How do I ____________ after 40 is probably one of the most common questions that I get.
One of the areas of our training program that tends to be affected by our age is the total amount of training volume that we can and should perform for optimal increases in strength and muscle building.
One of the themes of our book The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 was that the older you get the more you become “intensity dependent, and volume sensitive.”
We caught a lot of flak about this statement but to me it seems self-evident.
As you age, you do not recover from the same workload as you did when you were younger.
At 41, I don’t recover the same way I did when I was 31 or 21. I’m sure that 51 and 61 will yield the same trend line.
It’s true in basically all sports.
Great starting pitchers like John Smoltz or Dennis Eckersley become closers when they age, not the other way around.
They can still go hard……they just can’t go long.
Great NBA players have their minutes monitored and reduced in practice and in games as they age.
Elite edge rushers in the NFL like Von Miller become 3rd down specialists after about age 35.
Again…..they still have the horsepower……they just don’t have the gas tank.
The same is true in our training. As we age we should favor an approach where training sessions are shorter in duration, lower in overall volume, and perhaps higher in intensity.
Here are 3 Tips that can help improve your training if you’re over 40:
#1: For Strength Training – Use Submaximal Loads w/ Speed
If you are performing volume-based strength work, try and avoid sessions that have you “grinding” too hard on your volume work.
I’m not against grinding hard (in fact I’m in favor of it) but it should be used sparingly.
Working up to a really heavy 1-3 rep set, once per week on each lift is likely enough heavy grinding.
The volume work should be done a bit different.
Too many hard sets of the same movement in a single workout is a big drain on recovery.
Since, in my opinion, the benefits of higher volume work are mostly neurological there actually isn’t a need to grind hard, and you may actually get more benefit from moving the bar faster.
For instance, let’s say you can do 3 sets of 5 reps @ 80-85% of your 1RM. For many people that’s going to yield 3 pretty hard sets.
You might get the same results and far less impact on your recovery by doing something like 6 sets of 2 reps @ 80%-85%.
Roughly equivalent volume, but no grind. You move all 12 of those reps with speed (high force production, high levels of motor unit recruitment) and probably not have to rest as long between sets to do so.
So it’s more effective and a time saver.
#2: Train Hypertrophy Like Dorian
When doing hypertrophy-based protocols, limit the amount of work sets you do, per exercise, to just 1 or 2.
Done right that is all you need.
I’ve written and discussed this before, but the key ingredient for hypertrophy is not volume.
It’s tension.
And the highest loads of mechanical tension are derived when the bar speed gets very slow.
Not slow because you intentionally slowed it down, but slow because you are taking a set of 8 reps right up to failure.
So reps 5 and 6 start to slow, and reps 7 and 8 are barely moving. That’s where the growth is.
I truly believe the Bro-Science is right here and it is just those last reps that count!!
The problem…….those types of sets also cause a lot of muscle damage.
And contrary to what a lot us used to believe – excess muscle damage probably is not a good thing for hypertrophy.
So don’t do a lot of super high effort sets to failure. Limit them to just 1 or 2 per exercise on big compound lifts and perhaps up to 3 on some isolations.
#3: Factor Squat & Deadlift Volume Together
People tend to forget that just because the Big 3 (Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift) are 3 different exercises – doesn’t mean it’s 3 separate groups of relevant muscles – it’s two.
There is so much overlap between the relevant musculature of the Squat & the Deadlift that you really cannot program them completely independently the way that you might program The Squat and The Bench Press independently.
The legs, hips, and low back all take a tremendous beating in both exercises (potentially).
So whatever programming changes you make to the Squat will affect the Deadlift. And vice-versa.
It definitely is a zero-sum game.
Any substantial increase in volume, intensity, or frequency of one probably means some reduction in the other.
One of the best programs I have for strength focused older lifters is Garage Gym Warrior 2
I originally wrote this program for the members of my online barbell club as a little bit of a “foot off the gas pedal” on the heels of a much more difficult training program.
The results we had from our older members were tremendous.
So the program got cleaned up and made available to a broader audience.
We saw it work well for all ages but the older guys really loved it and responded well.
If you’re a strength focused 40+ lifter give this program a try!
