as you age from 20 to 30 to 40 plus the game of building muscle changes some people believe that the younger you start the more moldable your body will be meanwhile others believe that your full muscle building potential won't be achieved until you're at least in your 30s regardless as you age you may have to start doing things differently like adjusting your protein intake your exercise selection your rep range and maybe even your hormones unfortunately there are many misconceptions and most people don't know how to maximize their results as they age past their 30s 40s and so on so this video will help you understand the ideal steps to take as you get older first let me start by saying that you can definitely gain and maintain muscle well after your 30s sacropenia is a term that refers to age-related muscle weakening while muscle loss was often thought to begin in your 30s research shows that most people only start losing lean muscle mass around age 50 at a rate of around 0. 4 or about half a pound per year but this doesn't mean that you'll necessarily lose muscle as you age because much of that muscle loss is a direct result of inactivity and an unhealthy lifestyle rather than aging staying lean active and eating healthy can delay muscle loss for many years in fact we can refer to a study that found that age doesn't significantly impact muscle growth as a result of strength training in individuals with ages from 18 to 39. on top of that research in high-level older athletes found no significant loss of lean body mass or strength from the age of 40 all the way up to 81 years old these findings challenge the common belief about inevitable muscle loss as we age which shows why it's important to maintain an active lifestyle at all ages rather than using your age as an excuse something else that most people don't realize is that it's mostly a myth that you'll need more recovery time between your workouts this is mostly untrue even as you age far past your 30s and 40s most people can train just as often as they did before while our recovery capacity can go down as we age the decline is much less significant than what most people believe in fact some studies show that there's no significant difference between young groups and elderly groups when it comes to recovery capacity at all for example research shows that while individuals in their 60s took more time to regain muscle Force than individuals in their 20s the older group actually experienced less muscle soreness another study found that individuals over 70 years old recover at a similar rate to those between the ages of 18 and 30 in the 72 hours following a rigorous eccentric training workout the study found no differences in terms of recovery time for Force production hormone levels and inflammatory markers and we can look at other studies that found similar results for example a study found that roughly 50 year old individuals recover as rapidly as those around 20 years old in the 48 Hours following a high volume isokinetic workout so just because you're getting older doesn't mean you have to train less purely from a recovery and performance perspective you can still get away with training regularly with that said one thing that you may have to consider changing to maximize muscle growth as you age is your rep range especially if your joints start to bother you research shows that people over the age of 30 and older individuals who lift weights experience similar muscle growth with both low and high intensity training or in other words they can see the same results whether they're using heavy or light weights however as you age from 30 to 40 plus it can potentially be better to focus more on higher rep training compared to lower rep training where you use really heavy weights and there are multiple reasons for this one reason is age-related loss of type 2 muscle fibers and motor units as you age fast twitch muscle fibers shrink and over time lose their nerve connections completely the number of type 2 fibers can drop by 25 to 60 percent whereas type 1 fibers experience only reduction ranging from zero to 25 percent as a result of Aging even though for most people this reduction in type 2 muscle fibers is primarily due to inactivity aging itself is very likely to cause these changes as well this is why you become more slow twitch dominant when you get older slow twitch muscle fibers are better at performing higher reps with lower weights and are also trained most effectively in that fashion the second issue lies in the decline of Motor Performance that goes hand in hand with aging as people get older their nervous systems Motor Performance weakens due to this your body has a harder time Contracting all muscle fibers and the pace at which you can contract those muscle fibers also become slower in other words muscle contractile velocity becomes more varied and slower aside from that spinal motor neuron cells may also die as you get older which is known as apoptosis due to all these reasons you'll gradually become less explosive as you get older instead of trying to work against your physiology as you age by doing more low rep heavyweight sets it can be beneficial to work with your body and incorporate more higher rep training instead such as shooting for a minimum of 10 reps now again it's important you understand that these factors don't necessarily kick in as soon as you hit 30.
they only happen slowly and gradually over time it's also highly dependent on what you've put your body through in your younger years so if you spent your 20s doing construction work or another physically demanding job where you might be holding heavy objects in awkward positions over your head using things like hammers or drills by doing these things you may feel pain in your shoulders whenever going heavy on exercises like bench presses or military presses even in your 30s luckily you can gain just as much muscle by sticking to a lower weight load and working on increasing your rep range it's not just demanding work that could put you into this position in your 30s or 40s if you were an athlete playing sports like football when you were younger your joints May fare better with lighter weights for more reps again this is more so something to keep in mind as you add decades to your life even with that said it doesn't mean you shouldn't lift heavier at all it's still a good idea to have a couple heavy sets as well with lower reps if you're not experiencing joint issues but your overall workout Trend should go towards higher reps over time another thing you may want to adjust is your protein intake even though it most likely won't be an issue in your 30s or maybe even your 40s as you get older past your Prime you can start to be affected by something known as anabolic resistance which refers to a reduction in the rate of protein synthesis after meals and strength training while this would definitely be considered a negative from a muscle building perspective the nice part is that it can be managed effectively simply by increasing your protein intake this is due to the fact that a primary cause of anabolic resistance is that the leucine threshold increases meaning that you need to consume a higher amount of the amino acid leucine to maximize protein synthesis compared to younger individuals for example in one study young individuals experience no further increase in protein synthesis Beyond 20 grams of high quality protein after lifting weights but elderly people showed a dose response increase all the way up to 45 grams of protein after resistance training despite this fact that you need more leucine as you age your total daily protein requirements don't actually need to change with age I know that may sound counterintuitive but the strategy to counteract anabolic resistance involves consuming fewer larger protein-rich meals to stimulate anabolic signals specifically older individuals should consume a minimum of around 0. 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per meal doing this can help you meet the leucine threshold with each meal and overcome anabolic resistance so a higher protein intake per meal suggests that two to four meals a day are typically ideal for older individuals as higher meal frequencies may not optimize protein balance muscle growth or might lead to excessive protein daily intake now keep in mind I keep saying older individuals this is a gradual process you won't immediately experience anabolic resistance the moment you turn 30 or 40. in fact it might not even start in many people until they're quite a bit older but it likely will happen over time which is why it is important to keep this in mind as you age something else to consider is that you'll begin to become more prone to injuries as you age this is another reason to focus more on higher rep training as you get older aging unfortunately causes a decline in connective tissue strength joints and tendons get weaker due to a lower rate of protein turnover which is caused by a decrease in growth hormone production lifting very heavy weights for low reps is especially stressful for your joints and connective tissues which is why you might want to focus more on doing higher reps and perform those reps in a more controlled fashion one thing you could do as you get older is Implement more eccentric training into your workouts because that is especially beneficial for maintaining strong connective tissues so that you can reduce your risk of injuries for example you can do really slow negatives on a bench press with a partner that assists you on the way back up or you can also do things like leg extensions with two legs up and one leg down there are many other similar techniques that you can apply to other machines to incorporate eccentric training as well even though injury prevent tension isn't the most exciting topic for building muscle it becomes more and more important the older you get because remember you can't train if you're injured and if you're constantly getting injuries because you're training like you're in your 20s you won't make much progress at all again there are different people so sometimes there are some people in their 30s that didn't do much physical work or activity in their 20s and they may have very healthy joints if you're one of those people and lifting heavy weight doesn't seem to bother your joints you can include more low rep training into your program either way it's better to focus on more controlled reps as well not only because it'll help you avoid injuries but also due to the losses in motor efficiency research actually shows that elderly trainees fatigue faster than younger trainees when they do explosive reps but not when they do moderate or slow reps so the older you get the better it is to do most of your sets with a moderate or slow tempo if as you age from your 30s to your 40s and beyond your joints don't bother you you can work on improve moving with some form of explosive training so that you can maintain the ability of your body to generate power quickly but from a muscle building and joint health perspective focus more of your workout on moderate and slower repetitions as you get older past your 40s it might also be beneficial to begin working on doing more training volume than before doing more total reps and sets can be beneficial as long as you're not currently suffering from overuse injuries research shows older people benefit more from increased set volumes compared to younger people for example one study found that older people experience a greater increase than younger trainees in protein synthesis and anabolic signaling when doing six sets instead of three sets per workout per muscle group on top of that a meta-analysis discovered that elderly trainees show a positive dose response relationship to training volume with no evidence of experiencing negative drawbacks at those higher volumes so just because you're getting older you shouldn't use that as a reason to train less if you want to maximize muscle growth doing more sets actually is the way to go as you age so that about wraps it up I really hope you enjoyed this video if you have make sure you subscribe to the channel and if you'd like any extra help with setting up your personal diet plan a workout plan along with the recipe book and a coach head on over to my website where you can get all of this for free just by sticking to the plan that we set out for you for six weeks to find out more click the link below in the description or you can head straight on over to my website at gravitytransformation.
