Be Invincible In Your 70’s & 80’s (Here’s How!)

Want to feel strong, independent, and unstoppable in your 70s and 80s? 💪
What if you could bounce back from illness, injury, or even surgery without losing your freedom? In this video, Dr. Jeffrey Guild, physical therapist, shares the secret to building a “buffer” of strength and resilience, so setbacks don’t knock you down.

For over a decade, we’ve worked with clients in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s who are living proof: you can move better, feel younger, and stay independent, no matter your age.

✅ Why most people in their 80s lose independence (and how to prevent it)
✅ The “mountain” principle: how building capacity now protects you later
✅ Real client stories of 84-year-olds squatting 20 lbs and standing up without hands
✅ The difference between just “getting by” vs. thriving in your later decades
✅ How resilience training protects you from falls, flu, hospital stays, and life’s surprises

This isn’t about “slowing down”, it’s about taking control of your future health. When you train strength, balance, and mobility the right way, you don’t just live longer… you live better.

⸻

📌 Next Steps:
👉 Share this with someone you care about who wants to stay strong and independent
👉 Subscribe for more proven strategies to move better and age stronger
👉 Explore our programs: optimovedfw.com/basic-exercises-for-older-adults/

#HealthyAging #StrongerAfter70 #LongevityFitness #PhysicalTherapy

These individuals used to have to use their hands to stand up from a chair, and they're in their mid eighties. So if you want to live a high quality life and live longer at the same time, you can have both and don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. And we know this because we work with people in their eighties all the time who are experiencing that, because they implement this fundamental idea in their life. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Doctor Jeffrey Guild, physical therapist, and we work with people seventy to ninety seven years old all the time, all day, every day to improve their independence and quality of life as they chronologically get older. And at the same time, they move more youthfully and act younger because of their improvement with their movement. So the fundamental principle that I often talk to our clients about is your ability to improve your physical abilities is a lot like climbing a mountain. A lot of times we will meet people, let's say in their eighties, let's say their eighty two, eighty three years old. And maybe by this time they're having problems standing up from a chair without using their hands. They have to push with their hands to stand up from a chair. Maybe their balance is not as good as it used to be. Maybe they're starting to fall a little bit here and there, and they notice that their balance is going downhill. They're not able to do as much as they were before. They used to play golf or tennis or or pickleball, and now they've kind of given those things up. But, you know, no big deal. That just comes with age, right? And what we're finding is these things are not necessarily true. So our physical abilities are a lot like a mountain. And a lot of times when we find people in these situations, they are it's kind of like living on a small hill. And if something happens, let's say you end up into the hospital, you get the flu, you get Covid, you have a fall, something happens. You go from a very small hill to just plummeting all the way down to the ground and then to recover can be very difficult. However, if you're able to improve your physical abilities in your eighties to the point where you're climbing the equivalent of a tall mountain, if something happens, then you drop down a little bit, but it's not too bad. You have a long way to go down before you reach rock bottom, and this is something we see all the time. They're having problems with their balance standing up from a chair, their cardiovascular system, their breathing systems. They're very medically complex already at a fragile point. They don't have much buffer. They don't have much reserve left to sustain anything else, especially if it's something major or even something simple, such as the flu. But if someone is in their eighties and they're able to stand up from a chair without using their hands many, many times, or even with additional weight. Let's say with a dumbbell or a kettlebell. And we have a few clients right now who are in their mid eighties, and they're literally doing what we call goblet squats in the strength, conditioning and fitness world. They're literally doing squats with dumbbells or kettlebells that are twenty pounds, going down slow and controlled, lightly tapping the chair and then coming back up. Pretty much a full squat with twenty pounds. And these individuals used to have to use their hands to stand up from a chair. And they're in their mid eighties. These individuals have a very large buffer to their physical abilities, to their health. If something happens to them then they may go down a little bit, but not very far. They are able to continue without missing a beat because their physical abilities are already very, very high. I'll give you an example. We have one gentleman who is squatting fifteen to twenty pounds, and he's eighty four years old, and he's also working on and does, kneeling down to standing up from a lunge position in the middle of the room without support. And he's able to do this several times with either leg. That's just a part of his daily workout routine, so he's already able to do that. So he had a little procedure that had to be done, and now he's coming back. Now he can stand up from a chair. He can do squats, he could squat with ten pounds instead of twenty, and he could stand up from the ground from that kneeling position. But it was really hard. But he could still do it. And now he's working back up to being able to go from kneeling to standing several times with each leg in one workout, without any physical assistance from anything else. And he's almost there again. So his ability to bounce back is tremendous because of the amount of work that he put into his body for about a year, year and a half. Because when we met him, he had to use his hands to stand up from a chair. His balance was not what it was before. His balance from our professional trained eyes as balance specialists was obviously bad. Now, these were subtle things that he was not noticing, but we could see. And now he can see the difference because he's dedicated himself working with us and on his own to improving his balance, to improving his strength and his endurance. Now he's walking his balance. His strength is better. His ability to just continue to live life and do things, to continue to travel, to play golf, to do all this stuff has improved because of the work that he put in. He has so much of a buffer now that he would not have had otherwise. I'll give you an example with me. There was an event that happened when I was walking with my two young children. One was a baby. He was six months old, and our daughter went down a steep hill on a scooter. And then I reacted very quickly and I stepped on the stroller. I was pushing and my foot went down very fast and I broke my foot. No problem. This was actually at the very beginning of the pandemic, about April twenty twenty, and I ended up for a few days having to be what we call non-weight bearing meaning. I could not put weight on that foot because they had to get the CT results back and make sure that there was nothing complicated, and I owned a mobile physical therapy practice. I had to continue to walk around on crutches. Now what if I was older? What if I was twenty pounds overweight? If I was out of shape? If I had not run six miles the day before that had happened, pushing two kids in a double stroller? What if I was not in the weight room on a regular basis? Make myself stronger? I would have been about forty years old and overweight and out of shape, and trying to hop on one leg while trying to take care of young children. And let's just say I have back pain, like most forty year olds do, who are physically inactive and overweight and out of shape. But instead, I was in a very different situation where I had no problems jumping around on one leg, on crutches, sometimes without crutches, with a boot on and going from one place to the next all day long, working, seeing clients all day long and helping to raise young children with my wife. I had so much more of a buffer because of the training that I had done before then, because I wasn't overweight, because of the muscle mass I had, because of the functional strength training movements I was doing on a regular basis long before this ever happened. And I've been training for years and years. So this was nothing when I had to just jump around on one leg for a few days and then end up being in a cast for another four weeks, there had to be healing time, but what if I would have been overweight and out of shape in forty years old? My ability to endure that injury would have been far, far worse. My ability to then be there for my kids, to be able to work and to see clients. What would have happened to my business? What would have happened to me as a father? Would I have ended up with prolonged injuries because of having to be on crutches for a time? And as it was, I was no longer injured and I was able to bounce back as quickly as would have been appropriate. Right? I came back as fast as was physically possible given the injury that I had, and this is what our older clients experience as well, when they improve their physical abilities, when people who are living in their eighties improve their physical abilities, not just the standard, you know, go to a silver sneakers class. All that stuff is great, but really getting after it, really improving their strength and pushing themselves the way that we know that can be done when people train and really increase that mountain peak of your physical abilities, then if something happens, you come down from a much higher mountain and so you don't even come close to hitting rock bottom. It makes so much less of an impact in your life if you get sick, if you end up in the hospital, if you have to get a procedure and you will be able to bounce back faster than you imagine. If you've seen people like this or you have thoughts on this, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Share your ideas in the comment section. We'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, if this has been helpful to you or someone that you care about, send it on to them. Subscribe to our channel and we'll get more information out to you, and we'll look forward to seeing you next one.