Can you start bodybuilding in your 40s

Berardi recommends increasing your protein and fat intake slightly to support muscle growth and hormone production, while adjusting your calories to suit your progress; adding more calories and carbs if you're not growing, or cutting back a little if you're adding extra body fat.

Mike Samuels started writing for his own fitness website and local publications in He graduated from Peter Symonds College in the UK with A Levels in law, business and sports science, and is a fully qualified personal trainer, sports massage therapist and corrective exercise specialist with accreditations from Premier Global International.

Starting Bodybuilding at 40 Live Healthy Fitness. By Mike Samuels Updated April 27, References The Metabolism Advantage; Dr. Related Articles. The study, carried in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, compared three different treatments: corticosteroid injections, eccentric single-leg squats, and heavy slow 6 seconds per rep resistance training. At 12 weeks, all three treatments produced similar results.

But it was a different story after six months. Specifically, the eccentric and resistance training group maintained their improvements whereas they deteriorated in the corticosteroid group.

While lack of effort is certainly one reason why people fail to build a decent amount of muscle, it's not the only reason. There are plenty of people out there who train extremely hard yet make little or no progress despite all they're effort. If you keep on pushing your body to the limit in every workout, several things will happen.

Trivial things that you never even noticed before will start to annoy you. Worst of all, your results in the gym will dry up and you will gradually start to get weaker.

You need to train hard enough to stimulate progress, but not so hard that it has a negative impact on the quality of your other workouts. Hard work is a tool used to stimulate a physiological improvement. It needs a rest now and again. In general, the closer you are to your genetic potential i. Those who are farther away from their genetic potential will be able to reload less frequently. Static stretching has been heavily criticized in recent years. One stretch lasting 60 seconds or six stretches lasting 10 seconds work equally well when it comes to increasing flexibility.

Regardless of the length of a single stretch, the key to improvement seems to be total daily stretch time. Don't get discouraged if your flexibility hits a ceiling, though. Like most things, flexibility is influenced by your genes. A gene called COL5A1 is linked to your hereditary level of flexibility. Which means that the rate at which your flexibility improves, as well as the point at which it stops improving, are not entirely under your control.

There is no correct training frequency that works for all people, all of the time. Nor are there rigid guidelines that determine exactly what your training routine should look like at any stage of life. You may be doing just fine on a program that involves lifting weights 4 to 5 times a week. If that's the case, keep doing it. Stress can affect sleep, it can slow down recovery, and it can suppress testosterone. Talking to a health professional, learning some deep breathing exercises, and minimising stressful situations will really help you prepare for bodybuilding.

I cannot stress enough how important sleep is to the year-old bodybuilder. It is necessary for muscle growth, muscle fibre repair, testosterone and growth hormone production, mood, appetite regulation, and cognition.

Work on improving your sleep and you will immediately start to notice more energy, clearer thinking, and perhaps even some weight loss.

As a natural bodybuilder, you will only realistically be able to train times per week. Mathematicians among you will realise that you have more body parts than 3 or 4. Full-body workouts that contain a lot of compound lifts are great for burning fat, building muscle, and increasing testosterone and growth hormone production.

They also save time, a bench press will work the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Just avoid doing arms day, abs day, shoulder day etc ….

Your form needs to be seriously good. Remove the ego, lift weights properly, get a trainer if you need to, and you will see the best results. When starting out, you will struggle to recover from your workouts within 3 days. So be prepared for that. Be patient. As your fitness and strength improve, your recovery process will also improve, and soon you will be able to workout the day after your last session. But ensure that you are not overtraining. Three to four workouts per week is ideal, and the other days should be spent pursuing active recovery.

Walk k steps, take Epsom salt baths, hit your protein targets, try yoga, foam roll, stretch, even do some light cardio if you want. This can all help with recovery.

Also, keep your sleeping schedule up see above. As you age, your body becomes less effective at utilising leucine, a key branched-chain amino acid that makes up protein. Leucine is the amino acid that is responsible for muscle growth and recovery, which is why older men begin to lose muscle.

Increasing your protein intake is one way to prevent this. At 40, you are unlikely to be losing too much muscle anyway, but your ability to grow muscle could be affected. Hitting your daily protein targets is crucial.

You may also consider a leucine supplement. If you are starting from scratch, do not expect to be absolutely jacked within 6 months. Or even a year. This is going to be a long, hard process. But the results will absolutely be worth it. Do you want to be a bodybuilder or do you just want to look good naked? If you really enjoy bodybuilding culture and are prepared to make the necessary changes then of course bodybuilding is the right choice.

But there are other ways to improve your physique, that may suit you better. All that really matters is increasing your lifts, and that means that there will be a lot of positive experiences, particularly during the first year or so. Then there are traditional sports done recreationally. Tennis clubs, football clubs, rugby clubs etc are all great ways to improve your fitness, lose fat, and gain new friends. You can then combine it with a couple of gym sessions to injury-proof your body.

There is also the personal trainer route which I talked about earlier. Obviously, you will need to spend quite a lot of money, but the results will be better and quicker than if you did it on your own. A PT can also help with improving sports performance, improving your powerlifting performance, or even with bodybuilding.

However, there are other options that may suit your lifestyle and capabilities better. It is important to consider all possibilities before embarking on something that could define the rest of your life. Also, see a doctor before doing anything.

The commercial warned about the perils of "low T," aka low testosterone, as if hitting the big four-oh was doomsday for your manhood. I could have been frightened or offended, but I realized that the purpose of the commercial was simply to sell me a product. With ads like these becoming more common and better-produced all the time, it's no wonder so many Americans over 40 assume they have no choice but to deteriorate with age.

But you do have a choice—and more than that, you have an opportunity. Ask anyone who has successfully achieved the best shape of their life after the age of 40, and they'll tell you it's more satisfying than it ever was at age I said tricky—not impossible. You can do this, but you'll have to take it more seriously than you did as a year-old metabolic furnace that could run on the No.

Start by following these principles and working hard, and soon enough you'll be able to out-lift and out-run your younger self. Many folks from my generation were taught to train according to a strict split routine, oftentimes isolating one or two body parts a day.

While that is a great way of training, it's not the only way. And once you hit 40, it's also harder than ever to maintain. Get behind on your super-precise program, and it can be hard to catch up—a surefire recipe for skipped workouts and disappointment.

That's just one reason among many why I'm increasingly fond of full-body training and movements. To start, focus on building proficiency in the basics like squats, push-ups and pull-ups. There's no reason to overcomplicate things. Trends come and go, but these exercises are the foundation of most strength training. Soon enough, you can certainly add other exercises like lunges, rows, and dips. Throw in some ab flexion and back extension, and that's all you really need.

For the past several years, I've done nothing but bodyweight variations of these classics to get in by far the best shape of my life at Trust me; it can be done! If an exercise doesn't feel strenuous, it isn't. In life and fitness, lasting results almost never come without hard work. Sweat, muscular soreness, and an accelerated heart rate are all necessary parts of the game.

It's not supposed to be effortless! By the same token, be wary of fitness systems that boast of easy success. No matter what anyone says, fitness after 40—or any age, really, but especially after 40—must be earned.