Personal Training · Strength for Seniors
Strength training for seniors, run by a physical therapist
One-on-one, with someone who knows what your joints have already been through. The goal isn't a workout. It's still carrying your own groceries up your own stairs in ten years.
This is usually the point people get in touch
- Getting out of a low chair has started taking a plan.
- You've been told to lift weights, but not by anyone who would watch you do it.
- You've had an injury and you're nervous about causing another one.
- A group class moves too fast and doesn't account for your knee.
- You've been active your whole life and something has clearly slipped.
- You've started letting other people carry things for you.
The point isn't the workout, it's what it buys you
Strength is most of what stands between someone and a walker. It is also the most reliably trainable thing about getting older, at any starting point, including after an injury and including in your eighties.
What's different here is who writes the program. I'm a physical therapist with a board specialty in orthopedics, so I know what loading a joint that has already been through something actually does to it. That means we can push harder where it is safe to push, which is the part a cautious trainer misses and the part a careless one gets wrong.
Your first visit
What actually happens
A real conversation
Your history, your injuries, what you can and can't do right now, and what you want to still be doing in ten years.
A movement and strength assessment
How you move, what you can tolerate, and where the real limits are. Not a fitness test you pass or fail. A starting point.
The explanation
What we're training and why, and which of your old injuries changes the plan.
A program you understand
What we do together, what you do on your own, and how it gets harder as you get stronger.
What we work on
Getting up and down
Chairs, floors, cars and curbs. The movements that quietly decide how independent you stay.
Carrying and lifting
Groceries, grandchildren, luggage, the bag of dog food. Strength you can point at.
Bone and joint health
Loading heavy enough to matter for bone, at a level your joints will actually tolerate.
Training around an old injury
A replaced hip, a repaired shoulder, a back that has opinions. We work with it, not around it.
Balance and stability
Strength is most of balance. What's left over we train directly.
Getting back after time off
An illness, a surgery, a long winter. Rebuilding without picking up an injury on the way.
Before you start
Am I too old or too out of shape to start?
No. Strength responds at every age, and the people with the most to gain are usually the ones most worried they've left it too late. We start where you are, not where a program says you should be.
Is this physical therapy?
No. If you're in pain or recovering from an injury, that's physical therapy and we should talk about that instead. This is training for people who want to get stronger.
How often would I come?
Most people train with me once or twice a week and do something on their own in between. We'll work out what actually fits your week rather than what looks good on paper.
Can you come to me?
Yes. I train clients at the Levin JCC in Durham and travel to clients across Durham, Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Hillsborough.
What if you don't think I'm a fit?
I'll tell you on the first call and point you toward who is. I would rather send you to the right person than take your money.
Start with a conversation
Tell me where you're starting from and what you want to still be doing, and we'll work out whether this is the right fit.