The workout that’s keeping me ripped at 53
- Jürgen DV
- Oct 15, 2020
- 7 min read
Updated: 9 hours ago
Creating or maintaining a toned, muscular physique after 50 years requires some special attention. Using the guidelines on exercises, nutrition, rest, and supplementation here below will already get you a long way.
“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine to see it” – Michelangelo
Can you still build a healthy, muscular physique once you get older ? YES!
There’s little doubt that building muscle after 50 and beyond goes slower than at a younger age.
Does that mean you can’t build a healthy, muscular physique once you get older? Absolutely not!
Celebrating my 50th birthday with a 90kg weight, I figured it was time to drop the long distance running habits and shift to strength training. While building up for a half marathon made it possible to drop down to 78 kg over a 12 week period, the weight quickly came back every time.
Middle-East temperatures and a runners’ heel injury made the decision easier. After 3 years with some great personal trainers and numerous inspiring books, the disciplined combination of regular exercise, healthy nutrition, adequate rest and recovery and a minimum supplementation finally produced the result I was looking for all my life.
How does muscle growth work? The magic of hypertrophy!
During a workout, you apply stress on a muscle which is greater than what’s it used to take. This muscular stress produces a number of chemical and physical responses at molecular level such as muscle tension (activating growth factors), muscle damage (causing inflammatory molecules and immune system cells to activate satellite cells) and metabolic stress (causing cell swelling due to addition of muscle glycogen).
After the workout, the damaged muscle fibers are repaired through a process at cellular level where muscle fibers link together to form new muscle protein strands.
Muscle hypertrophy (growth) happens when the rate of muscle protein synthesis is greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown. This happens mainly when you recover.
Hormones such as testosterone and IGF (insulin growth factor) are vital to muscle growth.
Strength training helps the body to release testosterone but also to make the muscle cell receptors more sensitive to your free testosterone, resulting in multiple advantages such as increased protein synthesis and number of neurotransmitters at the damaged fiber location, reduced protein breakdown and stimulation of numerous other important hormones. IGF will stimulate muscle growth by pushing protein synthesis, sending amino acid molecules to the muscle fibers and augmenting their glucose storage.
It’s important to understand the magic of hypertrophy for consideration into your exercise, nutrition, recovery and supplementation habits and if the text above raises more questions than answers, I hope the following video will do the trick:
In conclusion, keep “surprising” your muscles by creating higher stress than before (heavier weights, new exercises, less rest between sets, … ).
Muscles grow outside the gym, during recovery, not inside the gym, when muscle growth is stimulated. Sufficient micro- and macronutrients have to be available in your body to supply the muscle-building blocks (amino acids) and molecules for all chemical reactions surrounding muscle growth.
How to build muscle mass after 50?
I started my fitness journey with the MAXWORKOUTS program by Shin & Susan Ohtake.
This is a reliable, high-intensity interval workout program, very well documented, providing gym-newbies an excellent basis for strength building and fat loss. If you follow their guidance, you will get an injury risk-free, total workout system providing an excellent basis for further development.
Check out their proposal on https://www.maxworkouts.com/ , it’s not a hoax, price is reasonable and you’ll get plenty of professional exercises, videos, nutrition advice etc.
If you want to focus more on bodybuilding or muscle growth, you’ll need to grab some weights or try some bodyweight exercises like The Mindful Mover.
Unfortunately, after 50, you need to be extra careful for injuries, you’re probably too busy to spend hours in the gym every day and … all human processes including hormone production, recovery, metabolism, etc. run a bit slower than before.
If you follow some basic guidelines and consult with a professional physician before hitting the gym, most risks can be managed.
Exercise basics to remember!
1. Warm-Up: I switch between a 10’ walk to run (5’ walk at 6 kph, then +1 kph for every 1’ until 10kph) or a dynamic warm-up like this:
2. Routine: consistency is the basis for mastery and the best way to reach consistency is to fit your workout in the daily routine.
For me, the best time to work out is right after I get out of bed, 5am. In order to hit each muscle group at least 2 – 3 times a week, leaving 48hrs for muscle recovery. I use the following schedule:
Monday shoulders & back, Tuesday arms & abs day, Wednesday core/chest, Thursday leg day, Friday abs, chest, shoulders or arms, Saturday HIIT, Sunday rest.
3. Choose the right exercises: some exercises are riskier than others and can be replaced by good alternatives. The classic bench press for example can cause shoulder soreness for some while dumbbell presses, push-ups or chest flies can provide safer alternatives. Your trainer will also give you the most appropriate options for your specific target and body. Below there’s a list of classic exercises you can choose from:
Just send us an email if you want to use this excel file to track your progress.
4. Always focus on good form: it’s much better to perform the exercise in perfect form than to perform them with higher weights. Maintain a smooth, natural movement and avoid cheating or jerking, swinging (while doing curls for example).
5. Gradual progress: muscle building is a long term process and it can take weeks before you notice any change in the mirror. Track your progress on weight, #sets per exercise, #reps/set, rest time and other variables which you can record in any tool (I use the excel file).
6. Higher Reps: Try a higher rep range such as 15-20, using lower weights will be easier for the joints and better to avoid injury. You can still work the muscle to failure using this strategy.
7. Strategies to keep it challenging:
· Drop sets: research indicates at least equal and potentially better results from drop sets when compared to standard training, it seems sensible to make use of drop sets especially with limited training time.
· Focus on the eccentric phase: allow yourself more time under tension. The longer you’re lowering a weight (and lengthening the muscle fibers again), the more muscle fibers will be torn, signaling more muscle growth! Use negative reps at the end of a set if a spotter can help you to lift the weight and you lower it very slowly.
· Split body training (see above): working 2-3 different muscle groups in one session, is an advanced approach allowing to lift heavier weights and growing faster. The disadvantage is that this strategy doesn’t require the body to work as a unit.
· Total body training involves training every major muscle group each session. This intensive strategy promotes muscle building and fat burning while stimulating heart and lungs. Disadvantage is that it’s harder to fatigue each muscle group and motivation might go down.
· Circuit training works the whole body in a short time with a variety of exercises spread over 6 to 12 stations, performed back-to-back with no rest. After one circuit, you rest 1’ – 3’ and start again. This is great for a fat-burning, aerobic workout but not ideal for building muscle mass.
Most of all, it’s important to find a routine that you enjoy and keeps you motivated. It’s a great idea to vary between strategies to keep your body guessing and motivation high.
Rest and recover
Muscles are built outside the gym!
You need at least 7 – 8 hrs of good quality sleep and a minimum of 48 hrs of recovery time for each muscle group between intense sessions.
Sleep is crucial for strength training recovery and helps with muscle repair after a workout.
Along with dietary protein to aid in muscle repair and new muscle growth, your body produces its muscle-building hormones while you sleep, including human growth hormone (HGH). During your REM sleep, the muscles relax, which can help relieve tension and reduce symptoms of certain types of chronic pain. In fact, many of the critical restorative functions in the body—like tissue repair and muscle growth—occur mostly or only during sleep. A consistent sleep schedule of 7 to 8 hrs/night during a fixed time period will help the muscle-healing process.
Avoid any workout less than 2hrs before going to sleep.
Selecting the most suitable mattress, pillow, cover, and linen is where it starts. The next step is optimizing your sleeping environment: eliminate noise as much as possible, total darkness, room temperature around 18°C, no radiation (WIFI, Bluetooth, … ), then your sleeping routine: fix your sleep timing (I go to sleep at 9 pm and wake up at 5 am every single day), nutrition and exercise. Make sure to catch sufficient sunlight outside to get your melatonin (sleep hormone) production going! Avoid blue light or any stress at least one hour before bedtime!
“A few simple disciplines practiced every day will begin to change your life.” (Jim Rohn)
Conclusion
Understanding how muscle growth works and applying this knowledge in a balanced way over your nutrition, exercise and resting habits will help you to stay fit and why not, get you ripped!
To boost your results, there’s no harm in helping nature by getting appropriate vitamins and building blocks through supplementation but always consult with a medical physician to avoid any risks. Check here the article about the nutrition.
Remember, age is just a number in your head and there is no reason why being older than 50 should stop you from getting in the best shape of your life!
Take care and stay safe,
Jürgen
A bit of vocabulary:
Reps: the number of times you perform a move without stopping for rest
Sets: the number of times you perform a certain number of reps
Pyramid sets: a series of sets in which you increase the weight after each set but reduce the number of reps
Drop sets: a series of sets in which you start with a heavy weight, lift until fatigue, then reduce the weight and do another set until fatigue, pausing between sets
Supersets: different exercises back to back
Tempo: the speed at which you lift and lower the weight
Compound lift: an exercise that involves movement in two or more different joints (e.g. a dumbbell shoulder press moves both shoulder and elbow joints)
Muscular hypertrophy: the increase in the volume of muscle tissue due to the enlargement of its component cells.
Eccentric phase: an eccentric muscle contraction is the motion of an active muscle while it’s lengthening under load (lowering the weight for example).
References:
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