Ingenuous jokes aside, you and I both know that at our age, “growth” has probably peaked some time back anyway. But fullness and appearance CAN change with a thoughtful change in routine. Your mental outlook will benefit as well — and that may be the most important part. If you want to keep doing the same stuff over and over again and expect different results, that’s your decision.
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Agreed.
For myself, I found something interesting over recent years.
At 48, I was down to about 8% bodyfat, however, I ended up losing muscle over time with fat.
I had some moderate food poisoning back in late July…it dragged on for about a week. But because my diet was relatively low in calories, and I was not replenishing my body enough from the illness, my potassium and electrolytes became too low. I needed to be briefly hospitalized with an IV to get my levels back to normal.
My Dr. thought I was too lean for my age and felt a little more weight would be healthy for me. You want ‘some’ reserve as you age especially when encountering an illness as I did. This doesn’t mean you have to be overweight it, but finding a balance.
So, since then, I gained at least 15 pounds; half of it fat, but half of it lean bodyweight/muscle according to skin calipers, scale, and tape measure. Now, some of this is simply muscle I had when I carried more bodyfat. BUT, it’s still nice to see again. I’m aiming to stay more in the mid teens for bodyfat. Next year, I will get tested for glucose, lipids, etc. to make sure I am still good.
One thing I have also noticed is, increasing my training load/weight a bit seems effective. This has helped with the added calories and in some way the extra body weight helped me getting stronger. I had been using various cumulative fatigue methods for a while and I think the loads became too low as well.
I’d be thrilled with 16” arms!
I’m currently quite lean and I’ve lost some muscle in doing so. Probably will be looking at damage control over Christmas and then leaning out again. Then I can incorporate caloric surpluses to help with muscle gain while maintaining current fat lbs which is <19 lbs (I prefer to count lbs rather than % as latter is moving target i.e. 10% at 180 is 18 lbs whereas 10% at 165 is 16.5 lbs). At 62, 10% apparently is comparable to a younger man’s 5-8% due to greater visceral fat as we age. I do have visible vascularity in mid section now. If I find muscle gains not coming at <19 lbs, I may experiment with up to 23-24 lbs to see if If makes a difference. As has been stated in other posts , after decades of training and at my age, and modest genetics , the ship may have sailed long ago but it’s fun to try and to debate in a civil manner. By the way, I never claim to my clients that hit is the best, but that it is the SAFEST (if slow speeds and proper turnarounds are utilized) and the most efficient by far in terms of ROI of time. Freeing up time to obsess and debate on these forums. lol
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Wow, that’s the first time I’ve heard that on one of these forums , ha ha! It’s usually much more. Years ago at my biggest I got my arms up to 16 inches for about two months.Generally my arms hover around 15 to 151/2. I was doing a routine of 30-15-6 reps with maybe 30 seconds or less rest between sets and my arms were burning by the end of the sets. It involved some cheating , which I don’t like to do, so I stopped doing them. I never did go back and try it without the cheating. Then I got on to some other binge. I really liked the burn and how pumped up I got with them. My arms felt like they were going to explode.
Scott
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I believe I quote Dr Darden from a book or paraphrase that a true lean 16” arm is VERY impressive. 18 or more is crazy big. And he’s measured a lot of arms in his day