The Inconvenient Truth About Building Muscle After 35
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
There is one big inconvenient truth about building muscle after 35.
And this is that it does not happen by accident. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a believer that your hormones and health and just on a massive nose-dive and you've got no hope of ever progressing because you're done and past-it.
But the lifestyle and responsibility changes do more to exacerbate the 1% annual drop in testosterone after the age of 35 than anything. So when you are in the gym, it's even more important to be focussed, deliberate and train with absolute intent to get where you want to be.
The common mistakes
After 35 most people think they need to work a bunch harder in the gym than they did in their 20's to make an ounce of progress.
So they sign up to weekly HIIT classes. Whether it's girls in the spin studio sweating it out, guys in the gym doing drop-set after drop-set with minimal rest, or the unlucky ones who find themselves getting indoctrinated in the world of functional fitness classes.
And it just don't really work.
Sure you can burn a shed-load of calories in a short period of time which is quite useful in creating a calorie deficit to burn body fat. But they come with a huge recovery demand which will often leave you feeling ravenous for the rest of the day and making your calorie deficit the hardest challenge of your grown adult life.
And sure they can get you really fit and build a big work capacity for doing more "fitness stuff".
But they don't specifically target the outcomes that you actually want.
Less body fat, more muscle, more energy and higher performance in and out of the gym.
You lift weights but haven't noticed any more muscle in the areas you're desperate to tighten up.
You sweat buckets but haven't dropped any bodyfat beyond the first 6 weeks.
And you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere fast other than to the bottom of a huge fatigue hole your digging for yourself. There is a much better way.
The keys to building muscle after 35
Like I said, building muscle after 35 doesn't happen by accident.
You can't just lift some weights for some reps and just expect muscle to pop out of the randomness.
You might make progress like that for 6-12 weeks, but no-one built the body they actually want in that amount of time.
You have to get focussed and deliberate.
The 3 main drivers of muscle growth are:
Mechanical tension
Muscle damage
Metabolic stress
So you need to be hitting these stimuli, ideally twice weekly, on the muscles you want to grow.
That means lifting progressively challenging weights through a full range of motion (mechanical tension).
Get close to failure and push through that feeling of a "burn" or "pump" to trigger a growth response to the accumulation of metabolites (metabolic stress). Recover from training with the acute inflammatory response caused from productively stressing the muscle tissues (muscle damage).
And the more frequently and consistently you can achieve these things, the better your progress will be.
And whilst your spin class may burn your legs, or your drop-set may give you a great pump, or your functional fitness class may be slightly heavier than the last time you did it in 2018...
You probably can't guarantee you're doing all three of those things in any given week, let alone repeatedly to guarantee you're building some muscle.
What I would do to build muscle over 35
Here's what I would do if I was over 35 and had the goal of building muscle (plot twist: I am over 35 and do have the goal of building muscle so this is actually what I do).
Stimulate each target muscle group 2x per week
If I wanted to build my quads, I would make sure im hitting them twice per week with a couple of days rest in between.
If I wanted to build my shoulders, I would do the same.
If I wanted to build my biceps, you get the picture.
No random workouts. No leaving it to the whim of a coach who's trying to keep 30+ people happy in one session.
I would make sure I hit what needed to be hit to achieve my goal at least twice a week with good recovery in-between.
Apply progressive overload
In those two sessions, I would create a realistic strategy to make sure I was doing some form of progressive overload.
An extra set, and extra rep, some extra weight.
I often employ a double step progression of adding a rep weekly within a range:
I.e. 8-12. Week one 8 reps, week 9 reps, etc, until we hit 12. Then add the smallest increment of weight possible and repeat.
It's very simple, and very achieveable to repeat for an extended period of time.
Track your workouts
Unfortunately this doesn't go without saying, but to ensure I was hitting each muscle group twice per week and applying progressive overload, I would be tracking my workouts and reviewing them each week/month to make sure I was actually doing what I thought I was.
Track. Your. Workouts.
Prioritise technique
Technique is so so important to every lifter, and ever more so the further you age.
You are putting in hard effort and precious time into your goals.
Don't fail at the final hurdle by using shitty form and compensating with other muscles which are not the target.
Squeeze the target muscle as you lift the weight.
Lower it with control over 2-3 seconds.
Reverse the movement smoothly without bouncing, maybe even including a brief pause.
And lift with the intent of training the target muscles, not just moving the weight however works as you fatigue.
You'll progress so much quicker and you'll get less niggly injuries and pains in your joints.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Repeat after me.
I will repeat the workouts that I have repeated before and know are working for me as I have repeated them several times on repeat.
Stop programme hopping.
Stop signing up for random workouts.
Stop quitting when something didn't yield 5kg of fat loss and 8kg of muscle gain in 6 weeks.
Fully commit to the actual plan.
And repeat your workouts for much longer than you think.
It's what the people with the physique you really want have done (even when they're not fully honest about it in the socials).
The Only shortcut to building muscle after 35
There are no shortcuts, but the best way to get this nailed and start working towards your goals is to work with a coach who understands and know how to apply this.
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