As you age, you will continuously lose muscles and increase stored body fats due to slowed metabolism. It is very crucial to remain fit and healthy despite your age. As you grow old, you should focus on building the lost muscles and make sure you maintain them. If you are over 35 years old and want to build muscles, you need to combine cardio, strength-training exercises with a high protein diet accompanied with a lot of rest. Below are some of the things you need to do to ensure you build and maintain body muscles even at your advanced age making sure you don’t get yourself hurt.
Become a gym vet
After 35 years, you lose between 0.5%-1% muscles mass annually if you don’t exercise. Although any form of training will help you build muscles, weight training is the most effective way since it optimizes the muscle growth. However, you will need to train regularly to build and maintain your muscles at this age. If you fancy power lifting, then go for very heavy, low-rep training otherwise moderately-heavy and moderate training will yield the same results. Make sure you rest for two minutes between reps to maximize your strength. Resting for longer periods will also help you in building your muscular potential. Make sure you weight train for at least 3-5 times a week.
Get more rest
More rest is needed by older people to recover from their training sessions. The harder you exercise, the more you need to rest. For your muscles to grow and also recover, they need rest. Remember your aim is to build muscles not destroy them. Since men have more muscle mass, they require more rest than women. Go for training for two days, resting on the third day, then a couple of more training days. Since at an advanced age you have more responsibilities which might be keeping you awake, it is very crucial to rest. Try and get 7-9 hours of sleep each day to help repair and grow your muscles.
Pay attention to injuries
As you get older, injuries take longer to heal so, whenever you feel any pain, give yourself a rest or stop weight training altogether. Always pay attention to any signal your body tries to send to you. Prevention is the key. If you get the injury treated quicker, you will be able to resume with your training much sooner and work towards your goal. Also, avoid getting these injuries by not overdoing things.
Incorporate more proteins in your diet
You will only be able to grow muscles if you meet the protein body requirements. Taking at least 30g of proteins is essential in building muscles and controlling body fats. Try eating 1g of protein per pound of your body weight daily. As you continue to age, you need to eat more protein for muscle repair than your younger counterparts.
Always warm up and stretch
A warm up is one of the best ways to start your training. As you age, you will need longer warm ups to help prevent injuries and get more from your workout. After training, you need to stretch to avoid tightness on the specific areas you worked on. Stretching will also help prevent muscle imbalances. You can loosen hip flexors and tight hamstrings through stretching. Poor posture can also make your chest and neck muscles tight thus stretching after a weight session will help relax them as your muscles are flexible.
Learn to choose your battles
You should know what kind of exercises your bone structure is best suited for. Get to know what is well suited for your body structure and stick to that otherwise; you will end up hurting yourself instead of building muscles. If a particular exercise hurts, stop doing it and find a similar one that doesn’t hurt. After all, no exercise cannot be replaced with another one.
Change it up
When you discover a successful training routine, make sure you change it every 4-6 weeks to avoid a plateau period that comes once your body gets used to stress. Your alternative routine should help you evaluate the intensity of your previous workout. It can also help in increasing the intensity either by the amount of weight you’re lifting or the maximum number of reps per session.
Involve your whole body
Always make sure you involve your entire body during strength training. Go for exercises like squats, bench press, and bicep curl as they will help you yield the best results because you will be addressing more muscles. These exercises also simulate motions like lifting luggage which you regularly do.
If you follow the above steps, you will also be able to build muscles even if you are older than 35 years old.
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Going to be useful for when I do hit 35 a couple of years from now! For now though, I relax haha!
Incorporating more protein in my diet totally works for me as well as going to the gym. Building muscles is no rocket science and you have just pointed out the ways to do it.
Good advice to those older fox. I can say it’s a good article. “You get older and you have to listen to what your body tells you.”
I never knew that you start losing muscles when you reach 35. I always heard that life started at 40 and I guess that was not in fitness terms. Those are some good pointers though as not many people are aware of those facts.
Thank god for this. I know as we grow older this is hard due to slowdown of metabolism so this is a must for everyone. Thank you for this.
These are really helpful tips! I gotta tell these to my uncles. Just kidding, but seriously everyone needs to know this whether they are younger or older than 35 years old.
I think these tricks would work on anybody, regardless of their age. All it takes is consistency, really
This is the perfect advise and help I really need. I need to grow muscle because I look weak. I am not thin, actually I am chubby. I need to delete the fat, replace it with muscle so that I will get strong. I will take this as a note.
I know all these things. But what can I do? I just don’t have discipline. Urgh! My mind is always ready to do things but my body just won’t follow! 😀
This article is very helpful. I am above 35 and thinking of building body muscles in order to look fit. I will surely be paying attention to injuries when I go to the gym. One advice I also found interesting was to learn to choose what sort of exercises are adequate for me.
Really awesome article, am not 35 years but I will definitely try this routine. Can you please estimate how I need to eat so as I don’t over do and what kinds of protein is the best? Thanks.