Design The Perfect Muscle Building Workout Over 50(Don’t Miss This Step)

Design the perfect muscle-building workout over 50(don’t miss this step)

Once we’re over 50, there are many good reasons we’d want to build more muscle. The need to offset age-related muscle loss, which keeps us functioning at a high level and protects us from injury as we age.

They did a study on 3,659 men and women. The men were over 55 and the women over 65. They followed up with them for 10 to 16 years and found that those with more muscle mass lived longer.

Who wouldn’t want a longer, more active life! With a fit physique better than what we had in our 20’s. That’s why today we are going to design the perfect muscle-building workout for you, the over 50 man.

Every good program starts with knowing what your goal is. Our goal is to build muscle, but we often have a secondary goal, for example, to build muscle and lose excess body fat or gain strength. These secondary goals affect programming.

Once we have our goal established, we need to decide how many days a week we can train. There is no point in setting up a 6 day a week program if you’re just going to miss 3 or four workouts every week.

Next, we have to decide how much time we have available to workout on those days. I like an hour workout, but you may only have 30 or 45 minutes available. This affects your exercise selection.

There is a minimum of 4 movements we need to have in every program. These should be compound exercises that involve multiple muscle groups.

We need an upper-body push like bench press or dips. An upper body pull like bent-over rows or pull-ups.

For our lower body, we want a quad-dominant movement which would include squats, lunges and even step-ups.

Then we have to have a hip-dominated move like deadlifts or hip thrusts.

If you choose to do full-body workouts 2 or three times a week, then you’ll want at least one of each of these exercises in every workout. You’ll do these at the beginning of your program, leaving secondary and isolation exercises for the end of the workout.

The number of sets you do will per exercise again depends on the time you have available. And it adds up fast; just doing 3 sets of each of the four fundamental movements makes for a 12 set total workout.

If you allow a minute and a half rest between sets, this brings us to 30 minutes, not allowing for a general warm-up before starting or any warm-up sets we may need throughout the workout.

A general warm-up shouldn’t take any more than five minutes, and for us over 50 guys, it’s essential. My warm-up includes a few minutes of light cardio to get the blood flowing and mobility work for my shoulders and low back.

If you keep the rest times down to a minute, this will give you time to get your warm-up in.

We’ll talk about longer workouts and accessory exercises, but I want to talk about warm-up sets first.

We should do a warm-up set or sets for the first exercise of every major muscle group, except for high rep training.

When training in the 15 to 20 rep range, we are already pretty warmed up by the time we reach those last few effective reps. This rep range helps to improve our work capacity and conditioning, which in turn improves our ability to recover and body composition.

Once we move down into the 10 to 15 range, we should be doing at least one warm-up set. The standard recommendation is to do a set of 5 to 7 reps with 70% of your working weight.

What I do for a warm-up is a bit different, going lighter between 50 to 60% of my working weight then do a set of 15 repetitions. This range is considered the best for muscle growth.

When you’re training within 5 to 8 repetitions, you need more warm-up sets. Usually, about five sets, with your first set being about half your working weight for 5 to 8 reps and your last warm-up set having one rep at 90% of your working weight. This is a good range for strength-based hypertrophy.

For those who have workouts that are an hour or longer, you can add a couple more exercises or sets. Usually, I find about 6 or 7 exercises per workout is perfect.

The next exercise I would add is for our shoulders. Traditionally it would be shoulder press, but if you have issues with your posture, you might want to add something for your rear delts and upper back like face pulls.

This leaves us with two exercises. Now’s the time to pick an exercise to help bring up a lagging body part or weak point.

If you are just starting to train, 4 or 5 compound lifts are all you will need to get muscle growth, but over time you will find to keep progressing, you’ll want to add in more exercises. Watch this video next to find out how to add in more exercises per muscle group without making your workouts any longer so we can keep working out while having fun.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4035379/
https://www.menshealth.com/uk/fitness/a759050/this-74-year-old-bodybuilder-is-taking-over-the-internet/