chen: That’s true, so many great pearls today, Matt. I think the most important takeaway from this discussion is that there’s really no “one size fits all.” It’s all a personal journey, but you can follow certain principles, you keep moving, if you can empower yourself to recognize that you can do this; keep it simple, focus on your metabolic health, maintain that good functional health.
My hope is that our audience can take away snippets of what they heard from you today to really apply it to their own lives, and apply it meaningfully.
Matt Arnold: I hope so.
Dr. Chen: Thank you again for being here, Matt.
Matt Arnold: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Chen: I’ll see you at the gym.
That’s all for this episode — hopefully you’re feeling a little more informed, inspired, and empowered.
If you have a topic suggestion for a future episode, you can leave us a voicemail at 507-538-6272. We might even feature your voice on the show!
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Thanks for listening, and until next time, stay curious and stay active.
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