Muscle Building Mistakes Over 35
If you’re over 35 you might have found that building muscle is getting harder, but are you making some mistakes that are holding your muscle development back?
Watch this video and I’m going to show you what you might be doing wrong.
Hello, this is Ivana.
I want to help you get fit, healthy and strong.
If you’re spending your valuable time in the gym, then you want to make sure that you’re doing the right things to build muscle.
And sometimes people aren’t in addition to what you’re doing in the gym. And you also have to think about the nutrition side and are you getting that right?
Are you able to build muscle?
Are you maximizing your potential?
I’m an online fitness and nutrition coach specializing in people over 35.
I’ve been training with weights since I was 15 years old and I’ve been on stage three times as national level masters bikini bodybuilder.
Building muscle is something that’s been really important to me for a long time and I’m going to show you what you may be doing wrong.
Not Training Progressively
So the first mistake you could be making is not training progressively.
Now this is a really key thing. If you’re setting yourself up with a three sets of 10 reps and that’s where you’re working, you need to make sure that you’re doing the maximum amount of weight that you can for that rep range.
So if you’ve got too many in the tank at the end, then you’re not really getting the most of that. And if you know that you can do the next higher weight, you should do the next higher weight.
You need to keep pushing your muscles in order for them to grow.
And a lot of people in the gym are just doing the same weight over and over and over. And that’s not progressive.
Progressive weight training is the best way for you to build muscle.
Not Training Hard Enough
So I see this a lot at the gym, not enough people are actually pushing themselves.
You’re if you’re going through the motions too often, if you’re leaving a lot in the tank. So if you were, let’s say you only do seven reps or eight reps and you probably could have done 20, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I’m sure. Then you’re not really pushing yourself hard enough if you’re doing anything that might distract you while you’re doing your weight training workout.
If you’re watching the TV or you’re playing with your phone, this can often keep you from maintaining the right focus and intensity that’s needed for muscle growth. I see way too many people playing with phones. I use mine too, to time my rest periods.
And that’s actually a really good way of maintaining the time that you’re training and that you’re getting that optimal rest period between sets.
That’s also a key element of muscle building.
And so you can use it way, but don’t get distracted by things, don’t have long, long periods where you’re not doing anything.
You need to maximize your time by staying focused in the gym and pushing yourself to the limit.
Most of the time, it doesn’t always mean that you’re going to failure, especially if you’re quite new to weight training. If you’ve had like a year or less of training, then you’re going just until your technique fails rather than your muscles completely fail. I’m not saying that you should leave the gym shaking and that your muscles are collapsing each time because that’s also not going to be great. You’re going to need a lot more recovery time, but you need to know that you’re pushing yourself and not just going through the motions.
Doing Too Much Or Too Little
So that refers to the amount of times you’re working out in the gym.
How often?
Ideally three to five times a week.
Particularly for people over 35, your recovery might take a little bit longer.
So you don’t necessarily want to do those six days and three days is probably the minimum that you really need to see improvement in muscle growth. Um, two days is too little.
Probably not that it’s still better than nothing. If that’s all you can do, that’s great, but if you’re really serious about muscle building, you need to be in that three to five times a week range.
Beyond that, I think that’s probably excessive for most people.
Maybe six days a week. If you’re someone who’s very experienced and you have good recovery and everything else, like your stress is managed and your sleep is okay, then six days a week might work for you.
Myself, right now I only do about three to four times a week and then I’m giving myself some like a couple of martial arts sessions or I mix it up a little bit for those other couple of sessions I spend in the gym and I also tried to do outdoor activities as well.
I mix it up a lot more because I’m not primarily focused on muscle building right now. So I keep yourself within that three to five range and that’s just about right for most people.
Always Training In The Same Rep Range
Generally I recommend that you work within that six to 12 rep range and I’ve actually created an entire video about muscle building HERE.
But you sometimes want to work outside that rep range as well.
So if you’re doing, you might do three to five reps and that’s gonna increase your strength so that you’re better able to tolerate heavier weights when you are training in that six to 12 rep range.
And sometimes you’re also gonna want to go outside that range and sort of do more than more than 12 so you might be doing 1415 reps because that will increase your lactate threshold. It will reduce your fatigue when you’re working in, again, the hypertrophy range, that moderate six to 12 range.
There are benefits to working outside that main rep range.
So you’re really missing out on muscle development if you’re not occasionally using the other rep ranges.
Doing Too Many Isolation Exercises
Isolation exercises only work one go work across one joint.
So a bicep curl, like I’m demonstrating here, a lateral raise just out as opposed to say a shoulder press. Okay, so you’re working more than one joint. So using the shoulders here and you’re also using the elbows.
Most of your workout should be composed of compound exercises because you’re working more muscle at the same time.
You’re stimulating your whole body to grow. Different parts are going to grow at the same time.
Good leg exercises that are compound or like squats, lunges, dead lifts, upper body exercises could be lat pull downs, shoulder presses, like I’ve demonstrated there. There’s either overhead, shoulder press or chest presses, that type of thing.
So most of your workouts should be compound exercises because that’s gonna stimulate your body to grow there.
It’s a little bit iffy in terms of the actual research there in terms of how much hormonal responses. Some people say you get growth hormone response. There’s a lot more growth hormone response, which means you’ll stimulate your muscles to grow. If you use more compound exercises, I’m not sure how much of the differences, it seems like it’s quite small, but overall it’s much more efficient to do compound exercises anyway and they should be most of your workout.
Does that mean you should never do isolation exercises?
Well, no, of course not.
There are a lot of great isolation exercises.
I do like lateral raises myself and front raises. They’re great for developing the shoulders.
There are a lot of great exercises, but they should be supplemental. So build your program around those compound exercises and then add the isolation exercises as well and that will help you maximize your muscle.
So hopefully you learned a few good tips and I’d like to hear if there were any of those muscle building mistakes that you’ve been making.
