The Best Ways for a 40-Year-Old Man to Gain Muscle Mass

It doesn’t matter what age you are, it’s important to remain healthy and fit. This is essential in later years of life; you need to concentrate on building and keeping muscle because decreasing muscle mass is a common problem. So, if you’re 40 years old or over and want big muscle gain, you’ll need the correct mixture of strength training exercises, cardio workouts, rest and a high protein diet.

Utilize Cardio Exercises to Blast Away Fat

The major goal of cardio programs is to lose fat not build muscle. Cardio exercise is any kind of workout that increases your heart rate and gets more oxygen pumping through your blood, thus demolishing calories and assisting you in shedding the layers of fat that sits over your muscles. For a 40-year-old man, great forms of cardio could be: running, brisk walking, jumping jacks, jogging, cycling, jumping rope. plyometrics and rowing.

Include Weights for a Bigger Gain

Strength training routines are crucial if you’d like to gain muscle mass. When you perform squats, why not hold a dumbbell in each hand? This will develop the hamstring, quad and glute muscles. But you shouldn’t zero in on one part of your body because the outcome could be postural problems and strength unevenness as well as other issues. You should combine flies, dumbbell curls, triceps kickbacks and rows with bicycle crunches, push-ups and planks. The greatest way for you to gain muscle is to stick with a program that gets you lifting weights until your muscles get tired—two or three sets should do the trick! Since you want bigger muscles, stick with the greatest amount of weight that you can lift with less number of repetitions; this will aid the most muscle growth and build strength.

Establish a Successful Workout Schedule

Producing the correct workout program is a necessary part of developing lean muscle mass. You need to prevent injury by beginning with one set of eight to twelve repetitions or until you’re fatigued. Then slowly work your way up to two sets of twenty reps or three sets of twelve reps for alternating routines. If you’re trying to acquire muscle, do your strength training program three days a week such as Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday; your cardio could be done on the other three days like Monday, Wednesday and Friday and could consist of ten minutes of jumping rope, ten minutes of brisk walking and ten minutes on the elliptical or rowing machine.

A High Protein Diet Makes a Difference

Nutrition plays a main role when you’re attempting to become or remain fit, particularly when your major focus is on developing muscle. Protein is very important for your body because it has amino acids and those are responsible for strengthening, repairing and rebuilding procedures in your body. It’s essential to include food in your diet that’s high in protein like tofu, certain grains, lean meats, nuts and eggs. If you don’t get the proper amount of protein in your diet, then you won’t achieve the muscle gain you’re looking for.

Things to Consider Before Beginning

As you get older, you can become more susceptible to exercise injuries, so talking with your doctor is always a good idea before proceeding with any type of new exercise routine—most notably if you’re coping with any past injury or you have any present health problems. Building muscle demands ample calories to assist your body in recovering from lifting weights, so be sure that you don’t limit your calorie intake too much. You might also want to think about working with a fitness trainer to examine your goals and get assistance developing the most personalized, beneficial exercise program for yourself.

It’s never too late to get your body back in shape or maintain it. Let Teri Walker Fitness help show you how!