Building muscle after age 50 is indeed more difficult to do than when we were younger. However, it is not impossible. In this article, you will learn how to build muscle after 50.
But, first, you should understand WHY you should start building muscle now.
As we age, our body begins to lose both muscle mass and eventually, bone density. As a result, if we don’t train, we become more frail.
The consequences of this frailty can be devastating. As we become more frail, we lose mobility, and ultimately our ability to live independently.
How to build muscle after 50
If you want to build muscle after hitting the big five-oh, you’re gonna need to lift weights with proper programming.
If your focus is primarily on gaining strength, then you will focus on progressively lifting heavier weights with fewer reps with just a few compound exercises.
If your focus is primarily on building muscle and gaining strength a little more slowly, then you will still train compound exercises, plus more assistance exercises, and usually with higher reps and more sets.
Either approach will give you good results.
Strength Training After 50
As I mentioned, if your focus is primarily on gaining strength, then you will shoot for eventually lifting heavier weights with lower reps and fewer sets.
Many people seem to be afraid of this, and it is understandable. After 50, we’ve accumulated some wear and tear.
I personally have a lower back issue that concerned me prior to getting started on a true strength training program.
However, just because you will eventually want to start lifting heavier weights to achieve your strength potential, doesn’t mean you start lifting heavy right away.
Through a process called the Novice Linear Progression, we start at a conservative weight, and add weight to the bar with each session, until that becomes too difficult.
Through this process, you will gain strength pretty quickly as your body adapts to lifting heavier and heavier weight by increasing bone density and muscle mass.
When you lift heavy weights, you will use fewer reps. In general, you want to be in the four to six rep range, with about three to five working sets.
Building muscle after 50
If your focus is mainly on building muscle, your approach will be a bit different.
You are generally going to want to train four to six sets of each exercise, with a rep range from 6 to 15, and less time in between sets… anywhere from 60 seconds to three minutes.
While you may train the big compound movements, the focus will be on assistance exercises such as dumbbell presses, barbell curls, leg extensions, bulgarian split squats, etc.
When training higher rep ranges with more sets and less rest, it becomes more difficult to do the big compound exercises.
The goal with this approach is to stress the muscle by pushing as much blood into it as possible. Bodybuilders refer to this as the “pump.”
While you will generally train with lighter weights, you still progress by adding weight over time. As a result, you will get stronger.
Compound exercises
If you want to build strength and muscle mass more quickly, you need to employ compound exercises.
These are exercises that involve multiple muscle groups at once.
Examples of these include barbell squats, deadlifts, bench press and the overhead press.
If your focus is mainly on building strength, then a typical workout might include the barbell squat, bench press and deadlift. You can then alternate doing the bench press one day and the overhead press on another day.
Bodybuilders focused on building muscle will tend to split up the workouts to focus on the lower body one workout, and the upper body for another workout.
Many will go further than this by splitting up the muscle groups in the upper body, such as training the chest and back on one day, and the shoulders and arms another day.
They’ll train this way four to six days per week and add a lot more exercises to the mix.
To build muscle, you have to eat
It is very difficult to build significant muscle mass while trying to diet. Your body needs the energy to recover after a workout, and the nutrients needed to build the muscle as it adapts to the workload.
There are really no ways around this. You are probably going to need to eat more calories than what you require normally.
Also, you are going to need to eat a significant amount of protein.
In general, it is recommended that you consume 1.5 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight. One kilogram is equal to about 2.2 pounds.
Therefore, if you weigh 200 pounds, you weigh about 91 kilos, and you’ll need about 135 grams of protein consistently each day to build muscle mass.
However, if you weigh 300 pounds, and you want to get down to 200 pounds, you do not want to consume as many calories as you would if your goal is simply to build muscle.
Figure out your initial target weight, and work off of that. So, if you want to drop to 275 pounds over the next couple months, you’ll shoot for about 190 grams of protein.
If you are significantly overweight, your body will pull some energy from its fat storage to build the muscle if you eat at a caloric deficit.
As such, if fat loss is a goal, you’ll need to pay attention to your calorie intake, and you’ll also still need to consume the protein for building the muscle.
Keep in mind, you won’t want to eat at too much of a calorie deficit, or your body will react by losing muscle as well as fat.
Ultimately, if you are significantly overweight, don’t worry so much about losing weight at the beginning of your program.
Reconstituting your body is the near term goal, as more muscle mass will increase your metabolism, which will ultimately burn that fat off.
How to build muscle after 50 – last step
The last, and not least thing you need to do to build muscle after 50 is… sleep!
After putting your body through the stress of lifting weights, it needs to recover. The best way for it to cover is through plentiful rest.
Ideally, we’d like eight hours of actual, uninterrupted sleep every night. Testosterone and human growth hormone levels are elevated when we sleep. In particular, testosterone levels peak when we achieve deep REM sleep.
Unfortunately, achieving a good rest every night can be difficult for those of us over 50. Stress, medications, joint pain, urination issues (such as enlarged prostate) all can interrupt our sleep.
Therefore, it may be necessary to modify some behaviors in order to get the sleep we need for proper recovery.
