We’re a bit of a broken record on this one, but the numbers on your birth certificate tell you far less about the type of training you should be doing than others would have you believe.

Just because you’ve accumulated a certain number of birthdays doesn’t mean there are areas of the gym you should no longer be frequenting. It certainly doesn’t mean particular movements are off the menu altogether.

If you’re 50, 60, even 70, and the training you’ve been doing your whole life still feels good and is still yielding results, crack on. Chances are, all the work you’ve done to get to this point is part of what’s built a body that’s still robust.

That being said, there are real physiological changes that come with ageing, and it’s handy to have a cheat sheet of exercises and tweaks you can start implementing as you pass the half-century mark.

This is by no means a prescription. Our advice? Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage on. Just maybe try raging with some of these exercises and adjustments to see if you can keep doing it with the same intensity for a little longer.

Your shoulders are front and centre in much of your upper-body training, so it’s useful to have a pressing option that lets you work around any niggles you’ve picked up along the way.

The landmine press gives you that nice, silky-smooth pressing arc. With one end of the bar anchored, you get some extra stability without being completely locked into a machine. You still need to brace and control the weight, but the angled path means you don’t have to take your arm straight overhead.

It’s a great pressing movement that can allow you to keep shifting heavy tin in your 50s and beyond. Because that’s what this is about: finding ways to keep pushing heavy weights as the years tick by.

How to do it: Place one end of a barbell into a landmine attachment. Kneel in front of the loaded end in a lunge position, holding the bar at shoulder height in the hand on your kneeling side. Squeeze your glutes, brace your abs and keep your ribs down. Drive the bar upwards and forwards, following its natural arc, without rotating your torso or arching your lower back. Pause with your arm extended, then lower under control. Complete your reps before switching sides.

Are deadlifts inherently bad for your lower back? Absolutely not. But a better question is: do you have lower-back issues when deadlifting, and do you want to do something about it, or simply find an efficient workaround?

You don’t have to chuck the barbell away. Plenty of people keep barbell deadlifting into their 60s, 70s and beyond. But the trap bar gives you another option.

Standing inside the bar, with the handles at your sides, lets you use more leg drive, often with a more upright torso. Many lifters find it easier to learn and more comfortable to load heavily. It doesn’t make your back bulletproof, but it may give you one less thing to worry about while you get on with getting stronger.

How to do it: Step into the centre of a trap bar with your feet around hip-width apart. Push your hips back and bend your knees to grip the handles. Create tension through your entire body, pull yourself down low, take the slack out of the bar and push the floor away. Finish by standing tall without leaning backwards. Reverse the movement under control and repeat.

Acceleration is an underrated quality, partly because so many of us simply stop practising it as we get older. Even if we’re doing plenty of cardio, it’s often slow and steady. Even a rapid 5K isn’t the same as out-and-out sprinting.

Keeping some speed work in your arsenal means you’re regularly asking your body to produce force quickly. That’s a useful quality when a five-a-side game rolls around, or when you need to bolt across the beach after a toddler waddling towards the ocean… all without accidentally tearing a hammy because you haven’t run this fast in decades.

Coach Courtney Fearon said it best on the MH podcast: we should approach sprinting more like strength training than cardio. That means a progressive warm-up, quality efforts and plenty of recovery between them. Just because you’re running doesn’t mean you need to treat it like a half-arsed jog.

How to introduce it: Start with one session a week. Warm up with easy running, movement drills and progressively quicker accelerations. If you haven’t sprinted in years, begin with short, controlled efforts below top speed, allowing several minutes’ rest between runs. Build speed and volume gradually over successive sessions. Runs of 50-100 metres can come later; they don’t need to be your starting point. Finish while you’re still moving well.

We could probably sell you on gymnastics rings just by showing you a picture of a gymnast’s biceps. But what they really add to your arsenal is freedom of movement.

With the landmine press, we’re using a little extra stability to our advantage. Here, we’re going the opposite way and giving you more manoeuvrability. During a ring pull-up, you can turn your hands and move your arms to find a path that’s comfortable for you, rather than fixing your grip to a straight bar.

We’re not saying that turning 50 comes with a compulsory collection of niggles. But statistically speaking, time gets us all. If you have picked a few up, rings give you another way to adapt the exercise and keep progressing.

They’re relatively inexpensive, fit in your gym bag and, if you have somewhere secure to hang them at home, unlock a lifetime’s worth of calisthenics training. You don’t even have to leave the house to get swole.

How to do a ring pull-up: Hang from a securely mounted pair of rings with your arms straight and feet off the ground. Pull yourself up by driving your elbows towards your ribs, allowing the rings to rotate naturally as you rise. Bring your chin above hand height, pause, then lower under control. If full pull-ups aren’t there yet, lower the rings and perform rows with your feet on the floor in an inverted plank position.

A powerful upper- and lower-body combo that takes you beyond your basic push-ups and squats – although we’d argue you should keep doing those well into old age, too.

The Hindu push-up takes you through a sweeping range of motion, building your chest, shoulders and triceps while asking your shoulders, spine and hips to move together. A dozen controlled reps in the morning can set you up nicely for the day. Think of it like yoga that also gets you jacked.

Hindu squats offer a similarly flowing dose of movement through the ankles, knees and hips. Find a rhythm and you can get your heart rate up, too. Both movements have a long history of keeping Indian wrestlers powerful far past their ‘prime’, and they’re worth integrating into your arsenal for their combination of strength, movement and conditioning.

How to do a Hindu push-up: Start in a press-up position, then lift your hips high into an inverted V. Bend your elbows, lowering your nose and chest towards the floor between your hands. Sweep your chest forwards and upwards, straightening your arms as your hips lower towards the ground. Push your hips back up to return to the starting position. Keep the movement smooth and cyclical throughout.

How to do a Hindu squat: Stand with your feet around shoulder-width apart and arms extended in front. Bend your knees and lower into a squat, sweeping your arms behind you and allowing your heels to rise as you descend. Keep your torso upright and knees tracking in line with your toes. Drive back up, returning your heels to the floor and swinging your arms forwards. Repeat rhythmically, aiming for the deepest squat you can comfortably muster.

We’ll say what we said with the deadlift: if you want to bench and barbell back squat for the rest of your life, and you can, absolutely go for it. Few tools let you load as heavily as a barbell, and the big compound movements are worth fighting to preserve.

But just like we said with the rings, if you’ve picked up a couple of niggles along the way, dumbbells give you more freedom to adapt your grip and range of motion around that training history.

Take the dumbbell bench press. You might not be able to use as much weight, but you can adjust your hand position to find a smoother motion for your shoulders. Plus, you can lower the weights into a deeper stretch. That gives you another way to challenge your chest without simply sticking more plates on a bar.

The same flexibility applies to shoulder presses and rows. The freedom dumbbells offer gives you more room to explore and make each rep work for your body. You may not need it now, but it’s a useful trick to keep in your back pocket.

How to do a dumbbell bench press: Lie on a bench with your feet planted firmly on the floor, holding a pair of dumbbells above your chest with your arms straight. Lower the bells slowly towards the sides of your chest, keeping your elbows from flaring straight out. Lower until you feel a deep stretch in your pecs, pause for a beat, then press back up explosively.

As with sprinting, this is about keeping explosive strength in the picture. Ageing plays a part in declining power, but so do habit and lifestyle. We become more sedentary and rarely call on our bodies to go from zero to 100 as quickly as possible.

The dumbbell snatch is a relatively accessible way to practise an explosive lift with a huge range of motion: from the floor all the way to overhead. It takes a little learning, but there’s far less technical complexity than its barbell counterpart.

Pick the weight up with one hand, squeeze the opposite fist to create tension and use explosive drive from your legs and hips to pull it upwards before punching it overhead. Keeping these in your routine gives you a regular opportunity to train power in a simple fashion. Keep the reps crisp and stop before they turn into a slow grind.

How to do it: Hinge down and grab a dumbbell from the floor between your feet, keeping your knees soft and back flat. Squeeze your empty fist. Explosively drive through your hips and knees, using the momentum to pull the dumbbell close to your body and punch it overhead in one fluid movement. Finish standing tall with your arm locked out. Lower under control to your shoulder, then the floor. Switch hands and repeat.

Many of your movement skills operate on a use-it-or-lose-it basis. If you want to maintain the ability to bound around quickly, it makes sense to keep some jumping in your training, alongside moving heavy weights.

Broad jumps, vertical jumps and other plyometrics give you ways to practise producing force quickly and controlling the landing. Choose the variation that matches your current ability. If you haven’t left the ground in a decade, start with small jumps and controlled landings before chasing height or distance.

How to do a broad jump: Stand with your feet around hip-width apart. Push your hips back, bend your knees and swing your arms behind you. Drive through both feet and swing your arms forwards to jump ahead. Land on both feet with soft knees, allowing your hips and knees to bend to absorb the impact. Regain your balance and reset before repeating. Start with short distances and a handful of quality reps, resting fully between sets.

Look, if your goal is to stay athletic, make sure your training sessions actually look athletic.

Being over 50 doesn’t mean retiring from hard training. It doesn’t necessarily even mean adjusting your training. But if you’re reading this list and noticing things you haven’t done for 10-plus years, despite quite liking the sound of what they offer, maybe it’s time to rethink your weekly plan.

Start implementing some of these movements and adaptations if you want to be ready for whatever life throws at you, for as long as possible.