Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1225: The 5 Must-Dos For Fitness Over 40

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin discuss five things everyone must do if they want to maintain fitness as they age. The challenges of training after 40. (1:42) Changes in recovery. (4:45) Discipline=Freedom and managing your schedule. (11:00) Ingraining muscle imbalances/chronic pain. (13:08) Changes in hormones. (17:30) The advantages of training after 40.  Tend to be more patient and have more wisdom. (20:18) Greater confidence in yourself. (23:24) Have the expendable income to invest in yourself. (26:30) The 5 Must-Dos for Fitness Over 40. (28:03) #1 – Form is EVERYTHING! (28:48) #2 – Proper priming. (35:44) #3 – LISTEN to your body. (41:01) #4 – Skip maxing out. (47:05) #5 – Place your health over your performance. (53:47) Related Links/Products Mentioned February Promotion: MAPS Split ½ off! **Code “SPLIT50” at checkout** The Breakdown Recovery Trap, Why You Aren’t Progressing – Mind Pump Blog Is Warming Up Before A Workout Necessary? - Mind Pump Blog MAPS Fitness Prime Pro – Mind Pump Fabulous 40's Bundle | MAPS Fitness Products - Mind Pump Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Saldas Defenow, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So in this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about the five must-do things that people over the age of 40 should do when they pursue fitness and health through exercise and nutrition. Now, this episode is also extremely valuable for those of you who are trainers. This is very valuable information for you for your clients. And of course, if you yourself are over 40, you will not want to miss this.

Now we talk about all the challenges that come with being over 40. We also talk about all of the pluses that you have. That's right, there are advantages to being over 40 as well. And then of course we go over the five most important things you should focus on. And we give you specific recommendations. You are going to enjoy this episode.

Also, all month long, maps split and the maps split t-shirts. So the program and the t-shirt are both 50% off. Now the program is a full workout routine. It is a split based body builder inspired routine. So it's really, really great for people who want to build muscle, people who want to sculpt and shape their bodies. People who really want to develop their bodies

and who like to work out, this is a six day a week routine. It's advanced and again, it's week routine. It's advanced. And again, it's very popular. It's half off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsplit.com. That's MAPS SPL IT.com and use the code split 50. That's SPL IT 50. No space for the discount. I have something for you guys. Oh good. Because we had both you guys's birthdays recently. Yeah. I'm a recent 40 year old. And I am still under.

So I still got a year to train like an asshole. Wait a minute, how old do you right now? 38. Oh, okay. See that? You turned 39 this year. Yeah, 39 this year. And then you turned 40.

Yes. That's normal. That's right. So I'm good at math. I've got, I've got a little over a year and a half to make more mistakes, still do stupid stuff when I train, but I want to get mentally prepared for when this, the four O hits. How do I need to train different? And that's a question I get in DMs all the time.

All the time. Right. All the time. And to be honest, to be quite honest, and I think we are probably really, really good people to comment on this, and I'll tell you why. Cause we're over 40. We'll be besides that. That's what qualifies us.

But in the demographic. But here's a deal. You hear a lot about the challenges of working out over 40, but a lot of times you hear that coming from people who are not maintaining their fitness the whole time. So then they come in, they try to work out, and I try to explain to them, most of the challenges you're experiencing

have more to do with the fact that you just haven't worked out. Right, right. And less to do with your age, all of us have been consistent for decades. I've been doing it since I was 14 consistently. I mean, besides injuries, I never stopped. But there are, and it started happening not at 40, by the way. I started noticing at about 35, 36.

Once I went on the back end of the back half of 30, I did started to notice some differences in the way I recover, my body and that kind of stuff. And then it started to make sense to me. Like, okay, now I understand why this is a category, you know, training over 40 versus training under 40. I used to make fun of my dad all the time because he like, Lou himself up with this bend gain and all this other stuff. That's not really bad, but, uh, but he was just trying to get his joints through it to, you know, respond and

even before we'd play just a regular pick-up game of basketball, he's pretty simple. He's a horrible bodyguard. He's a whole bodyguard. And I'm like, oh my God, this is really necessary. And now I'm starting to see, you know, like, why? He did that. It's really just the prep before you go to do any kind of like real rigorous type, but activity, any kind of like heavy lifting. Well, you can almost guarantee at 5.30 a.m. and 24th in this locker room, you will always smell Ben Gaye. That's what all, if you're at Tiger Ball, if you're in the gym at 5.30 the morning, more likely that you're a businessman or woman there and you're working out, you're consistent

stuff like that and you're probably north of 40 years old and you can pretty much guarantee that the entire, you know, men's locker room smells like Ben Gay at 530 the morning. It's totally true. Here's the biggest thing that I noticed. And again, I think we're good people to talk about this because we've already isolated out the changes that we felt or had to do with our age, not the fact that we stopped working out. Okay.

Here's the biggest thing that I noticed. Recovery, or to be more specific, I can't get away with stupid stuff like I used to. That's what I like. I like to be a little bit more specific because I still have good recovery so long as I train appropriately. When I was younger in my 20s and early 30s,

my recovery was better for when I did stupid stuff. So if I went, I'll never forget this. I was, I think 30, I turned 30 and for my birthday, I had this wonderful idea that I would go in the gym, I'd put 315 on the bar, and I would do 10 reps of deadlifts and I'd rest for 30 seconds and do 10 sets. I thought, this is, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do for 30 seconds and do 10 sets. I thought, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do for 30, total 10 times three, right? So, and it destroyed me. I was so sore and so it was just insane.

There was no rhyme or reason behind it. It was just me turning 30 thinking, oh, this is gonna be a cool thing to do. But I was okay with that. Today, I could still do the same thing. I would not be able to recover like I did when I was 30. Well, let's talk about why that is, though. I think there's several variables that play a role in why that is.

At least for me, things that I've noticed as I've aged, I move less. I move way less today than when I did 10 years ago. That's a big factor. When you think about recovery, just facilitating movement, more oxygen, more blood, more nutrients through circulating the body, I think that it's less to do with I'm 40 versus and I was 25 then. And it's more to do, hey, at 25, I was extremely active all the time. And just what that promotes for recovery, because I am a lot less active,

I also have to eat significantly lower to match my lower activity. And it is easier to recover when your calories are higher. Even if you're burning it through activity. Right. Because you're giving yourself all those nutrients that I'm probably lacking more often now than what I was when I was consuming 4,000 plus calories. And then that movie. So I think that has a lot to play with it.

That's actually a great point. There's another one too. And that's that when you're 40, you have 40 years of potentially cumulative things that have happened to your body. So at 20, I might not have had any injuries I've had to rehab, but at 40, I might have had a few to rehab. Now I might know, at 20, I might not have had any injuries I've had to rehab, but at 40, I might have had a few to rehab. Now, I might be rehabbed from them, but they start

to add up a little bit, and that can also contribute to the changes in recovery. You know what I'm saying? Plus, you might have built some compensatory patterns, you know, that aren't as favorable as they used to be. Right, right. Now, of course, age age by itself everything else being equal age by itself also does play a factor of course the body does age and over time starts to you know you you're born and then you get older and then it goes kind of backwards like it's time now to at some point you go back to where you came from and so there's that process that happens of course 40 is 40 is still very young, but the 40-year-old body,

there are some differences due to age that you maybe don't see as often when you're 20 or 30. And those can also play a role. They really can't. Here's the other one though, that plays a big, and besides that, there's other factors, like what Adam said,

like what I said with the potential accumulation of injuries. Then there's also this. It's a much more stressful hectic life. When you're 40, does that play a role in recovery? I think so, absolutely. You know when you're 20, something years old, and you don't have kids, you don't have much to worry about. You worry about eating, go to the gym, and whatever.

When you're 40, you're working about your mortgage and your kids and meetings and business and all that stuff. A lot of responsibility. Yeah, and does that play a role in your ability to recover? I think it does. I think so. I think it's important to note too

because there's some 22 year old that's screaming going like, I have a mortgage and I'm going through college and I have a kid, right? So there's always exceptions to the rules somebody who may be taking on more but generally speaking, you know, as you start to get up in your 40s, you're more than likely married, kid A kid or multiple kids, a mortgage, a job and the stress of that absolutely is going to take a toll. It's going to take a toll on your rest, your rest, and we know how important rest is for recovery.

And we dress this the other day in the podcast, how about those, you don't think about things like that, like just your mind being distracted and you're like that, what a low level consistent stress that is, and just never allowing the body to get over into that parasympathetic state. Yeah, and it's less of the, it's less of the, think of it this way,

because I've been thinking about this a lot. It's, forget the fact that it's this low level stress that you're having all the time. It's the lack of break from it. Right. It's really what it is. Yeah. It's the lack of getting out of that state. Yeah, no, no distraction, no, you know,

you're just with yourself. And you know, and you know, being at our age, we know the difference between the two because we live two lives, if you really think about it, we live the pre-super distracted technology life growing up. And then the post one, I mean, in my 20s, I didn't have cell phones like we have now

until mid to late 20s before that, the cell phone was just your regular, you just call somebody or whatever and couldn't do anything else. So all those breaks were like waiting in lines, you know, going to the bathroom, sitting in your car, you just, you don't realize that those make a difference. And we don't have those. Well, it's crazy too. Like you kind of mentioned sleep.

I just remember being able to sleep anywhere. You know, it like when I was in my 20s and then even like early 30s and I was fine, like I could sleep on a couch, I could sleep, like sleep for me, if I don't get good sleep, it really affects the whole rest of my week. It takes days for me to get that back. It's, that's one thing I've noticed.

If I'm not really like adamant about like getting proper rest, like it really screwed me up. Sal still has this gift. I don't know how you do it. Yeah. For the plain, the things. It's a superpower. It is a superpower, dude.

No, but you're right, it's quite calm, and it might have a lot more to do with the stress and schedule than it does to relate it to age, you know, when you're like again. Sure. When you're sure you can be stressed out in your 20s and all that stuff, but usually you don't have kids and, you know, those you're like again, when you're sure you can be stressed out in your 20s and all that stuff,

but usually you don't have kids and those types of responsibilities, which are a totally different type of worry. I mean, that's something that I feel I can speak to being someone that was 37 years old and didn't have a kid and I know there was a 30-year-old- Do you realize how I care for you were before? Oh, yeah, well, what I realized now is that,

I mean, if, if to get my workouts in and, and died in and check, like, it really takes a whole mother level of, it takes planning no matter what, no matter who you are, no matter how young you are, having a child now, it's a whole mother level of, of planning for me to make sure that it's already hard enough for normal people to be consistent. If you, if all you have to worry about is yourself. When you add in another person that now becomes as important or more important to you, that makes it really challenging, schedule wise to make it a priori- Yeah.

It takes a lot more discipline now to gain freedom. Oh, yeah. You know, like that, like I love discipline now because I know that that actually is providing me with more opportunities, but whereas before it was like, oh, I just have to put all this off and I got freedom. Well, no, 100% a great point. I'll give you a great example, you know, when you're in your 20s, maybe early 30s and you don't have those kinds of responsibilities

and let's say it's Friday and you went to Vegas with your buddies, and you partied till two or three o'clock in the morning. You can sleep in Saturday morning. When you have kids, you don't. You go home from vacation, and it's like, I gotta wake up early, gotta do all the stuff with the kids. And so for sure, generally speaking,

one of the challenges of being over 40 with your workouts is you just have a busier schedule. That makes it more difficult to structure and do your workouts consistently. In fact, when you're younger, you might not even need to make a big deal about your schedule. But when you get older, your schedule is everything when it comes to your workouts. If it's not in your schedule, if it's not scheduled and planned, oftentimes it just doesn't happen, which should make it real difficult. Yeah, I agree.

The next two are kind of the same thing, and just kind of quickly went over the ingrained muscle and balances. Yeah. And that also feeds right into the other one, which is chronic pain, which I think of all the things, of all the challenges at 40 and above that I see for sure dealing with chronic pain slash muscle imbalances is probably the greatest challenge and probably the

most important thing for you to put your attention towards when in the pursuit of overall health and fitness beyond 40. Totally. Now in grain meaning, if you have, let's say you've developed a muscle imbalance where you move a particular way or you have tight hips or a tight lower back and you're in your 20s or 30s, perhaps you've built this imbalance and cemented it for five or 10 years. Well, now you're 40. This is an imbalance that you've continued to strengthen and build for 20 years. Well, now you're 40. This is an imbalance that you continue to strengthen and build for 20 years. It's harder to reverse that.

It's a harder, it's a bit of a longer process to correct an imbalance that's been with somebody for a longer period of time than it is to work with an imbalance that was with somebody for a shorter period of time. In fact, it could be with somebody for so long that correcting it can feel quite strange. And I've seen this with people before, I train them and I correct them balances.

And when it starts to correct, they feel, I've had people tell me like, I feel like I'm sticking my chest out. That's a weird way to walk. I'm actually, that's good posture. You just, it doesn't feel right because for the last 15 years, you've walked with your shoulders forward

and didn't realize that. Well, I mean, think of the analogy I love to give when I try to explain that to a client is, you know, to pick up a ball and throw it with your opposite hand or eat with your opposite hand. Like you, you've just have not trained your brain to work that pattern. If you would have been eating with your left hand

your entire life, it would feel as natural as with your right. So that's exactly what I'm talking about. Another challenge I would run into with clients over the age of 40 was oftentimes, they would come to me to hire me, and the last time they had really worked out consistently would have been 15 to 20 years prior.

So they'll come to me, they'll say, oh, I'd like to lose weight and shape whatever, and I'd say, okay, when was the last time that you were really consistent about working out for at least six months to a year? And they would typically sell, you know, when I was 30 or when I was 25, that's when I was really consistent. And then I had kids and all that stuff and it all got in the way. And now, now, why is that a challenge? The challenge, the challenge in that was because they remembered

how their workouts were back then. They remembered how to move back then. They remembered their tolerance for intensity back then. And they have to get them to realize that they're a different person now. You know, take a different sequence to get there now. Yeah, like they would say to me like, no, I used to workout like, you know, every single day. This is the training session I used to do. Or this is how hard I used to work out. Like, no, hold on.

Especially athletes. Yeah. I was just going to say one of the hardest clients to train are, I remember getting the 50 year old or late 40s X NFL player and they have been out of shape now for 20 plus years and they wanna train and they, a lot of times higher you because they want to get their ass kicked. They take me back to boot camp days and getting ready for

the season. And that's how I need to get back and shape. Cause that's how they've done it for all of their finger pain. Their entire fitness life was surrounded, uh, surrounded, uh, uh, centered in sports. And so their training mentality comes from that. And now they're 50. And they remember how good, which is hard too, because they remember how good which is hard to because they remember They can connect how great a shape they were moved. I was strong. I look good. I want to be there I know what it takes to get there the reality is it's totally different. It is and it's funny because the your tolerance for exercise pain when you've been doing that for a long time as an athlete. Even if you stop working out for 20 or 30 years, for whatever reason, that becomes your gauge.

Like when I would train ex athletes, if I train them appropriately, they're always like, well, that's not hard enough. I'm not like crumbly. I'm like, okay, that was the pain tolerance and that was acceptable when you were a professional athlete. That is, you have to completely relearn what it had to listen to your body, because the way you listened to completely relearn what it, how to listen

to your body, because the way you listen to your body before is not going to work today. Now, something else that we see a lot in advanced age, we're just called advanced age. No, it's not advanced age. We're going to call it advanced age. No, it feels a bit. It's moderate. It feels a little aged. Middle age.

Yeah, yeah. Middle age. Middle age. Middle age. Yeah, early, it's middle. Middle age. Middle life crisis, come on. Yeah, right. One of the most common things though, that you'll get with somebody that's above 40 is hormone issues. Yeah, they're more common. Yeah, so much more common.

And I think again, real similar to some of the other things we're talking about, we always like to try and connect it to, oh, it's because I'm getting older. And it's like, well, it's less of that you're getting older. And it's more of all the other things that we're talking about that are probably causing the diet being off balance, the not weight training, the nutrition you're not getting, your sleep and stress, like all these things

are probably playing a bigger role on what's going hormoneally with you than the fact that you're sun, the number 40, right? Yes, so I've worked with so many clients, men and women who've come to me in this age group or older who is part of our questionnaire, they do mention hormone stuff, they get tested, they come back and say, okay, testosterone's low or my doctor or my specialist said estrogen dominance or whatever, and nine at a 10 times, exercise and nutrition and sleep corrects it. Nine at a 10 times in my experience.

With men, it's almost 10 at a 10 times. I was very rare where I would get a man who had low testosterone levels that couldn't get significant improvements by changing their activity level, their diet and their sleep. So the hormone changes you get when you age. This is now, by the way, this is especially true for men because women do go through a natural, and that doesn't happen at 40.

It can was for some women, but women don't go through the big hormone change, menopause, repair and menopause, typically until a little bit later. For a man who is appropriately active, good diet, good sleep, his testosterone levels will stay pretty damn high till the day he dies. So if you're 40 and you're inactive, diets not good or whatever, and your testosterone is low, it's probably due to your lifestyle and probably not do the fact that your hormones are just low. But these are challenges, right? Because if you are over 40, the odds are you're dealing with recovery issues, you're not

going to be able to recover as fast or get away with as much stupid stuff. Your schedule is a little busier, so when you work out and needs to be effective, you're not in there and mess around or to do things that are inefficient, you may have ingrained muscle imbalances, you need to correct that your 20 year old self might not have to work with. And maybe you have some chronic pain, you need to move around.

These are some real challenges. That being said, being a more patient. Absolutely, there's huge perks. There are massive perks to being over 40. One of the biggest ones is you tend to be more patient. You know, when I would get a 20 year old client or a 30 year old client, they wanna get their results yesterday.

Oh, I wanna do this yet. And this is, when I get my 40 year old clients or 45 year old clients, and I talk to them about how it's gonna take time, we're gonna correct muscle imbalances. You know what they always would say? Listen, don't worry about it. I just wanna feel better.

I'm gonna do what you tell me. And it was a breath of fresh air. My most successful clients were typically in over this age group. You know what I think that is. I think that you're just your older and your wiser. And you've started to connect how most things in life take time.

The best things take a long time. Right, and so I think at that age you start to piece that you've seen it enough times in your life that it makes sense that, okay, if this is gonna be that great, it's probably gonna take me some time to do this anyways, which reminds me the second piece, which is the wisdom part.

I feel like they kinda go hand in hand. Oh, that experience and that wisdom is extremely valuable when you are trying to create a lifelong fitness and nutrition lifestyle. It's, that makes a huge difference because the inexperienced person will tackle it head on and want to do everything all at once. The person with experience, like you're saying Adam,

they've already experienced that, you know, took me a while to get used to having a kid, took me a while to build my career, takes a while to learn these things. Like, I know it's gonna take some time, I'm okay. Yeah, this is too. I mean, hearing it from guys I guess that have actually been in the gym for this long

and then got to this point, it's like, you have tried a lot of different methods and a lot of different exercises and protocols and it's about efficiency and it's about getting that desired result but not having to put everything into it. And what does that even look like? And that's why we're always trying to voice certain methods and ways to approach training where it's like

you're going to get massive payout if you just do these small things. Here's a great example of how experience with somebody over 40 makes a big difference. Let's say all things being equal. Money, goals, everything's equal. The odds that a 25 year old guy is going to hire a personal trainer are way lower than a 25 year old guy is gonna hire a personal trainer are way lower than a 40 year old guy. Even if they had the same amount of money and everything, same goals, because the 40 year old is experienced.

And they aren't experienced enough to know, I'm gonna hire somebody who knows what they're doing. The 25 year old version of themselves, but I'm gonna go in there and figure it out. Well, most 40 year old men and women understand investment better. Right, just period. They understand investment better. Right. Just period. You know, they understand investment in the market, investment in retirement, investment

in themselves, a lot different than somebody who's 25 including myself. I remember 25, your thoughts of investing in retirement and investment in yourself, like, eh, that's the same. That's too much to think about. I'm worried about today. The most, the biggest value or the biggest plus that comes from being over 40, again, we're speaking generally, and this is the one that I think contributes

the most to success is confidence. You're just more confident when you're older, you've got more experience, you're more comfortable in your body, a little bit less insecure. So what does that mean? That means that if you're a man, you're less likely to do something stupid in the gym because you need to lift tons of weight. You know, 25 year old version of me, you know, if I'm in the gym and I'm learning a new exercise and I'm only using, you know, 75 pounds, I might go fuck, I don't want to go up to 100 pounds, even though I don't know how to do the sex,

people are watching. Yeah, smarter version of me, older, wiser version of me, it's like, I gotta learn to sexercise and I really don't give a shit what any of these people think. What does that look for, like, for female clients? They don't care, I'm learning, I don't give a shit. If anybody's looking at me, anybody cares, whatever.

I wanna take it my time, I wanna do this the right way. I'm not trying to look a certain way right now and I don't need to look out way tomorrow. I just want to feel better and do this the right way. And that approach, that fundamental approach is massive contributor to long-term success, is that confidence in that security. Because the biggest mistakes you see made

when people start a fitness routine typically come from insecurities. Typically get driven by their insecurities and it drives diet and exercise in ways that just don't work. Almost always. Almost always. Anytime somebody has got issues about the body image issues,

almost always will you see them make poor choices nutritionally and exercise wise. Not knowing though, right? Like that's part of why they make a bad choices. They don't realize it's a bad choice. They think they may be doing what's best for them, but because it's rooted in an insecurity, it causes them to make a quick or unwashed decision, right?

Where when you're a little bit older, wiser, less of that insecurity, you're a little more slow and patient to go, is that probably the best approach to do that? Or maybe you should listen to what Sal's saying and go a little bit slower and not worry about exactly how much I weigh or what I look like right now because I'm in this for the long game. Totally, totally.

I mean, I remember, I was never that guy that really cared, cared a lot about, oh, people are watching me. I mean, I would say I probably cared more about how much weight I was lifting and people were watching, but I really care if I was looking a particular way. But I care even less now. Now is a 41 year old man.

When I'm in the gym, I'm in there for me. You wanna look at me, you wanna, I don't care. I'm in there for me. And I would notice this with my clients too. If I had a 25 year old female client, it was like she had to have the right thing on, I had to look the right way. Makeup was all thick.

Yeah, my 43 year old female client was like, listen, I'm busy, I'm hiring you. I wanna do this the right way. I'm in my sweats, teach me, I wanna learn, don't care about what people think, show me how to exercise properly. That is very valuable, and I would never trade wisdom for youth, and I think people in the sage group would never trade wisdom for youth.

And I think people in the state group would agree with me for the most part. Here's another big plus and this one's a big one. When you're over 40, you got more money. Yeah. And that makes a big difference. Totally. Because you can pay for programs that will instruct you.

Like, if you wanted to get like a maps program or a maps bundle, you're over 40, you have the expendable income, you can hire a trainer, you have the expendable income. Again, this just like reiterates the efficiency component of that. Now you have resources, so you can get even further, like, I'm gonna do this the right way

because I hired this coach, I bought this program, like, I'm dialed in and I'm not just aimlessly like ramping up my intensity and like throwing the kitchen sink at what I'm trying to do. Totally, you can hire massage therapist, a chiropractor. I was gonna say most of the clients that towards the end of my career of training clients

I dealt with were, and these were some of my favorite. You're high performing CEOs that, I was one piece of all of everything. They would have the massage therapist already booked every single week. You were one of their staff, but I'm higher. Yeah, exactly. They said, hey, again, older, wiser, understanding the value

and investing in themselves. And hey, I'm gonna go higher the best trainer. I'm gonna go higher the best massage therapist. I'm gonna go higher in nutrition. I'm gonna hire these people that will take care of that. That's one of the pluses of being older, more than likely you have disposable income to be able to do so much.

Doesn't necessarily mean you will, but you're more likely to, as you get older. You can hire professionals, and you're more likely to have the wisdom to know that it's a good idea to do so. All right, so let's talk about the things that generally speaking, people over the age of 40 should focus on.

The five must-dos, I think. Must-dos, yeah. Absolute must-dos. These are the things. If you focus on these things, you will have your odds of a successful fitness program, the odds that you'll get to your goals and keep the progress and results that you get

are gonna be far higher if you follow the advice that we're about to give. And again, we've worked with, I'd say, over 70% of my clients were in this age group, mostly because of the expendable income. Yeah. I was not cheap. And I know you guys weren't so either. Me either.

So that's the main reason why. So we've worked a lot with these people. And these are the things that we always focus on. Number one, number one, form is everything. There is nothing more important than your form and technique when you exercise. By the way, form is everything for everybody when you work out. You just can't get away with not listening to this

as you get older. There's not as much wiggle room. You know, like you really do have to make sure your mechanics and everything, like posture is everything, especially as you get older. You want to make sure that like if you're moving in the right direction, like you're not going to put that added bit of stress on the joints that is unnecessary, like you want to really focus it in on the muscles. Yeah, think of it this way, okay.

Let's look at the squat, a barbell squat. Barbell squat is a complex exercise. It's multi-joint, super effective exercise for the lower body and just overall strengthens everything. One of the best exercises you could possibly do. When your form is good and you have good control and good stability and good mobility, a squat done properly is extremely safe.

It's a natural human movement, your risk of injury, doing everything right with control, good stability. The only way you really hurt yourself would be a freak accident with all those things, like I talked about in that context. Now a squat where you don't have control stability and mobility or your form is off, your risk of injury goes up and the more your form is off, the risk of injury is exponential.

The more it's off, the greater the risk to the point where you're guaranteed an injury if your form is off enough. Now that exponential growth of risk of injury is steeper when you're over 40 than when you're 20. Well, and this is why you hear crazy advice out there. Like I'll read blogs and things from doctors that are like making sure like people refrain from doing deadlifts or refrain from doing backloaded squats. And they put all this red tape over

because you know, they're making the case for you getting hurt doing this type of an exercise where really it's about the form has to be like damn near perfect for you to pull it off at this point. Well, we got tagged, I think all three of us got tagged in a Instagram post just about two days ago and it was a celebrity professional athlete trainer who was making the case that he never squats or deadless bilaterally, and that he does everything unilateral, right? And they were tagging us, obviously, to see if we were going to stir up shit and argue with it.

And I say, context matters, and I can make a case for this. Like, absolutely, if I have a client who is battling, uh, tons of chronic pain and has tons of muscle imbalances, um, I'm first going to probably be addressing, spinning most of my time in the gym with them addressing those imbalances. And then maybe the first thing I do progress them to are things like lunges, Bulgarian split squats, single leg deadlift and so that. First to really reinforce their stability and mobility before I start to progress them in strength. So yeah, absolutely. There's a case for not squatting right away, but to South's point, if you've got great form and

technique in your squat, it's perfectly safe. If it's not backing back and saying, okay, well, maybe we'll do things like Bulgarian split squats, lunges and replace of that for now with the ideal goal of making it to the squat. we'll maybe we'll do things like Bulgarian split squads, lunges and replace of that for now, with the ideal goal of making it to this squad. It may take some time. It may take that time to really reestablish that. Like you have support, you have control over your joints like you should. So yeah, like I totally, you have to make sure you are in a place where everything is accounted for and you have good form and all that before really just jumping right back into what

you used to be able to do. Right, so again, another example, use squats again. You have two people doing the squat, barbell squat, both one person mid 20s or 30, the other one, and I'll 45 years old. And they're doing the squats and in one of the reps, they're weight shifts a little bit to the right. So they have to correct by straightening the bar up.

Okay. The odds that the over 45, the 45 year old, that that'll result in an injury are higher than it is in the 25 year old. For all the reasons that we listed before, the moron grain muscle imbalances, the odds that they've had injuries in the past. So those all add up and so when the form is off a little bit the risk is higher typically for the older person than it is for the younger person because of that risk form again it's the most important thing regardless of your age but it's far more important when you get older because of exactly what we're talking about. Your risk of injury goes up quite a bit. Now, here's the other side of this. Good form is going to give you faster results anyway. This is the good part about this, because

if you, if sometimes people think that sacrificing form will get them there faster, that is a myth. Sacrificing form will get you there slower even if you don't hurt yourself. Good form gets you better and faster results anyway. So the really is no drawback to realizing that form is everything. Not to mention, this is also one of the first ways you start to see you alleviate the chronic pain. Oh, totally. All of a sudden I get a client who had chronic low back pain or hip pain, we mobilize them, we start teaching perfect, great form with squats, good full range of motion, good control,

and they get to a place where they're not, even if it's weak ass weight, not even heavy weight, just working towards getting to a really beautiful squat. Them focusing on that, all of a sudden, the feedback you'd start getting as a coach is, oh my God, you don't know, I noticed my back doesn't, my low back doesn't bother me, oh my hips don't bother me anymore

because we worked towards that. Oh, totally. Traditional resistance training exercises done properly are the best mobility movements you'll find anywhere. It's true. Traditional resistance training exercises. If you can do a proper deadlift with good form stability, control, and mobility,

if you could do proper barbell squat, overhead press, row, bench press, if you could do all of these exercises properly, and you just keep doing them properly and make sure you perfect your form, those are the simplest, most easiest, basic, and also most effective ways of maintaining mobility long-term. Some of my clients, you know, in this sort of age range, like that would ask me, like, why, like, they were, they didn't understand why I wasn't so focused on the rep count, you know, quite as much as I was previously. And really it's about the intention of every single rep.

Like, I want to see you, like, really focusing in on what has to take place in order to make sure everything joint wise is working properly, and all the mechanics are established and you're bracing, and all these things, you're really focusing in, you get so much more payoff from that alone, but even now, that's such a great way to protect yourself. Well, you saying that also reminds me

of what I think is for sure one of the most important, which is the importance of priming. Oh, for sure. It's important for all ages. It becomes necessary once you get to this point. It makes number one, what we just talked about possible. Yes. If form is everything, then that means when you go into

an exercise, you want to have a good form That's what priming does proper priming Sets you up so that you go into your exercise and right away you have good control stability mobility and form Not doing proper priming your odds of doing that are much lower and priming is quite Individual from person to person if If I'm doing squats, for example, and my issue is my ankle mobility, then doing ankle mobility priming before my squats means when I go into my squats, my form is going to look a lot better. It's going to feel a lot better. Same thing with thoracic mobility. Or, you know, if you're somebody that

has low back pain or shoulder pain Priming before you do these exercises means you're gonna be able to do them the right way You could get away with not warming up Sometimes but as you get older you can't get away with it Nearly as much you just can't again for all the reasons that we talked about earlier now luckily people over 40 or smarter and I typically don't have to convince them that this is important, like I do with my 25 year old clients where I have to sit them down, but why, I just jump into it and I feel good,

and it's not a problem. You know, talking to my older clients, as soon as I would bring this up, they would say, oh no, and if in fact, if I didn't bring it up, they would tell me. Yeah, this is one of those where you actually can sell. Like if you're a personal trainer, you could sell somebody on your training

so much through these priming sessions and you could show them individually how you can help to alleviate pain by just doing these things and making a ritual out of it. And not to mention like the ritual is so individualized. So if there's like certain issues that I'm facing, like my shoulders are retracting constantly that I'm facing, my shoulders

are retracting constantly. I'm in this forward position and I'm able to now constantly pull myself back, retract my shoulders and get that external rotation. And man, that frees everything, I feel great. My pain has been lowered. So it's really, it's not hard to sell people on that idea. Well, I remember when we wrote Prime, we also included the fortification sessions. And I would have to say probably 50% is a good guess for me of the clients that I would have to just kind of live there for the first- Oh, that's their workout. Yeah, for the first month or two.

So this is, you know, right now we're talking about priming the body like before you go into a squat or before you go into your workout. But, you know, when we're talking about above 40, there was probably a half of my clients, that age and above, spent a majority of their time just in the fortification sessions. And just we had the imbalances that we had going on, the chronic pain that we had was such

an issue that a majority of the workout was just to correct all that. So it's basically, you know, our fortifications sessions think of them like corrective training for imbalances. And that's what it looks like. And this is also, again, why this part is so important because if you're gonna get to the form of a squat and how it's so beneficial, you first gotta do the prerequisites,

which is this piece, and when you're getting 40 and above, this becomes mandatory. It's one of those things again, you can get away with, and your 20s, just get right into your workout, or oh, maybe my form's at the greatest. I'll figure it out, I'll learn.

Now, when you're starting in the game in 40 and above or it's been years and years since you've been lifting and you're getting back into it at 40, this area, priming, fortification, like this is extremely important. Yeah, I think too, like this was the appeal of yoga. And this is why the yoga really took off. It's like a wave for people to move their body

in ways where it just makes it feel good again. And there's a way to be a little bit more specific with that and also then apply that in to your regular workouts so you're still getting the benefits of weight training on top of it. Well, somebody may be wondering, what's the difference between priming and warming up? Okay, warming up is very general.

Priming is far more specific. Warming up is trying to prevent injury. Priming prevents injury better and also makes your body progress faster. You get better, faster results. Just like we did with form, just like I said with form, the irony of, you need to prime is, priming will get you better results also. So even if you're listening and you're like, with form, just like I said with form, the irony of, you know, you need to prime is,

priming will get you better results also. So even if you're listening and you're like, I don't need to prime or whatever, fine, you might not hurt yourself, but you're still going to reduce the quality of your results and maybe even the speedy results because being able to connect to your muscles and to movements right out the gates when you do your workout, that adds up. And you'll progress faster or slower, depending on whether or not you're doing that or not. So priming essential for over 40, but besides the fact that it prevents injury,

it makes you feel better. It also gives you better, faster results. So do them, absolutely. Here's the next one. And this one I think people over 40, in my experience are much better at this. Yeah, ties in with the wisdom thing. Yes, then people who are younger.

And this is something I like to hammer home, which is listen to your body. Pay very close attention to your body. And if you're doing an exercise or a movement, or you're eating in a particular way and it doesn't feel right, then you should probably heed that, you know, listen to that signal. I've said this before on the podcast,

regardless of all the advice that we give on the show on Mind Pump, there is no better coach than your own body. And so even if I say to you on the podcast, squats are the best exercise known to man, and no matter what squats don't feel good to you, don't do them. Maybe try to get yourself to a point where you can do them, but don't do them. Listen to your body. If you feel really super tired from your workout, if it's infecting your sleep, if you're

like, hey, I thought I was supposed to feel better while working out and yet I feel worse. Listen to your body. Not doing so is gonna result in your body getting, signals getting louder. Today it might be sore, achy muscles tomorrow and may actually be an injury. And I have story after story of people

who failed to listen to their body. It's like, in fact, if you're listening right now and you have a chronic, if you have an injury, I bet you can think back to how long you've were ignoring the signals telling you that you were about to hurt yourself. Right. That's typically, you know, at this point, yeah, all those like signs and signals, they come to fruition. And so it's like, yeah, the sooner you address those, obviously like you get on top of it, the better you're off,

you're going to be. And what we're, what we were going to talk about too, is like, like maxing out, right? Like in terms of like, like really challenging yourself, like there's, there's a point in a time for that. But I think in the over 40 kind of category, like is there really a need to challenge yourself on that level?

No, there's not. And before you get into maxing out, I think the, you know, more on the list in your body, one of the things I think that you start to get better as you get older too is, is how sore you feel the next day and understanding that you didn't need to be that sore to have had an effective workout.

And if anything, it took away. Right. It was detrimental. And I think I've said this on the show probably a hundred plus times now that our goal is always to do the least amount as possible to elicit the most amount of change. And so I really try to drive home with my 40 plus

and all clients for that matter. That if you are listening to your body and you feel so sore the next day, it's impeding the way you walk, it's impeding the way you move, it's definitely impeding into your next workout, then we overreached, we stretched ourselves more than we needed to to get the maximum results.

You could have scaled that way back and still got reaped incredible benefits from the workout. Or more benefits. That's the thing, that's the thing that you realize, that it becomes detrimental to cause that much damage to your body.

So you gotta listen, but back to the injury, I still love having this conversation with potential clients. They would come in and I'd ask them, questions about their history and whatnot and pain. And they'd say oh my my you know I hurt my my shoulder. I had a shoulder injury and I'd say okay Before your shoulder got hurt

Was it bothering you? It's um, well, yeah I did kind of hurt a little bit and it would bother me when I would do this and it would bother me when I do that and say how long did that happen for? Oh for years I kind of my shoulder was a little off and then finally I hurt myself. It's okay, those were all signals. Your body was talking to you. You just didn't listen and you didn't fix it and then it finally got hurt. Moving forward, we are going to listen to your body.

That means if we do an exercise and tomorrow, you don't feel muscle-sourness, but you feel joint pain or stiffness, you're gonna tell me-sornous, but you feel joint pain or stiffness. You're gonna tell me, hey, Sal, yesterday's workout, I noticed I woke up in the morning and my elbows hurt. Is my elbows supposed to hurt? I'm like, no, no, no, the triceps maybe,

but not your elbows. Now I'm gonna change your workout a little bit to address that. That's what listening to your body really means. Don't just hammer through because no pain, no gain. That's not how it works. Pay attention to your body, adjust your workouts accordingly. That's such a profound and impactful thing to you. Well, and shameless plug here, but I mean, this is how we wrote all these programs. Like someone listening right now is going, like, okay, so you have elbow pain. What do you do then, Sal? Well, this is why we created Maps Prime Pro is to help guide somebody who doesn't have a coach or can't afford to have a trainer that's telling them every time they have to modify like that.

And this is how you use that program. This is not a standalone program that most people will just follow every single day. It's something that you have in your tool bag that, oh shit, I'm training this way. and now my knees are bothering my hips or something. And then you go into Prime Pro and you go to the test section that's addressing the joint that you have an issue in. And it's going to give you exercises that you should perform before and after you work out to help prevent that. So when we wrote a lot of these programs, we were thinking just like coaches and trainers, when we have a situation where we have to call an audible what we do. Well, how do we give that to the general population?

That's an example on how you use Prime Pro when you run into issues like that because that's very common. It's coming for everybody. It's really common when you're above 40 that you're going to run into these things. You're following a great program, even if it's a MAMS program, it's going great for you. All of a sudden you're just getting chronic hip pain or you're getting like knee pain. And you know, the first thing you want to do is stop doing the exercises. Well, the better thing for you to do is to figure out, get to the root cause of what that

is. Well, how does the average person do that? Totally. You use tools like that. But that all starts with listening, not ignoring your body. Right. So it's the opposite of listening to your body, ignoring your body. Don't do that.

Okay. So Justin, you brought something up that I thought is very, very jumped again on that. Very no, that's great advice. It's, it's, it's skip maxing out. There's no need to test yourself. Now, I know there's a, there is some value in testing your performance and it's more of a mental, an emotional value. Sometimes pushing yourself to a limit, regardless of age, is a great way to test your mental capacity, your emotional capacity to give you that fire. I get that, but you're older, you're more wise, and the risk is much higher.

My advice is largely skip that. In fact, and you're more secure, you probably don't even need to do this as much, or if you're not, think twice before you do. So what does that mean? There's no need to go to the gym and see how much you can bench, or how much you can squat. There's no need for you to go and run and see how far you can run. Or how fast. Do your workouts in your challenging yourself. Remember, workouts have to be challenging for them to be effective. That's always a part of exercise, otherwise your body doesn't adapt.

But it's the maxing out and testing yourself that you don't need to do anymore. That's a surefire way. At some point, by the way, I'm gonna make the statement and I'll stand by it. If you max out a lot and test yourself a lot, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when the injury's gonna happen.

You are gonna hurt yourself I saw such a clear example of this between my dad and his best friend. They both their both named Steve and My his friend like throughout the years have just he's just done Very like moderate to maybe I mean he did challenging workouts But he would always stop before it was, you know, two, he put too much into it where like he knew tomorrow he was going to like do the next workout. And so he was just super, super consistent over the years.

And he's an incredible shape for his 70s. And it's just, it's this attitude of, this is a constant thing. And I'm just going to keep this a part of my everyday activities, and it's not like I'm gonna blast myself because you know, it's very ego-driven kind of, you know, when I'm going to max out, like what else? I'm just trying to test myself and see where I stand versus like I'm in this for the long game. Well, I blame this on our space. This is, I mean, we've done lots of research

and studies of support going to failure and intensity being such an important variable. And it is by itself, but when you compare it to smart, consistent training, it doesn't come close. It doesn't come close. And even in workout by workout, your splitting hairs on how much better that extra rep was. And that's a lot of the messaging in our space is beast mode, all out, grinding, push.

It's all this motivation hype. And part of why I think I've always hated it as a trainer and a coach because I've trained so many normal average day people that are not in the fitness space. And that message gets misconstrued and that's normally when injury happens. They think that I got to give it my all. I got it. Just like what we see in biggest loser right now, Sal, you brought up a point about knowing somebody that's behind the scene saying that, you know, they don't really push that hard.

That's only the little clips to show that. That makes me even more mad about the show because what they're doing, emphasizing all seven times. Right, exactly. They're putting emphasis on the push and grind and, you know, making them throw up, even if it's not a reality of what they're doing most of the time, like that's terrible. It's terrible messaging to the majority because most people see that and then they, as soon as they decide their new way of life

and they're going to be going back to the gym, that's the way they apply it. And that couldn't be further from the truth as far as the best way to be training, especially being north of 40 years. Totally. This is, so I'm going to start training my dad pretty soon on a semi consistent basis. This is one of the main reasons why. My dad has a very, you know, he's got a very competitive background, he's got a competitive attitude and his attitude is when I go work out, if I can't go hard, then I'm wasting my time. If I'm not going to go and use the whole stack and see how strong I am, then it's a waste of time.

And so I, you know, right now he's dealing with some major back pains. I'm really, really back. It was pretty de-ability. I'm going over to his house and stretching him. Can't even do anything else with him right now just taking him through stretches. And I told him, as soon as this pain is better, because it will get better at some point, I'm going to train you because I don't, you don't know how to work out. You go in the gym and you think you got to go hard, otherwise it's a waste of time. I need to completely change his paradigm and understanding of exercise.

And this is a big one. It's not about, look, unless you're a power lifter and you're a competitor, okay, it makes perfect sense. You need to know where you stand. You're competing against other people. But the vast majority of you listening, or the vast majority of people that go to work out, never compete in anything. Yeah, there's no

There is no reason for you to max out aside from the again the mental emotional satisfaction of knowing that you accomplished something But now that you're over 40 you probably don't I mean do you really need to do that like you did before? I don't think your ego need these competitions either. You don't need to sign up for all these things To get you to a place you really want to be you just need to need these competitions either. You don't need to sign up for all these things to get you to a place you really want to be. You just need to just keep doing little bits all the time. Well, there's ways to test yourself or push yourself without maxing out. Yeah, it'll be smart. I mean, most good programming is going to have five rep range and above in it. Very few programs unless you're doing a powerlifting specific program, I'm going to recommend singles, doubles, or triples. But hey, you know, if you've been training

five, five by five type of training and you've gotten really strong and you're like, man, you know, I want to see if I can lift a little bit more, well, put a little bit more on the bar and then stop short three or two. Right, right. You know, there's no, there's no reason to try and find your absolute limit of what you can load your back with. Here's what I like to do. I have a mental understanding of about 85 to 90% of my effort. I know what that feels like because I've been working out for a while. I can move within that range and add weight. I just don't go above it. In other words, if I lifted 200 pounds and that was 90% intensity,

and I tried this week and 200 pounds felt like 80% intensity, I'll add weight, but I won't go up to 100% intensity. I'm not gonna go up to maxing out because, again, the risk of injury is nowhere near worth the whatever you're gonna get from testing yourself and maxing out. So skip that part.

All right, here's the last one. And I think this one is important, just like all of them are important for everybody, but it's especially important and valuable for people over the age of 40. And that is to place your health over your performance in terms of priorities or your mobility over strength is another way to put it. Health is far more important than how well you can perform, how strong you are, how fast you can move because focusing on your health is going to take you to the finish line at the very end of this game we call life.

Focusing on performance at some point your body is going to stop you and it's going to stop you hard. If you don't believe me, just look at the highest level athletes that exist, look a professional athletes. And you can see how well they do typically after they retire. And oftentimes they're riddled with pain and injuries and things that prevent them from doing a lot of awesome things. But if you make your focus your health, if I go to the gym and I eat in a way to make, to really nourish and feed and fuel my body to feel good, then I'm going to stop when I decide to stop. My body's not going to tell me to stop. Well, this is also one of the safest and

smartest ways to prevent injury, right? It's just having this mentality. I mean, I think of even something like I'm going through personally or myself, like a 2020 goal for me is to get back to playing basketball. Since I tore my Achilles, I haven't played ball. Now, the young mind of mine wants to just like grab the ball, get back on the court, run some games, let myself naturally get back in the shape of that, start training some explosive type movements. But instead, I know I'm doing all the boring, tedious type of work to build up to that because I'm prioritizing my overall health more than my performance. Totally.

As much as I want to get on the court and start just getting better and throw myself in it, I know the age that I'm at now and the because of Torne ACL, MCL, and a Torne Achilles, and, you know, creeping up on 40 years old, that if I do that, I'm at such a higher risk of potentially injuring myself even longer. So just keeping the mindset of healthy joints, being healthy mobility wise, that that comes first, then I'll build the performance piece on top of it. Totally.

Now, again, here's the wonderful, kind of beautiful irony of all of this, right? Form is everything. Prime your body, listen to your body, skip maxing out, prioritize health over performance. Not only are these things that are going to give you longevity with your fitness lifestyle, but they're also going gonna get you better results.

A healthy body performs better. That's the end of the day. I mean, that's one of those things. I think people just forget that. They want to challenge and press their body to the limits of whatever they can, wherever they can go with it. But realizing that you know, rest and feeding your body appropriately and also like backing off weights, gives you even more performance to then,

you know, fuel back into those workouts and those sporting events and all those other things you're trying to do. Now, and along those lines, this is 100% true, my best performing clients. I'm talking about clients that did some of the most awesome everyday clients. I'm not talking about my athletes. I'm just talking about clients that did some of the most awesome everyday clients. I'm not talking about my athletes.

I'm just talking about average people. The clients that did the most incredible transformations, the clients that got really strong and just were impressive. The ones that were doing triathlons and runs that were blowing people's minds. The ones that got shredded and did so the right way. They were all my over 40 clients. They all, some of my best, if I had to take generally, just a lot of people and rate their performance, my over 40 clients were the ones that crushed.

That before and after picture that is somewhere on Doug's Instagram of Doug going from overweight to shredded, he was in his 40s when that happened. And he accomplished the best fitness of his life, never had a six pack his entire life, never was able to deadlift 400 pounds, which was a tremendous feat for somebody his size. He did so in his late 40s and it's because he did everything right and he had the wisdom and the money to hire a good trainer and it all worked out. It's shameless. And it all worked out exceptionally well.

If you're over 40 yourself and you want to follow a good, first off, hiring a trainer is the best possible thing you can do. Hire a good trainer, someone who's experienced, who knows what they're doing, that's all the best thing you can do. But if you want to do something a little less expensive, the best program I think for people in this age group who have a little bit of experience working out would be maps and a Ballack hands down and you could do two days a week in the gym or three days a week in the gym as the program is laid out. I'm gonna challenge that a little bit just that I think that if you're gonna have anaballac you have to have prime and prime

Pro throw them on there. Yeah, just because because that makes sure the encompasses anybody over 40 if you're in Good shape no chronic pain, feel pretty good as far as your form and technique goes as a 40 year old, then I could say just go in a ball and you'll be just fine. But if you've got chronic pain, you know you have tight muscles, you know that your form may not be the best.

You absolutely, in my opinion, have to have prime and prime pro to complement that if you really care longevity-wise. If you really care about setting this up the right way, long term, I think those have to go with that. Well, we actually have an over 40 bundle that includes maps and a ball, like and maps prime and maps anywhere, which is good for travel and stuff because of the time that we tend to find what professionals in age groups, so that works out really well. We also have free resources. So if you're listening and you just want more information,

you don't want to pay anything for it. We have really, really good resources and guides that we wrote that have that help with fat loss and muscle building. We have exercise specific guides like, we have one that teaches you how to get a better squat. We have guides for personal trainers. You can find all of those free resources at mindpumpfree.com.

You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Salon at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at minepumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time,

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