Barbell Shrugged - How to Build Muscle In Your 40’s w/Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #618

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What is the best training program for building muscle Can you still build muscle mass in your 40s Why playing the long game is the secret to success How to structure a training program for building muscle in your 40s Why muscle mass is the most important thing you can do for lifelong health   Connect with our guests:   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about how to build muscle in your 40s. And you know what's super funny and also super cool about having a podcast that has been around for over a decade now, like 300 plus episodes, is that a lot of our audience started listening to this show when they're in their late 20s, maybe even early 30s. And now guess what? Times have changed a little bit, friends. Now you're all diesel dads. Now you're all diesel moms. And you're in your 40s and you're still trying to figure out

what's the best way to stay after it. Keep building muscle. What are the training programs? And if you go back a couple of weeks, we went over the nutrition programs and things that you need to be thinking about in order for you to gain muscle in your 40s super super fun show friends it's always a pleasure but before we get into the show of course we got to thank our sponsors do you like free stuff well

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if you are looking into having a cold tub in your house. Completehuman.com forward slash cryo. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mast, today on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about how to build muscle in your 40s. I got this question on Instagram. Doug reposted it. Coach Travis Mash reposted it. All the people want to know because somehow, some way, I'm like 18 months out from being 40 years old.

And there's a lot of people, like the health revolution of probably just the United States, hopefully the entire world, but people are recognizing that you should probably be strong and you should probably be healthy. You should be thinking about all the components of building muscle that are gonna help you live a long, prosperous life. And many of them might be finding it in their 30s, heading into their 40s, like just becoming very aware of this stuff.

So when I posted the question, I immediately thought, well, I can't answer this on Instagram. I can't even answer this question on a long post. I need to have a whole podcast with the bros about this. The way that I want to get into it, Doug, how long do you have until 40? Are you 39 or 38? No, I'm 38 right now, so less than two years. See, this is Travis Mash's time to shine.

Mr. 48-year-old still – I know. I killed before. What are you guys talking about? I know. Before we like totally dive into this, I need you guys to know something. I hope the guy that I played in – I joined a tennis league because Doug Larson has a brown belt now.

The dude's still getting better at sports. He's still getting better at sports. He's still getting better at sports. He motivates you, yes. He motivates me to find a sport that I can continually get better at. And immediately, I had my first tennis match in the recreational adult league in Apex, North Carolina. And the dude that I played was like 10 years older than me. He has probably possessed like 1% of the athleticism

that I have displayed over my lifetime. I had two match points. I still lost. The amount of competitiveness that comes out in me. I love that. Just playing in a recreational league against some guy that's trying to get a sweat on a Sunday morning.

And he looked at me like halfway into the first set. He's like, you're very competitive, aren't you? I was like, I just can't imagine myself losing. Even though I haven't played tennis in like 15 years, I really can't imagine myself losing to you. And an hour and a half later, I was just walking home with my tail between my legs it was so embarrassing I couldn't believe it

but I'm a tennis player now you like it? yeah it was great there's so much running there's so much like I have so much getting better to do I just hope that I have like the time and I'm able to prioritize it just because it's

easy to not do it. But it's cool. I get to play sport again. I haven't played a sport in five years since the last time I competed in CrossFit, like a real sport where I feel like I want to get better at it. I think that's really cool, man. I'm really – I'm – jiu-jitsu is – I'm going to – I'm not even going to post any videos until I'm at least decent.

Yeah? You're thinking about starting? You already started? Yeah. I started messing last week, and now I'm going to start. Because you got your boys, right? Yeah. Boys into it?

Yeah, they go there. Yeah, they're into it. You got Rock and Bear? Yeah, Rock and Bear are doing jujitsu. And so every Thursday I go to jujitsu, and they do it, and then my little girl goes on with her grandparents, and I'm just sitting there watching while there's an adult jiu-jitsu going on at the exact same time.

Yeah. I'm right there with you. I do the same thing. My kids have class, and I have class right next to them. It's fucking perfect. It allows me to go much more frequently because I can take a kid or two with me. I'm excited.

Doug, would you ever... How long before you would feel comfortable wrestling Travis or rolling with Travis Mash? We can roll whenever you want. Yeah, he's got to know. I would be terrified of rolling with you if I was good at jiu-jitsu because you're way too strong.

You're way too hard. No one could get their arms around you. You would just snap someone's arm immediately with not even knowing. You'd be like, oh, sorry, it's broken. Sorry. I didn't mean to break your arm. There is kind of an unspoken rule around big, strong white belts where the upper belt people just don't want to deal with it. You would be terrifying. Try to wrap your legs around try to smash his core

yeah right look how long his legs are they don't make long legs long that long we're totally going to talk about building muscle in your 40s here in just a second but but no like they're with with big strong white belts sometimes it's actually almost harder to submit big strong white belts because all they do is like just like keep all their joints like like close to their body and they just they kind of just hug themselves and like they stay real stiff and they just don't let you they don't let you do anything to them and it's kind of boring and you're just like pulling on the whole time because if you if you are rolling with like a like a blue belt or like a purple belt someone who kind of knows a little bit of something like you know

in boxing how like you know counter punching is a huge part of the sport someone extends an arm and now they're out of position they're vulnerable just for a second before they pull it back in and reset um jiu-jitsu is like that too where a blue belt will actually try to attack you with stuff and then while they're attacking you, they've extended a joint. They've, they've pushed on your pulled on, you extended some,

they've made themselves vulnerable in some way. Cause they were attacking and then you have the ability to counter attack them. And then now you, now you're actually flowing and doing jujitsu, but big, strong white belts that just don't let you, don't let you do anything to them.

All they're doing is playing defense. It's like, what am I doing here? I don't even, I don't even want to do this. Like I'm not getting better. I'm just, I'm just going to get hurt. This person's just going to, they're only using their strength. It's not nearly as fun. So once, once you've learned a little bit more,

it'll actually probably be easier for someone who's really good to submit to. I mean, I did when I was in college and like the first three years of my, you know, out of college, I did some jujitsu. So that's pretty good. You know, I mean, I was OK. I'm nothing like you. So I'm not completely a rookie, but I'm excited to learn and like, you know, start advancing and maybe compete. We'll see. I need something to compete in that I like, you know. Yeah.

Don't you feel like you missed that you can yeah you can compete in jujitsu into your 40s and 50s and i know people that are in their 60s that i still that i roll it roll with like on a regular basis it's like it's a sport that that can scale in that way it'll be just like we're about to talk about building muscle in your 40s building muscle in your 40s is different than building muscle in your 20s and jujitsu in your 60s is of course different than jujitsu in your 40s building muscle in your 40s is different than building muscle in your 20s and jiu-jitsu in your 60s is of course different than jiu-jitsu in your 20s but you can still do it for a long time just like you can lift weights your whole life you can do jiu-jitsu your whole life you don't play football your whole life typically you don't do boxing or kickboxing your whole life typically but jiu-jitsu and lifting weights totally something you can do

your entire life which is part of the reason that i'm you know focusing on those things now that i'm you know my late 30s early 40s like there i i see that there's a future there i'm not trying to hang on to something that's just not going to last yeah that's why tennis too all right i can go play forever tell us about the mechanisms of building muscle yeah tell us how to keep muscle in your 40s you're you're what you're 10 ish years older than us you got all the experience well i mean first off you're gonna have to look you're gonna have to look at your life and you're gonna have to be real with yourself and say what is your life yeah look at your life you gotta say like um you know how much am i sleeping how much am i eating

and like then you need to the dosage should match your life, meaning the amount of working out you do needs to match that. Because if I try to do what I did in my 30s, knowing that now I have four kids and I have work and I'm in school and all these things, it's not going to work out. I'm going to go backwards. It's going to be too much. My body won't be able to adapt to it.

So first is to get the minimal amount of volume that sees some bit of gain. Start there. And then it becomes similar to the way it used to be. I need to add to that slowly. And I need to make sure, though, that I can commit to at least seven hours of sleep. Because if you don't do these things,'s probably gonna be really hard if I'm sleeping you know three hours a night you know you're probably not gonna gain a lot of muscle but you can do it the key word is slowly yeah if you were if you were 38 years old like we are and you have not been training and

don't understand what full range of motion is in a squat, like slower, the better. And barbells probably aren't even the place to start. Like starting with goblet squats, starting with, uh, some single leg work just to get some balance and understanding how your body moves in space. Like that general awareness of how your body moves is, is likely the best place to be. I can't imagine starting in a place where you're just immediately going into some sort of progressive overload. You have to be feeling pressure of having to put 10 pounds on the bar each week

in a back squat, and you can't get your hips below your knees. If you struggle to hinge with a flat back, if you struggle to just be able to stand on one leg and have your brain talk to your feet, those are probably some really good places to start. And you don't need a ton of weight. And you don't need real performance goals, like weight on the bar performance goals. Your performance goals should just be like general awareness of movement, feeling better, uh, increasing range of motion and, and learning how your body moves before really starting to like load any heavy weights.

Um, maybe even just using a barbell in general, cause the barbell is such a good tool for, for lifting weights. But I think that, um, a lot can be done with just a kettlebell, learning how to hinge and doing a swing, doing a goblet squat. If you have really bad ankles from years of sitting at a desk and you're trying to get in shape, you probably can't get your knees over your toes.

Knees over toes guy. Ding. If you struggle with just having proper range of motion in your joints, you can accomplish those goals with just a lot of time under tension without a ton of weight and just very focused movement and really finding squats, deadlifts, some sort of hinge, pushing, pulling, and carrying. the very simple things that Dan John talks about, I think is like the best place to start to just build some awareness around how your body moves and, and, and starting to assess just where you're at, where your starting point is because jumping right in and just trying to get

jacked right away, it's going to be a really rough go that most likely is going to lead to injuries within, you know, the first 18 months to two years. Totally. You know, I would do it too, you know, like the mTOR, the mTOR pathway, and I'm not even going to try to be, I don't want to confuse anybody, but it's just the pathway to hypertrophy. That's still there. It's not like you're a mutant now that you're 40. You still have the same pathway.

The biggest problem would be more of the hormonal side. And I'm talking not the acute, but the ongoing, whatever your hormonal, where the testosterone, your growth hormone, where those things are, you need to look at that. So I would probably – it wouldn't be a bad idea to get some blood work done and find out where you are. And that needs to be a focus too because you can't recover. mTOR is still the same.

You're going to the things that's happening when you work out. Those are still the same. But your ability to recover from that workout and to be able to do it more often because, you know, the thing is that you need to look at, am I going close to failure as often as possible? You know, as often as possible is the key. If you can't recover, then you can't go very often at all. So, you know. Just get away.

I'm not trying to say you need to be a professional athlete and step way back and only focus on this because that's silly. You have your life. To get a good idea of where you are hormonally is a good idea for longevity of life. Those go hand in hand. Getting stronger and living longer.

Getting stronger and living longer. Look at that Ooh, getting stronger and living longer. Look at that guy. Look at that guy. Just create a tagline for something. I do think that there, if we, if we're comparing training in your, in your teens and twenties, like kind of your, you know, your, your, your, your peak years, say you're,

you're 27 or whatever where you're bound to be like the strongest fittest you're going to be for your entire life. Ass assuming that you had good training leading up to that age. Like, you know, like Ryan Grimsland. He's 19 right now. He's absolutely smashing. Presumably, he's going to peak sometime in the next 10 years. And then he's just, you know, he'll start to get old at some point, like we all do. And you move back down but i do think when you're in your 20s versus your 40s there's actually more similarities than differences most of it is going to be the same with subtle tweaks but most of it's going to be the same you're still going to need to do some type of strength training hitting all your major movement patterns at least twice a week you know getting

you know slightly less volume than you probably did in your twenties, you know, instead of doing 20 or 30 sets a week per, per pattern or per muscle group or whatever it is, uh, like when you're at your highest volume ever in your whole life, you know, maybe now you're doing like half that you're doing like 10 or 15 sets a week, that type of thing. Uh, you still need to focus on sleep and recovery. Like you can't really get around having, you know, a solid, you know, eight or nine hours of sleep. If you're, you know, a, an athlete that trains hard and heavy, you know a solid you know eight or nine hours of sleep if you're you know a an

athlete that trains hard and heavy you know five days a week plus um you need to eat healthy real whole foods and get enough calories to actually put on the muscle mass if you're not eating enough food no there's no amount of training that's going to get you big and jacked if you're just not you're just eating like a bird all the time uh you need to get a gram of protein per pound of body weight still all these things they apply at 40 just like they applied at 20 they're they're very similar you know there's certainly going to be differences like if you if you uh anders mentioned full range of motion like well you know maybe by the time you get to your your 40s and and 50s or whatever it is like you've had you know know, eight knee surgeries. Now your

knees is not the same as it was when you were 20 before you had all those knee surgeries. And so now doing, you know, now doing overhead squats might just not be the movement for you. And now you're mostly focusing on lunges and step ups, they're way more conservative, you know, maybe doing box squats, because that limits your your knee range motion to, you know, 90 degrees or whatever it is. So you might have to make some changes to the exercise selection that you do and changes to your volume. But the big picture concepts remain the same. You need to do strength training with all of your primary muscle groups and movement

patterns. You need to be very consistent. You need to recover. You need to eat well. All these things don't really change. But it's just little tweaks along the way. Yeah. It's really just the framework. The mechanisms that allow you to build muscle don't change. It's not like the physiology totally switches at the age of 40

for some reason. Hormonally, testosterone may be a little bit down. You may be a little bit more stressed. You may not be sleeping as well. But I think that kind of like Travis was saying, you should be able to kind of like objectively understand where your body is at and where your life is at and kind of see like where the deficiencies are. Like if you don't sleep that well, it's probably going to play into your recovery. If you're not eating that well, or you're eating out all the time, if you're getting wrapped up in, you know, nine year old birthday parties and smashing cake with Elmo on there, like, you probably aren't eating that well. Like, you're not living the life. If you own a business and you're stressed out of your mind, like,

maybe you don't need 90 minutes in the gym. Maybe you need 30 minutes to start moving things in the right direction and accumulating volume. I think that those three buckets though are really where we can start to, to dig into the specifics of like the recovery side of things, the nutrition side of things, and then actual like training. And we all love training. And I actually feel like the, the framework of how you structure your training program, especially for, for like where

i'm at not just because i i try to train for like 30 ish minutes three to four days a week um and and do like a day of sprints and a longer day of conditioning that's kind of like my my general template but i think that when when you start to get a little bit older the idea of testing like a single or a double or just testing in general and taking things to like an RPE nine plus nine or a 10 is becomes less and less necessary. And it's just about accumulating really high quality volume somewhere in that like RPE eight or 80%, um, leaving, leaving multiple reps in in reserve however you want to kind of like use those terms to um regulate like the the intensity that you're bringing but it's it's

much more optimal in my eyes to be hanging out in six eights tens twelves maybe for rep ranges and using 80 to 85 percent of what feels like a maximal load, especially when doing these compound lifts. Like I, the last time I even came close to testing a one RM was that in your basement, Travis, and I was like, I want to say six, eight months ago. And there's just everything else outside of there. It's like very manageable weights that I move between five to 12 reps to just really try and accumulate as much volume as possible and move as well as I can. Totally. You know, you could easily not go heavy ever, you know, like

you could, there's studies that would show you could go like 40% and you know, of your 1RM and you know, you just have to like do a lot more reps, but it would, it would be better for your joints. That would be like the old school bodybuilding is probably the best thing to do if you're our age, just doing like 10s, 15s, and 20s. You know, like you're going to get sore, but your joints are not going to get as hammered as if you're trying to squat, you know, 700 pounds, 800 pounds, crazy. So, yeah, keep it light.

Yeah, I've been doing mostly with uh you know for the last probably six or six or more months uh doing a variation of our imam strength program and basically that's broken up into four week blocks where you do do a one rep max but i don't do i'm not like chasing a number i'm not trying to really hit pr specifically i'm just building up to something that's like an easy one rep max like maybe I maybe I could hit it for a double. Maybe I couldn't, but it's just a, you know, like it's like the concept of having like a daily max when you do squat every day, you're not setting a PR every day. You're just building up something that's pretty damn heavy. And then you're moving on to the rest of your stuff. And so every four weeks I hit an

easy max. And then, and then the next three weeks, you know, I basically build from like, you know, 65 to 75 to 85% doing like speed triples, speed doubles and speed singles over those three weeks at those percentages. And then on the fourth week I hit another easy max and then I kind of start all over again. Um, maybe, you know, and then I can, I can every four weeks if I want to, I can do a new movement. You know, maybe I'm doing the safety bar squats with chains. And then the next four weeks I'm doing front squats, that,

that type of thing where, um, I know Travis, you're a huge fan of velocity based training. And when you're, when you're doing velocity, like you're, you're pushing as hard as you can. You're putting as much force in the bar as you can, but you're not going to failure. And so it's easy on your body. It's easy on your joints.

It doesn't, it just doesn't beat me up. I feel great. I feel athletic. And since again, I'm not competing in anything and I don't have any numbers. and so it's easy on your body it's easy on your joints it doesn't it just doesn't beat me up i feel great i feel athletic and since again i'm not competing in anything and i don't have any numbers i have to hit i'm just trying to be healthy and athletic and we talked about jiu-jitsu earlier i'm just trying to be healthy for jiu-jitsu you don't have to be a fucking gargantuan you know muscular strong monster to be good at jiu-jitsu certainly there's people out there that compete in jiu-jitsu that are very strong and they do very well. And they, they use their strength, power, and athleticism to be good. But there's also plenty of guys that win world championships that

they're like in the weight room. They're not impressive at all. It's not a requirement for the sport though. It does help. So, uh, what I tend to focus on is just, um, being, being athletic, but I'm not chasing any numbers. You know was a great point like if you know if you guys wanted to go that route of getting the velocity i definitely would i would definitely recommend it you know i wish i'd had it when i was younger but nowadays i would i personally wouldn't live without it because like what it does it changes you know like you know you can go 60 and it's not a hard workout at all because you could easily just chill through the whole thing but if i go 60 and then i'm looking at how fast i'm pushing it the whole intent changes and so

the whole workout is now i mean like you look at ryan and he's pring right and left and like you rarely see him like struggling with a squat like i just posted he did because we use bands and chains too it you know it deloads off when he's at the super bottom. So he, you know, when he's at the bottom of the squat, full range of motion. And so it's easier on his joints, but then you also see when he takes those off, he's because we targeted his weakness, you know, where, where, where it was in the strength curve, he's still on his one RMs, continuing to climb and we're not even taking those far. He just did that 230 kilo 506 pr and it was at

like 0.5 meters per second you know so it's a lifetime pr but now it's at a speed where it's nowhere close to being like yeah that's fast for a pr it's super it's not you know it's really yeah it just it's not a true pr for him no because, because you know... It's got to be close. Yeah, well, so the 230 is getting there, but some people can PR all up to 0.18 meters per second. So he's got several kilos, but we're going to keep it. We've decided we're not going to actually ever get a true PR in the squat. We're just going to see that it's progressing with like, you know, what is he doing now at 0.5?

Is he doing 235 at 0.5? We got stronger. But I never have to see. So therefore, I never have to like, you know, take a chance to hurt him on a squad versus like saving it all for clean and jerk. And it is working like a charm. If I could just get everybody on the team bought in,

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testosterone, burn fat, get in the zone, get a pump before your workout, and make sure you go to proteachallenge.com. That is where you can download the e-book that I wrote, the 21-Day Challenge, the Proteach Challenge. That's right. Lose 9 pounds in 21 days, written by your boy. So get over to Proteach Challenge. Get to walmart right now i think that the the velocity thing really adds a lot of i've never actually used the thing but i because we talk about it so much i think about the speed at which i lift now or the speed at which i'm moving as like a really it's more of a field and an objective measurement like you guys have with the actual

the flex yeah that has actually allowed me to lift significantly less and feel like I'm doing a lot more just because I know that I'm moving with more speed, more intent. And when you are doing it, call it just from squatting and you're driving as fast as you can out of the hole instead of just grinding reps the idea of like being functional and the way that you're going to live a better life you should likely be moving faster um it's also one of the reasons like i love going out to the to the uh fields and just running sprints running backwards like doing things much faster um i think doug made the joke a couple shows back it was like everybody has heard of old school or old man It was like everybody has heard of old man strength, but nobody's ever heard of old man speed. You just lose that mess.

No one's like, wow, that guy's really got some old man hops. Like, no, nobody's jumping really high in their 40s and 50s. It just isn't – that's the stuff that you lose is that elasticity the idea of sitting there like grinding out reps is something we could probably all do for a very long time but to be able to have some giddy up and go and think about lifting weights quickly i think is a is a real skill that uh you know once you're comfortable with movement patterns and you have full range of motion, you feel confident in your tissues that you're going to be able to move effectively, efficiently, and safely, start adding some speed into it. Because you can really feel a lot of benefits to just adding speed and power to the things that you're doing on a daily basis.

Here's a really cool fact for you guys. It is relevant to what we're talking about. If you talk about Fred Hatfield, he was the first person to ever talk about compensatory. That might not be true. He's the first one who made it popular. He talked about compensatory acceleration years ago. And he was the first guy to squat. What was it? He squatted 1,015.

And at the time, that was the heaviest anyone ever squatted. But he did it at 45 years old. He squatted 1,015, and at the time, that was the heaviest anyone ever squatted. But he did it at 45 years old. And so his main – the thing, the principle that he talked about the most was trying to push the bar as fast as possible throughout the entire range of motion, every single rep. And at 45, the student squatted 1,015, which is insane. I don't even think I used to think about that when I was – it was always just get the weight up, grind it out if you have to.

I never really thought about speed as a part of lifting. It was just how much can I put on the bar. I never ever until recently thought about the fact that you can lift lighter weights faster and it's likely a much better response that you're going to get out of the effort that you can lift lighter weights faster and it's it's likely a much better response that you're going to get out of the effort that you're putting in the first time i ever really like got into doing um compensatory acceleration and or just like speed reps in general uh like i had exposure to chains and bands kind of early on like the first time i ever remember using them for like a whole summer i was like i think i was 19 I was just coming back I had broken my foot and I was just coming back trying to heal up and get onto my uh

my sophomore year of college football season and uh I think after that season if I remember correctly it was called I was told by my strength coach that there was a concept called three by five training where he's he said that the I have no idea if any of this is true so don't quote me on any of this this is what I was told 20 years ago um it was called three by five training and it was the russian spetsnaz would do three to five days per week three to five exercises per day three to five reps per set three sorry three to five sets per day three to five reps per set so you have this this huge range in volume there of course um but they um the the story goes that they were not allowed to be sore or beat up because they could get they could get the call at any moment to go fly over

wherever and and do some military something so they they need to be in shape but they couldn't be beat up because they had to be able to be ready at any moment so uh so i decided to try this and i wrote a program for myself and this was this 2005 that I did this program that I wrote. And it was, again, three to five reps for every single exercise that I did, no matter what it was. Even if it was dumbbell curls or sit-ups, you know, weighted sit-ups or whatever. Everything was explosive. Every single rep was explosive. Every single rep was explosive. And I had prior to that, I was, I was really struggling to, to get PRS on, you know, all the, all the main lifts. I hadn't PR

my clean or my snatch or my front squat in, in a while. And I did, I did three, four week blocks of this type of training, which actually kind of set the stage for this more recent EMOM strength program that we wrote for the Diesel Dad program. And the first four-week block, I didn't PR anything, but I had good lifts. And then the next four-week block, I PR'd everything. And then the next four-week block, I PR'd everything again. That was the first time I ever snatched 100 kilos. And I remember walking around the weight room.

I'm the only person in that weight room that snatches at all. But I remember walking around like so excited, like wanting to tell somebody that I just fucking did this cool thing who would who would maybe understand. So I'm like looking for Andy, basically, like, where's Andy? He's the only one that knows what's going on. But throughout that entire 12 week cycle, like I felt super athletic. I left the weight room feeling better than I came in. Like I just like had lots of energy. I felt super bouncy. I used call it uh feeling like whippy like when i would do cleans and snatches i want to feel whippy like where i'm just like i feel very elastic and and i pr'd everything and then when i when i would go to run sprints i just felt like i was just like flying out of the blocks like everything felt amazing my joints didn't hurt dude the whole thing was fantastic

so uh so when you do three days a week i guess you're going heavier so you want more recovery Everything felt amazing. My joints didn't hurt. Dude, the whole thing was fantastic. So when you do three days a week, I guess you're going heavier, so you want more recovery. Is that what you would do? Is that how you – Well, so I didn't actually fluctuate the days per week. I set up a four-day-a-week program, and then just really the main emphasis there was just three to five reps per exercise, and everything was explosive. Right, right, right. So even on – so you're snatching three to five reps per exercise and everything right right right so uh even on so you're snatching

three to five reps well so with with the big lifts with front squats back squats deadlifts um cleans and snatches uh and jerks uh i had that four week a similar four-week progression that i i just laid out where like the first week it would be um like uh back then i was doing i was doing 70 for triples for five sets and then the next week i would do 80 for doubles for five sets and the next week i'd do 90 for singles for five reps and then i would do a 100 max on the fourth week and then i would repeat right for all the for all the big lifts and it was like it was like an upper lower split. Right. All right. So two days, upper two days lower. And where did, where did that,

where did that work out come from? That's really cool. Just interesting little, I mean, I, I wrote, I wrote the programming for myself, like with the concept that,

that I just laid out, like the three by five concept. And then kind of just like rolled it into like a, almost like a upper lower, like West side type, type structure structure. Yeah. So yeah. And one thing I would recommend too, if I'm a, you know, at our age, if you do velocity, you know,

you look at velocity loss is a super big key. You know, if I stay, if I only lose, you know, what I mean by velocity loss is this is if my first rep is at one meter per second, you know, I want to stay within 20%, only 20%. Otherwise, now, if I start to go 40 and 50, now you're more like a bodybuilder, but then you're going to be sore and beat up, and it's going to crush you.

But if you only go 20%, you're going to feel good. Maybe you get a little sore. And the key is you're going to be recruiting fast-switch fibers. So there's a lot of benefits. Not that we're all trying to be fast anymore, but we should. Like you said, Anders, we don't have to be slow, but we start training slow. So if you keep it only at 20% loss, you're going to feel much better. Your elasticity is going to go up, and there's going to be a lot of advantages.

So going at 50, I mean that 40 to 60% range, which is what bodybuilders would do. Then you go, it's going to be, you're going to be beat up and you're going to pay the price for a few days. And most of this, you know, if we have kids, we just can't afford that. So yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know,

and this is my mindset about a lot of this stuff too is like i i think that earlier in my training i had i felt like i had tons of athleticism so i needed to get stronger but as i've moved away from like prime years of lifting my athleticism is likely the thing that's on the decline but my strength is never going anywhere like as long as i just keep lifting i'm always going to be plenty strong i don't have to worry about being strong i don't have to worry about muscle mass i did all that work for the first 20 years of this game now it's like how can i stay as athletic as possible and that that really comes down to like speed and movement and coordination piece which uh is isn't talked about that that commonly like just moving with speed and power like so many

people are focused on just like pure muscle but what they're really uh even if people say like my goal is to get stronger they don't but they're, I feel like when you read between the lines of that, what they're really trying to say is I'd like to be more athletic. It's like, I'd like to have a body that looks good and I'd like to be able to have more physical freedom. Well, grinding out reps and beating your joints up does not typically provide the physical freedom that you're actually seeking. You just don't understand that you don't know how to communicate that specific goal of what you want because getting stronger seems like the answer to your problem.

Like very few people walk up and like fill out a form. They're like, I'd like to get more athletic. How do I do that? It's like I want to get stronger and I want to get leaner. What you're really saying is like I'd like to have more physical freedom and be more athletic. And strength is part of that. L losing body fat is part of that. But what you're really looking for is the ability to go run and play and jump and do all this stuff. And that comes from moving fast, changing directions, being able to run backwards, and getting out and actually like

feeling like you're flying a little bit like finding top speed and and going um the actual muscle size piece of that is is a is a really long game um that is is a part of the equation but uh i think that the speed and athleticism piece is what what interests me the most as i get older so so now that we've like kind of really dug into the the speed power side of things i I'm going to take it the other way. I think as you get older, it's important to make sure that speed and or power training is, is a component of your training. You should run hill sprints and,

you know, do, do, you know, burpees as fast as possible for again, like three to five reps, just to like, just to get used to moving quickly.

Like Travis, you're doing jujitsu. Like if you're, if you're a jujitsu person and you're working on doing burpees at 100% full speed, well, you're basically just practicing sprawling when someone's trying to take you down, right?

Totally. But on the other side of that, like as you get older, since you don't have any competitive, any competitions coming up, it doesn't matter if you're, you know, squatting double body weight or whatever, then you can do the bodybuilder thing and do slow controlled reps and just give your muscles some

time under tension without really worrying about what the performance output is going to be. You're just providing some tension and stimulus to your muscles in a very slow, controlled way. So especially like if you have, you know, like, you know, achy elbows or shoulders or whatever it is, and you're doing pushups like at with a tempo, like, great, like if it helps your joints not feel so, so achy during the movement, but you still want to do some type of training, then yeah, doing, doing tempo and moving slowly. There's, there's not a huge downside there. In my opinion, you just want to get some time under attention and provide some stimulus for growth. No, I totally agree. You know, I just, I would probably just wave it. Like you say, you know,

any, well, it all depends really too on your lifestyle. Like, you know, what can you afford, you know, can you afford feeling, you know, that soreness that you're going to feel? And if you can, good. If you're Anders who has a baby, you probably don't want to feel that way the next day. But if you have this window of your life where the kids are grown or maybe you don't have kids or you have a nanny, whatever it is, then I think for sure, you know, you could do that. And you could do that anyway. You just got to suck it up. So it just depends on who you are really.

But, you know, there is going to be, if you want to add muscle, there has to be, you know, some kind of stimulus. You know, like I said, you know, if you're looking, if you have lost 20%, you can get, you can gain muscle. It's mostly fast twitch. It'll be easier to recover from. But if you want to get, say you have this window, you want to take a day, say you've been doing jiu-jitsu, you know, you have nothing coming up,

so you can afford a little bit lost in performance, then for sure, you can set it up to 40. I wouldn't go, you know, when you start getting that 60%, like at our age, you know, that's pushing it pretty good. And so, like, you know, your ability to recover from that much, from that basically 60% is all out. i gave everything i had and i failed and so when you start going to failure you know you know which is good to do sometimes you just got to really organize your training around when can i so that's that's the big key so and i will say this last thing is like

people always talk about i want to look like I used to when I was in school. Then you probably should do the things you did when you were in school. So continue to sprint, like you said. Continue to play sports. So I feel like we say that and we don't do anything like we did. It makes no sense. Yeah, to kind of piece those two things together,

what I tend to do kind of in the first, you know, the first third of my training session is some type of explosive something. Again running hills hill sprints or stairs or fast burpees or even even just like like shadow boxing where i'm like throwing really fast punches just something to to move quickly you can do med ball throws kettlebell throws all that type of explosive training which you know would be very similar to what you would do if you're an actual athlete in your 20s you do all your speed work first and then power stuff and then strength stuff and then assistance work and conditioning.

And that's like a kind of a normal template for a day. Of course, you can vary off of that. But doing some type of explosive something full speed and then doing a little bit of power work. And then when I'm doing my assistance work, especially single joint stuff, then I'm not worried about speed and power. And I can do slow, controlled, more tempo style reps. So you don't have to really pick one or the other. But you should, you can do both, you can do explosive stuff on the front end on the first

half of the workout, and then more controlled tempo bodybuilding stuff when you're doing assistance work on the second half of the workout. Sure. On the nutrition front, I feel like, once again, I'm not in my 40s, but I noticed this even now. It's like, there's just a lot less room for error. And kind of like, almost in the antithesis of what you were saying about the training of like doing what you were doing when you were an athlete or younger and going out and doing more explosive training and stuff like that. Like eating is the thing that you cannot do like you used to do. You used to maybe get away with a whole lot of bad decisions and still be able to break even and hit whatever your kind of physique goals are or lose fat or not even be putting fat on. But if you've been,

you know, making less than optimal decisions for, you know, a decade, maybe two decades going into your forties, I, I, I feel like there's just significantly less room for, for slop when it comes to whatever food choices you have. Um, I have noticed that it very much with me and that it's just like, because the sleep isn't there because training is less. Um, I can, I can focus on countless things, but there's just a lot less room for like big Saturday nights that lead into Sunday or alcohol is, is significantly less. Like I barely ever drink anymore. And when I do, even if it's like one beer, I feel like I wake up with like a hangover. Like my body just responds so poorly to crappy food and alcohol, sugar, things like that. It's much more taxing.

And until you get rid of that crap and then every once and then every once in a while habit, you'll never really feel or understand how it affects your body. It's been like one of the biggest things over the last, especially in like losing 20 pounds, 18 pounds in the last four months. It's like, I just, I noticed that stuff like so much. Um, now when I want to have a drink, it's like immediate hangover the next day, immediately. I feel like crap. If I, if I have a drink, it's like immediate hangover the next day. Immediately I feel like crap if I have a bowl of ice cream or something like that. Once you get rid of it, putting it back in, you just start to feel how bad it is. What is your diet like?

I mean, I know that you're ripped now. I've been seeing those pictures. I mean, I'm impressed by what you've accomplished. What have you been doing? Strictly counting calories or have you been looking at the quality you always kind of look at the quality I think even when you're eating whatever but like what has changed uh yeah I so I in four months the last four months it's been 18 pounds and it could have been 20 if I had an extra three days, which was kind of the goal. I wanted to know what 179 looked like on a scale.

I was like, whoa, that's little. 180.2, I started at 198. Food quality, I feel like, should be the leading thing for everyone um if you're eating crappy food all the time like at some point you're just gonna fall off that diet it's just not gonna work because your body's craving all of the nutrients that you're not getting by eating junk um and then so like on on average if i were to just be at pure maintenance at 198 pounds, I'm looking at somewhere in like the 25 to 2700 calories a day for maintenance. And to be honest with you, 198, like I just, I don't think that's like the healthiest weight for me. I probably should be around 190 for like just like a living top end weight. Um, but I cut that down to,

for the first eight weeks, I cut that down to 2,200 calories a day. Um, which is really easy. It's really sustainable. It's like 500 calories a day off maintenance, which is just normal, super simple. And I went right to that number. I didn't like slowly go from 2,700 to 22 over five weeks. I just went straight there. Um, and then I was at my in-laws for four weeks and I, I didn't have as much control over all the food and everything. So, um, I tried to just be at maintenance and just come home at the same weight. And I actually like nailed it. I was like two pounds over. How did you do that?

What did you do? I literally controlled as much as I could possibly control from eating my own breakfast, eating my own lunch, eating my own dinner as much as I could. And then when I didn't have any control or when there was like, cause it was like vacation as well. It was like, it was like you're around family and extended family and there's parties and there's, you're at the lake and it's like,

people are drinking and having fun. Um, so when I didn't have control, I kind of, I think like a really good framework or mindset around maintenance calories a lot of times is try to under-eat or prioritize as much lean protein as possible when you have control. And then when you don't have control, you're just kind of like filling in the gaps. So like if you're eating at the low end of maintenance or in some sort of deficit, like you're creating a gap that can be filled in by a couple beers or cheese and crackers when someone has the platter out. Like that's like real life. You can't get away from that stuff. So if you create a gap in the first half of the day, by the last half of the day when happy hour rolls around,

it's easier to be okay knowing that you didn't overeat in the morning or have a bunch of junky food in the morning. So that was really the tactics. Monday through Thursday, I pretty much had the majority of control over breakfast, lunch, snacks, my ability to work out, even if it was like just going for a run. And then by the time dinner rolled around, I had enough excess calories left over that I could just eat and then prioritize protein at that dinner. And then over, over time, it kind of like just falls into a rhythm, but that's really like, it didn't get hard until I got home. And then I went, I dropped at another 400 to 1800 for three weeks. And that starts to get like kind of dehydrating

and kind of like, you're really low. And then the final week I was at 1400 for five days. And that was like, that was tricky. That's like 183 to 180. Like it just, it starts to stack up of like, you're just really dehydrated. You have no carbohydrates in you. So training's hard. There's just, there's just things that happen when you're at 1400 calories.

You stop pooping. You don't pee as much. Your body just doesn't have like stuff in it um but coming out of it i'm gonna hang out at like 22 24 2500 calories and see if i can actually maintain a like 185 to 185 pounds would be like a really rad um year-long average weight for me i'm like pretty stoked on that sweet i think that that's like a it was like a really good formula for me where i didn't have to like overwhelm myself um like be as strict as you possibly can be when you own the time like that was like the mindset of the whole thing. If I have the time and I have the resources to be able to like choose the food, choose the amounts, weigh and measure.

I brought the travel scale that we give all of our clients. Like I bought one and, and put it in my backpack. So I was able to weigh and measure everything I needed to like when you own it, own it. And when you don't, because you've owned, owned as like when you own it own it and when you don't because you've owned owned as much as you possibly can it allows for like a little bit of the the fun a little bit of the slop without overstressing it and it worked yeah it downs four months so do you have any any time where you just want to quit or you just are you the kind of guy who wants to start you just do oh yeah because you had it well that's like i mean that's a that's

an entire show where i could just like uh talk about how i struggle with the maintenance piece like that's the hardest thing it's like having an athlete's mindset it's like on this day be ready to do this so like i knew colton was flying in here for a photo shoot and a video shoot had to be uh like in shape and i had to have abs and i had to look good and it like that was the day so you make it happen it's easy like that really is an easy thing to do if i told you at the front squat 500 on this specific day you go okay cool done yeah it's like mentally you just go there it's it's been hardwired your whole life to be able to go do this thing um hard part is when there's like no specific goal or like who cares if you overeat doesn't really matter you can just go lose the weight or eat less tomorrow but you

start stacking those like bad days or or like the loose lifestyle and that's when things get like more tricky to me me too you know i think i think one one trick you could say or one idea is to if you're if you say you want to get stronger or in shape 40 past you know past 40 years old you might want to consider like you know having something other than you know getting stronger or lifting weights as your goal like if you get a light jiu-jitsu or like you know say you know book yourself a photo shoot and like you like and like literally say hey i'm gonna do my 40 year old photo shoot let's say you're about to turn four and i'm gonna be in the best shape of my life instead of date pay for that mess you know schedule in advance and pay for it put your money up odds are you're more likely to stick to it or

even so you know it doesn't whatever is the motivating something to you yeah schedule it to be honest to be honest the hardest or the weirdest mindset shift in the whole process for me was it was the first time in my life I had ever gotten in shape for a photo shoot. That's so awesome. I always get in shape to go play sports. Yeah. I don't give a shit what I look like as long as I play well. But it was the first time I'd ever been like, oh, I have to diet down to have abs.

That's weird. I'm like, so not the aesthetic person, you know, like I don't, I've never cared. And I got to 185 every time I stepped on the regionals floor that day, because it was like, I'm big enough to move weight. I feel strong at this. Nobody on this floor cares if I have abs whatsoever. They just care if I could do 50 chest to bar pull-ups in a row like that's all that matters is how well you perform so like the idea of like getting in shape for purely aesthetics was like it was the first time it's weird that at 38 years old that's the first time i've ever gotten in shape to like look good but it's also a cool goal like i hit up i hit up brian uh a bunch of times because he he's like more in the like um like bodybuilding type scene like the natural bodybuilding scene and um i was like all right

dude here's where i'm at i've got three days i'm at 182 i like walked i like walked him down the final week i was like i weighed in at 184 this morning. Tomorrow is going to be 182. I'm going to be 180 on Thursday. I need you to tell me the exact schedule to like carb up so I don't look all watery and like weird. What is like the flow of how fast my body can rehydrate without being like bloated looking? And he like wrote the plan for me. It was rad. It was the first time I've ever like done a photo shoot where it like mattered or whatever you call it.

I would love to watch you pose and all the stuff you're doing. I'll send you the links. Hopefully, everyone will see it. If you are a male, 35 to 55 years old you better see all these pictures because that means they're doing a good job marketing that's right um bros we're gonna come back and and finish this i think that we can talk a lot about the nutrition side that was a lot of like my specific nutrition for uh like like getting in shape but i think that there are some like real overriding principles that we can dig into to like nutrition in your 40s um when you know you're not 20 years old and and burning thousands

and thousands of calories a day just in general life like you may have a uh desk job and and not just like out running and playing all the time so I think that there's a cool conversation we have on nutrition and recovery and part two of this thing. Travis mash. Where can people find you? Mashley.com. You can go to Instagram. Ashley performance. Doug Larson. On Instagram.

Douglas Larson. My name is Anders Varner at Anders Varner. You can find us at barbell shrug at barbell underscore shrug. Make sure you get over to Walmart. That is where we are on 2,200 stores, shelves in the performance nutrition section and get over to the dieseldadmentorship.com where all the busy dads get strong, lean, and athletic.

And guess what? Part two of this is going to be coming up and I'm fired up about it because this actually like really touches all the things that super interest me about strength. So awesome job today, fellas. Enjoyed that. See you guys next week.