I’ve been writing from the perspective of bodybuilding over 40… heck, far too close to 50 for my comfort.  But, as time marches on, you can join the parade or be run over by it.  I choose to not be run over.  So, here I am, working out again, getting in the best shape of my life lifting weights, at 48 years old.

In my 30s, I lifted weights regularly, but apparently wasted a lot of time.  I did full body routines, and although I got some benefit, I can’t help but think, “what if I knew then what I know now?”  But I won’t dwell on that.  It’s not productive.  What I take away from that experience is that there’s a lot of new or recent research that doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage in most of the muscle magazines.  (Actually, I stopped reading them a looooonngg time ago, except while burning time in an airport newsstand waiting for a flight.)  Fortunately there are some guys who studied kinesiology and as a result, know the new material and are selling courses on the Internet.  It is from these courses I re-learned how the human body responds to physical demands placed on it.  Really.

I can vouch for the general theories because I tested them on myself.  I am somewhat surprised, honestly, that I am making the gains I am.   And, I have to admit, I regularly stack the deck against myself by not getting enough sleep, not eating six small, well planned meals a day at regular times, and not maintaining a regular enough workout schedule.   If I want to see how far I can take this, I have to work my schedule and commitments to address these “enemies” of progress.  But that’s more a “bodybuilding” goal than a commitment to being in shape.

Today, after writing the most recent bodybuilding over 40 post, I got to work out, starting at 6:30PM.   It was perhaps the latest start since I began this “experiment” in late May.  It was the second workout with weights that are perhaps too heavy for me for the five by five workout routine of compound exercises.  I had increased my weights in a fit of frustration of not sticking to a good schedule.  Since I had done a full workout with these weights, I didn’t want to “go backwards.”  Being late in the day, the weights all felt heavier than they were upon the initial lift.  I was hungry.  I was somewhat tired.  I didn’t want to wait until Monday for the next workout.  I’ve broken that tendency and habit, and don’t feel like going back there.

But, despite it all, I finished in under 90 minutes.  Not that I’m patting myself on the back, but it occurred to me that I am doing supersets of compound exercises now using weights that are very close to my old one set maximum weights.  However, I might be pushing too close to the edge of failure.  I’ll stick with these weights until I can complete this in 60 minutes.  I don’t want to hurt myself and wreck progress.  I do have the tendency of getting muscle knots in my right shoulder and trapezius, a leftover from breaking my collarbone umpteen years ago.  That, coupled with near failure on the last set, can lead to bad form, jerky motions, and torn cartilage.  No thanks. I might rethink the military press weight, though, as I reflect on that.

Since it’s mid-August, and I started about mid-May, I’ve been on this path for three months.  I did not have 20 or 40 or more pounds to lose when I started.  I had been living a somewhat sedentary lifestyle, though.  Getting my “wind” back was tough, but it came back.  I looked for any sign I was “packing on 40 pounds of lean muscle” on my scale, but have stayed in the 185 pound range.  Now I wish I had done a body mass analysis and learned what percentage fat I had.   The reason?  My post-workout pump today surprised me again.  Again, I looked larger than I’ve ever been.  I jumped on the scale…. about 185.  You’re kidding, right?  No.  So my percentage fat has to be dropping as I’ve obviously built muscle.

On one hand, it’s taken me perhaps two months to “get back in shape,” whatever that means.  At three months, I’m still going, improving my fitness level.   And, instead of just getting skinny, I’m getting stronger and more muscular.  One more oddity: after a year, my alopecia (big bald spots that “forced” me to shave my head) is fading.  The biggest bald spot had remained unchanged since two different dermatologists blasted it full of some steroid or another a little over a year ago.  My hair was thinning, and I’ll keep it short, but the biggest bald spot is easily less than half as large as it was before I started lifting weights.  Could this be a benefit of forcing my body to release its own growth hormone?  It very well could.

I know I can carry my three year old around without thinking twice about it.  That’s my motivation.  I can carry my five year old, or toss him in the air as he howls with laughter.  That’s my motivation, too.  I can undertake any repair, construction, or landscaping project without worrying about hurting myself because I haven’t lifted anything heavier than my laptop in years.  I don’t fear a heart attack from shoveling snow.  My commercial lawnmower weighs almost 500 pounds.  You get the point.

What does “back in shape” mean to each of us?  At 25 years old, it might have meant having a great body to attract and meet someone special.  At 35 or 45 it might mean just being able to walk the dog without getting winded.  It might just mean a healthy blood pressure.  One aspect of it has to include the strength of our heart muscles and avoiding diabetes.  If you could get into the best shape of your life now, no matter what age, why wouldn’t you?  Could it be fear of failure?  It would require effort….  Is that it?  It can’t be a fear of the time commitment.  I’m proving it doesn’t take much time for the basic mechanisms to work.  True, I didn’t start with an extra 40 pounds of fat to burn, but I am 48.  The biological mechanisms work.

I have read great workout routines that take even less time and still get you to hit the right intensity to build muscle and burn fat.  I signed up to a bazillion mailing lists and have been getting information from several other authors and trainers besides Vince DelMonte.  They all have been saying similar things about muscle building being far better than low-intensity “typical” cardio exercises like running for getting in shape, and most have degrees in kinesiology.  There are some interesting exercises and routines.  I’ll gather some routines for bodyweight routines for muscle gain and fat loss, and post them in the not-too distant future.

Now that I’ve posted the free workout routine videos from DelMonte’s blog site (allowed, of course), I’ve been able to watch a couple of times. I’ve been all over the map on my recollections of when I finally got through three sets, how many weeks of that, etc.

All I know is that this week marked the transition into five sets of five reps of each exercise.

We went away for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, and stayed with family right near Cape Cod. Let’s just let it suffice to say I did not eat or sleep all that well… but I had a heck of a lot of sorely needed fun.

We were all a bit wiped out on Monday, and made the call that this week would be a Tues-Thurs-Sat workout week. It turned out that my wife’s schedule changed, so we haven’t worked out together yet this week. Tuesday’s workout had a huge break after the first set. I can’t remember exactly, but I know it had something to do with the boys. So, as I re-started the routine on set two, my perspective on weights was a little off. I increased weight on a couple of exercises I may not have if I’d never had that break.

Today I finished the five sets of five reps in one hour and 15 to 20 minutes. I had increased weight on a few of the exercises, pushing hard. I read the free “Insane Muscle Gain” report from Vince DelMonte and was inspired to up my intensity. Mind you, I only had about 4 hours of sleep…

In trying to figure out how many reps for the body weight exercises like dips I should do, I figured that I should probably try to do just a little more than last week’s 4 sets of 10 reps, so I settled on 5 sets of 9 for dips. 45 dips on the day… and I pulled it off, without compromised form.

In fact, the reduction in reps to five helped a lot for all the exercises. I tried pushing up the weights I use for every other exercise… Success!

The intensity of the superset workout can not be understated. I have read more and more about intense resistance training having more cardio benefit than hours on a treadmill or bike. The clincher I read today: If you can actually watch television (at a gym) while you’re “working out,” you’re not working anywhere remotely near the intensity you should be for any benefit. I can’t argue with that one bit.

Maybe I worked too close to “failure” over the last couple of weeks doing ten reps, but with the five reps, it seemed easier to just get five out and get on to the next exercise. It felt like a different kind of intensity doing the more rapid transition from muscle group to muscle group. I quickly began to sweat profusely… There’s a psychological benefit to “I only have to do five?” which I find encourages me to push harder through reps with the extra weight.

Tonight I’ll definitely get more sleep, and tomorrow I’ll finish my first week of 5 x 5. Today is the 10th of July… so seven or so weeks into it since May 18… and I’m using weights nearly double what I started this program with on most exercises. I have to admit that when I started, I didn’t think I had this kind of reserve left in me, nor did I think I’d progress as fast as I have. I’m enjoying progress!

It turns out that I had forgotten a few details when I started this routine on May 18th. I had combined the content of two of DelMonte’s free videos to create a compound exercise full body routine.

What I had forgotten was the number of reps/set, rest, and number of supersets per week.

I think my inability to get through more than one superset during that first week threw me for a loop. My old habits included doing a set, and then waiting until I was good and ready to do another set.. of the same exercise. Blasting from one exercise to another with only 60 seconds rest was just something I hadn’t done. Ever. And, make no mistake, when you try it with compound exercises for the first time, you’ll find it’s tough too.

It took me about four weeks to catch on that the routine required changing the number of reps/exercise and supersets done every two weeks. I think there was also a promo around that time that consisted of a 12 week, transform-your-body-contest open to anyone purchasing the program. Since I thought this free video workout was a 12 week program at three supersets of 15 reps per exercise, I’d say I mixed them all up.

So, here’s what it’s supposed to be:
3 sets of 15 reps/exercise for two weeks
4 sets of 10 reps/exercise for two weeks
5 sets of 5 reps/exercise for two weeks

For the exercises… a couple of caveats first:
I work out in my basement, and I’m tall enough that I can not do a standing military press without hitting the ceiling. I also own a Hoist home gym that has a weight stack for pulldowns. I otherwise don’t have a good place for pullups/chinups.

Deadlift
Flat barbell bench press
Squat
Bent over row
Clean
Seated dumbbell military press
Plate Chopper
Pull downs
Dips
Reverse Incline Leg Raises

And this, dear readers, is a killer weight lifting routine.

At the end of the routine, I have more often than not added oblique crunches, two or three sets per side. I’ve also added one pass through a shoulder superset with really light weight a few times. My shoulders have always been a weak spot in my mind.

Check out proper form, and review the rest/repetition info in these free workout routine videos.

Again, if you’re just getting back in shape, be careful! Even with very light weights, you will be shocked at how hard you work to do a superset if you’ve never done one. Don’t give up if it takes a few weeks to get do three supersets of 15 reps per exercise. This workout routine will rapidly transform your body.

For those getting back in shape: I’d suggest getting to the point or fitness level where you can do three sets…. THEN consider yourself “starting” this workout routine, doing two weeks of sets of 15 reps, then going to 4 sets of 10, then 5 of 5.

Let me know how you do!

Bodybuilding over 40…
I am sure glad I landed on Vince DelMonte’s info when I did. I recently did a few searches on “bodybuilding over 40″ and browsed a couple of “supplements are awesome” sights. The only bodybuilders over 40 I could find in my quick check of any discussion of age and bodybuilding had been bodybuilding since their early 20s. Granted, I found a few impressive guys, over 70 even, who were big and ripped… but had been doing it for 40 years, obviously with gifted genetics.

I did feel a bit self-conscious when I used the term “bodybuilding” to describe my efforts. After all, I don’t own a speedo and I’m not going to shave my chest or my legs… but I am working hard on building muscle. I’m not just toning. I’m lifting. I’m not just doing a few sets of bench presses and squats to maintain my current muscle mass. I’m going through a routine, increasing weight and intensity, to grow.

I guess it was a bit of a sanity check that led me out into the big, bad world of relentless nonsense on bodybuilding. One blog post written by some pro bodybuilder talked about weights to use if you are over 40 and going to start training again… I could swear I read “for the bench, pick a light weight, about 225lbs, to re-introduce yourself to training.”

I can’t even imagine trying lifting my old maximum workout weights… especially doing supersets of compound exercises. But I started light, and built up some endurance, and strength, and am making great progress. It’s not about “benching 200″ which was a high school taunt… (I can’t remember what my old max bench weight ever was, because I was doing inclines for the years I tried the Mentzer routine.) It’s not about the weight, or the reps, it’s about building muscle. If I can do it with a 10 pound dumbbell, doing the crazy shoulder superset at the end of my workout, that’s what it is.

If you’re thinking about getting back in shape yourself, go for it! Start with really light weights… maybe even “just the bar” so you can get your form down and ease into it so you don’t hurt yourself. There’d be not much worse than getting all psyched up to start building muscle again and have to stop because you hurt your shoulder, for example.

I’ve been healthy, not gaining much weight, no hypertension, etc, so it was a lot easier for me to get back in to a routine. Still, it took me four weeks to get to three times through DelMonte’s superset routine. So if you’ve not done any exercise lately, make sure your doctor clears you, and start fast walking or biking to get your heart used to beating hard. Then, I’d do the routine I started with, and go once through it. When you change your old training method from “waiting around until I recover as much as possible to do the next set of the same exercise” model to the superset model, your body will change quickly.

Tomorrow, if I don’t actually get the sore throat bug going through my family, I’ll start the second week of 4 by 10. Need some sleep too, so with that, I’m off for tonight.

All day I wondered why I felt so tired, so wiped out, so sore.    I had changed the routine a little bit.  Instead of the clean I substituted an upright row.  My elbows have been aching, and I thought the clean motion might be responsible.  Actually, not warming up enough might be playing a big role….  Thinking about it, I suppose increasing the weight I use for the clean might have also played a part.  For all I know it could be the arms of the chairs in which I sit when I blog pressing on my tendons “just so.”

All things equal, for whatever reason, my elbows have been aching a little, so something had to give.  I wanted to sub another compound exercise  for the clean, and settled on the upright row.

I’ve read all about “muscle confusion” and “turbulence training” and even DelMonte talks about switching up routines.  I didn’t figure I’d change the routine until I finished with the 12-week-transform-your-body-routine…  You know, try to power through to measure “before” and “after” results of that one routine…  but I couldn’t figure out what kicked my butt so badly.  Today was one of the days I dreaded when I used to think about getting back in shape… sore, achy everywhere, tired.  We had a bug run through the rest of the family this past week, so I thought I might be getting sick.  For all I know I am, but my shoulders really ached with soreness today.

Then it dawned on me… besides being the end of the first week of doing 4 sets of 10 reps for each exercise of the super set, I wanted something different to work obliques… side crunches didn’t seem to be doing it for me.  so I had added twisting cable pulls.  I had forgotten.  I had seen the exercise in one of DelMonte’s promotional videos.

I had gotten a false sense of security with compound exercises, and added another for obliques.  It might have been a bit much.

I did two sets for each side, since it was the end of a very tough workout.  That explains a lot of soreness.

I don’t think I mentioned this yet, but when I went back to look through the original videos, I realized I had been missing a couple of important details about doing the routine.  Off the top of my head, I think I was supposed to do three sets of 15 for only two weeks, or maybe three, then go to 4 sets of 10 for two weeks, then to 5 sets of 5.  It took me and my wife three full weeks to get to the point we could even finish the superset routine 3 times.  So we’re a little “behind schedule.” No big deal, though, progress is still huge.  Yesterday I got two sets of ten dips followed by two sets of 9.  Never would I have believed you if you told me I’d be able to do 38 dips in one day.  So, there is progress.

One more week of 4 sets with 10 reps each exercise… Still don’t have the diet thing down, but still making progress.