SAFR - a path to fitness in your 50s and up

More progression, less risk of injury

©️Stuart Collingwood, 2025

I have been exercising with varying degrees of frequency and intensity for almost 40 years. Following the wake up call following the DEXA scans in my earlier posts - and the new body recomposition goals I now had - I had to rethink much of the way I approached training.

In the past I have tended to focus on just one activity at a time - be that cycling for endurance (I used to do long distance events called sportives where you might also need to drop weight to make climbs easier) or weight training for adding muscle (particularly when I was in 20s and 30s where too much cardio could actually undo the gains). I would tend to over-index on each, often incurring injuries which would then kibosh my progress. Now I needed to work with the twin goals of losing body fat (and the important visceral fat) as well as retain and ideally add lean muscle mass.

Minimise the risk of injury

In designing the plan (which I have been following for more than a year now) I knew from first-hand experience that it must focus as much on minimising the risk of injury as making progress towards the body recomposition goals. I might think I am still 18 but the body absolutely has other ideas…..

This necessitated taking a long-term view on that progress - this would definitely not be a 30 or 90 day “get-fit-quick” plan - it needed to be more of a lifestyle approach (and also for the nutrition plan) that could be followed consistently. You really do need to “do the work” and stick with it which is why it’s super important to do activities you really enjoy and won’t tire of. Whatever the shirtless, six-pack’d Instagramer says there are no 30 day quick fixes, especially as you get older. It’s the stark reality, especially if you want the benefits to be sustained into your golden years - it takes time and consistency.

SAFR

I wanted to give this new approach a simple (and hopefully memorable) moniker. I landed on SAFR as it reflects that focus on ensuring you can be consistent through steady progression, uninterrupted (hopefully) by injury.

This approach has worked for me; as I mentioned previously I am not qualified personal trainer (and have no medical training) and your mileage may vary but with this approach I feel in the best shape of my life at 56 - improved overall fitness, functional strength, posture, flexibility and stamina.

It sequences the four key areas I believe you need to think about.

I am going to touch on each one here and I’ll dig into them all with more detail in subsequent posts.

Strength

Fun fact: age-related muscle loss - Sarcopenia - accelerates after 50. It actually starts in your 30s. It’s crucial that we maintain both strength and lean muscle mass as we age. This can particularly affect women where they have not done much in the way of resistance exercise over the years. My wife Lisa has made strength training a core part of her programme over the last year after she learned her bone density was poor from her DEXA scan. Muscle contractions actually stimulate bone development. Strength and muscle tone help prevent falls, give us the functional ability to move, left, push and pull - all facets for daily life. We are not talking body building here with your ‘bros’ in the gym (although that may be your goal, and you will notice aesthetic improvements at all levels) - it’s more about being able to be as active as possible. Maintaining this as we age can also help massively with remaining independent long term.

Aerobic

I mentioned Peter Attia’s book Outlive in a previous post. He separates aerobic health into two areas - low and high intensity. Specifically, with respect to high intensity he refers to VO2 max - this is your aerobic capacity (and I’ll cover this and testing for it in a future post). Many data sources point to a really strong correlation between longevity and VO2 max. At lower intensity you want to be able to maintain a good walking pace, be able to talk easily and sustain it. We all need to work on both. So I alternate these sessions.

Flexibility

I have spent 30+ years sitting in a chair hunched over a desk in front of a computer, on planes for extended periods of time travelling, riding my bike or just simply catching up on all the Netflix I missed doing all of the above. I am sure this will resonate with many of you. The body just tightens up as you get older. Moreover, tightness can introduce imbalances and lead to injuries. Once present these imbalances can be tough to accurately diagnose and time consuming to eradicate. For years I would have a cursory stretch after a session and think I was done….. Couldn’t have been more wrong. As the physical niggles developed I decided to learn more about the body’s fascia and how it impacted postural and other issues which led me to start Pilates with a brilliant instructor (Claudia) and I can’t overstate how impactful that has been after almost 2 years. Flexibility is so important.

Recovery

This is the area which I believe is the most overlooked when training in your 50s and up (and, to be honest, across all age groups). Recovery from exercise when you’re 25 is materially different when twice that age. It’s crucial. Recovering from the stress that you place your body under in each session is when the adaptations to those stresses actually take place - it’s not during the sessions. Treatments could be deep tissue massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, osteopathy - whatever your body responds to (as our bodies respond differently) - but I strongly believe you need to incorporate it, and regularly. This recovery has the benefit of moderating the pace of progression so that, in turn, it’s more sustainable and deliberate and less likely to lead to injury. Recovery days might be a massage or just a long walk. I used think recovery was a day’s exercising lost. That’s simply wrong. They all count.

So how do we turn all of this into a plan?

If I go back in time my sessions were frequently much too close together. I would train the same body parts in the gym, often on subsequent days, or do too many back-to-back bike rides just because more is better, right?! The next thing you know, you’re fatigued or you've developed an imbalance, and then the next reality is you've got an injury.

So my suggestion is to think of exercising using this SAFR framework. Exercise plans are typically positioned as a Monday to Sunday thing. My approach has been to structure it in terms of a rolling block of strength training, aerobic training, pilates, or yoga, or whatever it is that you do the recovery day and then start again. That way, for example, your strength training is every four days, which, when you're in your 50s, is plenty - assuming the intensity of each session is sufficient - because the muscles you just used need to recover.

These days I notice that whenever I try and do two days between strength sessions I am just not fully recovered. Three days and I am still only ~80% recovered. Progression stalls, overtraining kicks in, you get fatigued, and then you're not sleeping properly, and it just cascades from there.

Another benefit of this four day split is that it leads to better variety. You're not doing the same thing every day, you know? When you next come to do an aerobic session you’re fresh.

So the sequence looks something like this:

Monday - Strength

Tuesday - Aerobic (High intensity)

Wednesday - Pilates

Thursday - Recovery (Massage)

Friday - Strength

Saturday - Aerobic (Low intensity)

Sunday - Yoga

Monday - Recovery (Long walk)

Tuesday - Strength…. (And repeat)

It’s essential that you start gently if you are new to exercise. This is where working a personal trainer - who can assess you in person - is super beneficial to ensuring you don’t overreach and hurt yourself. Nothing kills your enthusiasm or burgeoning training progress faster than an injury.

If you’re more experienced with your training then you will likely have a sense for the intensity you need to ensure gradual progression but it does need sufficient intensity. If you are doing a strength session only every four days it needs to count. Ditto the other sessions. I want to see my HR elevated on a long walk, get a sweat on with the cross-trainer, and feel the impact on my muscles. Then gradually increase that intensity as you get stronger, fitter.

I’ll be sharing more on each of the SAFR elements - and much more, including nutrition - over coming posts so please subscribe and share. I’d love to get some feedback so please comment below.