Latest / SOTA Personal Training Podcast / How Much Muscle Can You Gain After Age 30?

Transcript

How Much Muscle Can You Gain After Age 30? · SOTA Personal Training Podcast

0:01
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SOTA Personal Training
0:04
podcast. We help busy adults get strong
0:07
and fit and stay that way for a really long time.
0:09
I'm coach Sean and in this episode I'm going to tell you
0:12
how much muscle you can gain after age 30, realistically
0:17
speaking. OK, now I'm going to start by
0:20
explaining why you want to keep gaining muscle as much as you
0:23
can throughout your life. I'm going to give you some keys
0:26
on how to do it. I'm also going to talk about why
0:27
I, why I am a little bit of a, a case study, if you will, in
0:32
this. And then I'm going to give some
0:34
numbers at the end, like some realistic numbers for both men
0:37
and women, how much muscle you can probably gain once you get
0:40
past a certain age or throughout your life in general.
0:42
OK, so let's get started here because you've probably been
0:46
told that, you know, things just start going downhill after age
0:51
30, OK? Or, you know, pick any random
0:53
age, right? But you know, from a muscle mass
0:55
perspective, we've heard, right? Well, we don't, we don't even
0:58
know who told us this, right? But we've heard maybe through
1:00
through the Internet or through the Grapevine somehow, right,
1:03
that once you get past 30, you're just going to start,
1:06
you're going to start losing strength and muscle, especially
1:09
if you don't train really, really hard, right?
1:10
And you're just, everything's going to start going downhill.
1:12
Your hair's going to start falling out.
1:13
Maybe it already has, I don't know.
1:14
Like all the all the things are going to go downhill.
1:16
You're going to turn Gray. My hair is pretty Gray, right?
1:18
You're going to lose muscle. You're going to lose mobility.
1:20
You're going to wake up, you're going to be in pain.
1:22
Everything's going to suck. Life is going to start to suck
1:24
once you get past age 30. So we've been told right now can
1:29
we flip that and can we gain muscle after we turn 30?
1:33
Do the opposite of what supposedly is going to happen.
1:37
And the answer is definitely yes.
1:39
Now, it's not easy, but I'm going to tell you how to do it,
1:41
OK. And you know, First things
1:44
first, why do we want the muscle?
1:46
OK? Like why?
1:48
Why should you be trying to gain as much muscle as you, you know,
1:51
realistically can? Well, I think that I, and this
1:55
is something that I think that most of our, our community here
1:57
at SOTA is starting to kind of catch on too, you know, is that,
2:01
you know, we, we do actually want to have a lot of muscle,
2:04
right? You know, muscle is important.
2:06
I, I feel like, you know, fitness 20-30 years ago was
2:08
about, OK, let's try to get really lean, right?
2:11
Or let's try to do lots of cardio, try to be in good shape,
2:13
whatever, right? Like, yes, there's still value
2:16
in that, but we also want strength and muscle.
2:19
We want strength and muscle because we live longer,
2:22
healthier, better lives when we have strength and muscle.
2:26
You know, I think with old age, one of the things that it
2:28
becomes a real problem for a lot of people is just lack of
2:31
strength and muscle. And this is where we see, you
2:34
know, you, you fall and you can't get up.
2:36
Things like that happen, right? So we, we want muscle, we want
2:39
muscle and, you know, a lot of different reasons.
2:41
It helps us look good, feel good.
2:43
It helps us, you know, even burn a little bit extra body fat,
2:47
right? So like, if you want to get
2:48
lean, if all you want is like, oh, you know, I want to look a
2:51
little more toned. I want to see AB lines, whatever
2:53
the heck, right? Like, well, having as much
2:55
muscle as you can get will generally help with that, OK?
2:58
Because your muscles will show up a little bit more once you
3:01
get down to a certain body fat percentage.
3:03
And it'll be easy, easier to get to a low body fat percentage if
3:07
you have a little bit more muscle on your body because you
3:09
will burn a little bit more calories by having a little bit
3:12
more muscle, right? You know, we can also, I'm not
3:16
going to get too into the the science doctor Y type stuff here
3:19
since I'm not a doctor, but you know, muscle is also an insulin
3:22
reservoir. Essentially.
3:23
It makes you it makes your body better at oh God, I'm buttering
3:28
the science of it. But of your insulin not spiking,
3:31
right, your blood sugar levels not not spiking as much after
3:35
meals, things like that. Again, you know, that's, that's
3:38
something that's a little bit above my pay grade, so to speak.
3:40
So we're not going to go too deep into that.
3:41
But these are just some of the health benefits of having more
3:44
muscle. OK, so, so you want muscle,
3:46
right? You want muscle in general, both
3:48
men and women. OK.
3:49
And like I said, the nice thing is, you know, I think that
3:52
people are even women now are still going to catch on to this
3:54
more, right? Because, you know, in the past
3:56
it was kind of like, oh, I don't want to lift heavy.
3:58
I don't want to get too bulky, for example, whatever, right?
4:01
I think that that I'll I'll just call it a myth straight up.
4:04
Like, I think that that myth is, is mostly gone now and, you
4:09
know, maybe still exists within, but, you know, in certain
4:12
people's minds. But the point is #1 if, if you
4:15
lift heavy in general, you're not going to get too bulky.
4:18
Because as I'm going to describe in this episode, it's really
4:21
hard to put on like even a few pounds of muscle.
4:24
OK, So like the whole too bulky thing is, it's, it's, it's a
4:27
pipe dream. Anyway, believe me, if it was
4:30
easy to get too bulky, me and Coach Blake and Coach Phil and,
4:32
you know, thousands of other Jim Bros across the country would
4:35
all be freaking huge with massive shoulders and arms and
4:37
whatever, right? But anyway, so I think that the,
4:42
you know, there is a trend towards people, both men and
4:47
women of all ages and all personality types saying, OK,
4:50
yeah, I actually think this is good.
4:52
I, I want muscle. I want to gain muscle, right?
4:57
So I probably don't need to sell it any more than than we already
5:00
have, right? You know, and I can also make
5:03
the argument that we actually live in a society, but that the
5:05
larger health problem is lack of muscle as opposed to too much
5:10
body fat, right? Now, you can make a good case
5:13
for both, right? But the point is, we want
5:16
muscle. We want muscle, OK?
5:19
And I'm going to tell you how to get it now, OK?
5:22
I mean, the reason that I say I'm a good case study for this
5:24
is because I'm 37 now, right? And when I was 30, this would be
5:30
2019. I probably had, let's call it 12
5:36
lbs less muscle than I have now. Let's go with 12.
5:40
I don't have a scan to back this up from like 2019.
5:43
You know, I like, I know that my body weight was probably
5:46
somewhere, you know, not that you would care about these exact
5:48
numbers, but like, you know, I'm a tall guy, so right, I'm 6 foot
5:51
2 like my body weight was probably in the upper one 90s,
5:55
but a little bit more body fat, you know, and like now I'm
5:59
around 2:05. I've been up as high as 210 or
6:01
215, but with a little more fat on me.
6:03
But anyway, like I, I think all that to say, I think that I
6:08
gained approximately 12, somewhere between 10 and 15 lbs
6:12
of total muscle between 30 and 37, OK.
6:16
And I've never taken steroids and I think that, you know, I'm,
6:20
I'm going to use my own self as the case study over the last
6:23
seven years. And again, not that you have to
6:26
be between 30 and 37, like, you know, yes, it does theoretically
6:29
get harder the older we get, right.
6:31
But you know, regardless of what age you are, I'm, I'm going to
6:36
kind of use myself as a little bit of a case study for how to
6:40
gain muscle after 30. And so I think that, you know,
6:46
cause a lot of people don't realize, like me personally, I,
6:48
I haven't actually been a personal trainer for that long.
6:51
So this was a career change that I made when I was 3132.
6:56
And, you know, before then, I had certainly exercised, right?
6:59
I had done lots of forms of exercise in my life, was in, you
7:04
know, relatively good shape. You would say was a, you know, a
7:08
mediocre athlete, I guess, through high school.
7:11
It's not like I had never exercised before, But I didn't
7:14
really know what I was doing in terms of how to build muscle.
7:17
You know, I was like, you know, throughout my, probably through
7:20
my mid 20s even, I was just kind of like a tall, somewhat lanky
7:23
guy, right? And then I wanted to put on more
7:26
muscle mass right now, you know, for me, you, you go through
7:32
this, this journey when you're trying to build muscle.
7:35
A lot of us do. And it's not necessarily the
7:37
smartest way to do it, right? But you just, you start with
7:39
like, you know, you start with what you see, like the Jim bro
7:42
is doing and you know, in your YouTube videos or whatever the
7:45
heck at the time. And it's like, OK, I'm just
7:47
going to go do like 100 push ups or something like that, you
7:49
know, or whatever, right? Like you start by just being
7:52
like, OK, I'm going to do a bunch of push ups and some bicep
7:54
curls and lift some weights or something, even though I don't
7:57
even know proper technique. I don't know what I'm doing.
7:59
And then I guess I'm going to just eat a lot of protein and
8:01
protein shakes and then and I'm going to do it every day, every
8:05
just every day. I'm going to do like an hour
8:06
every day. I'm going to do like 300 push
8:08
ups every day. Just push ups, push ups, push
8:10
ups. That's what some guy on TV told
8:11
me to do, Just do more push ups. Right.
8:13
I was like, OK, yeah. And and so like, that was a
8:17
little bit how my journey started when, you know, when I
8:19
was, I kind of laughed now because like I was like 3031
8:22
years old at the time when I really decided I wanted to put
8:25
on more muscle. And like, you know, if I could
8:27
go back six or seven years, would I do things differently in
8:31
a more efficient way and probably gain even a little more
8:34
muscle? Yes, definitely.
8:37
And and just like a side note here, that's actually kind of
8:39
like the fun part of this journey.
8:42
I know some of you out there are like, there's no way exercise
8:44
could be fun, Sean. OK, but but work with me here.
8:47
Like, part of the fun part of this journey is like, you're
8:51
always trying to learn and grow, you know?
8:54
Like, even now, you know, I go through different phases of,
8:57
like, the way I exercise in my own fitness.
8:58
But even now, it's like, yeah, I could definitely do better here,
9:02
you know? Or like, I could do better
9:04
exercise programming in my workouts here.
9:07
I could do technique better on these exercises, right?
9:10
Or sometimes it's like, you know, I could actually push
9:13
myself a little bit harder during the workouts, right?
9:16
And then of course, there's, you know, aspects of, you know, diet
9:20
and lifestyle, things like that, that are our major factors here
9:23
as well, which I'm going to talk about in a minute.
9:25
But the point is, it's like it's a fun journey if you're open
9:27
minded and willing to learn and willing to try to always keep
9:30
getting better, you know? So for me, you know, back 6-7
9:35
years ago, before I was even certified as a personal trainer,
9:39
you know, you're just doing it like the meathead way and just
9:41
like, I'm going to just do a lot of push ups and then have
9:43
protein shakes or something like that, right?
9:45
So, OK, cool. You know, and not that that
9:49
can't work to a certain extent, you know what I mean?
9:53
But when you do it like that, you know, without the help of
9:55
like a proper trainer, for example, or at least like a
9:57
proper training program, then you kind of just end up like,
10:02
you know, with maybe like some strong chest and arm muscles or
10:05
something and like an underdeveloped back and legs.
10:07
And you know, you're sore because you've just been doing
10:10
push ups and nothing else. And you get my point, right?
10:12
Like it's not the best way to go about it.
10:15
So like if you were to do it a smarter way, right, like what a
10:19
smarter, a more educated 30 year old me would have done, right?
10:24
Because like, you know, it was, it was right about then it was,
10:26
I was, you know, 31 essentially. It was when I started getting
10:30
certified, you know, it took me about a year, year and a half,
10:32
whatever to become a personal trainer certified.
10:35
And when I was going through that process, it was all part of
10:39
my own like, like learning journey, right of OK, like how
10:42
do I actually program workouts? How do I really get specific
10:45
about which exercises target which muscles the best, things
10:48
like that, you know, all the things, all, all the things that
10:50
all of us who work here as coaches know, you know, So of
10:54
course then I was like learning more for myself as I go,
10:57
etcetera. And then I started working with
10:58
a few clients, you know, actually being their trainer,
11:02
coach, etcetera, etcetera. And so we're always learning,
11:04
we're always growing, you know, But if I would have done things
11:08
in a, a smarter way to start when I was 30 years old, it's
11:13
funny, 'cause it sounds like I was like back when I was a
11:16
little kid, no, when I was 30, right?
11:19
I would have probably like I would have probably done
11:23
something like workout three days a week, really heavy
11:27
strength training, full body workouts, compound exercises,
11:32
you know, squats, dead lifts, chest and shoulder presses, pull
11:37
downs, rows, you know, the main compound movements that we try
11:40
to do here at SOTA for most of our clients and most of our
11:43
workouts, right? And I probably would have just
11:45
worked out three days a week and given myself rest in between.
11:49
And you know, I would have probably gotten better results
11:52
than I did from trying to do a bajillion push ups.
11:55
You know what I mean? Because it's, you know, there,
11:58
there there are better ways to train than just doing a
12:00
bajillion push ups, right? Or, you know, there's some
12:03
people out there that are listening to this that are
12:04
probably familiar with like the hit style classes or the
12:07
whatever, where it's like, Oh yeah, we do like 1000 burpees
12:10
and we somehow survive, right? Or, you know, like we do, OK, we
12:13
go on the bike and we go until we can't breathe anymore, right?
12:16
It's like, OK, well, or for the runners out there, like I'm just
12:19
going to run until I can't run anymore until I'm, I'm puking
12:21
and my calves don't work, you know, like, and I'm cramping
12:24
everywhere. Like, well, OK, there's better
12:27
ways to train, especially if you're trying to build muscle,
12:30
you know, any who. So I, I think that it was also
12:36
around that time that I started learning about just how
12:40
important, like I, I, I really got it through my head how
12:42
important diet and sleep are. OK, you can't exercise your
12:49
weight of results by itself. Exercise alone will not do it
12:53
for you. OK, let me repeat that.
12:57
OK, if you want to build muscle, exercise alone is not enough,
13:02
OK? You have to eat a certain way
13:06
and you have to at least sleep decently, OK, Now I get that for
13:11
most people at different stages of life, those are both hard
13:15
things. They both present challenges,
13:17
you know, trying to eat a relatively high protein diet
13:20
seven days a week with enough other essential nutrients and
13:23
trying to get, you know, ideally at least 7 hours of sleep per
13:26
night on average. It's hard.
13:28
Like, those are hard things to do.
13:31
But, you know, in the words of weightlifting legend CT
13:34
Fletcher, if it was easy, everybody would do it.
13:38
But that's just the way it is. Like, that's why you don't see
13:40
that many people walking down the street who have a low body
13:44
fat percentage and a high amount of muscle mass.
13:45
It's just not easy to do. But I'm here to tell you how to
13:48
do it. OK, so because, you know, to
13:52
that point in life, I had to exercise quite a bit, you know,
13:55
before age 30, but I didn't know how to eat and I didn't know how
13:58
to sleep, right, That I didn't know how to sleep, but I didn't
14:02
know how to optimize my sleep in order to get the best results
14:06
that I wanted. And a part of it, like for me at
14:08
that time, like this will resonate with some of you guys,
14:10
right? Is part of me, for me at that
14:13
time, like all I knew in terms of like how to train for like a
14:16
sport or anything was just like go hard, just like go as hard as
14:21
you can, you know, 'cause I'm the type of person when I was in
14:23
my 20s, I would just like to run like like 6 miles, you know,
14:26
just go out for a jog probably on a hot summer day, you know,
14:30
or something like the middle of the day when it's not even
14:32
smart, you know, just under like the baking sun with not enough
14:35
hydration, you know, just go run like 6 miles, right?
14:39
And then almost pass out afterwards and like barely
14:41
survive. You know, like First off, I
14:44
wasn't even training for marathons.
14:45
It's like, what good does this do, you know?
14:47
But like, all I knew was I got to like train really hard and
14:50
like push myself really hard, but that was actually
14:53
detrimental to my results because I wasn't eating properly
14:58
and I wasn't sleeping properly. So probably right around that
15:01
time when I was 3031, I finally learned, OK, OK, this is how I
15:06
need to fuel my body in order to get the results that I want,
15:10
particularly in the area of macro nutrients, right?
15:12
Proteins, fats and carbs. And I also need to sleep pretty
15:16
Dang consistently. OK, now sleep like, I'll
15:21
summarize it this way. OK, what you should be doing
15:24
with your sleep if you want to try to gain as much muscle as
15:27
possible. And by the way, this will
15:29
actually help to maintain as low of a body fat percentage as
15:31
possible as well. And it'll be really good for
15:33
your health. Like what you should be doing is
15:36
trying to go to bed and wake up roughly the same time seven days
15:41
a week without too much deviation.
15:44
And you ideally shouldn't be waking up with an alarm right
15:48
now. You might say to yourself, well,
15:49
Sean, how could I possibly get up and go to work if I don't
15:51
have my alarm? Right?
15:53
OK, like, I get it. But keep in mind, like keep this
15:56
in mind, they they don't tell you this when you grow up.
15:57
But like, waking up with an alarm is the definition of sleep
16:00
deprivation. Like you woke up via this
16:03
blaring sound when your body wasn't ready to wake up yet.
16:07
So like, it's the definition of sleep deprivation, OK.
16:10
And like most of us, we just grew up in a world.
16:11
We've been doing that since we were six years old.
16:13
So you're used to chronic sleep deprivation, right?
16:15
But if you can get out of chronic sleep deprivation that
16:18
80% of the world lives in, well, you can really unlock some
16:22
fitness and health, some progress.
16:25
And so you know what this looks like for most people is like,
16:29
how do you start sleeping more consistently?
16:31
And a little bit more for most people is, well, you put the
16:34
phone down at night and you stop doing scrolling.
16:36
You stop playing video games, you stop watching trash TV.
16:40
Am I missing any of the key ones?
16:41
You stop staying up late on a screen and you go to bed at a
16:44
reasonable time. And believe me, like if you put
16:47
the screen away, like if you move your eyes away from the
16:50
screen at 9:30 or 10:00 PM and either grab a book or just like
16:55
stare at the ceiling or something, as long as there's
16:57
not a super bright light or, you know, just like just don't look
17:01
at a screen, your body will want to fall asleep, especially if
17:05
you've done some exercise during the day and if you've walked a
17:07
little bit, if you've gotten outside.
17:08
Like the human body, in my experience, usually want we like
17:12
to sleep at night. Like we really do these, these
17:15
screens and blue light has just hijacked us away from it.
17:18
OK, but it really, really helps, you know, because I didn't
17:22
understand until I was early 30s how to actually sleep properly.
17:26
And I'm not saying I'm perfect at it now, you know what I mean?
17:28
But I'm a lot better than I was for the 1st 30 years of my life
17:31
and it's helped immensely. OK, now on the diet side of
17:35
things, OK, you know, to to summarize it because we've gone
17:40
down into the weeds many times on diet and you know how to
17:44
optimize for building muscle burning body fat.
17:47
You know what, what you want. I could kind of summarize it in
17:50
two key points For most people, you know, you, you want high
17:53
protein. You probably heard that a
17:55
million times already, right? For me and other people, you,
17:58
you want pretty high protein. You want mostly Whole Foods.
18:01
You know, there's a there's a place for protein shakes and
18:05
maybe even protein bars, although those can be a little
18:07
bit trickier. There's a place for that
18:10
sometimes. But the bottom line is you want
18:12
protein, you want other Whole Foods, you want good nutrients,
18:16
right? I mean, fruits and vegetables
18:18
will almost always have a place, in my opinion, in most people's
18:20
diets. Stay away from tons of junk
18:24
food, right? Maybe we'll see how we're doing
18:27
on time here. If I have time to like lay out a
18:28
little bit more of what like a daily eating plan would be
18:31
right. But the point is it's a pretty
18:34
high protein diet. Ideally, you need to eat
18:36
multiple times throughout the day.
18:38
You know, you'll hear different theories on intermittent fasting
18:41
and on, you know, like one big meal per day.
18:43
Oh, mad, one meal a day. There's some people who can do
18:46
it successfully, but but for most of us, it's not the best
18:49
way to to build and maintain muscle mass.
18:52
It's just hard to eat that much protein and that many nutrients
18:54
in one sitting, you know. So anywho, those are kind of
18:59
like those are the three big things you need to understand
19:01
how to to train well, which, you know, that's the part when when
19:03
you come here to soda, like we obviously take care of that
19:06
here, right. And then of course, like, you
19:10
know, Phil and I have joked about this before, but we at
19:12
least at this point, we can't be with you every second of every
19:15
day outside the gym. So now you've got to focus on
19:17
those other two areas on diet and sleep, right?
19:19
But you have to train well, you have to train in a way that's
19:22
going to playlicit muscle mass, trained to build muscle mass,
19:27
and then you have to diet and sleep in a way that will also,
19:30
you know, promote muscle growth, right?
19:32
And you know, just a little bit more on like the training
19:36
perspective. I mean, I think that what I
19:41
learned in my early 30s in particular was that just getting
19:45
really strong at the main compound movements.
19:48
So again, different types of squats, deadlifts, you know,
19:53
chest presses, shoulder presses, whether it's with dumbbells or
19:56
barbells, pull downs, pull ups, if you can do them, you know,
20:00
rows, like these are the main compound movements that lunges
20:03
are very good as well. And a little, you know, we could
20:06
debate which core, which AB exercises are good.
20:08
That's a little bit more of a tricky topic which we've talked
20:10
about before. But like the point is get strong
20:13
in the main compound exercises. By a compound exercise, I just
20:18
mean one that involves multiple joints, right?
20:21
So we're not talking about like. Bicep curls, that's a single
20:24
joint exercise. That's not a compound exercise.
20:26
Now, have I done some bicep curls over the last seven years
20:29
on my journey to be a meathead? Obviously, yes, but it's not the
20:33
most important thing. You know, like I, I would
20:35
actually argue and, and some people like are surprised by
20:38
this, but the times where I've gotten probably the best
20:41
strength and muscle results are the times that I'm working out
20:44
three days a week, full body for like 1 hour.
20:48
Just go hard, lift heavy, heavy compound lifts, maybe 5 to 10
20:52
reps per set, going pretty heavy, taking a minute or two
20:55
between the sets, rest recover. Like those are the times that I,
21:00
and then you have a full day of rest and recovery in between,
21:02
you know, maybe you walk or do some light activity, but like
21:05
I'm not going hard seven days a week, you know, and those are
21:08
actually some of the times I've made the best gains.
21:10
Now there's a place, of course, for the either like a, you know,
21:13
a push pull leg split or an upper lower split or like more
21:16
of a, a body part split where you're doing 4 or 5 or maybe
21:20
even six days a week of lifting. That can work as well if you're
21:23
trying to gain as much muscle as possible.
21:25
There's several different ways to do it, but the point is, you
21:29
know, you have to train and choose exercises, ideally some
21:33
of these main compound ones that I'm choosing that I'm talking to
21:36
you about. You have to choose those
21:38
exercises and you have to do them in in a good program.
21:41
And obviously that's what we help with here, right?
21:44
And you have to try to get progressively stronger.
21:46
Like guys, I'm I'm going to like shout it to the universe again
21:48
for the thousandth time. If you've ever been in a group
21:51
with me, small group, large group, whatever, you'll have
21:53
heard me like yell this over and over.
21:55
But it's worth saying, OK, you need to try to get progressively
21:59
stronger on your key exercises. OK, it's progressive overload.
22:03
OK, so if you're doing an exercise and you do 8 reps or 10
22:07
reps and you're like, I wasn't that hard, well then pick a
22:10
heavier weight. Pick a heavier weight, let's
22:12
pick a heavier weight. Or even if you're using the same
22:15
weight, you're like, oh, this is getting tough.
22:16
Try to do one more Rep than you did last time at the same
22:19
weight. Like we're trying to go up.
22:21
OK, we're trying to gain muscle, we're trying to go up.
22:24
And by the way, even on like non weighted exercises, there's
22:27
always ways you can scale them to make them more challenging as
22:30
you get better. OK, so progressive overload,
22:33
this is your term of the day to remember.
22:35
OK, progressive overload. OK, we're always trying to
22:39
gradually overload quote quote the muscles to make you
22:42
gradually stronger and gain muscle, OK.
22:45
So you know, that's really it. Like those are the three big
22:49
keys, OK, You have to train well, you have to eat well and
22:52
you have to sleep well, OK. And if this sounds like a lot,
22:56
well, it is like it's not that easy.
22:58
That's what, like I said, that's why you don't see that many
23:00
people who are in great shape with low body fat and a lot of
23:02
muscle mass walking down the street 'cause it's just not that
23:04
easy to do, you know? And, and this is where I like to
23:10
like, I like to talk about what I call a bodybuilder lifestyle,
23:14
OK? Even though most people don't
23:17
want to look like bodybuilders, right?
23:19
Like you see people who are in like a bodybuilding show and
23:21
you're like, it's kind of gross, like weird muscles and like, no,
23:24
fat doesn't look good. Yeah, I get that, right.
23:27
But here's the thing, like you are not going to look like that.
23:31
Neither am I. You know what I mean?
23:32
Because like, take it from me, like I have like I have trained,
23:37
eaten and slept almost as well as I can for the last seven
23:40
years and I don't look like a bodybuilder does, right.
23:44
So, like, the point is, it's like you should try as hard as
23:47
you can to use as many aspects of the, the bodybuilder
23:52
lifestyle as you can and you'll probably just look a bit more
23:57
fit than the average person in your friends group.
24:00
You know, they'll be like, Oh yeah, Tony works out.
24:02
Oh, yeah, yeah, Sally works out or whatever your, your name
24:05
probably isn't Tony or Sally. I don't think we have.
24:07
Do we have? I don't know, other coaches
24:09
could check me on this. Do we have a single Tony or
24:11
Sally member right now? We used to anyway.
24:14
I don't know, but you get the point.
24:16
OK. They'll be like, Oh, yeah, yeah,
24:18
you work out, don't you? You know, not like, oh, you look
24:20
disgusting like a bodybuilder. They're like, no, oh, you look
24:22
good. Yeah, yeah.
24:23
So like, you should be trying as hard as you can to have as much
24:28
muscle mass and as low of a body fat realistically as you can.
24:31
You know, there are rare individuals that can get to the
24:34
point where their body fat is too low that we would say, no,
24:37
you don't need to lose any more body fat.
24:38
But it's rare. It's rare in modern society,
24:40
right? So point is, you should be
24:42
trying to gain as much muscle and maintain as much muscle as
24:45
you can, regardless of your age. And you should be trying to be
24:47
pretty much as low body fat as you can because that's the way
24:50
you're going to be the healthiest.
24:51
And so that is bodybuilding. Like that is bodybuilding, that
24:55
is body composition. OK.
24:57
And that's quite frankly, like, as the other coaches know, like
25:00
that's the style of training and you know, and, and eating, I
25:04
guess that I like to focus on, right?
25:07
And if you if you try as hard as you can to use as many of these
25:12
bodybuilding principles as you can, then it's like a shoot for
25:17
the moon land among the stars thing.
25:19
No, you're not gonna look like a bodybuilder, but you're gonna
25:21
look like the best version of you, which is gonna be great,
25:24
right? And it's going to look, it's
25:26
going to look really good and people are going to notice, you
25:28
know? So that that's my pitch on why
25:30
you should try to live like a bodybuilder, quote UN quote.
25:33
You know, you should train, you should lift weights the way a
25:35
bodybuilder does. Sure, maybe not excess, maybe
25:38
not 2 hours a day. You don't have that much time,
25:39
whatever, right? But like, you should train hard
25:41
in the gym, OK? You should try to lift as heavy
25:43
as you safely can and we can help you with that, OK?
25:46
You should eat high protein meals, right?
25:48
You should eat high protein meals multiple times throughout
25:50
the day and you should get as good of consistent sleep as you
25:53
can. OK and so then that takes us to
25:57
the last part, which is some numbers here.
25:59
OK, so like how the question at the beginning is how much muscle
26:02
can you gain after age 30 realistically?
26:06
Well, OK, like I told you that I probably it's somewhere between
26:10
10 and 15 lbs. I would guess, you know, like
26:13
if, if you had, if you had put me on a DEXA scan or like an in
26:16
body scan at age 30, which I didn't do, it would have
26:18
probably shown somewhere between like 10 and 15 lbs less of
26:22
muscle mass than I have now, right.
26:24
And believe me, like the 10 to 15 is noticeable.
26:26
It's very, it's like it, it's noticeable.
26:28
It may not like, you know, sometimes I have people come in
26:31
and do in body scans and then be like, oh, my muscle mass only
26:33
went up like 3 lbs over the course of whatever.
26:36
No, like 3 lbs is a lot. OK, 3 lbs, like 3 lbs is a lot 3
26:41
lbs, especially if you've done it in a period of like months.
26:45
You're crushing. OK 'cause keep in mind I just
26:47
told you like over 7 years of like, trying really hard at
26:50
this, I maybe gained like 12, OK, so do the math.
26:54
We're doing like 1.8 lbs per year on average, you know what I
26:58
mean? Like, it just doesn't happen
26:59
that fast, right? And then it's hard to hold on to
27:02
too, which is another conundrum I have.
27:03
It's like, damn, do I have to do this forever?
27:06
Like, well, probably yes. And then the question is when is
27:10
this new class of muscle building drugs that's going to
27:13
like mimic the GLPS but in the opposite direction going to come
27:15
out? And I think there is a lot going
27:17
on there, but that's not my area of expertise.
27:19
I'm not going to worry about it right now.
27:20
But anyway. So for now we got to keep
27:22
lifting weights and eating protein.
27:24
But so, you know, numbers like how much muscle can you
27:28
realistically gain after age 30 if you don't take steroids,
27:31
which you shouldn't. So, you know, obviously
27:34
different from men and women, right?
27:36
We like to use, you know, we use in body scans.
27:39
On that scan you will see the skeletal muscle mass number,
27:42
right? So you've got your skeletal
27:44
muscle mass. You've also got your lean body
27:45
mass, which is a little bit different, right?
27:47
So like the lean body mass is everything except the body fat,
27:50
you know, muscle, bone, water, whatever else, right?
27:53
So like, you know, I'll give you an example.
27:55
OK, so like my scan right now would say around 205 lbs of body
28:00
weight. The lean body mass would
28:02
probably be about 185. The body fat would be about 20
28:06
lbs, which is 10% basically. And then but like the skeletal
28:10
muscle mass would show up is about 105.
28:13
OK Now again, these are numbers for a 6 foot 2 male who's been
28:18
training and lifting weights a lot, right?
28:20
So for years, right? So like the average person, you
28:24
know, the average, say 5 foot 10 male who hasn't trained that
28:27
much might come in with 80 lbs on that skeletal muscle mass
28:31
number 80 lbs skeletal muscle mass, right?
28:35
And the average woman who's, you know, say average height 5 foot
28:38
5, whatever would probably come in somewhere in the low fifties,
28:41
you know, of, of muscle mass, right.
28:45
And so I, I kind of like to think just to give you a couple
28:49
ballpark numbers, if you do a scan like this, right?
28:51
Because, and I know we have enough members who do scans who
28:54
listen to this, right? If you're a female of relatively
28:57
average height, say between 5, three and five, eight, you know,
29:00
or somewhere in there, right? If you get to 60, if you get to
29:07
60 lbs of skeletal muscle mass, you're freaking strong.
29:11
OK, Now, obviously if you're a bit taller, it's a little bit
29:14
easier to get past that 60. If you're a bit shorter, well,
29:16
it's really hard. But and then, you know, for men,
29:19
if you're say an average height male, you know, 5-10 or
29:22
something like that, if you get 90, you're kicking butt.
29:27
OK, as an average height male, anywhere from like, you know,
29:29
5-8 to six feet or whatever, right, you are kicking butt at
29:33
90 lbs of skeletal muscle mass. OK, Now, obviously, like I said,
29:37
if you're taller, you know, yeah, I'm 6 foot two would have
29:39
105 or whatever on the scale. Like if you're over 6 feet,
29:42
yeah, you know, shoot to get above 100, right.
29:45
But it's still, it's a lot of work.
29:47
It's a lot of work. It's not easy, OK, but it's fun.
29:49
It's great fun guys. So my point with all this
29:52
though, is like, you know, for women, obviously you're not
29:56
going to put on as much muscle, right?
29:58
You're going to start with a little bit less.
29:59
You're not going to be able to put on as much as fast, right?
30:02
But you know, if you can add 5 lbs of muscle throughout the
30:06
course of several years of training, you've really done a
30:10
good job. And it will be noticeable.
30:12
Like there will be more definition, more tone, quote UN
30:15
quote, you know, in your arms and legs and midsection,
30:17
etcetera. People will notice if you put on
30:20
five or more pounds of muscle. OK, Now I know that most women
30:25
are still concerned with, you know, it's still kind of, I
30:27
don't want the number on the scale to go up too much.
30:29
The nice thing about muscle is you're you're like, you're not
30:31
going to gain that much of it, right?
30:33
Like let's say you're that average woman who's 5 foot five.
30:36
You started off with 53 lbs of skeletal muscle mass on that
30:40
scale and you crushed it. Like you went up to you got all
30:43
the way up to 60. Now you're 60 lbs of skeletal
30:46
muscle mass, right? It's like, OK, 7 lbs, right?
30:49
OK, so you gained 7 lbs, maybe you were 130 and you're up to
30:55
137, but your body fat percentage is actually lower
31:00
because you gain more muscle. So your muscle is a higher
31:02
percentage of your body composition and just going to
31:04
show up more. You're going to look more lean,
31:06
right? But the point is like, you could
31:08
train a lifetime as a woman and you may be like 7 lbs of muscle.
31:13
You'd be doing a phenomenal job to gain 7 lbs of muscle.
31:16
OK, 7 lbs in the scale, we're not talking about you going from
31:20
1:30 to 160 or something like that.
31:22
Like you just won't gain that much weight and muscle.
31:25
Does that make sense? You just won't gain that much
31:28
muscle. It's just not going to happen.
31:29
So don't be afraid of like the scale going way, way, way, way
31:32
up, OK? And again, you should want as
31:34
much muscle as possible for all the reasons I stated before.
31:37
OK, so you know, anywhere from like 5 to 8 lbs of muscle after
31:43
after age 30 or really at any age is a really good number for
31:47
women to shoot for. If you can gain that much.
31:49
And it ain't going to happen in three months, ladies, OK, it's
31:51
not going to happen in three months.
31:52
OK, If you, if you can, you know, let me know the secret
31:56
because I'll, I'll then use it and do every client the same
31:58
program you ran, right? But you know, 5 to 8, maybe 10
32:02
if you're doing crazy good, you know, throughout the course of a
32:05
lifetime of training or say 5 to 10 years of training, right?
32:09
And obviously eating and sleeping pretty well.
32:11
And guys, I mean, you know, you can add over 10 lbs of muscle
32:15
over time if you do things right.
32:17
Like I said, I think I could have done better.
32:18
You know, I could have probably, I could have realistically put
32:21
on 20 lbs of muscle over the last seven years, even as a
32:25
natty, a natural, you know, not using steroids, had I done
32:28
everything, everything right. But again, like if you can add
32:31
10 lbs of muscle, it's, it's reasonable.
32:33
It's reasonable to do after age 30, you know, add 10 lbs of
32:37
muscle over the course of 5-10 years, you know, whatever, you
32:42
know, Yeah, go for it. It's it's doable.
32:44
It's not easy. It's not easy in the current
32:47
state of the world, but it's doable.
32:48
OK. It's doable.
32:49
So those are kind of some rough numbers to put to it.
32:51
And I know some of you might be like, well, what the heck.
32:54
Like you're telling me I need to train for like 5 years to gain
32:58
like 5 or 7 lbs of also five years?
33:01
Like, what are you nuts? Hey, I mean, This is why you
33:05
just need to develop a relationship with exercise where
33:08
you don't necessarily love it, but you're like, you know what?
33:11
This is something that I do, and it's a part of my life, and I
33:14
know why it's good for me. You know, you need to learn to
33:17
enjoy the process in a certain way, even if you don't love
33:20
every Rep of every exercise, OK, Because yes, it is something
33:24
that is going to take some time, unfortunately, OK.
33:27
But anyway, I hope this is a good summary of how to
33:30
realistically, you know, how much muscle can you gain after
33:33
age 30 and what is the best way to do it?
33:35
OK, I'm going to leave it at that for today because as usual,
33:37
I rambled for almost 34 minutes now, but thank you for
33:40
listening. I hope that is helpful.
33:41
All right, see you guys in the gym.
33:44
All right, love y'all peace.