Finding gains as a busy 45+ year old

Bigger Stronger Leaner Over 35 Lifter
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I returned to lifting a few years ago after hardly touching a barbell since my 20s. I was 42 when I started. I’m 46 now and am getting better gains now than I did then. No “beginner gains” for me. I just wanted to share my experience over the past few years.

Note that I’m 100% recreational. The only thing I’m competing with is the second date that will be engraved on my tombstone.

The first 3 years I did the usual thing: try out lots of different weekly splits, lots of exercises, and lots of intensity/volume experiments. Ate massive amounts of protien and carbs, fearing I was leaving gains at the table if I didn’t… Despite really needing to reduce fat. Always felt that I was just “not getting it”. I watched videos, got informed, misinformed, and everything in between. Eventually I discovered a pattern that works for me.

  1. Stopped worry about the numbers. I stopped tracking everything; instead I began listening to my body to know how to train to failure and beyond. Tracking numbers is great for many… but for me, my workouts are quicker and I’ve learned that I tend to get better stimulus by “feel” rather than by looking at the numbers.

  2. I learned how to truly push each muscle to failure and beyond. I learned a lot from the Heavy Duty/HIT guys like Mentzer and Yates even though I don’t follow them strictly. This usually means lighter weights, slower reps, and occasional static holds. I also learned how to use exercises that work the muscle in a stretched position, and also exercises that do the opposite by allowing a maximum contraction. Both work well but feel different and seem to give different results.

  3. I only lift 2-3 days per week now. I quit worrying whether I hit each muscle every week. Life for me currently is busy and emotionally difficult, and thus I struggle to recover if I hit every muscle every week (or multiple times per week).

  4. I follow a 4 day split: Push - Legs - Pull - Legs. But those are two different type of leg day.

Push - Chest, Tricep, Shoulder presses, and side laterals.

Legs- Calves and quads. Usually squats are the dominant lift on these days.

Pull - Lats, Biceps, and shoulder pulls. Rows, lat pulls, shoulder rows (upright rows, facepulls, etc).

Legs–Calves and Posterior chain. RDL, Deadlift, back hypers, leg curls, for example.

Sometimes it takes me 2 to 3 weeks to get all 4 days in, due to having a busy, messy season of life.

Despite this, I’m gaining better than I did back when I was just in there 5 days a week thrashing around, not understanding how to get good muscle stimulus.

I’m sharing this in case it helps any especially at my age. Get a good intense workout, learn how to truly fatigue that muscle, then have no shame in resting for 2-4 days. Light cardio if you can on days off.

Above all. Don’t let the grind demotivate you. Some days you may sit in the parking lot of the gym trying to talk yourself into going in there. Sometimes you’re just being lazy. Sometimes you legitimately just need to de-stress and recover for another day.

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Thanks! The motivation I need as a 47 year old guy. Used to work out in my late 20’s and work has been busy since then.

Slowing down at work and really looking to get myself back into shape. I’m trying to read more on how it’s like for an older guy will recover. Starting day for me is tomorrow 5pm!

-Gjaime

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I kind of get let down when threads like this start, then stop.

Original post, BadGaskets, are you still at it? How long do yor sessions take? Are you doing one set per exercise? What does beyond failure mean? rest pause, forced reps, drop sets?

How are your workouts going now?

Good luck to you.

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Helps to properly tag op @BadGaskets.
That should send him an email if he’s still around.

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It makes total sense to not pay attention to numbers using very slow reps because you will be very disappointed mentally if you did.

Well, speaking for me anyway.

I do 1-2 intense sets throughout the day but I focus on numbers which means speed and even sloppy reps, however I do notice the stronger I get, the heavier I can do a slower rep with.

Same can be said for doing say a heavy day using a single slow rep should increase your lighter days of slow reps.

So I’m actually wrong, but that still requires measuring your numbers and reps.

ERR, I should have just kept quiet here……

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Yes, definitely still at it. Same opinion, I love it. Easy to build up a lot of fatigue that can hit you all at once if not careful but I still love it.

The only change is that I’m more likely to add in an hour of zone 2 or 3 cardio weekly , but still doing 2-3 days in the gym lifting.

Going to failure and beyond means that once I get to where I can’t push another normal, safe rep, I’ll start doing the “beyond” things like half-reps, cheat reps, or perhaps dropset/myoreps. Basically look up Mike Israetel on Myoreps and Mike Mentzer/Dorian Yates on the other “beyond failure”. Use whatever works for you.

Knowing when to stop is tricky. With chest presses and triceps, I can keep doing Myoreps for way too many reps/sets. Just because you CAN take a 10 second pause and bust out a few more reps, that doesn’t mean you should. Usually I’ll get to the point where I’ve done 5-10 additional half-reps or Myoreps and then stop. That seems to be when I get the best stimulus without digging too deep of a recovery hole.

I usually do two sets on most. First set is just a warmup or “feeler” set, but it’s still what most people call a working set. It’s a weight I can do usually 10-20 reps on before hitting basic fail. Depending on how that set goes, I’ll add or remove weight before doing set two. Once I do that feeler set, I’ll take a break, and then do the set where I go to fail and beyond.

Squats, Romanian Deadlift I only do straight sets as close to normal fail as my body will allow. I have not found “going beyond fail” on these two to be safe. I’d probably hit cardiac arrest or torn hamstring before I hit muscular fail. Especially the squats.

My way of really doing a good leg workout is to hit the major muscles using isolation FIRST. My quads grow much faster if I do a full-on fail/beyond approach on leg extension before I go do squats or leg press. Since I cannot safely squat “beyond fail”, I take my quads there first. After a few minutes to catch my breath and clear out the acid burn in my quads, I load up the squat machine (I don’t barbell squat). Usually, I try 10-20 reps with lighter weight. No regrets.

I’d do the same with RDL if I could. My preference would be do Leg Curls to fail and beyond first the go do RDL and I’ve done that many times, got great growth out of it. But, I have some unusual neurological issue that makes me far more prone to hideous hamstring cramps if I do anything involving knee flexion without doing really, really long warmups, so I have to do hamstring backwards. RDL and back hypers are relatively safe, they nearly never trigger a cramp, so I’ll do those first (one or the other). Then, I’ll finish up on leg curls. I have to buy recliners that have the arm-flip lever on it, because if it’s the type that requires you to fold the footrest down with your feet, I’ll get a sudden ham cramp out of it.

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