Five Steps to Building Muscle After 50

Do you think you're too old to start building muscle after 50? Many people, after they reach the age of 50 think that it's too late, or that their bodies couldn't take the stress of exercise. That's a lot of hooey. Fifty year old people build muscle just like those of any age, younger or older. Muscle growth requires only two things: anabolic stimulus through exercising at the gym or at home, and eating nutritious foods. Of course, as you age, your body does undergo changes that might make it more difficult to build muscle, reduction of testosterone and…

Do you think you’re too old to start building muscle after 50? Many people, after they reach the age of 50 think that it’s too late, or that their bodies couldn’t take the stress of exercise. That’s a lot of hooey. Fifty year old people build muscle just like those of any age, younger or older. Muscle growth requires only two things: anabolic stimulus through exercising at the gym or at home, and eating nutritious foods.

Of course, as you age, your body does undergo changes that might make it more difficult to build muscle, reduction of testosterone and growth hormones are a good example. Injury is more easily incurred as you age as well. But despite these challenging differences which can be overcome, you can easily build muscle after 50, prevent bone loss, and minimize the chances of cardiovascular problems by following the five steps discussed below.

Muscle Building Step 1

Maximize the effectiveness of your workout times by utilizing high-intensity training (HIT) techniques. HIT is brief but intense, and allows adequate time for the muscles to recover. If you are trying to build muscle after 50, and are one who has not trained for years, start slowly. Perform only one or two sets during each workout when you first start out. Slowly and progressively increase the intensity as you become stronger to challenge your body and build muscle.

Muscle Building Step 2

Before you begin a workout routine, perform warm up exercises to increase blood flow to the muscles. Work your way up to the increased weights slowly, to prevent injuries. These slow warm up exercises are often referred to an occlusion warm ups because they significantly increase the flow of blood to the muscles, ensuring that the muscles get the nutrients and oxygen that they need in order to repair and grow.

Muscle Building Step 3

When building muscles after 50, limit your weight-training workouts to no more than one hour per session. This is the point where cortisol, the stress hormone, peaks out. Cortisol, which occurs naturally, is responsible for muscle breakdown. To continue exercising longer than an hour will defeat the purpose of your exercising. You wish 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

Schedule your eating to correspond with the times that you perform your workouts. As you get older, your metabolism slows and more of what you eat gets stored as fat. If you time your eating to correspond more closely with your exercising, what you eat will more quickly get utilized by your body for repairing the muscle tissue damaged during exercise. Training experts recommend about 50 grams of whey protein, 100 grams of carbohydrates, and about 30 grams of healthy fats. The healthy fats are good for the heart and can help your body to lower cholesterol.

Muscle Building Step 5

If you’re working at building muscle after 50, use supplements wisely, by adding the more important ones to your diet. One quite effective natural supplement is creatine monohydrate. If you take about 5 grams a day, you can maximize muscle performance and will recover from your workouts quickly. Consider also Secretagogue, a growth hormone. Secretagogue is a blend of essential amino acids that cause a growth hormone to be released by your pituitary gland. This can be of great benefit to older bodybuilders whose natural growth hormone production is declining. Some of the most popular growth hormones are Powerful, from USP Labs, NuSoma, from Olympian Labs, and the previously mentioned Secretagogue, from MHP.