#4 Is It Just Because You’re Older?

Most men think getting out of shape is just part of getting older...

It’s not.

In this episode, I break down why doing what used to work in your 20s stops working… and why that’s exactly why you feel stuck.

If it was just about effort, you’d already be in shape.

This is about understanding what actually needs to change as your lifestyle, stress, and priorities shift… and how to stop repeating the same cycle every year.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Inside of the Method podcast. Today I'm about to dive into a discussion and topic that I almost speak way too much about, to be honest. And I think there's gonna be a big shift in terms of belief for a lot of men, a lot of women listening to this. Now, the reason and the inspiration from this podcast was just I've been a lot of consultation calls over the last seven days, and the main common thing I've seen is guys do what they've always done to get into a brand new shape they've never been in in a brand new chapter of their life. But the old keys don't open new doors anymore. So this is gonna be one line where you take pen and paper out. We're gonna dive into a lot. I want to break the belief that you have to show you a brand new way to actually get in shape when it comes to your 30s, 40s, and beyond. Because if you've always done what you've done, you'll always get what you got, and nothing changes and nothing changes. Okay, so generally speaking, this is gonna come from a place I want to be cruel to be kind because I think this is what we need out there. See, from speculation, I've seen that most men don't stay generally in the same shape as they age, they either get in extremely good shape, and you look at the guy and you're like, right, what's he done? He's completely changed his life, he's a brand new person that I met years ago, or they get extremely out of shape, they slowly fall off. But that slowly fall off is like a death by a thousand cuts where it happens so slowly in the moment, and then one day you wake up and you're like, I can't recognise the man in the mirror, right? I've had that second moment, and I've also had the first, by the way. So I'm coming from experience because I generally believe that if you're not progressing, you're usually regressing. There's no maintenance. I think maintenance is a lie that's fed to people as like the one I when I once I get here, I will. And it's kind of fed as like a holy grail, but there's no maintenance, either getting better or you're getting worse, there's no complacency. And the scary part is when it comes to the opposite of getting out of shape, most people don't realise it's happening, but like it's happening every single day. Then one day, whether it's you try your work trousers on, you try a shirt on, you take a photo and you look back at it, it's like I didn't recognise that person, or that's not me, right? Which is hard, but those moments that just change a lot of people for the better. So I've just watched this happen to people I grew up with, loved ones, myself. I've seen a lot of people either get in amazing shape or completely the opposite, right? And there's always the people that have been in shape that just stay there, aka maintain, but usually get out of shape over time. So kind of to paint the picture. Let's say you're on your early 20s, the school years, you're playing sports, you're the jock, you know, getting lean is easy and you're not trying too hard. Then fast forward five, ten years from now, you've got a career, potentially your family, you're married, engaged, you've got a partner. You're you're the same guy with the same intention, but you're getting completely different results. So you still try now and again, you still join the gym again, you eat clean for a little bit, and then you fall off. And then what you do, you stay in the cycle of stop and start dieting, which by the way, kills so much progress because it completely ruins your metabolism, kills your hormones, and you actually lose trust in the process because then every failed attempt is another dip in terms of confidence, in terms of what's possible. And a lot of guys kind of throw in the towel at that point after a few attempts, which is the worst place I've seen as well. People actually give up, right? And they don't try again for decades, if not longer, until the later, later years in life where they get health scare. But like these are the guys that just say, Oh, I just need to get back to what I used to do, which is wrong, right? And I'll tell you what, most men generally think it's they need to put in way more effort, they need to be more meticulous, they want to go harder, right? And they repeat the same version of themselves that doesn't exist anymore. Because think of it, how you train your 20s. I used to do five days a week, high training volume, and I would just go hit PBs all the time. Nutrition can be very subpar, I wouldn't gain a single pound, and it would just be easy to stay lean. However, when you get older, no matter what everyone says, it does get harder, it gets different too, right? And the thing is, you don't want to keep repeating the version of yourself that almost let's just say died years ago, it doesn't exist anymore. So, like, right now you probably have less movement, you have more stress, you have lower recovery, you have different priorities. Your career, maybe the biggest thing that's important to you, maybe your family, maybe your social life, how you're getting older and older, and you want to create lifelong memories. So the same input doesn't give the same output anymore. As long as you know you recognize the spiral, it's extremely important because now we're trying to get anywhere somewhere. See, if you continue to go this way, I generally find it's gonna be a point where you do give up, right? Guys, you stay in the same shape and they're just throwing the towel, they're like, Yep, it's just meant to be. I guess unless I go quote unquote all in, it's not gonna happen, which is a big belief that you need to be all in, that every single time I diet is the easiest thing in the world. Not because, again, it's not a brag, but it's because I've done it several, several times, I've coached several, several guys for it. As long as you know the formula, it is much easier than you think. And getting leaner building a world-class body is made to be out to be difficult by bodybuilders, influencers that train seven days a week. Like, screw it, even this morning I was training with a good friend of mine, he's obviously Jack, no names dropped. He trains every single day, and like respectfully, he looks great, by the way, he's aspirational, but I couldn't do that. I just don't have the same priorities or the same lifestyle, we're not the same, we don't have the same schedules either. But like kind of drifting away from the point, like you get told it's hard, which makes it hard, and you build this belief it's hard, but it actually isn't meant to be, right? It's men like you that are listening to this, you're not lazy. We know that you've got the career, you're putting all the effort into the workplace, you come home burnt out, you're giving everything day to day, like you're not lazy. I think lazy is a term that people use to justify shortcomings, but lazy should be broadly used as a label, right? If you're working hard in your career, if you're giving your full presence to your family, you're not a lazy person, right? I think there's alignments that needs to happen. Okay, and imagine you apply the same level of effort you do to your career, to your body. Not to say that's necessary, I don't think you'll have that issue of being out of shape in the first place. Like a lot of guys generally think it's because they lack discipline, they can't stick to things, but in other areas of the life, they absolutely can do. And these limiting beliefs kind of completely chip away from your confidence, and a lot of guys kind of have this belief where oh cool, I guess just I'm not that guy, or I can't, it's not for me. So, like, kind of coming back to this. Most guys often use that lazy word, but they're just stuck doing the wrong approach. Random workouts, the same previous workouts, eating the same way they usually had, having that belief that they can get away with eating different, the same as they previously did, takeaways, chunks, clean eating, quote unquote, and you know they just start and stop over every few weeks, and every time you stop, you get worse and worse out of shape. So you kind of go in this perpetual show your dieting cycle, which gets you to a place where actually nothing really works. So you don't need to go back to where you were, and this is huge. You do not need to go back to doing the same things previously, you need to upgrade, right? Your identity shift now is extremely important, and this is what we're gonna dive into. And I want you to actually, if you can, get a pen and paper out because you need to kind of create a brand new identity, right? Getting in shape in your 30s and beyond isn't harder, it just requires a completely different skill set. You're not the same guy that's aiming to be that fit guy trying to get back. If you have that identity, you're gonna find he's actually gonna continue to be that fit guy that's trying to get back to track. You need to completely change the narrative. You're the guy that's building a brand new standard in his life, and let me say that again. You're not someone that is trying to get back in shape, you're someone that's now trying to build a brand new physical standard that is there to be built permanently in this new chapter of life. You're the guy that wants the body, the career, the social life, the business. You want it all, right? It's completely different back then because you're you had way less priorities, way less in your plate. See, once you made that shift in terms of identity and the goal and you reframe your language, that's gonna get you closer and closer. See, the this little phrase of just rewiring that, trust me now, believe me later, it makes a world of a difference, right? If you just say yeah, I'm just trying to get back on it, you'll continue to try to get back on it. If you're like, hey no, I'm actually in the process of building a brand new standard, and you say that with confidence to yourself and the way you speak to yourself, this word can either be a weapon of mass destruction or the biggest asset you have, right? Your language is a superpower, right? And I think this is kind of huge because you reap what you sow, and the words you use form your identity and they form your results, and they form the action you consistently take. If you tell yourself like, hey, yeah, I'm just too busy, you're gonna act like a busy person. If you tell yourself you're too tired after work, you're gonna be tired, feel more tired after work. If you tell yourself you're tired, like try now, you're gonna feel tired. If you tell you, hey, I'm not tired, I'm completely fine, everything's normal, you will act differently, right? So, like it's almost uh evening time over here uh in on Sunday the 5th, and we're about to do some running intervals this evening, and I have this little voice at the back of my mind that I'm ah I just I'm too sore, right? I'm just too tired. But if I tell myself that I'm gonna be sore, I'm gonna be tired, I'm not gonna do the intervals. However, I'm like, hey, screw it, sit to the plan, not your feelings, get it done. You're not sore, you're not tired, we're gonna go through and go ahead first. Uh helmet on and just go all in, right? This changes a lot because you kind of keep to a place now where you often build belief again and you build a brand new weight and mental software. So, like, if I kind of come back to the things now, what you need to do from a tangible perspective, keeping it practical and not overwhelming. Let's dive into your training. I generally think now the formula to get world-clash results, and I've seen this time and time again myself with like a lot of the guys we've coached, is training needs to be prioritized, right? I think three days a week is more than enough to get into the best shape of your entire life and stay there forever. Four days if you want to and you like to train five days. I don't think anybody needs to train five days. Like, I had a friend a while back, um, I had a friend a while back, I have a friend, um, they compete on stage, going for the Olympia in the bodybuilding show. They train, she trained five days, four days a week. If she needs to train five days four days a week to get into that little stage that she needs to get into, what's to say, me, yourself, who doesn't even need to or want to get to the Olympia standard, needs to train five. Like, less better beats more words any day of the week. So, like, three days a week, how I'd personally structure that is you pick two key big body parts you really want to go all into, train them twice. Everything else, your maintenance volume, right? So, let's say you want to grow your for me, for example, my quads and my chest. I'm gonna be training them twice a week. So I'll train them on day one and day three. So I would generally do a push, pull, and then I'll do a full body, generally speaking, or I'll do a push, pull, push, next week I'll do a push, pull, push, and so on and so forth. Now, in that stance, how I may do it is day one, we've got pushed, we can do three chest exercises, three legs, or ideally three quad-based. So we will do some compound movements, of course, that will channel your glutes, your hamstrings, your triceps, your shoulders, of course. But like three chests, three quads, primarily. Day two, let's say back, you will probably do back and hamstring so you can strain everything. That's more maintenance volume, three back exercises, so it can be two vertical pull, one horizontal, an RDL, two leg curls variations, or a two hamstring variations. Day three, what you will do is let's say you've done a horizontal push, you will then do one to two of the same movements for your chest and your quad so you can progressively get better at it. Then, one, you may train an angle you've not trained before. Let's say you're not doing a Smith Machine press on day one, you may do that, or a Smith Machine Squat, you may do that, right? But like day one and day three will generally be identical to some degree, they'll be very similar in nature. That's fine. You try and train the results. You need structure, not randomness. This needs to be key and dialed in. Second thing, let's dive into your food. We need consistency, we cannot go all in. I think the biggest thing you can do, and I mentioned this in previous podcasts, calorie deficit still works. You've got the formula, I'm not gonna go dive into that, but in some periods of your life, let's say you've got a longer working day, you've had more stress, you've got more on your plate, it's a social day, you're with family, utilize maintenance days. There's nothing wrong with you being consistent within the deficit with maintenance days where you hold progress, right? I think that's one of the biggest things advice I can give to everybody, right? You don't need to be in a consistent calorie deficit, you can have high days, low days. I think the high and the low approach for most guys works extremely well. It also helps if you do that from a carb cycling perspective, by the way, which I absolutely love. I think it works extremely well for schedules like mine and yours, where you'll have highs and low days based on your schedule, based on your day today and what it looks like. The only thing is you plan tomorrow today. You plan tomorrow's diet today, and you look at your schedule from a work capacity, a food, a training, and you map it out 24 hours earlier. Let you go and put on your calendar right now, plan tomorrow today at an hour before you go to bed and watch your life change for the better, right? I'm not gonna dive into the macros that's there for the other podcasts which I've made in the past, but overall, you need consistency and not the same thing day to day, right? You eating the same foods every single day is not gonna work anymore. You need variety, you need sustainability, and that's what you need. And third thing, you need a life that's built to last, I would say. Like I want you to adopt evening and morning structure. I want you to know what your morning's gonna look like, what your evenings look like, and win both of them, right? For me personally, I wake up and get the body moving before the mind does, I get a workout, get some steps, get some cardio, I get movement in within the first 30 minutes, and I do a workout. For me, that the reason I do that, by the way, is because I wake up quite negative. So me, I just need to frequency shift my frequency up to a higher state, and the moment I do that, I'm in a better mood, I'm more productive, and the workout's done. So for me, I find working working out in the morning what's better. Previously, years ago, it was the last thing of the day. Now I'm waking till silly o'clock. Um, sometimes 1am in the morning, 2am. So, like for me, my life's different. I need to kind of force the right key and the right door. Right, but you need to adopt your daily routines. If you're stuck with that, put a morning schedule in, put an evening schedule, figure out the rest as it comes. Right, just have those two fundamentals in place. You don't understand how much of a difference a morning evening routine will make to your life until you have one. And ideally, now frame mix, this should be something you can repeat every single day of the year. So, like if you realistically cannot journal every single day, do not plan to journal, right? I can't journal, I've tried it, I've got I've bought notepads after notepads. It's like I'll get 10 pages in, I'll write something else. I'll just start using it as a notepad rather than a journal, right? It's not for me. I would personally like to have conversations. If I am, I'm gonna start to let vocalize thoughts again. Self-awareness though, but like this is the key. We wanna win not by doing more, but we win by doing what's actually works now, and that's a key observation, right? So just kind of like wrap it up overall, guys, because I know I've kind of been through a few things. I've gone through the identity shift, which I think is the first step into the practicalities. This is huge for me because I've seen guys spinning the wheels year to year, and when they finally switch to their approach, things click fast. I've seen the same for myself. Like the diet I used to do will no longer work now, it just wouldn't. I've tried to force it time and time again, it just doesn't work. The training I used to do, the train volume, the schedule, the exercises, the workouts, I've tried in the past, they don't delay with the same results, right? Things click fast when you finally shift the approach and meet where you're at. And just to wrap it up, and I think this is huge, and I want to re-emphasize this point: there is no maintenance. So the moment you get caught in this maintenance land or this maintenance phase, I generally believe you either get in better or you're slowly getting worse. No one stays the same. And at some point, every man needs to make a decision and admit to themselves which one it is, or they'll have a decision made for themselves, right? So if this hit a bit too close, good, because it means you're aware now, you can take the next step. Awareness proceeds change at the end of the day, and if you're not aware of the shortcomings or the things where areas where things are dropping off, then you'll never get anywhere. And I think that's the biggest thing as well when it comes to personal development, physical development, any development anytime in life. Self awareness is huge, and that's the main goal and the purpose of this show today. So if you took value, thanks for listening. I'll see you in the next episode.