Picking something heavy up from the floor is the most useful thing you can train after fifty. It is also the lift people are most nervous about, usually because of a story about someone's back.

Start higher

We start with the bar raised on blocks or in a rack, at about knee height, so the first lift is short and easy to get right. Every two or three weeks it comes down an inch.

Go slower than you think

Five pounds a week is plenty. Leah, sixty-one, began at 45 lb from the blocks and pulls 135 lb from the floor a year later. Nothing hurt along the way, which was the point.