Working out for sex appeal is great. However, most of our clients that are over 40 work out for a better quality of life. They want to feel awesome and strong for a long time. Programming for this has to be intentional. Depending on the people you work with, and the context, the training methodologies you use will change. If you jump into an intense workout program prioritizing rapid weight loss your joints are at a higher risk to take a hit, also there’s a rebounding affect that can happen.
Many times i’ve seen people go into really low calorie consumption, train really hard 5-6 days a week, and they stop just to gain it all back and then some. In my personal opinion it can be tough on the body long term to be a “sedentary athlete”. This means you may sit at a desk for hours becoming stiff, then jump into a large class with not much discussion back and forth about how the body feels, only to cause more damage to your nagging problem areas.
There are other approaches that could be more sustainable, reliable, and would cater to someone over 40 who doesn’t have the time to be in the gym 5-6 days a week. My suggestion would be to get 10,000 steps a day, eat .7 – 1 gram of protein per pound of goal bodyweight, do 3-4 days a week of resistance training, and find fun ways to get your ears rate up such as pickleball, or hiking.
If your training for longevity and quality of life, the fast and hard approach could be hard to keep up with for years on end. The other thing that helps tremendously is having a coach, instead of a trainer. A trainers job is to play loud music and push you until you feel like you can’t move anymore. A coach will have conversations about sleep, different ways to fit in protein, even help navigating relationships with the new goals you have. Sometimes the hardest part about changing your habits is letting everyone in your life know that you have new boundaries. It’s ok to get annoyed when your best friend keeps trying to push you to eat desserts with them.
On the training end, valuing range of motion over pushing as much weight as humanly possible will contribute to long term health. Our joints are happiest when the muscles and tendons are loose and work together as a unit. If you can squat lower with less weight, let’s do that before going up. As a client you may not know how low to go in a squat, or if your knee feels weird, should you still go low? or find a different exercise? These coaching conversations can add up over time to help you train and have the life you want as you enter the age of 40 and beyond.