Man in the Arena with Craig Spear
Are you ready to change the trajectory of your health? If so, you’re in the right place. Man in the Arena with Craig Spear is a podcast dedicated to helping men over 40 optimize their health and lose weight. Here, we discuss strategies that will get you off the sidelines and into the game so you can lead a legacy of longevity.
Man in the Arena with Craig Spear
Strength Training 101 for Men in Their 40's, 50's & 60's
It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
One of the main problems with the health, fitness and weightless industry is there is way too much information out there.
It creates a ton of confusion for people who don’t know where to start or what to do. So it’s not your fault if you don't know where to start.
But it is your responsibility to learn more and educate yourself as much as possible.
That’s why I created this week’s episode called Strength Training 101 for Men Over 40, 50 and 60.
If you're ready to do more strength training or optimize what you’re already doing, be sure to listen in because I cover:
- Why strength training matters for guys in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s
- Common Myths and Misconceptions
- How to get started with strength training
- How to optimize your strength training
- 5 Important Takeaways
I’ve distilled 30 years of knowledge and experience down into 30 minutes of everything you need to know. It’s free and it’s damn good info!
Did you find this episode helpful insightful or motivating? If so, let's connect! You can find me on....
Instagram
Linked In
The Spear Method Website
Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Oh, boys, do I have an epic episode for you today? I wanted to do this episode for a while now, but I was waiting for the right time, and now is the right time. So a few months ago, I did an episode called Making the Most of Cardio, and in that episode I explained all the basics you need to know about cardiovascular exercise. And today's episode is going to be very similar, but in this one I'm going to talk about strength training.
Speaker 1:Now, when I say strength training, I also mean resistance training, weight training, weight lifting. These are all the same way of saying strength training, and strength training takes on many different forms and varieties, from bodybuilding to powerlifting, to calisthenics, to functional training, and just know that all of these are categorized as strength training. Now, strength training is defined in any form of physical exercise specializing in the use of resistance in order to induce a muscular contraction, and then this muscular contraction can build strength, can build anaerobic endurance, and it can also lead to an increased size of the skeletal muscles. So when we talk about strength training, there's a number of main goals that we have. One of those goal, or a number of those goals, can be sort of categorized as performance based, and the other side can be categorized as health or functional based. Okay, so when we talk about performance based goals of strength training, we've got an increase in muscular strength, so that's the ability of the muscle to exert force, and this is what power lifters often train for. Then we've got muscular power, so this is the ability of the muscle to exert force quickly. So think of a sprinter or running back in football, where they're going to aim to train with this in mind, where they want to develop a lot of power, right, so they're not necessarily trying to lift a lot of weight or exert a lot of force, they want to do it really quickly. Then you've got people who train with muscle size, or what's called hypertrophy, in mind, and this is the aim to increase the muscle mass. So this is what bodybuilders train for.
Speaker 1:Now, something I want you to keep in mind when we do strength training, we cannot increase the number of muscle fibers we have, but we can increase their size. So no matter, you know it all comes down to genetics. The number of muscle fibers that you have, or the muscle cells that you have, is what you got. You can't increase that through training. What actually gets you stronger is how the brain, the nervous system, communicates with the muscle, or the type of training you do. That actually tears the fiber down and then builds it up so it becomes bigger. So with that I want you to keep in mind that muscle size does not mean more strength. Bodybuilders are usually the biggest dudes, but they can't lift as much as a powerlifter because they train differently. So I want you to keep that in mind when you're thinking about your strength training goals.
Speaker 1:Another strength training goal is muscular endurance. So this is the ability of the muscles to perform over and over and over again over time without fatigue. So this is what a runner or a cyclist might train for when they're doing strength training. Another performance-based goal of strength training is to strengthen bones and improve kind of joint function and increase bone density, so that often reduces the risk of osteoporosis. And then the last performance-based goal of strength training is to improve your metabolic rate, which means basically increasing the number of calories your body is going to burn each day. When you have more muscle mass, you have a higher metabolic rate. So if you're trying to lose weight, this is a great reason why we want to strength train. Now the other side of that is the health and functional benefits. So when we strength train, we are going to see reduced risk of injury, so we see injury prevention. We do that. We also see an improved posture and balance. We also see reduced chronic disease or even the management of chronic disease. And then, lastly, strength training is great for our aging and our mobility. So that's kind of the health and functional side of the benefits of strength training.
Speaker 1:So that's a very general overview and in today's episode I'm gonna dive deeper into all of this. More specifically, I'm gonna dive into why strength training matters for guys in their 40s, 50s and 60s. You could say 70s, 80s, however long you wanna go. Okay, I'm gonna talk about common myths and misconceptions about strength training and I'll tell you how you can get started with strength training. Then I'm gonna tell you you're gonna optimize your strength training. And, lastly, I'm gonna cover five key takeaways from today's episode. All right, so let's just jump in.
Speaker 1:Why does strength training matter for guys over 40? So if you're in your 40s, right, here's something that you have to consider about strength training. Number one is muscle mass decline. After the age of 30, right, men start to lose muscle mass at the rate of about three to 5% per decade. So strength training is gonna help you counteract that muscle loss. As I talked about earlier, the metabolic rate. So as muscle mass decreases, our metabolic rate also slows down, and this makes it easier to gain weight. All right, so strength training is gonna boost your metabolism by building muscle. So if you're in your 40s, right, consider this.
Speaker 1:Strength training also helps with the hormonal changes that your body is going through. So when we reach 40, our testosterone levels start to decline. That impacts our muscle mass, it impacts our strength, our energy levels. So strength training is gonna help you mitigate all of these effects as you enter your 50s. So if you're a guy in your 50s, just know that strength training is going to reduce your risk of chronic diseases. Okay, when you get into your 50s, there's a higher risk of conditions like type two, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and strength training helps to improve all of these. So, even though strength training isn't cardiovascular in nature, it does improve your cardiovascular health. It helps you regulate your blood sugar, and then it also increases your bone density. Okay, well, speaking of bone density, let's talk about joint health. For guys in their 50s. We have more age-related wear and tear on our joints and this often leads to increased pain and it leads to mobility issues. Strength training often improves the strength of the muscles around joints and, by virtue, reduces the burden on them. Okay, so that's one of the benefits of strength training. If you're a guy in your 50s, you're a guy in your 50s.
Speaker 1:We also have to start to consider functional independence. So, when you maintain your muscle strength, this is key for all sorts of daily activities and independence from listing groceries to climbing stairs, to playing with your kids or your grandkids, to playing golf. So just improving the overall quality of our life. Now let's talk about guys who are in their 60s and beyond. Right, when we get up into these years of our life, we see further muscle loss, which is often categorized as sarcopenia. Okay, and this means that the muscle loss is starting to accelerate. Remember I said earlier when you're in your 30s, it's three to 5% per decade. Well, this starts to accelerate, okay, and so by strength training, we're actually going to reduce the likelihood of this muscle wasting condition. We also see increased falls when guys start to get into their 60s. So we see reduced balance and, as we know, strength training is great for helping guys maintain their core strength, the balance, and this, of course, reduces the risk of falling an injury.
Speaker 1:Now, something you might not consider, but is absolutely true with weight training, with strength training, is it's so important for our cognitive health. There's a ton of research that's emerging that suggests that regular physical strength training it's gonna have a positive impact on your cognitive functioning. So this often leads to a delay or reducing the risk of dementia, alzheimer's, parkinson's, all these other types of cognitive related diseases okay, so if you need a reason to start strength training or continue strength training, I hope there's something there that landed, because it is so important for our long-term health and our long-term the way that we just thrive on earth, okay, and just know that doesn't matter how old you are, whether you're in your 40s, 50s or 60s or you're even younger. We know that strength training has so many positive impacts on our mental health, our mental wellbeing, on our body composition, our ability to maintain muscle mass and improve our metabolic functioning and then just our overall quality of life. So, again, it doesn't matter how old you are, strength training is key, okay.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, there's often a number of common myths and misconceptions about strength training, and there's seven that I've identified, but there's probably a lot more. But I just wanna highlight these because chances are you think in one of these ways and I want you to know that these are myths that are probably holding you back in some respect. So, as I kind of go through these, just keep in mind which one of these is holding you back and hopefully you'll understand that there's so much more benefit to strength training than what the myth might stipulate. Okay, so myth number one is that strength training is dangerous for older adults right Now. While the risk of injury does increase with age, strength training, when it's done correctly, when it's done with proper form, in a progressive way, is not inherently dangerous. So you're still gonna have what's called delayed muscle onset soreness. This is when you work out and the next day or the day after that get that really stiff feeling. You really soren the muscles. That's common across any age group, doesn't matter if you're old or young. Okay, we know that strength training is crucial for maintaining muscle mass, bone density and joint health. So the pros definitely outweigh the cons here. If you're just starting and I'm gonna talk about this in more depth in a minute but you wanna start with lighter weights, focus on technique and form and then gradually increase your intensity from there right Now, another myth kind of similar to that, is that it's too late to start after 40.
Speaker 1:The reality is it's never too late to start strength training. Okay, it don't care if you're over 40, you're over 50, or over 60. The reality is, your body retains its ability to build muscle and strength, albeit at a slower rate compared to young people, but we still have that ability to continue to build muscle even after 40. Another common myth that holds people back is that strength training will make you bulky. The reality is that gaining a large amount of muscle mass requires specific, intense training and diet that's designed to support hypertrophy. General strength training is not going to lead you to become big and bulky. You have to really focus in on that through diet and through the amount of reps and sets and the amount of weight that you're lifting. So if your goal is to just maintain your current health or put on some more muscle mass, just know that you will not, by virtue, just get big and bulky from strength training.
Speaker 1:Another common myth is that cardio is more important for your health than strength training, and so what people often do is they just focus on their cardiovascular exercise and they often skip over strength training. But strength training is equally important. As I've mentioned before, it has so many positive benefits, including improving blood glucose control. We've talked a lot about that on other episodes, but just know that cardio is not the only form of exercise that helps you maintain blood glucose control. Strength training does that as well.
Speaker 1:Myth number five is strength training is bad for your joints. When you train properly, with the right technique, strength training is actually beneficial for your joints. It strengthens the muscles around the joints and then this provides better support and it reduces the load on the joint itself. Okay, but again, it's so important that you practice with proper technique and that you progress in a really healthy way. You're not adding weight too quickly as you go. Now myth number six you need to lift heavy weight to see benefits. Now, benefits can be seen through a variety of different resistance levels. If you're lifting light weights to moderate weights, you're using resistance bands. If you're just doing body weight exercises, these are all going to be effective. The key is to work muscles in a way that is progressive and we're going to talk about progressive overload in a minute and that you follow a program where you're highlighting and putting form above anything else. Okay, so you do not have to lift heavy weights. You lift heavy weights Sure, there's a lot of benefits to that but you do not have to lift heavy weights.
Speaker 1:The last myth here is that strength training takes a lot of time. A lot of people think, in order to get the most out of a strength training session, I got to lift for a long time. But we now know a lot of research is showing us that strength training sessions they don't have to be long. Okay, short focus sessions a few times a week can lead to significant benefits. What's more important is the quality and the consistency. Quality and the consistency are more important than the length of each session. So you've probably had some of those thoughts before and maybe that's limited you from actually starting a strength training program.
Speaker 1:I hope that what I've said here has helped dispel those myths and misconceptions and has now helped you open your eyes a little bit to start wanting to strength training. So, with that in mind, here's some ideas that I've had about getting started with strength training. Now, if you heard my last episode, I talked about how to find the right gym fit, and you probably heard in that episode just how much experience I have working out and training and teaching people how to exercise properly. I've been in a gym since I was 13 years old so that's over 30 years and along the way I've done a ton of research. I went to school, got a kinesiology degree, and one of my thesis projects in school was all about the science and methodology of strength and conditioning. So with that in mind, here's a few things that I want you to consider if you're just getting started with strength training.
Speaker 1:Number one my best advice is to hire a trainer or work with a coach. Why is that so important? Well, what's going to happen is a good coach, a good trainer, someone who's been in a gym for a while, who has a lot of experience themselves. They're going to teach you the proper technique. They're going to teach you how to breathe when you exercise. They're going to teach you how to hold the weights and position the bar. They're going to teach you how to stand.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of really important fundamentals that I can't really dive into on a podcast episode. You really have to be in person and you have to kind of feel and experience the exercises and then have someone assess your form. If that's not available to you, that's okay. Don't make that a barrier. Simply just be mindful of how your body feels as you move through certain exercises. Now, with that, another important piece of advice is I recommend getting some sort of assessment. This can act as a starting point for your strength training program, as a way to where you can start and progress from there. Some people are a little bit further along, some people need a little bit more runway. To get started with strength training, if you hire a trainer or work with a coach, get that assessment and just get an understanding as to what you're really good at, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and then, hopefully, that person can help you build a program.
Speaker 1:Speaking of a program that's point number three. I really implore you and encourage you to create a routine, create a strength training program that is based on what's called the principle of progressive overload. Progressive overload is a fundamental concept in strength training. It often refers to the increase of gradual stress that you're going to place on your body during the training that you're going to do. It's based on the idea that, in order to either increase your muscle size or strength or endurance, or to improve any aspect of your physical fitness, that the body has to continuously be challenged to adapt to a higher level of stress. For example, if you do the same routine, the same weights, the same amount of time, you will, at best just maintain your fitness. In fact, you might even see a decline in your fitness over time. Here's what this progressive looks like in greater detail.
Speaker 1:There's a number of concepts and core elements that are important to consider. Number one is increasing your volume. Volume is calculated by the total amount of work done. Usually, when we're talking about strength training, volume is usually measured in sets, in reps, and weight the overall volume of everything. So your sets times your reps times your weight. You can increase your volume by doing more repetitions, or you can increase your volume by doing more weight or by doing more sets. So the volume matters, okay. So a little side note here a lot of guys mistake reps and sets and sets. They mistake reps and sets. A rep is equal to moving through the exercises motion and then returning to the start. So, for example, in a bicep curl, one rep would involve starting with the arms extended, curling the weight up towards your shoulders and then lowering it back down. That's one rep, one repetition. Okay, a set is multiple reps of an exercise and they're typically grouped into sets. So, for example, if you do 10 bicep curls in a row, that would count as 10 reps, but together that would make one set. So when you start a program, you might do three sets of 10 bicep curls, three sets of 10 repetitions of the bicep curl. Okay, so that's volume. That's how we explain volume when it comes to strength training.
Speaker 1:Another core element of progressive overload is the intensity. Now, the intensity is often increased by lifting heavier weights and oftentimes what we do when we're prescribing a program or we're developing a program for someone. We make this relative to what's called a one rep max. Okay, and it's usually. A one rep max is usually a theoretical one rep max, because it's very dangerous to put as much weight as you can on a bar and try to lift. That right Leap to injury could lead to a very serious harm. So what we do is we say, okay, let's say your theoretical max for a bench press is a hundred pounds, okay.
Speaker 1:And then what we do is we have certain rep ranges that we use to develop certain aspects of strength, and I talked about those earlier whether it's building muscle, hypertrophy, increasing maximum strength, increasing power or muscular endurance. So those are the four main areas. When we wanna increase our muscular endurance, we're usually looking at rep ranges between 12 and 20 reps okay, of your one rep max. And when we're looking to increase hypertrophy or increase the muscle size, we're usually looking at a rep range between five reps and 10 reps. When we're looking to increase muscular strength, we're usually looking at between one rep and five reps okay. If you're looking to increase muscular power, it can go anywhere from one rep to 12 reps, but you try to lift that weight with more speed. That's how you develop more power. So intensity often is explained by the amount of weight you lift or by the number of reps that you're correlated to lifting as well, okay. So those are the two main core elements of progressive overload, so volume and intensity.
Speaker 1:But then we can also look at three others. We can look at the form and the technique. So, even without increasing your weight or the amount of weight that you're lifting, improving your form is gonna lead to your effectiveness of the exercise and that can provide a new challenge for the body, right? The other thing that we can do and I do this a lot in my workouts that I prescribe is we can vary the exercises. So from one phase to the next, what I'll do is I'll change the exercise to target different muscles, to target different movements or even be progressive from one movement to the next. So, for example, if I do a dumbbell bench press right in my first phase, what I might progress to and change the exercise to is a one-arm dumbbell bench press, which makes that significantly more challenging.
Speaker 1:In addition to varying the exercises, we can also increase the frequency. So when we increase the frequency of our strength training sessions, we're going to see a greater risk of progressive overload and it's really important to keep this in mind. If you want to see an increase in either your muscle size, your muscular endurance, your muscular strength, muscular power, you want to train at least two times a week with strength training, okay. So frequency is so important. If you train once per week, you're not going to see an increase in your strength, you're usually just going to see a maintenance of where you're at Right. Now. Why is progressive overload important? Well, one, we see muscle growth and muscle strength. So your muscles need to be challenged to grow and progressive overload ensures we do that. It helps us avoid plateaus. So as the body adapts to consistent workload comes more efficient Right, and so by pushing the limits a little bit, we get to break through those.
Speaker 1:The other thing is, with progressive overload we reduce injury risk. So by increasing and lowering and increasing and lowering the workout demand, this can help us reduce the sort of likelihood of injury we go up too quickly. That means a higher risk of injury and in fact I often tell people, volume plus intensity equals injury. So if you increase your volume and you increase your intensity, you are actually increasing your risk of injury. So what I often do when I prescribe programs or make a program is I'm manipulating those two variables to offset one another. So if I increase volume, I'm trying to increase or decrease intensity. So if I increase the number of reps and sets, I'm usually decreasing the amount of weight. If I decrease the amount of volume so reps and sets then I'm going to increase the intensity, which is the weight.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I've talked a lot about progressive overload, talked about why we want to add strength training into our exercise routine and into our daily living. So many benefits there, especially as we get into our 40s, 50s and 60s. But what we also want to do is consider how we can optimize our strength training workouts. And it's very simple, right off the bat. What I'll tell you is you always want to warm up and cool down. So, rather than just getting to the gym or going into your home gym and getting right into a resistance training workout, you want to progress into it. You want to warm the body up. So, whether that's with a bit of like jogging or on a bike or doing different calisthenics or body weight movements, this increases blood flow to the working muscles, it increases your core temperature. And then, of course, we are going to get a better result when we ultimately do start to lift the weights, because our muscles will be primed. And then, likewise, we want to make sure we have an adequate cool down.
Speaker 1:Most guys skip the cool down. They finish their workout, the main body of the workout. Okay, I did what I was here to do. I'm just going to leave Now. Their heart rate is up, their core temperature is up and their body is essentially inflamed at this point. Right, the muscles have worked really hard, but they're inflamed. So you want to get that inflammation out of the body, and the best way to do that is through an effective, proper cool down. So maybe that means getting back on the bike, getting back on the treadmill and letting the heart rate gradually come down. Maybe that means doing some foam rolling or some stretching, something that is going to just bring your heart rate down and help your muscles start to acclimatize to what the work that you just did. Okay, so that's warm up and cool down.
Speaker 1:Another way that you really want to optimize your strength training is with proper technique, and I've touched on this before. But without the proper technique, you're not activating the muscles in the correct sequence, and so, in order to get the most out of our strength training, we want that to happen right. Think of our body like a kinetic chain One link leads to the next, and we want that our body to move efficiently. So proper technique is going to only help us even more. On top of that, it's going to help us prevent injuries. So we got warm-up, cool-down, proper technique, and then, of course, we've talked about progressive overload.
Speaker 1:But most importantly, guys, you got to listen to your body. You got to understand the difference between good pain, which I call sweet pain. This is muscle fatigue. This is where there's soreness in the muscle. That's okay. But we also want to avoid bad pain or injury pain, or what I call sour pain. That's where it just you know the body's not responding. It hurts to do something, it hurts a lot to do something, and that's where you want to pull back and stop, if you ever feel that doing a strength training workout Okay.
Speaker 1:Other ways that we can optimize our workouts is through proper nutrition and recovery. So one of the reasons why we see a decrease in our muscle mass as we get older is obviously we see a decrease in our testosterone levels, and testosterone is a hormone that helps our muscles recover more quickly. So testosterone doesn't actually make us stronger, it just helps us recover more quickly, and that's why athletes who take steroids see the benefits. Not that they're actually getting stronger from the steroids, it's helping them recover faster, and by recovering faster they can actually work out harder, they can do their next workout more quickly, closer to their last workout, and so that, by virtue, is making them stronger. So what we can do is we can help promote recovery doing a number of things. We can optimize and maximize our sleep. So if you're doing resistance training, I encourage you to really focus on your sleep as well, because that's going to optimize the gains that you see when you do strength train. So sleep rest really important.
Speaker 1:Active recovery is another way. So in all of my programs I intentionally plan a week of active recovery every four weeks. What that means is I cut my reps and sets in half, keep the intensity the same, but I cut my reps and sets in half, and this just aids in better recovery so that when we change the phase, we're coming into it with just a fresher body and fresher muscles. Okay. And then, lastly, nutritional needs. So as we get older actually it doesn't matter what age you are protein is such an essential building block of building muscle and strength. Okay, that's not new information. I'm sure you've heard that before, and the general rule is this at least 1.5 grams per kilogram of body weight per day is the amount of protein you should be aiming for? Okay, minimum 1.5 grams per kilogram of body weight and if, depending on the intensity of your training, it could go as high as 2 grams per kilogram of body weight, okay. We also need fats. Fats are essential in our hormone production and regulation, so healthy fats are essential there as well. And, of course, we need really good quality carbohydrates fruits, vegetables, grains, those sort of things that give us the energy we need to really show up and perform well in our workouts.
Speaker 1:Okay, now five key takeaways. Guys, there's a lot of information here. There's a lot to take in and a lot to digest. I get that. But here's five key takeaways. Number one strength training is essential for anybody, especially guys over 40. And it's never too late to start. So if you're over 40, you're over 50, you're over 60, just know, with the right coach, with the right guidance, with the right program, it's going to help you live a really healthy long life. Okay.
Speaker 1:Number two if you're worried about injury or doing something wrong, I encourage you to connect with me. I'm here to help you take the next steps, and we've got one-to-one coaching, we've got the arena, we've got lots of different ways that you can get involved with the spear method and avoid injury and just take the proper steps going forward. Okay, with that takeaway. Number three follow a program that utilizes progressive overload Right and take into account the intensity, the volume and the exercise types that you are implementing. Number four you can optimize your results by practicing a proper warmup, cool down, nutrition and then ensuring that you're getting adequate recovery in between workouts. And then, lastly, most importantly number five listen to your body and know the difference between sweet pain and sour pain. Okay, guys, I hope you've learned something here today and, more importantly, I hope this episode inspires you to start strength training immediately. I promise you it's going to change your life. It's going to change your health.
Speaker 1:If you're not sure what to do, I want you to contact me, craig, at thespearmethodcom, and get into the arena. Let's talk about one-to-one coaching. I've helped so many guys just like you who are stuck. They're not sure what to do. They've heard all these different myths and misconceptions. I've helped those guys improve their health and their fitness as a result.
Speaker 1:Okay, in fact, I've created a program and it's called the program. It's part of the arena and we're all doing this in the arena, myself included. It's a completely well-thought-out exercise program. Strength training program. Cardiovascular training program also includes mobility and core strength. Everything is done for you right there in the program.
Speaker 1:I encourage you to jump in and get started with us, because we're going to do this all year long. Right, our goal is to not only learn as much as we can about our bodies and how our bodies respond to training, but our goal is to just get in the best shape that we can over the course of the next 12 months. Okay, I encourage you to do that, guys. Thanks again for listening. Thank you so much for stopping by the arena Next week. We've got another great episode coming up. In the meantime, I encourage you to keep showing up, keep doing the work so you can look, feel and do better. Now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to thespearmethodcom and discover how I can help you get started on your path. Better health and weight loss.