Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why Now Is the PERFECT Time to Build Muscle Over 40 | Ep 393

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Why Now Is the PERFECT Time to Build Muscle Over 40 | Ep 393 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: You've probably heard that you should build muscle while you're young because you'll lose it when you're older.
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: And sure there is science behind that, but what nobody's talking about is the flip side of this advice, which is the dangerous myth that once you hit your 40s or 50s, you've already missed your chance.
• 0:17
  Philip Pape: Today I'm showing you three things.
• 0:19
  Philip Pape: First, why the muscle building window never actually closes.
• 0:22
  Philip Pape: Second, why midlife might actually be your best opportunity to build serious strength.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: And third, the engineering framework that explains why starting now gives you a compounding advantage for the next several decades.
• 0:35
  Philip Pape: If you've ever felt like you're behind or you should have started earlier, this episode will change how you think about muscle, aging, and what's actually possible when you apply the right inputs at any age.
• 0:47
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're going to tackle a topic that comes up constantly with my listeners, our clients, especially those in their 40s, 50s, and beyond.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: I was recently listening to Peter Atia talk about building what he calls a strength reserve early in life.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: And while I completely agree with this concept, I noticed something missing from the conversation.
• 1:27
  Philip Pape: That is the practical message of hope for anyone who didn't start lifting in their 20s.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: This episode is about reframing that narrative, that story around muscle building and age, especially for strength training over 40.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: Not to dismiss the science, which is real, but to show you why the moment you're in right now, whatever your age, is the perfect time to start building strength and muscle.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: It's a little bit of an inspirational episode, but it's also one of the most important things to wrap our head around and say, hey, I am where I am today.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: What should I do going forward to give me the best chance and an amazing rest of my life for decades to come?
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: So let's get into it.
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: And I actually want to start with part of a testimonial I received from someone in Physique University.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: And I'm not going to read her whole testimonials.
• 2:17
  Philip Pape: It's actually quite long.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: I'm going to focus on what's relevant to today's episode.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: She said, I asked him if this program was appropriate for a 65-year-old mostly beginner.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: I've been lifting for a while, just trying to figure out, figure things out on my own, but I really wanted to be doing things right.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: I feel like I'm doing things right now because I haven't felt this good in a long time, maybe ever.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: I have a workout program with instructional videos, nutrition app, a community of like-minded people whom I can reach out to anytime I need.
• 2:42
  Philip Pape: I love how Philip and his program gives me a lot of leeway in the things I want to eat and my fitness workouts.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: Not that I'm a control freak, but this program enables me to feel in control.
• 2:51
  Philip Pape: I don't have to rearrange my entire diet and eat things I don't like.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: I'm getting results with strength training without killing myself.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: As a matter of fact, one morning I skip my workout to get an extra hour's sleep, guilt-free, because that's what I needed.
• 3:02
  Philip Pape: And Philip suggests we get our sleep dialed in, is one of the first things we do.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: The program takes care of my whole person.
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: I'm feeling really good and I'm getting stronger.
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: I feel empowered emotionally and physically because I get to make my own decisions with guidance from Philip.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: I like his engineering mindset and the fact that he backs up his exercise science with facts.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: And she goes on from there.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: But really, the point is she's 65 doing this for the first time.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: And listen to the kinds of things that are possible again at any age.
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: And I think that is so, so powerful.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: I love to see when someone who's never done this before, finds the show, finds our program, whatever, reaches out, sends me an email, and says, like, I feel at my wit's end.
• 3:41
  Philip Pape: I'm whatever age, I feel like I can't do it anymore.
• 3:45
  Philip Pape: Perimenopausal hormones, you know, these issues, that issues.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: It's possible.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: And that's what we're going to talk about.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: So jumping into the topic, let's start with what the research shows because understanding the mechanism helps us engineer the solution.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: I've talked about it a lot on the show, but I'm kind of bringing it all together today and talking about muscle mass and the decline of muscle mass with age, but that's not something to fear.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: In fact, it's something that really gives us power.
• 4:12
  Philip Pape: It's something that's at the crux of what many people out there discussing obesity and weight loss and health are missing.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: So, what does the data say?
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: Let's start with the quote unquote bad news, and then we'll jump from there.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: The data shows a roughly 3% to 8% loss per decade after age 30, and that accelerates after 60.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: We also think that's why your metabolic decline accelerates around that age, because of the muscle mass.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: Because in reality, people's metabolisms tend to stay stable from the age of 20 to 60.
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: I know it sounds insane.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: There, I did a whole episode on this.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: I'm not going to go into that piece of it, but from the muscle mass piece, it really starts to decline 30s through 60s and then accelerates after 60.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: This goes back to studies back to the late 80s by researchers like Lexel and others who measured muscle fiber counts.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: They mess measure cross-sectional area in looking at aging populations.
• 5:06
  Philip Pape: However, the critical part that gets left out from a lot of these conversations, right?
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: They're like, okay, muscle mass declines.
• 5:13
  Philip Pape: That sucks.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: The decline is not primarily driven by aging itself.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: It is driven by what I'm gonna frame as three D's for this episode to make them easy to remember.
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: Three D's, D as in dog.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: Disuse, deficiency, and deconditioning.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: Okay, disuse, deficiency, and deconditioning.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: Most people in these studies, first of all, weren't strength training.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: I mean, that's just the average general population is not strength training.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: And they weren't eating enough protein and they weren't providing their muscles with the mechanical tension needed to maintain, let alone build muscle, because they weren't training.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: And when you actually look at studies where older adults, okay, we're talking 60 to 80 years old, engage in progressive resistance training, the results look like magic and they are remarkable.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: And I wish we had even more studies like this.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: There was a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Fiat Fiat, I don't know how to pronounce his name, but F-I-A-T-A-R-O-N and colleagues in 1990 that showed that frail nursing home residents in their 80s and 90s had 10 to 20% increases in muscle size and even bigger improvements in strength after 12 to 16 weeks of training.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: That is incredible in their 80s and 90s.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: And of course, not surprisingly, they saw better metabolism and functional capacity.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: Functional being a more important word than the word itself.
• 6:35
  Philip Pape: In other words, that's living your life and daily living.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: Very important when you get into your 80s and 90s.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: Their muscles didn't know they were old, right?
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: Muscles muscle, no matter how old you are.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: They respond to stimulus the same way that younger muscles do.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: They might have different kinetics behind them, different support structures like your bones and connective tissue, but they're still muscle tissue.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: And the mechanism is very straightforward.
• 6:58
  Philip Pape: When you apply that mechanical tension to muscle tissue, this is understood probably to be the most important driving factor in muscle growth.
• 7:07
  Philip Pape: When you do resistance training, you trigger a cascade of responses at the cellular level.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: Very important.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: Satellite cells activate, protein synthesis ramps up, your muscles adapt.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: We don't have to get into the biology of it.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: I half understand it myself.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: I will be honest.
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: I'm still learning this stuff.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: But I understand that it works and you get stronger, your muscles get bigger, and it doesn't stop when you're 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 90.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: And unless you're out there listening to this and you're 120, 130, you've already cracked the code, most likely, anyway.
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: What does change with age, though, is how efficient this response is.
• 7:43
  Philip Pape: And this is one of these things we just have to understand and live with.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: It's okay.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: Older adults might need a little more protein to overcome a little bit more anabolic resistance, which is kind of that blunted response to protein.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: They may need more recovery between sessions.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: The neuromuscular adaptations, like the motor unit recruitment that occurs, might take a little longer to develop.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: Now, is this because you're older and your body is so trained in one way and your brain is less pliable and plastic and all those?
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: Maybe.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: Again, I'm not a biologist, but it all makes a little bit of sense, doesn't it?
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: The good thing is, none of this means the window is closed.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: It just means the inputs have to be adjusted for you, which you would want to do anyway at any age, male, female, you know, different situations, different lifestyles.
• 8:30
  Philip Pape: And so we're going to talk about that throughout today's episode.
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: The takeaway from this first part is really simple, though.
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: Muscle doesn't expire.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: It does, however, decondition.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: And deconditioning can be reversed by conditioning with the same physics that you use to build it in the first place, which again, mechanical tension, progressive overload, adequate nutrition recovery, the basics.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: Those are the principles.
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of the underlying what's going on, right?
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: And again, I meant remember the three D's disuse, you haven't used it, deficiency, okay, because you haven't used it, you don't have the function, and deconditioning, you haven't trained your muscles.
• 9:09
  Philip Pape: So of course they are doing what they do best, and that is wither away because you don't need them.
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: And we are gonna turn this around.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: We are gonna flip this entire conversation around and look at why starting now, whether you're in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, I really don't care, might give you advantages that younger lifters don't have.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: Ooh, pretty cool, right?
• 9:29
  Philip Pape: I've thought about this a bit.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: I've thought there's certain things that I have an advantage over younger lifters because I started later.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: Certain things I don't, but let's focus on the positives.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: First, you've got a lot of data and you have some level of discipline.
• 9:42
  Philip Pape: Now, I don't want to over-emphasize discipline for its own sake.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: I'm not asking people to quote unquote be disciplined.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: What I'm talking about is that at this stage of life, you've tried lots of things.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: You're listening to this podcast, you're collecting lots of data, you've learned a lot about your body, your life, you've gone through the school of hard knocks, you've created and developed wisdom.
• 10:04
  Philip Pape: Let's be honest, you have wisdom.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: Now, there's a lot of stupid people who are 45 that I've met, and yet they still have more wisdom than they did when they were 25.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: So laugh at that or think about that what you will.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: And granted, some people don't have the mindset to develop wisdom, and that's a whole different conversation.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: But you're listening to this podcast, so I'm gonna say that you've self-filtered into the group that I'm talking to.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: So you're you're probably not winging it in the gym on YouTube videos.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: I hope you're not by this point.
• 10:31
  Philip Pape: But if you are, great.
• 10:32
  Philip Pape: That's something we're gonna start from and say there's a more structured approach, a system-based approach.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: But you kind of understand that it usually takes a little bit of effort, a little bit of a system in place, some form of tracking or measuring, right?
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: You know this from your money over the years.
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: Think about the jobs you've had, the businesses you've had, making money, spending money, losing money, investing money in risky ventures that didn't pay off, whatever it is in your past has probably taught you things that there's some level of awareness, knowledge, discipline, consistent application of some sort of principle that gets you a result.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: And so think about the areas where you have been successful over the years and you have the years behind you to give you some of that wisdom.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: Again, to use that word, right?
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: There's lots of things I did I wish I didn't do when I was young, but then I reframe it and say, you know what, I'm glad I did, because it taught me early on what I should and shouldn't do.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: This is like the engineering mindset that I talk about on this show, where younger lifters are chasing novelty.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: And to be frank, some older lifters as well, but they know there's something different that they need to do.
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: And so I see people program hopping, getting distracted by trends.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: I think you being in your 40s, 50s, 60s, dear listener, you and me, we're we're we've got a little more wisdom.
• 11:43
  Philip Pape: We can take a structured approach.
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: We can track the inputs and outputs, we can make adjustments based on feedback rather than emotion because we know all that other stuff hasn't worked.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: We know it hasn't worked.
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: So we have that behind us.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: So I just kind of give you props for that.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: Give yourself props for being just the fact that you're older means you're wiser in some ways.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: The second thing I I think here is you've got hopefully more resources than you when you were younger.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: And there are a lot of different types of resources.
• 12:10
  Philip Pape: One may be money.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: Not everybody, I understand, but one may be, you know, that you've earned some more income, you've saved some more money, you're probably making more than you did when you were younger.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: At least you should be, right?
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: And maybe you can afford some more of the tools or coaching or equipment or gym memberships or whatever food, you know, that you need to make it happen.
• 12:29
  Philip Pape: I think that's an advantage of being older, is that you've got, you know, I think of all the things I had college debt, I had lots of, you know, I had credit cards when I was younger, things that I've had to kind of scrape out of.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: But you also have access to tools and people, a lot more people than probably when you were younger.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: You can invest in different recovery strategies.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: You probably have your own place to live where you're, you know, in charge of your bed and your sleep hygiene and your supplements and stress management, your schedule.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: All of those things, it just what comes to mind for me is just as we get older and we get more responsibilities, the flip side to responsibilities is you generally have resources as well.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: Okay, maybe that's not everyone, but it's it's a thing that comes to mind to me versus like a 20-year-old.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: And then the third thing, and I think this is huge, is your motivation is different at this age.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: Okay, you're not lifting just to look good at the beach, although that could be a great side effect.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: I always say that.
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: Like the vanity piece, the visual, the physique is a pleasant side effect.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: But what you're really doing is you're lifting for longevity, for function, for independence.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: You're lifting so you can pick up your grandkids, so you can hike without pain, so you can live the second half of your life with strength, with vitality instead of decline and dependence and decrepitude.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: And this kind of motivation is far deeper and more sustainable than vanity.
• 13:51
  Philip Pape: Again, not to knock vanity, but we need the deeper motivations as well that are tied to meaning, values, quality for your future.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: And if you have children like I do, it enhances it even more.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: Not to say, not having children, you can't have deep meaning.
• 14:04
  Philip Pape: Absolutely, you can't.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: Everybody can have meaning in their life, no matter what, no matter your religion, you know, your family situation, whatever.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: But do you have those things in your life that you're anchored to that makes you far less likely to quit when things get hard?
• 14:17
  Philip Pape: And I would ask you to seek that out if you're not sure what it is.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: You've got to reflect on that and identify what that is for you, right?
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: For me, that is absolutely my family, my wife, my kids.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: But it's also their kids when I get older and if I have grandchildren, I don't want to do to depend on them.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: I want to be the one there helping them stack wood, you know, move into their new house, right?
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: Run around and play sports when I'm 70.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: Absolutely.
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: I see 70 and 80-year-olds who have done this the right way and focus on getting strong, do that.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: Absolutely.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: Even if they were already on the path toward frailty.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: And that's my point of this episode.
• 14:56
  Philip Pape: It's never too late to start.
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: That is why strength training over 40 is not just effective, but can be more strategic.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: And one little side tangent of this, which actually wasn't in my notes, but I was thinking is you haven't beat yourself up from 20 years of strength training already, whether it was done correctly or not.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: So that's another advantage of starting late.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: You're a little bit fresher in some ways.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: In other ways, not so pliable.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: I get it.
• 15:21
  Philip Pape: But again, we're focused on the positive.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: And then the fourth, I guess, advantage of doing this over 40 is, and I think nobody talks about this, is that you can not only build but preserve tons and tons of muscle as if you were young.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: I mean, I'm gonna be honest, your amount of muscle you can build is still not that far off from what you could have when you started young.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: It's a little bit less, but not much.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: And guess what?
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: Most people take a long time to get to their genetic potential anyway.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: And so I wouldn't even worry about that.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: I wouldn't even worry about, oh, I only have so much muscle to build.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: If your problem is that you're running out of new muscle to add, you've already won, you've already won the game.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: I'm you've already won the game.
• 16:05
  Philip Pape: In that case, you're just you're you're trying to optimize and you're trying to go after that next level, right?
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: And by doing this now, I don't care if you're 55, 65, like the person whose testimonial I read.
• 16:17
  Philip Pape: I don't want to say her name because I didn't get permission to say her name, but yet.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: But just like her at 65, she is front loading her reserves for the next few decades.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: I mean, at 65, and if you live to 95, that's 30 more years of health span, wealth span, whatever word you want to use.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: And you think of it like this if you build your strength and muscle now, okay, over the next couple of years, you build that.
• 16:39
  Philip Pape: We're not, we're not always dieting, right?
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: We want to build muscle.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be in a big surplus, it could be at maintenance.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: That's a whole separate topic.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: How do you build?
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: How do you lose?
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: That's other episodes.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: But if you do that now and then you maintain it, and by the way, it's a lot easier to maintain than build.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: So, in other words, once you've built some muscle in the first few years, you have a lot more flexibility on how much volume you need in the gym to hold on to it.
• 17:01
  Philip Pape: And then you're holding on to like 90% or more of that new tissue that everyone else is losing their muscle mass.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: You've built muscle mass and you're holding on to that muscle mass in your 70s and 80s, because you can definitely just keep training.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: Compare that to someone who never built that reserve in the first place.
• 17:17
  Philip Pape: Even a small amount of that age-related decline is what is going to lead to them being frail and dependent.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: They're gonna be, they're gonna fall, they're gonna break their hip, they're gonna have joint issues, they're gonna have dislocations.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: Okay, they're not gonna be able to get off the toilet one day.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: I know it's it's a terrible, grim view of the future, but it's kind of like in Christmas story where the ghost of Christmas past says you have a choice and this is gonna lead to one future or the other.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: That's your choice right now.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: Okay, you're not trying to turn back the clock, you're changing the future clock.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: And if you want to think of it as getting younger every year, I'm cool with that because I do that myself.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: I'm turning 45, joking with my wife.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: I'm like, since the time I was 40, every year, I've actually gotten a year younger.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm not turning back the clock.
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: I'm still that many years old on this earth.
• 18:06
  Philip Pape: But from the age of 40 to 45, I feel like I've gone from 40 to 35 in age and how I feel and how I function.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: And and I was joking with my daughters.
• 18:15
  Philip Pape: I said, so I'm gonna do that another five years.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: When I'm 50, I'll be like I'm 30.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: Now, at some point, I don't think I can really be like a 20-year-old ever again because of the hormone situation.
• 18:23
  Philip Pape: Although, you know, there is TRT.
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: But I said, you know, at least if I I'm I'm 30, I'm like a 30-year-old when I'm 50.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: That's 20 years of biological advantage over my peers.
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: And then I just maintain that.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: And now when I'm 60, 70, 80, 90, I'm far younger in spirit and physique and fit and physical capability than my peers, right?
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: And that's where we want to be.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: So if you're realizing now it's your time to start building serious muscle and strength, but you're like, look, I listened to your podcast or I'm gonna binge the show, whatever, and it's a lot of information.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: It's very confusing.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: I don't want to figure it out on my own, or it's gonna take me a long time to do that, which is super common.
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: And don't beat yourself up for it because that's exactly where I was until I started following people and working with coaches and asking for help.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: If you're in that situation now, I want to invite you to join Wits and Weights Physique University.
• 19:15
  Philip Pape: This is my semi-private group coaching program.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm just laying it out there, being transparent.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: You get evidence-based nutrition and training, strategies, courses, help, accountability, live calls, all that fun stuff.
• 19:29
  Philip Pape: It's not really about the stuff, so much as the clarity to know what to do for you and quickly be able to get an answer from experts.
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: So that would be myself as well as Coach Carol.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: She's an expert, especially for women and hormones and thyroid issues, uh, especially.
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: She's also a personal trainer.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: And you get immediate help from one of us.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: You also get direct nutrition support.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: There's training templates and programs designed for every level, every level of equipment, days per week.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: There's live coaching calls.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: One of the most value-added things we've been doing is monthly workshops that go really, really deep on things like body recomp and recovery dieting.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: And the one coming up in November before we get to the holidays is how to finish strong with a year, how to have a bailout strategy rather than trying to do more than is realistic during the end of the year.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: It's those kinds of things.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: And of course, the community that binds it all together of like-minded, ambitious people who are all ages.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: I mean, we have people as young as in their 30s, maybe even late 20s, to be honest, but most people are in their 40s, 50s, beyond, who are focused on doing this, on trying to reclaim their muscle, build it up, become stronger, and just more badass people.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: That's excuse my French.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: That's the the closest to swearing you're going to get on this podcast.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: And the best part is because you're listening to the podcast, if you use my code FREEPLAN, you'll get a custom nutrition plan as well for free at the beginning.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: And what that's gonna do is give you an accelerator for what to do, when to do it, how to do it.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: We don't do meal plans.
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: We don't do anything that's generic.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: We personalize it for you in a group setting.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: And you're like, how does that work?
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: Well, come check it out.
• 21:08
  Philip Pape: Go to physique.wits and weights.com.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: I have a demo in there.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: You can read all about it.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: You can ask me questions if you're if you're not sure.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: Some people will ask 10 questions before they join.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: I'm cool with that.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: If you're serious about making this the decade that you build that real lasting strength, because that's what it's about, is strength, guys.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: It's not about YouTube workouts, it's not about mobility, it's not about you know yoga and mindfulness and all that.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: All that's great, but it's really about strength and function and fitness that all ties to the rest of it.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: I want you to go to witsandweights.com slash physique, use my code FREEPLAN to get the free plan, link in the show notes.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: All right, let's keep building this framework for this episode.
• 21:47
  Philip Pape: Because next, I want to give you a mental model.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: I think mental models are a great way to understand why starting now is optimal and kind of tie into the the deeper why of why we do this and then how to do it.
• 22:01
  Philip Pape: So I want you to think of your muscle mass as structural capacity, structural, as in your structure of your body.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: And I want you to think of your strength as the output, kind of like the gas engine, the throughput, the output.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: If in any system we design, if you designed a system in life, like a physical product or system, you would design it for future demand, right?
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: You wouldn't just design for the current you current use, you want it to last.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: When a civil engineer builds a bridge or designs a bridge, they don't build it to handle just the traffic today.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: They say, okay, we need a safety margin, extra capacity, increased load over time, unexpected stress, wind and hurricanes and all that fun stuff.
• 22:45
  Philip Pape: Your body works the same way.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: The muscle and strength that you build now is not just for today.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: It is your margin of safety for the next three, four, five decades.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: Every pound of muscle you add, every unit of strength you gain, expressed by, you know, weight on the bar, weight on the machines, weight on the dumbbells, expands that margin.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: And even if you start later in life, the act of building capacity is still going to pay an equivalent dividend across your remaining lifespan.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: And therefore, by starting today, you're retrofitting your system with far better materials and greater load-bearing capacity.
• 23:22
  Philip Pape: You're increasing your whole capability of your body.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: Someone who started at 25, they have a longer runway, sure.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: But you can still build substantial capacity in a short period of time and then maintain it because that's the key.
• 23:35
  Philip Pape: It doesn't actually take a long time to build it up.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: And as I mentioned before, maintenance requires a lot less work and stimulus than growing.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: So we want to focus on that growth.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: Once you build the muscle, holding on to it becomes easier.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: And that's why I always tell you, dear listener and our clients, that building, if you if you're not sure if you should build muscle or lose fat, I err on the side of building muscle.
• 23:58
  Philip Pape: Now, you're gonna build muscle regardless if you've never done it before, whether you're losing fat or not, because you've never done it before.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: Your body's gonna respond really well.
• 24:05
  Philip Pape: So don't get hung up on that.
• 24:06
  Philip Pape: Okay, don't get hung up on Phillip saying you need to gain weight.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying that.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: I'm just saying you need to build muscle.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: Not five years ago because you don't have a time machine.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's not the best time.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: You can't go back in time.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: But think of the opposite.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: Every year you delay is another year it gets harder.
• 24:26
  Philip Pape: Your margin of safety decreases, and your health span decreases.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 24:31
  Philip Pape: Again, not to fear monger what's happened in the past.
• 24:33
  Philip Pape: If you're 70 today listening to this, this is not a negative story.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: This is a positive story.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: You're listening to this and hearing this message now.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: Amazing.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: Now do something about it.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: Now, what do you do about it?
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about the inputs and outputs because this is where we get practical.
• 24:47
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: On the input side, you have, I'll say, four primary variables for today.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: And I say for today because I always go on podcasts and I talk about the pillars of health.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: And sometimes it's four, five, six.
• 25:00
  Philip Pape: I kind of move them around.
• 25:01
  Philip Pape: But today we're gonna talk about four.
• 25:02
  Philip Pape: The first one is training.
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: You have to progressively resistance train, ideally three or four times a week, but for some of you, two is gonna be amazing, better, way far better, infinitely better than zero, that's for sure.
• 25:15
  Philip Pape: And you have to have enough volume and intensity to create the adaptation where you build that muscle.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: And that means primarily using compound movements.
• 25:24
  Philip Pape: So these are exercises that involve major natural movement patterns, squats, deadlifts, pressing, and so on.
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: You have to progress, meaning you're not jumping around doing YouTube workouts.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: You're doing whatever you did on Monday, you're doing it the next Monday, and you're going up in weight or going up in reps, right?
• 25:41
  Philip Pape: That's just simple examples.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: You're progressing.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: And the real first principle here is you're training close enough to failure that your muscles, muscles have to respond and get bigger.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: Lifting weights with progression in that way, that is what signals your body to build and maintain muscle tissue.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: So if you've been doing this for 20 years and going to the gym, you're like, Philip, I love all what you're saying, but I just don't can't seem to build muscle.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: Well, you're not doing a progressive program.
• 26:05
  Philip Pape: I guarantee it.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: If I looked at what you were doing, that is not what you're doing.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: If you still have the same 15-pound dumbbells, and that's the heaviest dumbbells you have in your home gym, that's the problem, right?
• 26:15
  Philip Pape: That's the problem.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're 80 years old, you've never worked out before, 15-pound dumbbells might be super heavy.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: So it's all relative.
• 26:21
  Philip Pape: So that's the first variable is training.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: The second variable is nutrition.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: And this is why it's four today, because I'm kind of lumping them into big categories.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: Nutrition.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: Adequate protein is the underwriting factor here, overriding factor here.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: And we're just gonna hammer it home the message again.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of body weight a day.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: Optimal muscle protein synthesis is closer to that higher end, but at least 0.7 grams per pound, you're golden.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: Okay, older people tend to need more than than younger, but that range covers pretty much anybody, and it's good enough.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: It's plenty good enough.
• 26:53
  Philip Pape: Don't sweat it.
• 26:54
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: At the same time, you need enough energy.
• 26:57
  Philip Pape: So energy is calories.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: And for some of you, that might be a slight surplus or even a you know, more aggressive surplus to really focus on growth.
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: If you're trying to recomp, I would keep it more toward a very slight surplus.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: If you're overweight, if you have extra weight to lose, you're gonna have a slight deficit.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: But the point is you have to have enough energy where your body feels like it has the resources to build the muscle in response to your training.
• 27:22
  Philip Pape: A fat loss phase, specifically lose body fat, is a trade-off to that.
• 27:26
  Philip Pape: And I'm not discussing that today.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: But if you have extra body fat to lose, there is a place for fat loss phases for sure.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: They're not very long, they're moderate too aggressive.
• 27:36
  Philip Pape: You get them over and done with, you get out, and you go back to building muscle.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: Third, the third input here is recovery.
• 27:42
  Philip Pape: Sleep is non-negotiable.
• 27:44
  Philip Pape: I can't tell you enough how sleep is probably the biggest other than alcohol for some of you.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: Sleep is the thing that many of you should focus on first.
• 27:53
  Philip Pape: Now, I don't mean first to the exclusion of training.
• 27:55
  Philip Pape: You've got to train as well.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: But if you had to pick all the other things that could be having the biggest impact on your metabolism and your muscle building, it's probably sleep, quantity of sleep, quality of sleep, you know, managing your fatigue and recovery between your sessions, using the right workout program depending on the phase you're in, all of that fun stuff.
• 28:14
  Philip Pape: You know, even managing your stress, like can be connected to this.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: All of that supports your ability to adapt.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not gonna talk about movement today and neat and all of that.
• 28:25
  Philip Pape: I do think it's very, very important that you're walking and getting up.
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna put that as one of the one of the primary variables for muscle building, but I probably should.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: Now that I think about it, I probably should.
• 28:36
  Philip Pape: But we're gonna go to the fourth variable, and that is consistency.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: I wanted to I wouldn't include a process-related input here because this is the multiplier.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: It's also the thing that you succeed or fail by because you can have perfect programming, perfect nutrition, but if it's sporadic, you're not gonna build anything.
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: If you have adequate nutrition and adequate training and do it consistently, oh, that is gonna compound into such an amazing transformation.
• 29:03
  Philip Pape: Now, it may take longer than if you did it more optimally, but so what?
• 29:07
  Philip Pape: It's gonna happen.
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: It's gonna happen.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: I briefly mentioned earlier we're gonna be doing a challenge in physique university in November before the holidays.
• 29:15
  Philip Pape: It's to close out the year.
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: I'm mentioning it because part of that strategy is having a bailout option.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: What I what I mean by that is we all want to be optimal.
• 29:24
  Philip Pape: We all want to train five days a week, you know, eat our protein every day, sleep nine hours, all those things.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: We want to, we want to do those, but in reality, we don't do those.
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: And rather than saying, well, okay, I'm not doing them, so I'm a failure, we have minimums that we try to hit.
• 29:39
  Philip Pape: And I've talked about that many times, having a minimum.
• 29:41
  Philip Pape: But I'm gonna take it one further and say, why don't you have a bailout strategy as well?
• 29:45
  Philip Pape: Even if you can't do the minimum, do you have a bailout strategy that still gives you a win?
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: That's my point when I talk about consistency is doing something every day, a non zero in all the things you care about.
• 29:56
  Philip Pape: On most days, if you're optimal or even minimum, you're gonna be good.
• 29:59
  Philip Pape: Even if some days are bailouts, as long as you don't have any zeros.
• 30:04
  Philip Pape: Now, are you never, ever, ever, ever, ever gonna have a zero?
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: No.
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: But this sets up your mindset and the way you approach your process to give you tons and tons of flexibility.
• 30:13
  Philip Pape: I could be optimal, I could be minimum, or I can go with the bailout strategy.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: Anyway, that's something we're gonna teach in the workshop.
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: Let's get back to this, talking about consistency.
• 30:21
  Philip Pape: I think it's super important as probably the number one principle.
• 30:24
  Philip Pape: And remember, consistency and intensity often battle each other.
• 30:28
  Philip Pape: So if you're trying to go all out and be too intense, you know, David Goggin's style and everything, that's a sure recipe for failure.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: If you're all or nothing, sure recipe for failure.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: Let's pick one thing, training.
• 30:39
  Philip Pape: Let's pick two things, training and sleep, whatever makes sense for you, and build up over time.
• 30:43
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's the inputs.
• 30:44
  Philip Pape: On the output side, well, now you have to see how all those inputs are translating to what you're doing.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: And that's where you track metrics that give you feedback.
• 30:52
  Philip Pape: You're like, oh, data, numbers, you know what?
• 30:55
  Philip Pape: All life, all existence can be reduced to math.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: I don't whether you like to hear that or not, it's true.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: Math is a universal language.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: And that's because math is simply, is simply an abstract representation of reality.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: That's all it is.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: And by reality, I mean the empirical, observable things that happen, the cause and effect that happens.
• 31:17
  Philip Pape: Okay, and if you can figure out the cause and effect, ooh, you've got it made because that gives you control and confidence.
• 31:24
  Philip Pape: That's what we are all about.
• 31:25
  Philip Pape: So, for example, weighing yourself on the scale every day is a perfectly normal thing to do.
• 31:31
  Philip Pape: It is not obsessive and it's associated with high positive outcomes in not only weight and fat loss, but main maintaining that.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: There's so many myths in the fitness industry about tracking, being somehow obsessive or calling causing OCD type behaviors.
• 31:45
  Philip Pape: It's not true.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: If you are if you are prone to those to begin with, certain things may trigger that, but it's not because you're tracking itself, it's because you've got other issues to resolve.
• 31:54
  Philip Pape: So take scale weight, for example.
• 31:56
  Philip Pape: You weigh yourself every day and then you average it out or you smooth it out over time to see if your body mass is moving in the right direction.
• 32:03
  Philip Pape: Now that's one example where there could be confusion because you're like, okay, Philip just said I need metrics.
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: I'm weighing myself every day and it's going up and down two, three, four pounds.
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: Can't do anything with that data.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: You're right.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: You can't do anything with that data because the daily fluctuations are meaningless.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: But over time, the amount of energy you have stored in your fat is going to be indicated by the trend in your weight over time.
• 32:23
  Philip Pape: Once you've smoothed it out for that noise with the water weight fluctuations, right?
• 32:27
  Philip Pape: So you kind of have to have a level of understanding of these things.
• 32:30
  Philip Pape: Obviously, that's where a coach can help.
• 32:33
  Philip Pape: You know, we can help.
• 32:34
  Philip Pape: Listening to this show can help.
• 32:35
  Philip Pape: There's things I had to figure out not till I was four years old.
• 32:38
  Philip Pape: So that's trend weight.
• 32:40
  Philip Pape: Strength progression in your lifts, your big lifts, your accessory lifts, really anything you're trying to progress to confirm that you are adapting.
• 32:48
  Philip Pape: And again, you have to know what to measure.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: What do I measure?
• 32:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, I need to measure the exercises, the sets and reps, the weight.
• 32:54
  Philip Pape: Really, it's just the numbers and track that they are changing over time.
• 32:58
  Philip Pape: Measurements for your physique, your body composition can be helpful to understand where the weight's going, whether you're achieving your goal for losing body fat, visceral fat, et cetera, and health.
• 33:09
  Philip Pape: And then there's all the subjective markers that become more objective over time of your biofeedback, recovery, energy, soreness, right?
• 33:16
  Philip Pape: Hunger, sleep stress, et cetera.
• 33:19
  Philip Pape: And I could go on, I've done entire episodes about this, but this is a closed loop system.
• 33:23
  Philip Pape: Your body's a closed loop system.
• 33:25
  Philip Pape: So when you apply inputs and you measure the outputs, you can reasonably determine what should be adjusted.
• 33:31
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 33:31
  Philip Pape: And I say reasonably because it's it's a practical thing, it's not a perfect thing.
• 33:36
  Philip Pape: You're not going to get down to the third decimal on stuff.
• 33:40
  Philip Pape: You're just going to know that, okay, the way I'm eating right now is leading me to slowly drift up in weight.
• 33:45
  Philip Pape: Okay, great.
• 33:45
  Philip Pape: So I need to eat a little bit less.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: Like that's a simple way to close the loop.
• 33:49
  Philip Pape: The precise amount of calories you need, you'll never truly, truly know.
• 33:54
  Philip Pape: And I'm sorry if you're a perfectionist and feel like you have to know, you don't.
• 33:57
  Philip Pape: It's just good enough.
• 33:58
  Philip Pape: It's not mystical.
• 33:59
  Philip Pape: It's not dependent on luck.
• 34:00
  Philip Pape: It's not dependent on genetics either.
• 34:02
  Philip Pape: The genetics establish the baseline.
• 34:04
  Philip Pape: Once you measure yourself, it's it's baked in.
• 34:07
  Philip Pape: The genetics are baked in, but you need to measure yourself for you.
• 34:10
  Philip Pape: Then the genetics are baked in.
• 34:11
  Philip Pape: At that point, it becomes engineering everything.
• 34:14
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 34:14
  Philip Pape: Now I get it, things change over time.
• 34:16
  Philip Pape: As we get old, if you're in your 50s, if you're a woman, you're like, wait a minute, I've got my hormones are all changing.
• 34:23
  Philip Pape: So how can you say that it's just inputs and outputs and it's a closed system?
• 34:27
  Philip Pape: Because at any given point, what's happening is still a result of what's going on in your body.
• 34:32
  Philip Pape: And it may be because of some combination of hormones and nutrient deficiencies and your behavior and your brain genetics, but it's still measurable to a good enough extent that you can do something about it.
• 34:48
  Philip Pape: Now, some of you may need to measure more things than others.
• 34:50
  Philip Pape: Some of you may need blood work, right?
• 34:52
  Philip Pape: We do performance blood work for a reason.
• 34:54
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash blood work, just to give ourselves a plug here on that, because that can be a massive game changer for anybody who has done the things or they're starting to put all this in place and there's still something else that seems a bit mysterious.
• 35:07
  Philip Pape: But anyway, the beautiful thing is this works at any age as long as you provide the right inputs, right?
• 35:15
  Philip Pape: Stimulus, recovery, nutrition, consistency, and measure the outputs.
• 35:19
  Philip Pape: All right, so this episode's going longer than I than I anticipated, but I think it's important.
• 35:24
  Philip Pape: And now we get to the practical stuff.
• 35:26
  Philip Pape: So let's make this concrete.
• 35:27
  Philip Pape: What should you do if you want to start building muscle and strength right now, regardless of your age?
• 35:32
  Philip Pape: First is start with a structured training program.
• 35:35
  Philip Pape: When it comes to lifting weights after 40, it's no different than lifting weights under 40.
• 35:41
  Philip Pape: But the difference is how you respond and understanding that your nutrition and training need to work together.
• 35:48
  Philip Pape: So if you're new to lifting or if you're coming back after a long break and you're detrained, a very simple full-body program, three times per week with the big compound movements can get you 80, 90% of the way there.
• 36:01
  Philip Pape: Absolutely.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: In fact, it's probably what you should do.
• 36:04
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 36:04
  Philip Pape: Programs like Starting Strength, uh, we have different novice strength programs in Physic University that also uh play on this concept of keeping it simple.
• 36:12
  Philip Pape: It's boring, but basic.
• 36:13
  Philip Pape: You focus on learning the movements, getting in touch with your body, building that base of strength, and establishing consistency.
• 36:21
  Philip Pape: And you'll start to pack on wins after win after win after win as you see how strong you can get pretty quickly.
• 36:26
  Philip Pape: Even if you're 80 years old starting this, I guarantee it.
• 36:30
  Philip Pape: Doesn't mean you have to use a barbell.
• 36:32
  Philip Pape: It might be a dowel, it might be body weight, it might be dumbbells.
• 36:35
  Philip Pape: It depends on where you are.
• 36:37
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're more advanced, if you're intermediate or advanced, well, then we have to look at having enough volume to continue growing.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: Okay, that could be splitting into four days a week, even five days a week, using things like upper lower body splits, body part splits, push-pull legs.
• 36:50
  Philip Pape: There's so many varieties.
• 36:52
  Philip Pape: It you almost can't go wrong if you're just sticking to the principle of progression.
• 36:56
  Philip Pape: I've known people who almost do random gym workouts, but they actually tracked what they were doing and did more of that as they went, and they even had progress.
• 37:05
  Philip Pape: It's not optimal, but the principle is they train close to failure and they progressed.
• 37:09
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 37:10
  Philip Pape: You have to increase the demands on your muscles over time, whether that's more weight, more reps, or more sets.
• 37:15
  Philip Pape: You have to.
• 37:16
  Philip Pape: So that's the first one is training.
• 37:18
  Philip Pape: Second is your nutrition.
• 37:19
  Philip Pape: Again, we're tying these back to the inputs that I mentioned earlier, but being a little practical.
• 37:23
  Philip Pape: For nutrition, the best thing to do is to track it.
• 37:26
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 37:26
  Philip Pape: Just track it.
• 37:27
  Philip Pape: If you're like, oh, here he goes again.
• 37:29
  Philip Pape: It's because how do you know where your money is going without tracking your spending?
• 37:33
  Philip Pape: How do you know where your food and your body mass is going with track without tracking your food and your body mass?
• 37:39
  Philip Pape: I mean, it's just, it's, it's almost self-evident.
• 37:42
  Philip Pape: But if you're not doing it, don't complain that you don't know your metabolism or don't know why you're gaining weight.
• 37:49
  Philip Pape: And don't say, I think I'm eating this or I think my metabolism is this, because that means you don't know.
• 37:54
  Philip Pape: Just to be honest about it and honest with yourself.
• 37:58
  Philip Pape: So start tracking your food, which includes your macros and your calories, and hopefully also your micros.
• 38:04
  Philip Pape: I love MacroFactor, my favorite app.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: I use it myself.
• 38:08
  Philip Pape: Use my code WITS and Waits, all one word, to get a free trial on that app.
• 38:12
  Philip Pape: And that app is not only going to track your food, it's going to give you an estimate of your metabolism.
• 38:18
  Philip Pape: And then you'll know how much you need to eat for what you're trying to do.
• 38:21
  Philip Pape: You have to be tracking for two or three weeks before you could really get enough data.
• 38:25
  Philip Pape: And that's why you have to be consistent about it.
• 38:27
  Philip Pape: And then you adjust your calories based on if you want to lose fat, you want to maintain, you want to build muscle or recomp, whatever.
• 38:34
  Philip Pape: Now, underlying all this is how do I eat?
• 38:37
  Philip Pape: And that goes down to eating consistently, having enough meals throughout the day, having enough protein in every single meal and fiber.
• 38:44
  Philip Pape: If you start there, the rest is going to slowly fall in line as you realize what it takes to reach your goals and the quality of foods needed and what it takes to not be hungry and and and things we've covered in other episodes on this show, I'm not going to go into, but it's eating whole foods, eating fiber, eating consistently, not doing things like fasting and keto and all these restrictive diets.
• 39:03
  Philip Pape: You don't need them.
• 39:04
  Philip Pape: If you want to do them and they feel great for you, I've always said go for it, but you don't need them.
• 39:08
  Philip Pape: Third is again recovery.
• 39:10
  Philip Pape: And this is where a lot of people at our age screw up because you're training like you're younger without recovering adequately, and then you get injured or you get burned out, or you don't focus on form, or you're trying to progress really quickly and you don't dial in the movement pattern.
• 39:24
  Philip Pape: In my opinion, getting the movement pattern right, but not dragging it on for months is probably a good approach.
• 39:31
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 39:32
  Philip Pape: Being mindful, getting a coach.
• 39:34
  Philip Pape: I don't care if it's a personal trainer in the gym, hopefully somebody that knows what they're talking about, reach out to us, join physique university, whatever it is, to get that help.
• 39:41
  Philip Pape: I've had multiple coaches as I've learned to train, and I still go and I talk to coaches, and I still will occasionally hire a personal trainer who I respect to do form checks for me.
• 39:52
  Philip Pape: Because it's and I've got friends who are really good lifters, so we can do the same.
• 39:56
  Philip Pape: We can send it to each other.
• 39:57
  Philip Pape: I'm in a barbell club that I pay for where there's a coach who can do that.
• 40:01
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 40:02
  Philip Pape: So I do it myself.
• 40:02
  Philip Pape: I walk the walk.
• 40:03
  Philip Pape: I suggest you do the same, or else you're gonna screw something up and you're at best, or yeah, at best, you're just not gonna progress, but at worst you're gonna injure something.
• 40:12
  Philip Pape: We don't want to do that, especially with the age-related stuff.
• 40:15
  Philip Pape: And then fourth, well, how many points do I have here?
• 40:17
  Philip Pape: I have five points, practical points.
• 40:19
  Philip Pape: Fourth, I want you to think long term.
• 40:20
  Philip Pape: This is the mindset piece about consistency and patience.
• 40:24
  Philip Pape: It's not a 12-week challenge.
• 40:26
  Philip Pape: I'm sorry if you think this is a short-term thing, like I need to improve my physique, I'm gonna take 12 weeks and I'm gonna move on with my life.
• 40:32
  Philip Pape: That's not.
• 40:33
  Philip Pape: This is the next chapter of your life.
• 40:36
  Philip Pape: This is your new life.
• 40:37
  Philip Pape: This is the system you're gonna use for decades.
• 40:39
  Philip Pape: And that means this is the fun thing about it, this is the positive thing about it.
• 40:44
  Philip Pape: The choices you make for that system should be things you want to make on a day by day, by week, by month, by year basis.
• 40:51
  Philip Pape: Things that are sustainable, not just effective in the short term.
• 40:55
  Philip Pape: Listen that to that carefully.
• 40:57
  Philip Pape: Choose things that are sustainable, not just effective in the short term.
• 41:01
  Philip Pape: What that means is you're gonna choose things that have some level of effectiveness, but are also sustainable.
• 41:07
  Philip Pape: So you're actually making a little trade-off most of the time to do that.
• 41:11
  Philip Pape: The trade-off is you're not picking something that's 100% effective, you're picking something that's 90% or 80% or even 70% effective, but you can do it.
• 41:20
  Philip Pape: And when you take effectiveness, modest effectiveness from I'm gonna do it, you get the transformation.
• 41:28
  Philip Pape: You get it on whatever timeline it's gonna happen, but you get it.
• 41:31
  Philip Pape: If you're going for 100% effective, but you don't do it, that's a zero.
• 41:35
  Philip Pape: That's a big goose egg.
• 41:36
  Philip Pape: So get that into your thick skulls.
• 41:38
  Philip Pape: And I'm talking to myself here, guys.
• 41:40
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm talking to myself here.
• 41:42
  Philip Pape: And then lastly, here, get help if you need it, and pretty much everybody needs it.
• 41:48
  Philip Pape: It's insane that people will go to all of these specialists for healthcare, but they won't talk to one person when it comes to the preventative, functional, lifestyle nutrition stuff, right?
• 42:00
  Philip Pape: Personal trainers, coaches, nutrition coaches, friends who know about this stuff, you know, programs, groups, free groups, paid groups.
• 42:08
  Philip Pape: I don't care.
• 42:09
  Philip Pape: Whatever your resources allow that makes the most sense, get help.
• 42:13
  Philip Pape: Work with someone who could give you objective feedback and keep you accountable.
• 42:18
  Philip Pape: It's not not only does it accelerate your results, which I know a lot of you, you know, because you're a little bit of impatient, impatient for this, that kind of piques your interest.
• 42:27
  Philip Pape: But but more importantly, it prevents the legion costly mistakes that you're gonna make otherwise, which you're gonna learn from, but it might take you 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
• 42:37
  Philip Pape: We want to learn these now, okay?
• 42:39
  Philip Pape: Especially when injury is at stake or your health's at stake.
• 42:42
  Philip Pape: So the point to all of this is there are clear actionable steps you can take starting today.
• 42:47
  Philip Pape: This is not theory.
• 42:48
  Philip Pape: This is something, this is not something you have to wait for the perfect time or even wait till Monday.
• 42:52
  Philip Pape: The perfect time is right now.
• 42:53
  Philip Pape: If you have to go back and listen to this episode over and over to get it in your head, please do.
• 42:58
  Philip Pape: Use the timestamps, share it with a friend, talk about it with a friend, post it on social media and say, this is the thing that I learned, and I'm gonna do this today because I want to live a great life.
• 43:09
  Philip Pape: The last thing I want to leave you with is a concept called opportunity cost.
• 43:13
  Philip Pape: Okay, this is for all my engineering and finance folks out there, business people, but really this is for everyone.
• 43:18
  Philip Pape: Opportunity cost is the value of the next best alternative that you give up when you make a choice.
• 43:25
  Philip Pape: Okay, it's the value of the next best choice that you gave up when you made another choice.
• 43:30
  Philip Pape: And here's what I've realized about opportunity cost regarding building muscle later in life.
• 43:35
  Philip Pape: Every day you delay is not just a day that you don't build muscle.
• 43:40
  Philip Pape: It's a day that you lose muscle because your baseline is not neutral.
• 43:45
  Philip Pape: You don't just stay the same.
• 43:47
  Philip Pape: The baseline, if you do nothing, is decline, is muscle loss, is strength loss, is reduced metabolic health, is decreased functional capacity, is age-related disease.
• 43:58
  Philip Pape: So the question is not whether you should have started earlier.
• 44:00
  Philip Pape: The question is what are you going to do now?
• 44:02
  Philip Pape: Here's the truth you can spend the next five years regretting that you didn't start 10 years ago.
• 44:06
  Philip Pape: Or you can spend the next five years building something remarkable so that five years from now you look back and realize this was the turning point right now, today.
• 44:14
  Philip Pape: The muscle building window never closes.
• 44:17
  Philip Pape: It never does.
• 44:18
  Philip Pape: It is always open to you.
• 44:19
  Philip Pape: You have to choose to walk through that door.
• 44:22
  Philip Pape: And what I've seen over and over with clients in their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, in this age grain, which is the vast majority of people I work with and I identify with, is that when they do start, when they commit to the process, when they trust the system, the results are life-changing.
• 44:37
  Philip Pape: They change your life.
• 44:38
  Philip Pape: I'm almost in tears thinking about this and how many people could be helped by just taking this message to heart.
• 44:43
  Philip Pape: And it's not just how you look.
• 44:44
  Philip Pape: Great, that's a side effect.
• 44:46
  Philip Pape: It's how you feel, it's how you move, it's how you show up for yourselves and for the people you care about.
• 44:50
  Philip Pape: I'm choking up here.
• 44:52
  Philip Pape: This is the this is it.
• 44:53
  Philip Pape: This is the decade you take control, this is the decade you build that reserve, this is the decade you engineer the body, the life that supports what you want to do for the next 20, 30, 40 years.
• 45:03
  Philip Pape: And how powerful is that?
• 45:05
  Philip Pape: So let's just recap what we've covered today because it was a long episode.
• 45:08
  Philip Pape: First, muscle loss with age is not inevitable.
• 45:11
  Philip Pape: It's driven by inactivity, inadequate nutrition, lack of stimulus, and your muscle remains very responsive to all of these things well into old age, which means you can do something about it.
• 45:21
  Philip Pape: Second, midlife is an ideal time to start because you have a little bit more discipline than the young ones, you have some more resources, you have some more motivation to apply a longer-term approach.
• 45:32
  Philip Pape: You're thinking about longevity, you're thinking about your kids, your grandkids, you're thinking about the future generations and your own health and not being in a nursing home.
• 45:39
  Philip Pape: You're not chasing just the short-term vanity.
• 45:41
  Philip Pape: And again, I'm okay if you want to be good looking, but you are building that foundation for longevity, for independence, for metabolic health.
• 45:48
  Philip Pape: Third, doing this today is gonna expand your margin of safety for the next few decades.
• 45:54
  Philip Pape: You're not trying to reverse time, you're trying to change the future of your time on this earth, right?
• 45:59
  Philip Pape: And it all compounds.
• 46:00
  Philip Pape: So you've got to start today, just like with money for retirement.
• 46:03
  Philip Pape: And then finally, the practical steps are actually clear.
• 46:06
  Philip Pape: We know what to do.
• 46:06
  Philip Pape: You train the right way, you eat enough protein, you recover, you think long term, have patience, be consistent, and get help if you need it.
• 46:14
  Philip Pape: All right, so I always like to leave you with some clear action or something simple that's gonna be helpful.
• 46:19
  Philip Pape: And I thought for today's episode that sharing my muscle building nutrition blueprint could be a fun thing to grab because it's one of the more comprehensive guides I have.
• 46:28
  Philip Pape: It tells you how to set everything up for muscle building, but it also has a real life example.
• 46:32
  Philip Pape: When I did this myself a few years back during a muscle building phase, I gained 10 pounds of muscle and how I did it.
• 46:37
  Philip Pape: And so it kind of gives you the numbers, gives you the thought, gives you the process and the really practical stuff.
• 46:42
  Philip Pape: And that's totally free.
• 46:43
  Philip Pape: Okay, you can download it for free.
• 46:45
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash muscle.
• 46:47
  Philip Pape: A link will be in the show notes.
• 46:48
  Philip Pape: Witsandweights.com slash monk muscle to set up your nutrition plan for building muscle.
• 46:53
  Philip Pape: And that is it today, guys.
• 46:55
  Philip Pape: I hope you were inspired.
• 46:56
  Philip Pape: I hope you take action.
• 46:57
  Philip Pape: Please do.
• 46:58
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 47:01
  Philip Pape: And remember, the best time to build muscle always, always, always is right now.
• 47:05
  Philip Pape: Talk to you next time.
• 47:06
  Philip Pape: You're in wits and weights.