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I’m 50 and These 5 Habits Improved My Physique the MOST · Harder Than Life

• 0:00
  I'm 50 and I'm in the best shape of my life right now, and I wanna be really clear that it had nothing to do with training harder because I trained harder for six years straight and looked exactly the same the whole time.
• 0:11
  If this is your kind of thing, subscribe because I make these every week.
• 0:16
  Stay to the end of this video and you're going to have all five habits that actually changed it.
• 0:23
  And four of them happened nowhere near the gym.
• 0:26
  I'm Kelly Siegel and this is Harder Than Life.
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  Let's get right into it.
• 0:31
  Why training harder wasn't the answer.
• 0:34
  I was the hardest worker in the gym.
• 0:36
  I still am.
• 0:38
  And years of effort, real sweat, real consistency, lifting heavy, and yet my body wouldn't fully change.
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  Effort was never my problem, and it's probably not yours, HDL Nation.
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  I wanna get into my origins.
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  Eight Mile, where I grew up.
• 0:59
  where the body actually started.
• 1:02
  Not the vanity, survival.
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  I built size to protect myself in a house where the adults were the threat.
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  My stepfather was a gargantuan man, and he would beat on me.
• 1:15
  My mom, they used to call her Zap, or I forget what, they used to call her one of the American Gladiators because she was a fitness freak, and tougher than heck, and showed me.
• 1:30
  So I built the body on survival.
• 1:34
  So armor became my healthy addiction.
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  Through the chaos and all my drinking years, the gym was the one coping mechanism that made me stronger instead of weaker.
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  And I used it as a crutch.
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  As long as I got to the gym, no matter what I did the night before, I rationalized and justified my own bullshit and said, ah, it's not too bad.
• 1:58
  As long as I went to the gym and I went to work, I wasn't a total screw up.
• 2:03
  So during the pandemic, I declared war on myself.
• 2:07
  While most of Michigan binged on Netflix, I absolutely wanted to change my life.
• 2:14
  But the real transformation came from what changed outside the workouts.
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  And if you guys remember, all gyms were shut down.
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  So I had to do calisthenics.
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  I didn't have to.
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  I wanted to do calisthenics.
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  I went for runs, I did jumping jacks, I did push-ups, I did sit-ups until the home gym that I ordered showed up.
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  And the receipts are clear.
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  I shredded up to 220 pounds, under 10% body fat at 50.
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  Literally my body is the proof.
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  So every little habit that follows has weight behind it.
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  Everything that I'm going to tell you, the five habits,
• 2:53
  that are coming.
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  One happens in the gym, four don't.
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  And the fifth is the one that made the other four possible.
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  It's last for a reason because it's the most important.
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  Let's get into the habits.
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  Habit one, lift heavy, hard, and fast.
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  This is the gym one that I talked about.
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  So I'm gonna get this one out first because literally it is the easiest.
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  Yes, you have to train.
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  But notice this is one habit out of five, not five of five.
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  It's one of five, not the fifth one.
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  The gym is necessary and widely insufficient.
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  Seven days a week, my groove, not yours.
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  Get in five days, you'll be good.
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  I train daily because I'm admittedly a bit insane.
• 3:40
  Your version might be three.
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  I'd prefer five.
• 3:44
  But if you get the four, hey, that's a habit that's showing up and it's not copying your calendar, which I'm proud of you.
• 3:52
  If you have 50% and you give all 50% of what you have, that's 100%.
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  Most won't even give that 50%.
• 3:59
  We will, HGL Nation.
• 4:01
  Excuses don't get results.
• 4:03
  So some days you're gonna feel 100% and come and give all 100%.
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  Some days you're gonna feel 80%, but I just ask you to give everything you got and that will help you.
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  Lifting heavy, hard and fast,
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  with intensity and pace, in and out, no two hour social hour, no junk volume.
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  Just one hour, hard, heavy, fast, get in, get out, and you're gonna wanna break a sweat.
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  I see so many guys in there not even breaking a sweat.
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  They're on their phone.
• 4:37
  Skipped workouts are the worst business days for me.
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  I noticed that pattern while building NTM.
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  I was a little bit more irritable.
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  I get a little grumpy.
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  Every skip gym day was a foggy mind, a bad decision day.
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  The biggest deals close on training days.
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  And then my daughter, so aproposly pointed out the days that I don't work out.
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  I am irritable.
• 5:01
  So for me, training is survival.
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  So this habit number one is easy for me.
• 5:07
  Probably is for all you guys, but I want you to up the intensity.
• 5:11
  Someone told me once, I can't work out.
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  Literally, it's my worst fear in the world.
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  What would hurt me the most?
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  And my answer was, I can't work out anymore.
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  Training was an identity, not an obligation.
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  And it still kind of is, it's just on repeat.
• 5:31
  I wake up, even if I said, if God told me I don't have to work out anymore and I get to keep this body, I would still go to the gym.
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  So habit number one, again, lift heavy, hard, and fast for one hour.
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  Three to five times, I do seven.
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  Habit number two, sleep like it's your job.
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  This habit felt like a weakness.
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  And it's the first of four non-gym habits.
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  And the one that all y'all are gonna resist the hardest because rest feels like surrender.
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  I used to say, I will sleep when I'm dead.
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  And had I continued that, I'd probably already be dead.
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  From four to five broken hours to seven to eight solid straight through.
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  And it came with a lot of doctor's visits.
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  The single biggest physical change of my late 40s wasn't the gym.
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  was in the bed.
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  No perverts.
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  It was sleep rest.
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  Muscle is built while you sleep, not while you lift, not just while you lift.
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  That rest and recovery is paramount.
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  A weak body creates a noisy mind.
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  So there's a chain reaction, weak body, noisy mind, bad decisions, damaged families and companies.
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  Sleep is a decision, quality insurance.
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  And what I stopped doing, I stopped training through injuries, wearing exhaustion like a trophy.
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  The 40s version of me would have called recovery soft and he was wrong and he was stuck.
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  And I just kept going on a scarcity and fear over and over.
• 7:05
  When I got the love and abundance, I was able to take days off.
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  And remember, you've been following me for all.
• 7:14
  I'm training like this so I can live into my hundreds.
• 7:16
  Yes, not to a hundred, into my hundreds.
• 7:20
  I'm not training to win on a Tuesday.
• 7:23
  The 50 year old horizon changes every choice and sleep is the foundation of all of them.
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  Again, just to put this out there, I wanna live to 120.
• 7:32
  Number one, train hard.
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  Number two is sleep hard.
• 7:34
  Number three, fuel cheat codes.
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  I sabotaged my own games.
• 7:40
  There was a brutal lesson.
• 7:42
  Building businesses at 1,000 miles an hour, skipping meals, energy crashing, and I tried to outwork my own nutrition.
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  Doesn't work, guys.
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  Does not work.
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  I cannot run on empty fuel.
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  So the cheat codes are pre prepped meals.
• 8:00
  You'll see me, I got, we're working on partnerships with several companies, but my go-to right now is still my good friends at Clean Eats.
• 8:08
  The fix wasn't willpower, it was a systems.
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  So protein prepped and ready, so the decision is already made when the day goes sideways.
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  Remember,
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  You wouldn't put cheap gas in a Ferrari, so why feed a high-performance body junk?
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  Fuel quality is a respect issue, not a diet issue, and it's keeping the promises you make to yourself.
• 8:31
  These systems beat discipline every time.
• 8:34
  The theme of all four non-gym habits, stop relying on daily willpower and build structures and systems that make the choice automatic.
• 8:45
  I once heard...
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  A quote from Nick Saban.
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  We do it till we can't get it wrong.
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  That's how my life works.
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  Habit number four, measure everything.
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  What gets measured gets managed and gets better and grows.
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  Track your workouts, your sleep hours, your proteins.
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  Remember, you want one gram of protein per pound that you wanna weigh each day.
• 9:12
  You can't improve what you don't measure.
• 9:15
  The vibes are not a metric.
• 9:17
  I saw so many times facts over feelings.
• 9:22
  You're gonna feel like you got a good workout, but why not know for sure by looking at the metrics?
• 9:30
  Remember, the mirror gives instant feedback.
• 9:33
  Unlike mindset work, the body shows the receipts in weeks.
• 9:39
  That visible proof lights the fire for every other area of life.
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  This is why I love working out because you can literally go into the gym, get a pump and see what your body will look like if you keep it up.
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  It's the only area that I know that that to be true.
• 9:59
  Confidence is a stack.
• 10:01
  of promises kept.
• 10:04
  Every track workout is a promise kept to yourself, which builds confidence.
• 10:08
  The physique is just the visible evidence of the ledger.
• 10:11
  And I got a news slash for you.
• 10:13
  People see my body and they know I'm gonna keep the promises I make to them.
• 10:18
  So your body is your first word.
• 10:21
  And they know if you're gonna be in business or not.
• 10:23
  I want to be very transparent.
• 10:25
  I am honest as the day is long.
• 10:26
  Everybody asks me.
• 10:28
  That's what this episode is about because I had the last episode I did, the last post I did, I get so many, what does your diet look like?
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  What is your exercise routine look like?
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  And what are you taking?
• 10:41
  And I want you to understand something.
• 10:44
  At 40, I was working out like crazy and it was the only time in my life that I literally was getting chubby.
• 10:51
  working out harder, dieting, exercise, doing everything right and getting fatter.
• 10:55
  So I was introduced to a hormone replacement doctor and my testosterone was like 230 and got on testosterone replacement therapy.
• 11:05
  Right now we're on, I'm on a different type of peptide, all doctor supervised.
• 11:11
  So every six months I get my blood work done and I never overdo anything.
• 11:17
  Uh,
• 11:18
  We're going to be working on partnerships that we'll be sharing, which doctors that we use, that's to be determined.
• 11:26
  And so, but it's not one thing, it's the combination of all, the eating, the sleeping, the working out very hard, the keeping the promises I make to myself, I'm giving it all to you.
• 11:36
  So before you guys sit back and say, oh, he's on steroids, I'm not on steroids.
• 11:40
  We take a small amount of peptides and a small amount of testosterone,
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  But it is the eating, the heavy working out, the sleeping and keeping the promises.
• 11:52
  That is the majority.
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  So if you look back.
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  I tease people all the time.
• 11:56
  I've looked like this for 30 years, 30 years, from 20 till 50.
• 12:01
  I have been the same weight, the same size with a couple little changes over the last years.
• 12:07
  I've gotten wiser.
• 12:08
  I probably am in the best shape because I've implemented the sleep one.
• 12:12
  That was the biggest one for me.
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  Every one of you are going to have one.
• 12:17
  It could be sleep, could be the cheat meals, could be you need to up intensity, but all of us have one thing.
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  Mine was I wasn't sleeping enough.
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  This one's gonna be controversial.
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  Habit number five, sobriety.
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  As important as sleep is, not drinking.
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  I held this one last on purpose because this one habit nobody puts on a physique list and it's the one that unlocked all other four for me.
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  because I got a news flash for you.
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  The sugar that comes with alcohol, the depletion of the dopamine, it's all working against you.
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  You can't out train the poison.
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  And that's literally what alcohol is.
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  It wrecks your sleep, it tanks your testosterone, blocks muscle repair, and it dissolves the discipline every other habit depends on.
• 13:10
  I was sabotaging every rep before I quit.
• 13:14
  That's probably why I'm in the best shape of my life.
• 13:17
  We're looking at seven and a half years of this.
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  There's no coincidence at 50, I'm in the best shape.
• 13:24
  And I'm gonna dig into that a little deeper because most of you aren't drinking anymore, but there's a few of you that have still a couple.
• 13:31
  And I wanna deep dive into sober Kelly versus drinking Kelly.
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  Same gym.
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  Same effort, completely different results.
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  Because recovery is where the physique is actually built.
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  Sleep and recovery, which are one and the same.
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  But I wasn't going and killing it with the poison.
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  Sobriety wasn't one habit among many.
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  It tipped the sleep, the nutrition, the training, and business together.
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  all at once.
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  So call it the domino effect.
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  So if you're drinking, obviously if you're drinking heavy, just eliminate it.
• 14:08
  Give me 90 days off.
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  But if you're just having one or two a week, I want you to knock those off too.
• 14:14
  Cause that next day, and if you're any, any type of age, it takes a few days to feel better.
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  So cut out the drinking.
• 14:22
  It's habit number five.
• 14:24
  It's important.
• 14:25
  The gym replaced the bottle for me.
• 14:27
  If you're gonna be addicted to something, pick the addiction that compounds in your favor.
• 14:33
  Trade the poor for the pump.
• 14:36
  You won't regret it.
• 14:38
  I would be remiss if I didn't say that training harder was never it.
• 14:44
  Six years of harder training couldn't beat bad sleep, bad fuel, no tracking, and alcohol.
• 14:52
  The gym was never the bottleneck.
• 14:55
  It was the bottle
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  and the lack of sleep, no pun intended.
• 15:00
  So don't copy my routine, copy the consistency.
• 15:04
  30 years of training.
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  Pick one of the five habits that I gave you.
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  For 30 days, track it.
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  And if you're drinking, start there.
• 15:15
  It's the domino that'll tip the rest.
• 15:18
  And for you who hates working out, you don't hate training, you hate starting.
• 15:26
  Give 30 days of any movement you don't dread and let the results argue with you.
• 15:32
  Results don't lie.
• 15:35
  You don't need a pill, you need a plan.
• 15:38
  The body isn't broken, the habits are.
• 15:41
  And your habits are a choice that you make every single day.
• 15:47
  Better choices, better life.
• 15:50
  And remember, pro tip.
• 15:52
  Things that are good for you usually suck to start and things that are bad for you are usually easy to start.
• 15:59
  So if this hit smash the subscribe button and send it to someone who's winning everywhere except in the mirror, face your fears, live your dreams.
• 16:10
  This is harder than life and I'll see you next Thursday.
• 16:13
  Please rate and share this podcast.
• 16:14
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• 16:19
  Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity.
• 16:30
  Visit TrustNTM.com for more info.
• 16:33
  Until next week, be harder than life.