Five steps to build muscle after 50

Think you’re too old to start building muscle after 50? Many people, after reaching the age of 50, think it’s too late or that their bodies can’t handle the stress of exercise. That’s a bunch of nonsense. People in their 50s build muscles like any age, younger or older. Muscle growth requires only two things: anabolic stimulation through exercise at the gym or at home, and eating nutritious food.

Of course, as you age, your body undergoes changes that can make it difficult to build muscle, lower testosterone and growth hormones being a good example. Injuries are also easier to sustain as you get older. But despite these challenging, surmountable differences, you can easily build muscle after 50, prevent bone loss, and minimize your chances of cardiovascular problems by following the five steps below.

muscle building step 1

Maximize the effectiveness of your training times using High Intensity Training (HIT) techniques. The HIT is brief but intense and allows adequate time for the muscles to recover. If you’re trying to build muscle after 50 and haven’t trained for years, start slowly. Perform only one or two sets during each workout when you first start out. Slowly and gradually increase the intensity as you get stronger to challenge your body and build muscle.

muscle building step 2

Before starting an exercise routine, do warm-up exercises to increase blood flow to your muscles. Work your way up to increased weights slowly to avoid injury. These slow warm-up exercises are often called occlusion warm-ups because they significantly increase blood flow to the muscles, ensuring that the muscles get the nutrients and oxygen they need to repair and grow.

Step 3 of muscle development

When building muscle after 50, limit your weight training workouts to no more than an hour per session. This is the point where cortisol, the stress hormone, peaks. Cortisol, which occurs naturally, is responsible for muscle breakdown. Continuing to exercise for more than an hour will defeat the purpose of your exercise. You want to build muscle, not break it down. If you’re over 50, you’re already losing muscle mass, so don’t overdo your exercise to make the problem worse.

muscle building step 4

Time your meal to correspond with the times you do your workouts. As you age, your metabolism slows down and more of what you eat is stored as fat. If you time your eating to more closely match your exercise, your body will more quickly use what you eat to repair muscle tissue damaged during exercise. Training experts recommend around 50 grams of whey protein, 100 grams of carbohydrates, and around 30 grams of healthy fats. Healthy fats are good for your heart and can help your body lower cholesterol.

Bodybuilding Step 5

If you’re working on building muscle after 50, use supplements wisely, adding the most important ones to your diet. A fairly effective natural supplement is creatine monohydrate. If you take around 5 grams a day, you can maximize muscle performance and you will recover quickly from your workouts. Also consider the secretagogue, a growth hormone. The secretagogue is a mixture of essential amino acids that cause the pituitary gland to release a growth hormone. This can be of great benefit to older bodybuilders whose natural growth hormone production is declining. Some of the more popular growth hormones are Powerful, from USP Labs, NuSoma, from Olympian Labs, and Secretagogue, mentioned above, from MHP.