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Informed Aging
A podcast about health, help, and hard decisions for older adults.
Informed Aging
Episode 91: Strong Over Skinny: Why Muscles Matter After 50
In this episode of Informed Aging, host Robin Rountree speaks with renowned personal trainer and educator Robert Linkul, founder of TrainingTheOlderAdult.com, about why building strength—not just being thin—can significantly impact your longevity, independence, and overall quality of life after age 50.
With over 25 years of experience, Robert breaks down the dangers of sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss), the link between strength and fall prevention, and how resistance training can help older adults bounce back from injuries and even avoid catastrophic outcomes from falls. He shares how minimal effort—just 20 minutes every other day—can lead to significant improvements in balance, bone density, and daily function.
Welcome to Informed Aging, a podcast about health. Help and hard decisions for older adults. I'm Robin Rountree. I'm a former family caregiver. I worked in the home care industry and now work for the Alzheimer's and Dementia Resource Center. The thoughts and opinions expressed here belong to me and my guest, not our wonderful employers and sponsors.
Before making any significant changes in your life or your person's life, please consult your own experts today. Our guest is Robert Lingle. He's the owner of training The. Older adult.com. He has over 20 years of experience in personal training, a master's degree in personal training, and has rehabilitated his own body from hip replacements, back surgery, carpal tunnel surgery, and lung cancer.
We'll be talking with him right after these messages.
Robin Rountree: Welcome back, and today we are talking with Robert Linkul. And Robert, I think you win the award for the most letters after your name. So can you take us through what all of those?
Robert Linkul: Well, number one, thank you for having
me. Very happy to be here to chat with you. Um, a bunch of the initials just mean that I've been in the industry for about 25 years and been doing this a long time.
I'm an N-S-C-A, National Strength and Conditioning Association, CSCS, which is a certified strength and conditioning coach specialist. And we have something called distinction component, which means you've been doing it a long time and you put in a lot of extra effort on education and research, and so we get a little star distinction after our name, so I have that as well.
I'm a certified personal trainer with them as well and was their 2012 personal trainer of the year. Uh, I was inducted into their fellowship in 2017 Oh. And was on their board of directors from 2021 to 2024. [00:03:00] So as a personal training representative. Yeah. So I've done a lot with them
Robin Rountree: Wow.
Robert Linkul: Over the last 15 plus years.
And, uh, currently own and operate TOA training, the older adult.com, which is a half training program for regular folks and the other half an education business for other personal trainers and coaches out there that are working with older populations. And I also work with FitBody Bootcamp. I'm their director of education and, do all their programming for their FitBody Forever program, which is all their older adults.
So, , pretty well dialed into training. Awesome. 50 and over population out there and have a lot of personal experience and education in it myself. Happy to, to be able to sit here and share it with you.
Robin Rountree: Well, okay, so, so, you know, a few things, I just wanna make that clear to everyone listening. This guy is not just the lunkhead at the gym who got , I don't know if there is a, an easy personal trainer qualification, but it seems, uh,
Robert Linkul: there definitely are, that there is ones that you
can earn in a few minutes on the internet and yeah, we don't necessarily have a ton of respect for that in our profession, right?
Those of us that do [00:04:00] this you know, at a high level it's our career choice., Yeah, we definitely take the road less traveled, but the, the more respectable, you know, kind of route of getting a good accredited certification. And, a lot of personal trainers in our profession, they do have a, a bachelor's degree in exercise science or in personal training, and those tend to be the ones that, that do, you know, a little bit better.
Robin Rountree: All right. So we think, I don't know about everybody else, but I think personal trainer, I think Hollywood celebrity getting in shape for some action movie. but that's not really the case, especially when we're talking older adults. Do we still need a trainer?
Robert Linkul: Absolutely.,
, To answer your question, absolutely, like you do as you get older. The better the coach you have, the better you're gonna be able to, , learn. Number one, resistance training. Learn what exercises are gonna be best for you, and to be able to work with not around any limitations that you have. If you have a frozen shoulder or if you have a lower back issue and you have sciatica, or if you have neuropathy, or if you're going through treatment of something.
The older [00:05:00] populations, if they are really serious about this and they wanna make this change in their life, they need a really high quality coach that's not gonna let them get hurt. And that's where, our profession comes into you, the, the consumers need to do your research and your homework as to who you're hiring.
And just because someone has a bunch of initials after their name, it might be all in group exercise, which is fine. Just that's not you. You're an older adult. Mm-hmm. And so you need somebody that's got the experience, that kind of tailored and education that's tailored in that direction. Our industry was really lacking that, and that's kind of why we, we built what we built.
My wife and I were with TOA. And you know, there's FAI, the Functional Aging Institute and all kinds of other organizations now that are doing this.
Robin Rountree: Now you, you're talking about these conditions that we have. Uh, some people may
call that an excuse, not a condition, but you're saying, if I've got neuropathy, if I have this back problem, we can still exercise.
Wow.
Robert Linkul: . As long as you are capable of moving and manipulating your body, I can find a way to train you. I can't [00:06:00] say that for every coach, but that's kind of part of what our, our profession and our standards are, is that if you are willing and , you are capable of coming to us, we can build a program for you, and that comes down to the individual that you're gonna work with, that's gonna be able to
look at someone like you, whoever you are, your neuropathy, your knee replacement, your pending hip replacement, you just finished, , chemotherapy, and now you have to rebuild your body back into this, , , whatever it might be. You, you have to work with someone that has recognition and understanding of that limitation or that injury or that disease, and knows what kind of protocols we should be progressing you through to kind of build in this level of strength for you on a regular basis every other day.
Even if it's just for 15 or 20 minutes to start and then gradually, you know, kind of progressing that up. And the, the goal is for that coach. If they don't, if they don't know what to do, they should be honest and say, I'm gonna research this. I can work with your physical therapist, with your doctor. We're part of the team and [00:07:00] we should be part of the team.
As a matter of fact, we're the tip of the arrow, if you will, the tip of the spear because we get to see you three times a week. How often do you see your doctor? You know, if you're going through something serious, maybe once a month. Yeah. When do you, how often do you see your dentist? Twice a year.
Your, therapist, your, your, your rehab, your physio, you might see them every other week. You get to see us three times a week for 30 minutes to an hour every time. We should know you the best. We should be fully integrated with that team.
If you have a chiropractor, if you have a behavioral counselor, what, whatever, whatever it is. Anyone out there, we should be part of that team and be well educated on who you are and what your needs are and what protocol we're using. You've got a pending knee replacement. Well, you shouldn't be jumping and we shouldn't be doing a lot of running or impact stuff.
I need to know that if I don't. And, and so that's where being integrated into the team, is really valuable. That really comes down to you, the customer, the consumer. You have to insist on that and say, okay, Rob, I'm gonna connect you with my doctor. Here's this email, here's my physio, here's this email.
And now you got three people all working [00:08:00] together to help you build this level of strength and, and overcome something called sarcopenia. It's a muscular loss and function. So people will hear a word like, , atrophy, and they'll go, that's, that's loss of muscle mass. And you're like, correct.
Mm-hmm. Well, you'll lose, you'll atrophy so far. You actually start to lose function now. And that's when we see posture change. Gait gets smaller. Mm. When someone's walking stride, that's their gait. That gets smaller as they get weaker. Their ability to pick things up, carry them on their own, their groceries, their suitcase, whatever it might be, to be able to pull it towards them, put it over their head.
I, every time I travel, three, four people ask me to move their suitcases for 'em. I'm happy to do it. I would just, I would rather them be able to do it on their own.
It just means that you are deconditioned and you're atrophing now to a point where you've lost function. That is sarcopenia, that is an, an official disease. It was,, diagnosed and officially declared in 2016 by the CDC. And this is my area of expertise is helping older populations overcome [00:09:00] sarcopenia.
It is a disease you can be diagnosed with and it is a disease that you can be cured of, and it is simply done by adding more muscle mass
If you stay active every day and you lift weights a couple of times a week, and you get out and you go for walks or what we call rucking, when you walk around with a backpack or a weight vest on to help your bone density, you can overcome that.
You keep your heart healthy, you sleep well at night. You stay hydrated, you eat well, you don't drink too much. You, you take care of your brain. You stay, uh, cognitively stimulus with going out to, to socials and engaging with people. And you go outside and you take in sunlight and good oxygen.
Do all those things that you know, you, we hear everybody talk about. You gotta do all these things to help you live long. But the one big thing they kinda leave outta that is like the whole resistance training, muscle mass part. That's what's gonna propel you through life is those muscles keeping your bones strong and moving you all around.
Well, if you get so weak that you can't move around. Your feet start to get smaller and you start to shuffle and just like a spinning top, it's fine while it's balanced, but the second it gets outta balance, wow, it goes down hard. [00:10:00] And when that happens statistically, if you're over the age of about 60 or 65, you have about a 30% chance of recovering.
And if you're not in that 30% chance, within six months, you're dead.
All are out just
Robin Rountree: from a fall.
Robert Linkul: They are the linchpin to an early mortality to a poor quality of life, and we see it over and over and over again. Someone will fall, they'll break a couple of their ribs, they'll crack the femoral neck on their hip and maybe their clavicle or their forearm. And so you could look at all those and be like, well, those are three catastrophic breaks.
Any one of those alone would be really difficult, but if someone has two or three of those all combined, which is very common. Um, their ability to rehabilitate back to where they were is less than 30%. They're now bedridden, so they can't get up and walk around the little they were already doing, so the bit of muscle mass they were using and, and they have on a regular basis is now reduced by 20, 30, 40, 50%, and they continue to shrink away and shrink away.[00:11:00]
And your body gets weaker and your will, your desire to want to live is getting less and less 'cause you can't go anywhere. You're just stuck in a bed or in a chair all day long. And so how do you think your body's ability or your body's desire to want to overcome whatever, if there's any underlying disease, pneumonia, anything else that starts to creep in?
You're just so vulnerable and weak at this point. So many people pass from, and you'll hear the, the family members say they were doing okay until they had that fall, and that from that point on, it just, . It just goes downhill so bad. So there's, there's something called the disability threshold, and that is that line where you now are, you've had a fall or an injury, or you've become so weak that you have a cane or a walker or a wheelchair or someone else to take care of you.
And when someone enters that threshold, it's very rare they come out of it.
Robin Rountree: So how do you get to be in that 30% of people who fully recover?
Robert Linkul: When you take that fall, you just bounce off the ground and you don't break. Now we're a hundred percent back, so you're good. You may, maybe the only thing damaged is your ego. 'cause [00:12:00] you just fell in front of everybody.
, And I'll give everybody this advice, okay? When you fall, and we all do at some point. Just lay there. We all saw it. Everybody tries to hurry and get back up, and more people get hurt on their second attempt to get up really quick than if you just stay down. Number one, everyone saw it. We heard it. We're all looking at you now. And then when you try to get up really quick and you fall again, or you try to get up and you are hurt and now your leg is broken or your forearm is broken and you push and you try to get up from that, it breaks even more.
And so it's better to just stay down. Just you ate it, you fell. Just lay there and let people tend to you. But if we have to answer your question, if we had enough muscle mass, you just hit the ground and you dust yourself off and you get up and you realize, I'm gonna have some bruises, but I'm okay.
That's our ultimate goal, that your bones were dense enough and your muscles were then insulated and wrapping them enough to where you can take and absorb the impact of the fall. And that comes directly from our resistance training on a regular [00:13:00] basis.
Robin Rountree: Okay. So fitness in my mind, my 20-year-old mind was skinny and could run a little bit.
Um, what should fitness be? Okay, there's a, for someone 50 plus, there's
Robert Linkul: a very, uh, low hanging fruit answer to that. There was a study done. With a couple of hundred people, okay? And what they decided to say was, what is weak and what is strong and what they found, was if you were over 69 years of age, okay, and you could pick up eight kilos, which is 18 pounds, if you could pick that up twice, you were considered strong of the group, but if you were under that, you were considered weak.
And those that were in the weak category were 250% more likely to increase their mortality rate. They increase their mortality rate by 250%. Oh. And , and so if the average American right now lives to about 74 years of age, well if you are increasing your mortality rate [00:14:00] by 250%, that's gonna suggest that somewhere in your late sixties, you're gonna, you know, reach the end where those that are stronger are going to reduce their mortality rate.
They'll live into their early eighties, somewhere along those lines, based upon this very, very general, again, very low hanging fruit. When, when you ask me as a professional, like, is 18 pounds a good barometer for us to look at that? At a bare minimum? Okay, a bare minimum, yes. What I would really like is for anybody male female, to be able to pick up off the floor about half of their body weight.
And if you can do that, you're, you're gonna place enough stress and density through your body to challenge it on a regular basis to make the bone stay strong, to make the muscles stay engaged and strong. That's gonna help you stay upright more, have a longer, better gait. And reduce your risk of falls, which we know, you know, is the start of that, that rolling downhill momentum that leads us in the wrong direction.
I want all my clients [00:15:00] to make it to like 102. Alright, and just heart attack dead. Like I, again, I don't mean to talk about it in like weird mortality ratings, but I don't wanna see anyone stuck in bed for 7, 8, 9, 10 years, not able to walk, and then eventually you can't talk. And it's like what that does to everyone around you.
Robin Rountree: . So you're not asking people to give up six hours a day. Um, you're starting small.
Robert Linkul: Here's, here's how small. Okay? There was a, uh, community, living facility. So not assisted living, just community living.
They took a leg press machine and they put it in the lobby, okay? And they asked all the attendees as they came by. If the machine's open, get on and do a set of five and then rest. And if you can increase the weight a little bit and do another set of five, do it. And if you can increase it a little more, do it again.
So three sets of five. Anytime they came through the lobby, one time a week, that's all they needed. Increased their grip strength, increased their posture, increased their bone density, increased their overall strength, increased their muscle mass by three pounds over three months of doing this. Just like, it wasn't even like, I'm gonna go to the gym.
They went down to check [00:16:00] their mail or to go play whatever, whatever they were going to do. And they walked by the leg, press, hopped on, right? Spent two minutes doing three sets of five, and then moved on with their life and had that kind of result. So imagine if you were going to a gym twice a week, three days a week for 20, 30 minutes.
Like how great of benefit could come from that if as little as like three minutes once a week, could do that. That's my point, isn't, yeah, you don't need to it doesn't need to be this massive life change. What it needs to be is a life addition. Here's 20 minutes every other day. We call it EOD 20, every other day for 20 minutes.
That's where we like to start people, and it can be whatever. If you wanna go for a walk one day and then every other day, the next day, go lift weights for 20 minutes, and then the next go walk. And then the next go lift and we start there for about a month or so. And then we encourage you to do 20 minutes every day.
And just build from there. If you want it to be more, that's great, but I feel like anyone and everyone, if you place any value on aging and having a good quality of life, can invest 20 minutes a day to try to aid in their longevity and their quality of [00:17:00] life.
Robin Rountree: And it can be very inexpensive, right? Going for a walk not gonna cost you more than pair of sneakers, a pair of sneakers. You know, a lot of gyms, you know, are not that expensive. I think the expense, of course, is finding the right person to teach you to do that, but then they don't have to be by your side every minute, right?
Robert Linkul: And so you could have a, a general gym membership that's 20 to $50 a month where you go in, hire a coach, work with 'em for a couple of weeks, and then you keep going on your own. But there's an initial investment that I think is really worth it to learn what to do, how to do it, and be motivated by the right person.
And if you want to continue with them, yes, it's gonna be a higher,, investment in that. Remember, that's not a cost. Right. This is an investment. You're investing in your health, and as long as you continue to get a return from that session that every, every workout, every experience with your coach, it's a good investment.
When you get to the point where you're like, my coach is on his cell phone half the time and he's eating while I'm up here and he's not paying attention then you picked the wrong [00:18:00] person and, and just like any other profession, there's good and there's bad and then there's great and there's really bad.
And so some of us, I like to consider myself in the upper echelon of it. We take this very serious and we want every penny that you invest to be worth it. And then there's others that do it as a part-time gig and you know, it's just something they kind of like to do here and there while they're doing their other thing.
And, you know, that's, that's okay too. You just can't tell that necessarily until you get in there and you get to work with 'em a little bit. So just quick tips on that. Every coach, okay, in my opinion, should offer you a test drive, a free session. Let's come in. Let's see if we work well together because okay.
You are not only picking me, I'm picking you. I want to be able to go, can I see this person three days a week and enjoy training them? And sometimes the answer is no. It's just a, a clash of personalities, and that's okay. Um, as a good trainer, they would help you find somebody else so they feel like would match up better with you.
And from your end, you might meet your coach and be like, he's spending more time looking in the mirror at himself than he is at me, than this is the wrong person, right? [00:19:00] Uh, or all he is trying to do is sell me supplements, then that's the wrong person.
So ask around first Shop around second. And as you finally find somebody, yeah, do a test drive, do a workout or two with them, and if you don't like it, speak up.
Say, Hey, this just isn't the thing for me. Thank you. I appreciate it. And move on till you find your person. Now you've got time to invest. Mm-hmm.
Robin Rountree: Yeah, I would think being clear on your limitations at the beginning and saying, mm-hmm is this something you've worked with before?
Right? Have you worked with neuropathy? Have you worked with back issues? And that could just save you the going through the trial run. If they have no idea and aren't willing to research, it's then keep looking.
Robert Linkul: Yeah, you gotta wanna shop around as someone that goes, you know, or there have been like. You know what I, I trained, uh, two clients that have had foot injuries. Uh, one was a Achilles tendinitis, the
other one was neuropathy type of thing, based on diabetes. So I think I have a decent idea that's a great place to start, like someone who knows this, but maybe it's not exactly what you had.
Nice. I'm good with that. 'cause now if I connect 'em with the doctor and everything else, like [00:20:00] we, we got a team effort here that now this person can get a little better, but they're already kind of, kind of on track of what we're wanting to do. Have they have an idea, an interest in it? Well, that's great.
You know, so it doesn't have to be perfect, but it's gotta be someone that you feel like is somewhat educated in this, no matter how young or old they are.
. Do your research, find a good team. Improve your quality of life. It's so worth it.
Robin Rountree: We were talking earlier about falls mm-hmm. And how damaging they can be. Balance. Is that something we should be working on? Yeah, that's a, on the days we aren't lifting weights.
Robert Linkul: That's a great, and the, the best way that I can answer that for you is if you focus on balancing all the time, you need a couple of things to help you balance.
You need strength, you need stability, you need coordination, and you need some level of mobility. So if you don't have those other things, it's really difficult to balance and kind of the first step in all of that, the foundation is the strength part. If you can make your muscles strong, [00:21:00] when you ask those muscles to hold you in a balanced position, they respond a hell of a lot better. If you have some coordination and some mobility in those joints
at the same time, anytime you get out of balance and you move into these odd leaning positions or forward falling backwards, et cetera. Your body knows how to handle that mobility and that coordination, and it can rescue a fall. So it's not just balance. I have clients who are like, I stand on one foot and I brush my teeth at night, and I'm like, well, that probably helps your feet stay a little stronger.
And it makes you really good at standing on one foot when you brush your teeth. So you have this cool circus trick that you can do. But most falls occur when you're walking forward or backwards and or step on something or you miss a curb or a dog runs at you. Something where you are in locomotion, general mobility and movement walking about, very rarely does someone stand and or just stand on one foot and then fall over and break their hip.
They're almost always in motion. So I need to train you to be strong first and to be able [00:22:00] to manipulate load in motion. . And that's where we do things like farmer carries and suitcase carries where you pick up a weight, usually uneven. 'cause your groceries are rarely ever the same weight. The average grocery bag, by the way mm-hmm.
Uh, is about nine pounds.
Seven to 11 pounds, nine pound average grocery bag. So if I get seven pounds in one hand and 11 in the other, and I have to walk 65 feet from my car up to the front door, put both bags in my left hand, grab my keys outta my pocket, open the door, transfer the bag back into my right hand, walk into the house, avoid the dog, walk around the island, put everything up on the top of the countertop, and then go back out and get the water and whatever else and the laundry detergent and whatever else is there.
Those are real life skills. Those are hinges and rows and carries and pushes and presses. And that's all the stuff that we train you for in the gym. So when real life calls, you're ready. And until we're strong and we're stable, I don't really worry about balance. 'cause the stronger and the more stable I make you, you're already better balanced.
So it's, it's, it's kind of like looking at [00:23:00] the, the candle on top of the cake. I wanna build the cake first. It's not that the candle isn't cool and that's not something we'll address. We gotta have the foundation first, though.
Robin Rountree: Okay. Alright. I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm gonna ask anyway. Should we aim to be thin
Robert Linkul: or to be strong? Strong. Strong, strong. Absolutely. I'll take strong. Yeah. Anytime over, over thin. 'cause thin is different for everybody.
The point is, is is we're all genetically kind of set up. Mm-hmm. With a certain frame that we can then take advantage of and, and meaning that should I aim to be thin or strong, I would always suggest people to be strong first. 'cause in the pursuit of strength, your body's probably gonna become what it naturally should be.
The more muscle you have, the longer you live, the more muscle you have, the better quality of life you will live. The more muscle you have, the better cognition you will carry into your later years of life. There are high correlations that show more muscle mass, less, um, cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, any, [00:24:00] any kind of diagnosable cognitive decline to disease.
The more muscle you have, the less likely you are to have that, and it goes hand in hand with most limitations, injuries or disease. The people that have higher muscle masses, higher bone densities, all of them have lesser potential to obtain any of those more negative age related symptoms, diseases, injuries that most people will occur.
And so the later we can push that, the better we're gonna be. Oh, right.
Robin Rountree: Alright,
um, again, tell us what TOA stands for, for is
Robert Linkul: training the older adult.com. Again, we've got a section on there that's, you know, for consumers, for clients, and the other section for coaches.
So anybody listening out there, if you're either one of those, feel free to check it out. Um, but my YouTube is my name Robert Linkul on YouTube and I've got almost 400 videos on there where I talk about anything and everything age related to fitness. Our whole intention is that call to action to try to help everybody. We're all aging and I want everybody to age as well as they can.
Robin Rountree: I love it. Robert [00:25:00] Linkul, all the, links are gonna be in the show notes
Robert Linkul: thank you for having me.
Please make sure to subscribe to our podcast Informed Aging, tell your family and friends about us too. If you'd like to support the work that we do at the Alzheimer's and Dementia Resource Center, please go to ADRC. cares.org/donate. You can find us at facebook.com/informed Aging. Today's episode was recorded at ARC's Podcast Studio.
That's it for now. Looking forward to our next visit.