The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
The hosts Mitch and Bart discuss fitness, fatherhood, and guy stuff to help men live a great life, have fun, laugh, and get a little more fit in this weekly Podcast.
The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
Fun Bonus Pod: Bart talks Maximizing Muscle After 40
We uncover the nuts and bolts of maintaining and building muscle in your 40s and 50s through optimized gym workouts. This chapter of life requires smart training strategies as our bodies don't recover as quickly as they once did.
• Seven essential concepts for building muscle past 40 years old
• Creating an effective workout split: push-pull-legs or push-pull-legs-rest-upper-lower-rest
• Selecting the right compound movements for each major muscle group
• Incorporating isolation exercises to increase volume without overloading joints
• Optimal sets per body part per week (12-20 sets depending on experience)
• Managing exertion levels without going to failure on every set (RPE 8-9)
• Eating your body weight in grams of protein daily for recovery
• Prioritizing 7-8 hours of quality sleep, with extra on weekends if possible
Check out the description for more links and visit my YouTube channel, the Mindset Forge, to find videos on Zercher squats, mobility, stretching, and activation exercises for shoulders and hips.
To Learn more about GLP-1s and Set Up a TeleMed Call with Solutions RX, use this link:
https://solutionsrxaustin.com/solutionsrxaustin-dadbods-and-dumbells
To Learn more about James and Mona De Lacey's Strength Programs, visit:
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Visit Mitch's website: http://Bigboysruntoo.com
Visit Barton's Training Website: http://teambryanwellness.com
You are listening to the Mindset Forge podcast and Bart and Brian, your hosts, is episode 98. It's a solo cast episode and I'm just going to give you the nuts and bolts on how to max out your gym experience so that you can maintain and even build muscle in your 40s and 50s. Let's be clear this chapter of our life not easy, right? We're not just going to go to the gym, do some bench press, do some squats and just start putting on muscle like we might have done in our 20s and 30s. The proverbial slide is starting to happen. Our hormones, our body doesn't recover quite as well. We have to optimize, to maximize our gym workouts, and I'm going to teach you just how to do that. So I've got seven essential concepts that are going to help you build muscle past 40 years old. Let's talk about our split Now. There are so many ways to do it in the gym and I'm not going to tell you one way is the best way, but I'm going to give you a couple of options and I'm going to tell you why I like them. If you have something that's been working for you fantastic, you can always stick with that. The principles are still going to apply. We're going to use a seven-day cycle so you can kind of plan your workouts. Now, some people like to get it done during the weekdays and have the weekends off. I'm not like that. I like to have my weekends, oftentimes when I can get up, go to the gym and get more than two hours, if I need to, to maybe hit some major body parts, or just take my time, hit the sauna afterwards and enjoy the whole experience. So you can do it any way you want.
Speaker 1:But the goal here is we're going to focus on push day, pull day, leg day, and then I'm going to give you two options. So if you're new to getting into strength training and you're just kind of trying to figure out a program that's going to work for you, the first option is just going to be a basic push day, which is chest press, triceps, shoulders, all the pushing upper body muscles. Pull day, which is anything that's rowing, that's pulled down, it's bicep curls, it's the upper body, pull muscles. And then leg day, which is obviously going to hit your quads, your hamstrings, your glutes and your calves. So if you're brand new, here's what I want you to do Push day, rest, pull day, rest, leg day, rest, repeat Okay, if in those rest days you want to do cardio, yoga, abs, anything like that, totally cool, not going to affect it. But as far as the strength training, let's just get used to doing push, rest, pull rest, legs. Okay, that is new to you now if you've done that type of workout or been doing any type of workout consistently. What I want you to go into is a push-pull, legs, rest, upper-lower rest. So you're basically doing every body part twice in the week, right, you got all the push muscles, all the pull muscles, the leg muscles, rest completely. Then come back and do upper body. So you're going to do less volume on each of those muscle groups because you're doing the entire upper body on that that fifth day. And then you're doing legs on the sixth day and we're going to modify what you do on the second leg day from the first leg day. All right, and then you got a full day's rest. So that's putting two rest days into your week, but splitting it up like three on one off, two on one off, if you get the idea. So that's your first essential concept is creating a split that works for you.
Speaker 1:Now, like traditional bodybuilding, splits are a little bit different. They're usually like chest tries back and by. Sometimes they throw that in and maybe shoulders and legs. I like to give leg days its own day and I like to split up the upper push versus upper pull. I like to split up the upper push versus upper pull. That gives my upper body push muscles like my shoulder, my triceps, my chest, several days to recover. Because if I'm doing upper push day on Monday and I got pull Tuesday, I got legs Wednesday, I got rest Thursday, I'm not coming back to push any of those tricep, chest and shoulder moves until Friday. That gives me a significant recovery window to make sure that the joint and all the muscles are recovered fully for that next workout. And that's important in the course of the fact that we are not recovering as fast when you get into your forties and specifically into your fifties. So that's important Now with the, the kind of basic split we're doing rest, pull, rest, legs, rest and then you can go ahead and repeat that or you can just start on monday again and do push, pull legs.
Speaker 1:That will work either one. If you're doing just those three strength workouts a week, my recommendation is you know you got to throw some other stuff in there. You got to do some cardio, you got some abs, some core, maybe some yoga. Mix it up a little bit so that you're not just done only working out three days a week. But if you're not used to strength training, just start with push, pull legs, boom, all right. Number two we're gonna pick a compound movement for each of the primary movements so that you can make sure you're getting like a full power strength movement when you're starting out. So in horizontal push, which would be chest right, that's obviously some sort of a chest press.
Speaker 1:I'm always gonna tell people, especially in their 40s and 50s, I recommend a 30 degree incline, whether it's dumbbells or barbells. It is just a little bit easier on the shoulder and if you're not somebody who's been doing bench press your whole life or knows that that's really a strong movement for you, it's not really worth trying to like develop that shoulder stability because there's just a lot going on in the rotator cuff and in the lats and how the shoulders kind of sit back and support that. You can do a 30 degree incline, which is not a high incline if that's, you know, zero degrees. You got up to about 30 degrees and then you're pressing and with a little bit upper chest, middle chest. It's a lot easier on your shoulders and you're going to get maximum chest involvement, which is going to allow you to build muscle, especially in that upper chest, which is what looks so good when you're wearing a tight t-shirt. So if you're aesthetically focused on looking good, bam, that's going to give you your best bang for your buck. So my recommendation on that is some sort of a 30 degree incline press, whether it's barbell or dumbbell. But you can also do flat press, dumbbells or barbells and chest dips like lower dips. That's a great one to really hit the lower abs, also very good for developing that entire chest, triceps and shoulders as they work together in a decline movement.
Speaker 1:So all those are good compound movements. Don't do them all right. Pick one for your first push day. So what I'm recommending here is like, hey, let's do dumbbell incline four or five sets day on your first push day and then on the second upper body day, maybe you're doing some flat press or some dips. Right, we're still going to do more chest work, but that's going to be our compound movement for that day.
Speaker 1:All right, now, if you're been doing it a while and you're just looking for some ideas, just maybe change it up. If you've been doing it a while and you're just looking for some ideas, just maybe change it up. If you've been doing one movement for a long time, change it up. Make that first workout exercise something different than what you're used to. And if you've been doing a lot of flat bench or dumbbell press, change it to incline. Just switch them up. Do your incline first, do flat later, or change it up and even to do some flies after the incline.
Speaker 1:Okay so, horizontal pull, maybe bent over rows, maybe T-bar rows dumbbell with the one arm row is a good compound movement. Pick one of those for your major movement during pull day right Now. I mentioned a horizontal pull. So you've got two major pulls. You've got the horizontal pull and you've got the vertical pull down. So I'm going to differentiate between the two because I want to make sure you have a compound movement for both. So in horizontal row we're talking about barbell, bent row, dumbbell, one arm row or a T-bar style row. You can even put your chest into an incline, hang out off the side and do some chest supported dumbbell rows. That's another great one, especially if you've got some low back issues.
Speaker 1:Then vertical push, that's your shoulder press. Right, we want to push upwards, so that's shoulder press. Don't feel like you have to pep this weight way back here, elbows kind of way behind you. If it feels more comfortable to get dumbbells and put them slightly in front, that's even a little bit easier on the shoulder and the position of it. You can definitely get some good work in the shoulder press doing that. But if you, if you enjoy being out here or want to use a barbell, obviously you have to be out here. But I always recommend bringing into the front of your, over the front of your chest and then press straight up versus behind your head. Unless you have an incredible range of motion and mobility in your shoulders, behind the head is probably not the right move for you. Right again, there are exceptions, but in general, especially in our 40s and our shoulder mobility is just not where we've got a lot of tension up here. We don't want to exacerbate that by putting our head forward and bringing our shoulders too far back and then we could impinge something back there while we're trying to shoulder press.
Speaker 1:Okay, then, vertical pull, that's going to be a pull-up, a chin up, reverse grip. You could do some sort of a wide pull down, neutral grip pull down, even a close grip pull to anything that incorporates the entire body pulling down, whether that's a pull up with the body or pull down with a bar Fantastic. My recommendation on that and we'll go into kind of how to maximize it more later though is don't overdo the weight. Right, if you're somebody who can knock out a lot of pull-ups, great, do pull-ups. It's a great exercise. But if you're really struggling with just getting two or three with perfect form, pull-ups are probably not yet right for you, because you're going to end up just overcompensating with other muscles. That's not going to maximize your strength in the back that we want to feel. Okay. So a vertical pull, that's our pull-up, that's our lat pull-down and that is also our chin-ups. Now let's go to legs. So we've got squats Now.
Speaker 1:I've done a lot of videos on Zercer squats. If you haven't seen that, check probably right up here or there. You can probably see the link right now. But check one of my videos on why I love Zercer squats, how to do them and potentially add them in. Especially if you've got low back issues or it is uncomfortable to put a lot of weight on your back for a back squat. It's a front loaded squat but you're carrying that weight right there with a pad, so you're not bruising your arms, but you're holding them right there. It allows you to get super deep and develops a lot of core strength and it's a great exercise. I literally did it this morning and my gosh, my glutes, my quads, my hand everything was working because I was going deep, way below 90 degrees, because of that front loaded posture that allows you to really get into those deep hip area and maximize your whole movement, whereas if I put weight on my back because I'm so tall, I would have to hinge forward, my butt would be back, I'd have to do a lot of stuff just to get myself to 90 degrees. So this is a great way to not exacerbate low back pain or put a bunch of weight on your neck and still maximize a squat all right. So squats, surfer squats, front squats if you're a back squat king and that's your thing and you rock it, hey, no problem, go for it, keep it up. But again, as we get older, putting a ton of weight across the back it can start to take its toll, whether it's on lower back or upper back, neck mobility and things like that. So you just have to be aware of that and if that becomes something that seems to be nagging, you then go ahead and just switch to either front or zersher squat.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about lunges and Bulgarian split squats. A fundamental movement is a lunge, that one-legged knee bend. There's two ways to do it. You can do walking lunges, you can do step-back lunges. Either way, you're really getting the quad, glute and hamstring, the entire leg. Plus there's that power and stability that comes from really having all the weight of your body on one leg, Plus you might be loading with a bar, some dumbbells. All that stuff can maximize the growth and stability of that leg. So I highly recommend lunges and of course a lot of people do Bulgarian split squats. The back leg is up on a bench so that you're really loading all the way in that front leg which just turns on the glute and hamstring even more. So if lunges are kind of half quad, half hamstring and glute, I would say Bulgarian splits quad is more like 75% glute, hamstring and maybe 25% quad. All right, so that's a great one.
Speaker 1:And then finally, romanian deadlift or traditional deadlifts for that posterior chain, glute, hamstring, low back man, you can't beat it. You can use a hex bar, a barbell, dumbbells there's plenty of ways to do it. Just be careful anytime. You're obviously bending at the hips. Low back might get angry from that. So you've just got to be mindful of your form. Taking it slow. I'm a big fan of eccentric movement three seconds down, one second to get back up. I got videos on that too, so check those out if you'd like.
Speaker 1:But the goal here is really not to see like, hey, how much can I actually deadlift at 45 years old? Uh, you know, those days are kind of over and nobody cares how much you deadlift, right, maybe your bros do, but most people don't care. It's really about getting the maximum results out of it. But we gotta be good at hinging, because that is the butt, that's the hamstring, that's that posterior chain, and if we lose strength in the posterior chain, that's when things start becoming harder, right, we lose mobility, we lose power and we become kind of fragile because our posterior chain is not where it should be, all right. So those are kind of compound movement patterns. You got to pick one. Now you can go to the show notes. This stuff is going to be listed. You can kind of make your decisions from there.
Speaker 1:Next up is incorporating an isolation exercise to build muscle and increase the volume in your work without overloading the joint. So a great example for chest would be chest flies, cable flies, pec deck, anything like that. Even pushups as a kind of a burnout exercise can be great. You know, if we've done the heavy incline dumbbell press, you know the next thing to do maybe some sort of a flying movement, something like that, to help you kind of continue to maximize your strength, get more volume in the chest workout, but not overload it again with another exercise. That's super compound and challenging. So that would be a good one for back straight arm pull downs, where I'm grabbing a cable pulling down towards my thighs, that's a great one. You might grab a cable here at the top and pull all the way down. You're really activating the lats and there's almost no bicep work. You're actually working a little bit of triceps, but majority of this is happening from the lats and there's almost no bicep work. You're actually working a little bit of triceps, but majority of this is happening from the lats. A pullover would be another example of that, but it's a lot more difficult on the joint to grab a weight and pull it behind you like that, because you're putting a lot of stress at the part of the movement that we're weakest in, which is all the way back here. So it's very safe to do a straight arm pull down because you're pulling and it gets harder as you pull down, but that's where we're strongest. So highly recommend that.
Speaker 1:Another one would be face pulls, grabbing a rope with the uh, the cable just pulling up towards their eyeballs, elbows high, just maximizing the upper back, the rear delts and those upper trap muscles, really squeezing, holding, get that strength and stability of that upper back to kind of polish off the entire backside. All right for quads leg extensions, right Hamstrings we got leg curls, those are obvious ones. And for glutes, because we've been doing glutes on the Bulgarian split squats. Even squats have glutes in them. It would be some sort of a one-legged hip bridge with just our body weight Lay across the bench bench, put one heel down, lift the other leg in the air, just lift and squeeze. So don't neglect the opportunity to do a little bit of, uh, one-legged glute bridges to just maximize the use of your glutes. The other thing would be box step ups uh, just stepping up on a box slowly going down. That's going to activate your glutes, similar to a Bulgarian split squat.
Speaker 1:All right, so next up is concept number four, fourth, essential. So right now you've got your split, you've got compound movements, you've got these kind of the isolation movement to incorporate with the compound to really get a little more volume into the workout. And then we're going to say how do we how many sets per body part per week? Now here's my recommendation. The good rule of thumb is somewhere in the 12 to 20. If you're new, 12 is your number. If you've been doing this a while and you're you've already been doing 12 to 15, you can push it up towards 20. So what that breaks down to is push date, right 12, 20 reps total for the week.
Speaker 1:If you're going to do push pull legs upper lower as you're split, then you're going to do 10 to 12 sets on monday or that first push day, and then you're going to take the second upper body day and do six to eight, same thing with legs and pull. My recommendation is two or three exercises in the first time. You do it and then come back in two more the second day. If you're just doing push-pull legs as a combination for the week. My recommendation is stick with 12 and then see how the results come from there and then only add volume as you feel. Like you know you've done it for several months and now you can add maybe a couple more sets, maybe even take pull downs from three to four sets, maybe you're taking a one arm row from three to four sets versus adding a new exercise, so you kind of create some consistency around doing the work. That's my recommendation.
Speaker 1:With leg day around doing the work, that's my recommendation. With leg day, my recommendation because you've got glutes, hamstrings and quads is you can break that up a little bit. Think posterior chain, hamstrings and glutes as like okay, I want to get eight to 12 of that on day one of leg day and then day two come back, get six to eight more sets, right? Same thing with quads, whether you're doing Zercher squats, back squats, hack squats, whatever type of squats and leg extensions, remember. And then, of course, lunges are also included in there. You just want to piece together 10 to 12 sets the first time you do it and then, when you come back, you're going to get another six to eight, maybe even 10 sets. Total of 18 to 20 for your legs, right. So that's the idea.
Speaker 1:Again, everyone is a little bit different and, depending on if you're kind of new to strength training or you've been doing it a while and you're looking to like take this and change it up a little bit, you kind of have to decide what your recommendations work for you and what your body needs. So everyone's a little different, so you have to accommodate for that. There isn't a one size fits all approach to any type of strength training. All right, five relates to kind of okay, what's my exertion level? Because here's the thing If you go to failure on every single thing you do, you have a very high probability you're going to get injured or start to have some chronic issues with joints or low back.
Speaker 1:Because when you go to full failure which means like I'm doing squats and I cannot get that last rep up, I am at complete and total failure. Legs are fried, you have to literally drop the weight right. You are getting closer and closer to the point of an injury. We call that risk reward ratio kind of an important factor to think about. Now, when you're in your teens or 20s, even sometimes early 30s, that's not quite as big an issue because we're just so much more flexible and strong and our joints are really young and healthy and we recover very well. But we get into our late 30s, 40s and 50s we really have to be accountable to. Okay, I'm going to push myself, I'm going to exert a lot, but I'm not going to go till failure every time, right.
Speaker 1:So what we use here is what we call rate of perceived exertion, or RPE, right when I'm in the gym or when I'm coaching somebody and I want to get them close to failure without actually achieving it. Because what we find happens and the science really proves this is if you can get to eight or nine out of 10, which means like you've got a rep, maybe two reps in the tank left, if you really, really really went for it, you still get results from that. You actually grow from that. Your body will respond, recover and adapt to that stimulus, even though you're not there at the bench with all the weight. And then all of a sudden it's like something feels off, like your shoulder just couldn't do it and all of a sudden you have some chronic thing or some nagging injury. If you can get to 7, 8, 9, and then you're like man, I think I could probably get one more, but I'm going to let it go there.
Speaker 1:We have to take into consideration the long game. We want to be strong for a very long time. So the way to stay strong is to stay injury free and progress very slowly, with a comfort zone around going to total failure right. Every once in a while you might be like you know, on a safe exercise you're like, okay, I'm going to go and see if I can get this last rep and maybe you get it, maybe you don't. But if you do that too often, nagging injuries, even severe injuries, can start showing up, whether that's in squats, deadlifts, chest press, shoulder press, all those types of things.
Speaker 1:What I recommend is like start out in your program and go to about eight out of 10. We're talking about maybe having two reps left in the tank. I would stop there most times Every once in a while. Go for it. See if you can get that final rep in. As long as the form looks good and your body feels strong, all right. But let's avoid trying to max out, getting to failure every time because of the risk reward. I promise you you will adapt, you will get stronger and you will increase your weight and build muscles. Those are your top five and those are really the ones that relate to actually in the gym, how to do it and maximize the results. I will tell you just. All in all, it's less about how much weight you're using and how you're controlling the weight, how you're moving through that full range of motion, getting mind-muscle connection. Like focus on quality over quantity, got two more. These are lifestyles. This is recovery stuff.
Speaker 1:You got to eat man. Oh, my goodness, you got to eat your body weight in grams of protein a day. Okay, protein is everything. We got to get this from meat sources Red meat, lean red meat like a sirloin tenderloin, things like that, going to be very high in protein. Also has natural creatine in there. Okay, chicken, obviously. Fish can be good. Whey protein or Greek yogurt another way to get it. Just find multiple ways Ground turkey, ground chicken, ground beef all those can work. Right, we need that protein. All right, I'm 220 pounds. I've got to eat at least 220 grams of protein per day to sustain and potentially build muscle. Right, you want to push that a little bit higher, especially if you're really trying to get a little bit more muscle mass. I would push it maybe 10% above body weight and grams of protein. So if you're at 200 pounds, maybe you're eating closer to 220 to kind of give your body a surplus of protein to really utilize. All right, that's key, that's quintessential. That's all about recovery and building back not just the muscle tissue, the connective tissue, giving the cells what they need to recover and get stronger and stay healthy. Good lord.
Speaker 1:And the final piece of that is number seven. I don't know why it's seventh. It should be first. It's about sleep. Right, there's this really tough like how do I make it work? Like if you're an entrepreneur or somebody's working their butt off, you've got family, you've got all these things. You may not be able to get nine, ten hours of sleep, and I don't necessarily think that's viable on a day-to-day basis. I'm always shooting for seven to eight, with, like I'm trying to always lean on the side of eight hours a night, and then on the weekends I'm shooting for nine. That's kind of where I'm at, I think.
Speaker 1:If you're getting more, like six to seven, my recommendation is, like, week by week, try to add 15 minutes of extra sleep, which usually just means put the phone down, go to bed 15 minutes earlier and wake up at the same time. We're better at the end of the day if we can just shut it all down. Don't watch Netflix. Just let your body relax. Let your body calm down. Go take a hot shower, get into your covers and just try to get to bed 15 minutes earlier each night for a month and just see if you can actually get an hour of sleep extra a night just by modifying your evening schedule.
Speaker 1:That's one way to do it, but it's key. It's all about hormones of release. There's so much stuff going on. There's so many things that happens when you sleep that just does not happen when you're awake, including muscle protein synthesis, people that are sleep deprived. There is literally a reduction of like up to 18% in terms of how your body is turning the protein into muscle tissue and things like that. So you can actually be missing out on muscle growth and recovery by not sleeping enough. So my recommendation highest order, seventh. It should be first, but it's sleep well, eat well and go to the gym. Right Within the context of that, one through five are all about how do you maximize, you know, your time at the gym so that you can kind of max out that aspect of it.
Speaker 1:But let's hit all of our muscle groups at least once a week, twice. If we can Use one of those two splits either the push-pull legs and that's it for the week, or push-pull legs rest upper lower would be my two recommendations. There's plenty others out there that are very usable, that work, but those are the two that I recommend to people who ask me those questions. All right, hope this is helpful. Drop any information into the comments. If you want more information on a specific thing, check out the description there's some more links in there and, of course, go to my YouTube channel, the Mindset Forge, to find some of those videos, specifically on Zerzer, squats, different movements. That'll help you. And if you need some mobility, stretching, activation stuff for shoulders, hips, things like that, I've got that in there too. So search out that stuff and let's make sure you're as educated as possible on working out and getting to that next level of strength, fitness and living your best chapter in that 40 to 60 range. Thanks for listening to the Mindset Forge podcast.