Peak-Muscle.com  

Welcome to the Peak-Muscle.com forums.

You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. Come join us in on one of the best online fitness communities. We have 16,000 members that are likeminded towards a fitness, bodybuilding lifestyle. Registration is free and only takes but a few minutes. By joining our free community you will have access to communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. You will be able to create threads to discuss and or create a fitness regimen. Or just bounce ideas off of some very knowledgeable members. So don't miss out. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!

Register FAQ Members List Calendar Arcade Mark Forums Read
Go Back   Peak-Muscle.com > Bodybuilding and Fitness Discussion > Over 50 and beyond.
User Name
Password

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 09-21-2020, 05:43 AM   #1
liftsiron
Administrator
 
liftsiron's Avatar
 

Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Cimmeria
Posts: 18,385
liftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant futureliftsiron has a brilliant future
The New Rules of Over-40 Lifting

The New Rules of Over-40 Lifting
Keep Making Gains Like When You Were Younger
by TC Luoma | 09/13/19


Pretend for a second that you're an aging professional athlete. Your joints are a little achier than those of your younger teammates and your reflexes aren't as spectacular, but you've still got most of your game.

Now tell me, should you, as an aging athlete who wants to continue to play at a high level, or an even higher level, start training harder or easier?

Harder, of course. Or at least a lot smarter. Otherwise, your skills will diminish. You no longer have some of the luxuries of youth, so you can't take your abilities for granted. There's no time to slack off.

If that's the case with older athletes in football, baseball, hockey, MMA, or just about any other sport, why are physique athletes told by almost everyone to take it easier when they get older?

It's as if 40 is an expiration date tattooed on your fanny when you come tumbling out of the womb and once that date is up, you better give up squats or deadlifts or lifting anything that weighs more than a box of Depends, which contains exactly what you'll soil if you ignore that advice.

They tell you that you should likewise pay more attention to recovery – maybe once a week do a couple of sets, between which you go to the park and feed the ducks.

I say bollocks to all that. I realize there are some differences between 25 and 40, and probably a lot of differences between 25 and 50, but not as many as you might think, especially if you have at least 10 years' worth of training experience by the time you hit your "expiration date."
ADVERTISING

In most cases, you shouldn't start to take it easier when you near 40 or 50 or even beyond. In fact, that's the time you need to kick your training up a notch if you want to stay in the game. There are, however, some hard truths that you'll need to swallow.
Work Capacity
1 – Build Up Your Work Capacity

You can't train hard if merely pulling your pants on makes you wheeze. You need to do cardio or metabolic conditioning or whatever term you feel comfortable with. How do you expect to work hard if your lungs don't have the sass to carry on?

Moreover, your cellular batteries – the mitochondria – start to wear out, get lazy, take extended vacations in Cabo, or die as you get older. They need a kick in the pants so they get to multiplying, and that's what intense exercise provides.

Fear not, though, because you don't have to devote hours and hours to all that tedious, conventional aerobic training stuff where you sit on a stationary bike for an hour as your panini-ed prostate swells up to the size of one of those sand-filled Bulgarian bags.

Instead, at least three times a week, get on the treadmill, rower, or yes, stationary bike for a measly 10 minutes for some HIIT-style training. Focus on all-out efforts of 20 seconds, followed by 60 seconds of "active recovery."

On a treadmill, that might mean setting the speed at a leisurely 3 miles per hour and then cranking it up as fast as your little stubby legs allow for about 20 seconds, after which you'd drop the level back down to 3 again for a minute or two before you do another round.

You could do the same thing on a stationary bike or rower, or you might prefer short sprints followed by walking-recovery periods.

Alternately, you can crank up the incline on the treadmill to the Himalaya setting, or as high as it goes, and trudge uphill, Sherpa like, for 30 to 60 seconds before zeroing out again.

This type of training has been shown to increase mitochondria. That, coupled with the increase in endurance you'll experience, will allow you to lift as hard as you need to.
2 – Do More Work. Lots More Work

Doing 3 sets of 8 and going home is no longer going to suffice. It may have worked when you were younger and had testosteroned-up tiger blood flowing through your veins, but not so much when you've got a 50/50 blend of tiger blood and prune juice squirting through your plaque-riddled vessels.

That's why damn near every workout should contain an extended set, drop set, or finisher of some kind and if you're not making an ugly, just-got-burned-by-dragon-fire face at the end of it, you didn't work hard enough.

Do strip sets on leg press or Smith machine squats. Rep out. Pull a plate. Rep out. Pull a plate. Rep out. Pull a plate. Rep out. Collapse into a fetal position.

Try Paul Carter's 10-6-10 method on an exercise or two. That's a 10-second isometric followed immediately (using the same weight) by 6 full-range-of-motion reps done with a 3-5 second eccentric, followed immediately (again with the same weight) by 10 partial range, little grunt reps. Here's what it looks like:

Or pick a weight that you can do about 10 reps with. Look at the wall clock and note the time. Give yourself 5 minutes to do 50 reps with the same weight, taking little bitty chunks of rest in-between sets to failure. If you actually hit 50, the weight was too light.

Mechanical advantage barbell curls like this work well too:

A1. Reverse barbell curls for 6 to 8 reps.
A2. Drag curls for as many reps as you can.
A3. Standing barbell curls for as many reps as you can.

You get the idea. It sounds counter-intuitive and it smacks of weightlifting heresy, but you've got to train harder than when you were younger if you want to stay in the game.
3 – Screw Your Achy Joints

Having achy joints is no excuse to let up. Everyone who's been doing any serious lifting for at least 10 years wakes up in the morning feeling like they spent the previous day trying to ride the back of Bodacious the bucking bull, and was flung clean over the stands into the deep-fried Twinkie concession stand.

Get over it. Sure, you can do your stretching, that hot Yoga where they treat you like a pork dumpling, or whatever rehab exercises fit the situation, but for the most part, you're always going to hurt.

Your recourse is to simply get smart about it – do exercises that don't hurt the particular joint; use grips or foot positions that allow you to train with no pain; do a reduced range of motion, or lower the weights with a slower tempo. A good 4-second descent should take the strain off any angried-up tendon.
4 – Say Goodbye to Sets Under 5 Reps

This is your one, big, lifting concession to Father Time. You should forget about doing sets for fewer than 5 reps. There's just no need to use such heavy weight, and the risk of suffering an injury that you can't work around, like tearing tendons or ligaments that just aren't as spry as they used to be, is just too great.

No worries, though. You can stay plenty strong by devoting some time to sets of 6 to 8.
5 – Lots of Days Off Are a Luxury You Can't Afford

The conventional thinking is that old bastards need to take more time off sitting at home in an easy chair eating protein-laced porridge until the poor old coots can gather the strength to get up and shuffle-walk to the gym.

It's true in one way, but false in another. Sure, older guys need to focus on recovery more than younger guys, but they often convince themselves to take off more time than necessary. They end up taking off because the mass of sweaty, training humanity says they're supposed to, rather than taking time off because they need to. The incessant recovery drumbeat messes with their heads.

But older guys can't afford to take too much time off, unlike younger guys. If you're young and you miss a few days, it's no big deal. Your body is perpetually in the orderly throes of negenthropy, which is the opposite of entropy. The young body grows no matter what, while older guys' bodies have the propensity to deteriorate.

The old guy must continually fight against that dying of the light, and he can't fight it by taking off too many days from the gym. Don't trust how you feel, either. Your mind wants you to take a day off. It wants you to get a nice mani/pedi because anybody whose opinion of you matters at all is already at the gym so they won't see you getting one.

There's one thing that should tell you when to legitimately take a day off, and that's your training log. If it tells you that on Tuesday you failed to exceed, or at the very least, meet the previous workout's numbers, it's time to take a day off.

If not, get thee to the gym, just as you have since time immemorial.
Lifter
6 – No More Stupid Bro Splits

You're not 15 anymore. The traditional bro split where you train one body part each workout (usually 5 workouts a week) isn't efficient or effective, especially for an adult with a job who actually communicates with real-live women in their non-pixilated form.

Your muscles recover in about two days, so why let them go fallow for a whole week? Besides, what happens if life intervenes and you miss a day or two one week? That mucks up the whole schedule and you might not train the same body part for another 8 to 10 days instead of 7.

You're much better off doing an upper body/lower body split where you work out 4 days (or even 6 days) a week:

Monday: Lower Body
Tuesday: Upper Body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Lower Body
Friday: Upper Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

As Charles Staley pointed out in his The Single Most Effective Workout Split, this upper/lower split does a couple of things:

It makes the best use of time. Since muscles recover in about two days, muscles trained on Monday should be trained again on Wednesday. If you don't, you're losing ground.
You get to train muscles more often with fewer workouts. With a bro split, you work out 5 times a week and each muscle gets hit once. With an upper/lower split, you work out 4 times a week and each muscle gets worked twice.

7 – Bend the Knee to Volume

Earlier I suggested giving up on sets of less than 5. That doesn't mean falling forever into the sticky 8 to 10 reps mire.

Everybody's been stuck on doing 8 reps forever, mostly because ancient, cave-man lifters began a tradition of doing 8. Doing 6 or 7 didn't feel like it was hard enough and doing 9 to 10 or more was talking-to-an-insurance-salesman tedious. But I say to you, Horatio, there are more beneficial rep schemes in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your weightlifting philosophy.

You can build plenty of size – perhaps even more size than you thought possible – by doing sets of 12, 15, or even 20 reps, especially since you've probably ignored higher rep ranges your entire lifting career.

You might incorporate these higher rep schemes into your workout by devoting the first training day (say, for upper body) of the week to sets of 6 to 8, devoting the next training session to sets of 8 to 10, and then the subsequent session to sets of 12 to 15 or more before starting the whole merry-go-round over again.

Are you skeptical of high reps? Try this protocol out a couple of times before you judge:

Pick a weight for just about any exercise that you can do for 20 reps using a one-second concentric (lifting part of the rep) and a two-second eccentric (lowering part of the rep):

Do the first set of 20 reps.
Rest just 30 seconds.
Do the second set of 20 (or as close as you can get to 20).
Rest 30 seconds.
Do a third set of 20 (or as close as you can get).
Stick worked body part in ice to cool the fire.

Researchers Fink, Kikuchi, and Nakazato (2018) found this method worked twice as well in building muscle in yes, experienced lifters, than the usual 8-rep sets. Case in point, higher reps work just fine, thanks, and they're much more forgiving on the joints.
8 – Deload That Spine When You Can

Granted, you need more rest than someone who's 25, and taking a daily nap might be impractical or a little too old-fogeyish for you, so consider spinal deloading. Doing this for just 20 minutes a day gives your spine a ton of relief, in addition to being restorative in general.

Just find some floor space and lie on your back with your lower legs and calves on an ottoman or chair so that your hips and knees are at a right angle. This takes the load off the discs in your spine and allows it to relax without having to contend with gravity.
Deload Spine

Plus, if you do fall asleep and someone catches you, you can just claim that you were doing a sophisticated spinal rehabilitation/restoration technique that's beyond their comprehension.
Don't Be a Smurf

Being young is kind of like a pro sports franchise in Denver – they've got an incredible built-in advantage by being a mile above sea level. Visiting players just can't hang as well. They start to turn blue like Smurfs from lack of oxygen.

To fix that, they have to train harder, work smarter, and dole out their energy and efforts into the right things. That's exactly what the gray or graying lifter has to do
__________________
ADMIN/OWNER@Peak-Muscle
liftsiron is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 06-20-2022, 08:54 PM   #2
Stickler
VET
 

Join Date: Jun 2022
Posts: 115
Stickler is on a distinguished road
Good/Fun Read. I'm 45 and I'm starting to get paranoid about join and certain long lasting muscle aches. Maybe I just need to say forget HIIT and also change up the bro splits. I still do bro splits for 6-8 reps.
Stickler is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2022, 11:51 AM   #3
1bigun11
Moderator
 
1bigun11's Avatar
 

Join Date: May 2022
Posts: 281
1bigun11 will become famous soon enough
Great article. Glad other people are saying this. As you get older you HAVE to work harder, not less.
1bigun11 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-22-2022, 02:08 AM   #4
Deacon
Vet
 
Deacon's Avatar
 

Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Belleview Psych Ward RM 213
Posts: 3,686
Deacon is just really niceDeacon is just really niceDeacon is just really niceDeacon is just really nice
harder but also smarter
__________________
Originally Posted by Doink the clown;
"Every gym has the tard who never gets bigger,never shuts up,and never goes away!"


"If you say you are not afraid to die either your lying or your a Ghurka,"

"Amatures built the Ark - professionals built the Titanic."
Deacon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-22-2022, 07:38 AM   #5
Roughrydr
Moderator
 
Roughrydr's Avatar
 

Join Date: Oct 2017
Posts: 2,160
Roughrydr is a name known to allRoughrydr is a name known to allRoughrydr is a name known to allRoughrydr is a name known to allRoughrydr is a name known to allRoughrydr is a name known to all
Great article. In my late 60's now i find it's more important than ever to.push myself, but still listen to my body. Ive been unable to train since June 2nd because i was being superman doing shoulders. Pulled my right shoulder out of socket doing military press with 275 on my rag tag bench press bench at home. Im not in my 50's any more. Im almost healed up, but letting it heal up before i rip.it out again. So lighter, higher reps, more compound movements, and above all quit trying to.impress my dogs. All tgey want is a treat or a butt rub anyway. Lol. Yep, smarter, but still find wzys to push it.
__________________
OFFO




Muscle Forged In Pain
Roughrydr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-22-2022, 05:30 PM   #6
Kluso
Vet
 
Kluso's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: East Coast
Age: 49
Posts: 869
Kluso has a spectacular aura aboutKluso has a spectacular aura aboutKluso has a spectacular aura about
Makes a lot of sense Lifts.
Kluso is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-25-2023, 09:18 PM   #7
metooharley
VET
 

Join Date: May 2023
Location: Northern Cali
Posts: 13
metooharley is on a distinguished road
I’m about to turn 63 and man it’s hard! For my 58th birthday I was working out with my son who is a big boy in the gym, very strong and just great to workout with. I told him I wanted to rep 405 on the bench, I was used to repping 375 so figured the 405 would be easy! Started warming up with 375 and on my second rep the bar hit the safty notch and it knocked my lift out of balance. Thought it was no big deal still lifted it back to the top and stopped! I couldn’t even lift a gallon of milk after that. Doctor said I need both shoulders replaced! I guess I just wore them out. Long story short is I’m not doing the surgery and I now no longer lift heavy. I lift still but lighter weight with reps until failure. Nope not nearly as big as I was but atleast I’m still able to lift and still strong, just not nearly as strong as my earlier years. Shoulder pain is a mother ever night, so started using a neoprene brace when I lifting for chest or anything that pulls on the shoulders ( which is about everything ).. Anyways glad to see I’m not the only old guy here!
metooharley is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-04-2023, 06:39 AM   #8
hrpiii3
VET
 

Join Date: Jan 2017
Posts: 33
hrpiii3 is on a distinguished road
I still go by these great suggestions. I just turned 57 this year and I miss lifting 'heavy' but still push my reps with lower weight. I keep my main lifts in the 6-8 rep range and lift what feels good for what my body can do. I still lift 4 days a week, still Pro-wrestling, still active coaching ball and working. I am still enjoying everything I can do and still look and feel great doing it. I miss benching over 450 lbs, but I know those days are gone, I lift smart and keep pushing.
hrpiii3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-04-2023, 09:11 AM   #9
Demigod
Moderator
 
Demigod's Avatar
 

Join Date: Feb 2018
Posts: 292
Demigod is on a distinguished road
Great article....I dunno how I've missed it. It really hit home.
Demigod is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-04-2023, 12:35 PM   #10
Massive G
VET
 

Join Date: Apr 2019
Posts: 57
Massive G has a spectacular aura aboutMassive G has a spectacular aura about
Great article over 50 here. I have been systemically reducing weight increasing reps slowing down reps for a few years now. My rep range used to be 4 to 6. Now it's 8 to 10 and I don't go to or pat failure. I can't train 2 days in a row. The fact about missing days is so true. When younger I could take a few days off extra and just grow and fill out. Now more than a few and atrophy and start to smooth out.
Also AAS a lot less smaller doses and cycles. I miss those days but seen far too many fall by the wayside from pushing the envelope.
Massive G is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 06:50 AM.


Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.