They can usually be found on the cardio machines at your local gym. Often, they are hanging around in the warm-up area doing some stretching with their personal trainer. These are the middle aged men, who have been steered away from free weight resistance training and instead have been told to practice some form of cardio exercise, almost exclusively. As a result, they are almost always exercising via distance endurance activities.
They have usually been told by a doctor, trainer or dietician or a combination of the above that their days of pushing weights are long over. They are often told that they will be risking the revival of old sports injuries they experienced when in their youth, or worse, new injuries. So, they have bought into the maxim that to lose that middle aged spread – “you must do cardio and you must cut back on your calories!”
You can almost always peg these guys just by the way they look. Unfortunately, I have heard the most unflattering descriptions directly from ladies of the same age lamenting about what the hell happened to their college athlete men. These guys are usually 40 to 60 years old, with a sizeable belly. They often have skinny arms and I have heard their legs described as (this hurts) “two white baseball bats standing on end” holding up their rather oval bodies.
What’s sad is that most of these guys were really strong and active only a few years before. They often played sports competitively and lifted weights. Many times I have heard them talk about the amounts of weight they used to be able to lift or how strong they were when they were younger. These recollections of youthful vitality always sound odd to guys the same age who have embraced a responsible, but aggressive strength training program. Many of them are setting new personal records for strength, speed and power, despite their age.
Suppose you are 50 years old and not very active. You are 30 pounds overweight and you embrace the aforementioned bad advice. Let me run through the basic path of physiology you will unfortunately follow:
- Your cardiovascular condition improves and some weight loss occurs
- Muscles, begin to atrophy (get smaller!) and weaken due to insufficient use
- Bones, tendons and ligaments, also stressed insufficiently, begin to weaken
- You eat less meat (as advised) and more grains, etc. to help fuel long cardio exercise
- Less testosterone is produced due to a lack of any intense muscular stimulation
- Fat loss slows as your body adapts to cardio exercise – so you do more and more
- Further atrophy of muscles (primarily fast twitch) lowers your resting metabolic rate
- Your lower resting metabolic rate requires extra cardio work to burn any body fat
- Visible muscle disappears but fat is much harder to remove, so you cut calories
- Calorie reduction causes your body to further conserve your fat calories.
This vicious cycle continues as your muscle mass and resting metabolism drop to new lows – you are increasingly SKINNY-FAT – consisting primarily of bone, fat, and skin
This does not end well. Trust me, #5 is especially bad. Testosterone is what drives our youthful male vigor. We really like testosterone! Believe me, you want to create as much of that as possible. So, the only real benefit we get in this scenario is an improvement in our cardio-vascular fitness, every thing else gets worse.
Who on earth imagined that this state is where we, as middle aged men want to end up?!?!?! Enough already! I believe I speak for most if not all of my middle aged brothers when I say that HERE IS THE LIST OF WHAT I WANT, DAMNIT!
- I want as much speed, power and strength as possible!
- I want visible muscle, and not just for show – I want it to do something!
- I want super strong bones, tendons and ligaments!
- I want to be able to eat as much good food (like steak) as I want!
- I want extra testosterone and all the youthful hormones I can possibly get!
- I want to hold my own in bar fight!
- I want a strong desire to chase women around and the ability to actually do something if one of them lets me catch her!
Regarding making progress over the age of 40, please consider the case of Mr. Louis Simmons, owner of the Westside Barbell Club – arguably the most successful power and strength training gym in the world. Louis has been a competitive lifter since he was a teenager, yet he broke all of his previous records in his 50’s. How could this guy have possibly accomplished this apparent physical anachronism? He simply applied newer, more effective methods, thus creating greater power and speed than he ever had, even though he was older. Louis is over 60 and still breaking records. Over the years his gym has produced champion athletes from all kinds of different sports.
Don’t get me wrong – I think endurance sports are fantastic, and I think the athletes who participate in them are amazing! My issue here is with the broad denunciation of middle aged men aggressively trying to get stronger and faster by building functional muscle (and the bad dietary advice that often accompanies that misinformation). Unfortunately, these tired old maxims still pervade popular information on diet and fitness.
I only wish the best for my middle aged brothers, and I want to help save them from this bad advice that invariably sends them into this harmful, do-it-yourself, physical atrophy. Bottom line – free weight resistance training is even MORE important for guys like me in their middle age!
If you’re looking for a weight loss diet and exercise program to put you on the road to wellness, we invite you to take a look at The Eco-Diet. It’s an all-natural program that’s scientifically based and modeled after the diet our ancestors followed successfully for thousands of years.
Sean Kelly is my hero.lol