The Biggest Myths About Exercise and Aging—and What Actually Helps You Stay Strong After 50

As you get older, the advice around exercise starts to sound increasingly cautious: Take it easy. Protect your joints. Don’t lift anything too heavy. If something hurts, avoid it. Stick to gentler forms of exercise.

Some of this caution is certainly warranted. Bodies change with age, making it harder to gain muscle mass, and certain health conditions require modifications. But trainers who specialise in working with older adults say that being overly cautious may prevent healthier ageing. Treating older adults as inherently fragile can discourage people from doing the things that help them maintain strength, mobility and independence.

“A lot of folks still think they’re too old to get started or that, because this or that hurts, they should avoid exercise altogether,” says Claudette Sariya, a personal trainer who has a specialisation in senior fitness. “Part of why I feel so strongly about this is because I’ve seen so many different ailments across family members who don’t or didn’t exercise.”

So how do you tell fact from fiction when it comes to the advice you hear about exercising in your 50s and beyond? We turned to Claudette and other trainers who work with older adults to debunk some of the most persistent exercise myths they want you to ignore, so you can continue to train well into your golden years.

Myth: If an exercise bothers your knee, shoulder, hip, or back, you should avoid training that area.

Many people who struggle with persistent joint or low back injuries tend to avoid the aching area during workouts for fear of making it worse, says Stephen Holt, a personal trainer who specialises in working with women over 50. But, depending on the cause of the pain, avoiding the area altogether isn’t necessarily the answer.

In many cases, a physiotherapist or qualified trainer can help find exercises that strengthen the surrounding muscles without aggravating symptoms.

Research supports strength training for certain painful joint conditions. For example, a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine in 2024 shows that resistance training can reduce pain and improve strength in patients with osteoarthritis in the knee or hip. It can also improve joint function, as long as the strength protocol lasts for at least four weeks.

Stephen recommends that clients strengthen the muscles both above and below the painful joint, especially for clients without arthritis. “For example, if your knee hurts, focus on exercises for your hips and ankles,” he says. “Knee pain that’s not due to arthritic changes often comes from weak hips and ankles because they’re the main factors in how your knee functions in your daily life.”

“There’s always a way to work around pain or strengthen muscles that can help alleviate the pain,” agrees Claudette.

Myth: Strength training is dangerous if you have osteopenia or osteoporosis.

Trainers like Stephen often hear from potential clients with osteoporosis or osteopenia who fear they’re too frail to train safely. Yet research shows that strength training is one of the best tools for helping to prevent or improve low bone mass, thanks to the mechanical load it places on bones, which leads to enhanced bone strength.

In 2017, researchers published a now-famous trial – the LIFTMOR study – in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The trial showed that supervised strength training is safe for postmenopausal women with low bone mass. Over eight months, 49 of the 101 women did high-intensity strength and impact training twice a week for 30 minutes and saw improvements in bone mineral density of the lower spine and hip.

“The subjects lifted over 80 per cent of their one-rep max, which is much heavier than the average woman in that age range would ever choose to lift on her own,” says Stephen. They also did exercises like overhead presses and deadlifts, which were previously deemed dangerous for this population, he says. (They did this under professional supervision, keep in mind.)

Myth: Cortisol spikes mean you should skip high-intensity exercise in menopause.

One of the most persistent myths touted by wellness influencers is that high-intensity exercise, including running, raises cortisol, so it should be avoided in favour of less intense methods – especially for menopausal women. “This myth refuses to die,” says Sarah Fuhrmann, a menopause coach and certified trainer for older adults.

Exercise temporarily raises cortisol levels, which is a normal, healthy stress response that your body is built to handle, she says. According to a meta-analysis published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports in 2021, cortisol levels are elevated very temporarily: They drop two hours after an intense workout, and then return to baseline within 24 hours.

Over time (and with proper recovery), high-intensity exercise can actually balance cortisol levels by training the body to adapt to stress.

Cortisol can become problematic when it’s chronically elevated. “It’s unmanaged stress that’s the real problem, not a challenging workout,” says Sarah. “Telling midlife women to avoid intensity because of cortisol spikes does more harm than good, since strength and cardio capacity are exactly what protect them long term.”

Myth: Older adults should avoid lifting heavy objects or high-intensity workouts.

Go gentle. Take it easy. Don’t push yourself. Jennifer Short, a personal trainer at a retirement community, has heard variations of these instructions over and over again. “This is simply not true,” she says. “That’s not how we improve over time.”

To improve over time, you need to give your muscles a new stimulus by changing up your workouts and making them harder. In strength training, that’s known as progressive overload: gradually increasing the weight, repetitions, time under tension or range of motion of an exercise as you become stronger.

That doesn’t mean every older adult needs to lift a barbell loaded with 100 kilograms or more. ‘Heavy’ is relative to the person. “My cue for this is to make a squishy face,” says Sarah. “If you can smile through an entire set, the weight’s too light. You should need to scrunch up your face a bit to get the last couple of reps out, always with good form and a rep or two left in the tank.”

The same goes for high-intensity interval training, or HIIT. “Not only is HIIT not too hard, it’s actually beneficial (and completely doable) for older adults,” says Sarah. HIIT doesn’t mean sprinting until you collapse; it’s just structured intervals of easy and harder efforts, where you work to raise your heart rate for a short burst of time and then let it recover before you repeat.

Sarah teaches it on a rowing machine, which is total body and low impact. “By changing stroke rate and effort level, my students can easily dial their intensity up or down,” she says.

However, someone who’s new to strength training shouldn’t jump straight into heavy weights or high-intensity workouts. Start with loads you can control with good form, and gradually make the exercises more challenging as your body adapts. People with medical conditions, injuries or major mobility limitations would also benefit from an assessment by a physiotherapist or other qualified professional before starting.

Myth: Balance problems should be trained mainly with balance exercises.

Falls are a major threat to health and independence as we age, so balance drills (like standing on one leg) are often prescribed to older adults. These exercises are useful, but they may not be enough on their own to prevent falls – it’s best to do them in conjunction with a total-body strength training routine.

“It doesn’t matter how long you can hold a single-leg stance if you can’t stay in control when your foot hits the ground,” Stephen says. He suggests that exercises focusing on leg strength, core strength and power (the ability to produce force quickly) will “keep people upright.” A few examples of exercises that target these factors: single-leg glute bridges, planks and squat jumps.

Myth: You’re too old to start exercising.

One of the most damaging misconceptions that all trainers who work with older adults hear constantly is that people who never exercised when they were younger are too old to start now.

For older adults who have spent years hearing that ageing means slowing down, Claudette thinks the message needs to change. “The truth is, it’s never too late, and there’s always a way to work around pain or strengthen muscles that can help alleviate the pain,” she says. “As long as someone is physically able and medically cleared, they can start.”

While your exercise routine may not look the same at 70 as it did at 30, the goal is to keep building the physical abilities that allow you to do as much as possible, for as long as possible.