How to build real power (plus strength) after 50

15 power + strength exercises you can start doing right now to develop fast-twitch muscle that keeps you quick, agile and ready for any physical challenge that comes your way.

My first power+strength workout with a weighted mace, in February.

Physical strength is so important in the second half of life (and it’s never too late to start building it). But strength alone won’t keep you quick, agile and fully physically capable of handling unexpected challenges. You also need to develop power.

Strength and power are different abilities. And here’s a sobering statistic: Once you hit 50, muscle power declines roughly twice as fast as muscle strength.¹ Power is something I’ve put more personal emphasis on lately. Below, I recommend several exercises that anyone in good health can do to build strong and powerful muscles.

What is “power” and why is it important?

Strength is your ability to move a heavy thing. Power is how fast you can move it. And here’s a twist that many mature athletes may not realize: Heavy strength training alone doesn’t produce meaningful power gains in older adults. You can squat twice your body weight (though I don’t recommend bar squats) but your vertical jump and chair-stand speed will barely move. The reasons are mechanical and neurological: heavy lifting trains the nervous system to produce force gradually. Power requires the nervous system to fire fast—to recruit type II fibers quickly and synchronously. Slow, heavy lifting does not.

That accelerated decline in muscle power after age 50 is, in large part, a fast-twitch fiber story, and that’s why gyms are full of strong people who haven’t trained for power. Power is what gives your muscles quickness, and quickness is what gives out first in daily life. Power, not raw strength, allows you to:

• get out of a low chair or off the ground

• catch yourself when your foot hits the curb

• climb stairs two at a time (without holding the railing)

• throw fast, jump high, punch/kick with force (or deflect punches and kicks)

• accelerate and decelerate

• snap a towel, pan-toss an omelette or lift luggage into an overhead bin

• catch a falling object (or return a wicked tennis or pickleball drop shot²)

Muscles don’t have to be big to be powerful. They just need to be trained to contract faster and generate force more quickly. Here’s how anyone—women and men, younger or older—can start building more fast-twitch muscle power.

15 power + strength workouts you can start doing now*

Power is moving a weight quickly. So to create more powerful muscle for longevity, the solution is pretty simple: move weight faster. You can adapt your existing workouts to do that, of course, using a “slow/down, fast/up” rhythm to any movement.

Here are 15 specific exercises (with a couple video clips) that you can do at home or the gym that are excellent for building functional power into your strength training.

• 9 of the 15 movements below have 🅗 after them, denoting exercises you can do at home with no equipment or almost no equipment

• The mace bell exercise shown the photo above is not among the 15 power exercises below, but it is a great workout. If there’s interest, I’ll create a post on it.

• I marked my favorite movements with 🤘