The 3 Simple Solutions To My Over-40 Muscle-Building Struggles

Turns out I didn’t need more workouts, discipline, or supplements after all.

“Why is my body being an Asshole?”

My body and I were close to falling out big-style. Because despite all my lifting, huffing, and puffing in the gym, I wasn’t getting anywhere.

If anything I looked less muscular the more work I put in. But I was certainly ticking all the ‘right’ boxes:

Working out 4 days a week;
Getting enough protein;
Training hard;
Being disciplined, training even when I was sore and my brain told me to skip the workout.

So did I need to replace some exercises? Change my protein source? Order those shady-looking ‘Testostobol 3000 Extreme’ pills I saw online?

Nope. None of that finer details stuff.

It took me to hold my hands up and admit to my insanity, i.e.

doing the same unproductive things over and over again and expecting a different outcome,

to finally reverse the weight gain around my midsection, build some muscle in my 40s, and start to look forward to workouts again.

If that sounds like the boat you’re in, it’s time to work WITH instead of AGAINST your 40+ body and copy the 3 simple steps I took to turn things around.

#1 Yeah Protein IS Important But…

I aim for 1g of protein per lb (2g/kg) of lean body mass. Studies vary, recommending anything between 0.6g and 2g per lb, but 1g is doable, realistic and proven to be sufficient.

I was eating plenty of fish, lean meat, dairy, protein powder and eggs.

So where the hell was my miraculous muscle growth?

The problem with only focusing on your protein numbers is that you can overlook the fact that the rest of your diet is a bit… sh*tty.

For example, when I went back to writing down what I was eating each day, I found I was having:

tons of bread
very few vegetables
very little fibre
too much stuff from the freezer aisle that I could just “throw in the oven”.

As much as I adore fresh bread, it bloats me like nothing else.

Add in the high salt from the processed foods and lack of actual ‘healthy’ fibrous food and it was no wonder my wee belly refused to budge and my body looked the same despite my workouts and protein intake.

Luckily a few simple changes to my diet got things moving again:

I cut back on bread (a bigger challenge than you’d think!)
I ate big salads with plenty of meat/fish for lunch
I had a serving of vegetables at dinner
I ate convenience foods/take-out at weekends only

I started to lean out within a couple of weeks. But what about this pesky lack of muscle growth…

#2 Train For How You Want to Look & Feel

I got a free wallchart with my first Joe Weider weights set in 1994.

It showed around 15 exercises using barbells and dumbbells that I was supposed to base my workouts on, doing 3 sets of 8–15 reps.

That program worked really well for several years.

But then the damn Internet came along and my Training Wilderness Years began. I listened to…

too many guys talking about too many things that would help me achieve too many conflicting goals.

Stupid Technology. I don’t think I stuck with any program for longer than 3 weeks for about 15 years.

Slightly older and wiser, I got back on track in my late 30s, deciding I wanted to get stronger and bigger. So for months and months I focused on lower rep programs — Wendler 5/3/1, Stronglifts 5/5/5 — both great programs for building strength.

And I got really strong.

Thing was, I looked and felt like crap. I didn’t look more muscular at all, even though I was:

benching
deadlifting
rowing and
squatting

some heavy-ass weights. Turns out training for strength, combined with my short-limbed, narrow-shouldered Irish genetics weren’t a good mix. I now had:

a huge (albeit strong!) ass;
wide upper thighs that wouldn’t fit in jeans;
rounded shoulders from all the benching; and
that ‘watermelons under the armpits’ walk.

This Chunky Leprechaun was not the ‘look’ I wanted, while I also felt tired, sore and my joints creaked for a while most mornings.

I realized that actually looking and feeling good was more important to me than Big Numbers on the Big Lifts.

And do you know what program saved me? PLOT TWIST… it was the one from my 1994 Joe Weider wallchart, because:

higher reps built enough tension to cause hypertrophy so I added some muscle;
full body routines three times a week, 7–8 exercises each time, stopped me feeling sore and beaten up AND allowed me to add specific exercises to improve my aesthetics;
I could ignore the online noise and just stick with the Old School stuff that has always worked for regular guys.

Author after ditching the strength-focused workouts ;-)

I learned to train according to how you want to look and feel, regardless of what the internet tells you you HAVE to do. If you don’t like the outcomes from a program or exercise, ditch it and move on.

FYI I can photocopy the Joe Weider wallchart for you if you want ;-)

#3 Treat Your Body Like a Slow Computer

My diet and training were ‘fixed’ but arguably the biggest mistake I’d been making was NOT listening to my body.

lack of motivation to work out
low mood
no energy (despite copious cups of coffee!)
patchy sleep quality

All these things pointed towards high Cortisol (stress hormone) levels which can cause lower-than-ideal Testosterone.

A blood test backed this up:

You’ll see how high my Cortisol was, then the outcome of taking a few simple steps to lower it throughout 2022.

By lowering Cortisol my Testosterone levels returned to a normal (useful!) level and my mood, energy, metabolism and muscle-building capabilities improved accordingly. Nice.

So what did I do to reduce my Cortisol? I treated my body like a slow computer.

When your computer stops running smoothly, freezing randomly, being glitchy, you realize you’re running too many programs and what do you do?

You RESET it.

Having a busy work life and family life AND trying to lose weight AND trying to work out hard in the gym equals a whole lotta programs trying to run at the same time. Nothing seems to run properly, right?

You turn your body off and back on again by prioritizing sleep and cutting physical and mental stress where you can. So:

I stuck to a sleep schedule, ignoring my persuasive wife’s pleas to watch “one more episode”;
I left my phone downstairs so I could avoid keeping myself awake looking at it;
I cut workouts to two hours per week, training hard enough without killing myself;
I planned my upcoming week every Sunday so I wasn’t stressed out during the week by ‘unexpected’ things I should have seen coming!

If we listen to our bodies (mood, energy, motivation, sleep problems) we can pick up on any clues that our stress levels are high.

High Cortisol puts the brakes on fat loss, muscle building and makes life feel like a tough slog — none of that is conducive to us getting in shape after 40!

Reversing The Dad-Bod is Within Your Powers

Technically we should be a bit older and wiser by now. I’m sure you’ve become progressively more awesome at your job for example.

But when it comes to working out to build strength, muscle, and fitness we can often do some really counter-productive dumb sh*t, even when presented with evidence that it’s just not working for us.

Look at it like this:

After 40 your body is like a vintage sports car;
It can still go fast, and you should definitely still push it to its limits sometimes;
But you need to take care of its maintenance (sleep, stress, hormones, joints, healthy eating);
Keep taking it out for a spin regularly BUT listen out for signs that you’re pushing it too hard.

Operation ‘Handsome B*stard After 40’ will stay on track AND pay off if you can just work with, rather than against your body, and learn to work smarter rather than harder.