Training Your Over 40 Body

I always thought age was just a number. I never really thought all those things you hear about would happen to me. You know, the achy joints, the inability to stay up all night and rally the next morning. I really thought these people were using age as an excuse.

And then I hit my 40’s.

My body has changed and it continues to change. I think the hardest part has been adjusting my mindset to embrace what my body is now and not long for the days when I could go #beastmode in the gym and trash my body and still move the next day. The days of #NoPainNoGain no longer exist in my over 40 world. If there is pain, there is almost certainly not gain when it comes to my physique.

I definitely don’t think this means we throw up our hands in resignation. I do think there are steps we can take to continue to make progress when it comes to our health and fitness goals. I believe with some tweaking in our heads and some tweaking to our nutrition and training we can feel better as we age.

Stop wishing you had the body you used to have and embrace the one you have today. It is so easy to reminisce about the way things “used to be.” Maybe you miss the abs you used to have or the way you used to be able to run 10 miles and you didn’t need a week to recover. Thinking this way keeps us stuck and wishing for something that is highly unlikely and unrealistic and mostly, it discourages us in our efforts to reaching the goals we have today. With each year our bodies continue to change and we must change with them. For many of us women, we have struggled our entire lives trying to accept and embrace our bodies. I believe today more than ever before, this is the time to love ourselves and stop beating our bodies into submission.

Rest and Recovery time is high priority for individuals over 40. With each passing year, our bodies take even more time to recover. With the influence of social media, we’ve felt the pressure of training hard and pushing our limits beyond what is healthy. If you’re over 40, it’s time to stop competing with strangers on social media or twenty somethings in the gym to see who can out-train the other. If you’ve bought into the #nodaysoffmentailty, now is the time to let it go. Rest days are mandatory. Your over 40 body needs more recovery than it did in your younger years. Think long term - by learning to build in rest and recovery days now, we will ensure that our bodies are in good shape in our later years. I know so many bodybuilders who have pushed hard well past their 40’s and have had to have major surgery to have joints replaced. No. Thank. You. Now is the time for injury prevention.

Keep lifting weights or start lifting weights if you aren’t already. As we age, we lose strength and muscle size. Weight lifting is the best thing we can do to stay strong and keep the muscle loss to a minimum. I would encourage you to focus on exercises that do not put unnecessary strain on your knees and shoulders and hips. The amount of weight you can bench or squat becomes irrelevant if you injure yourself because your ego got in the way. It happens to the best of us. :) You may want to replace some of your free weight exercises with machines that do the same thing but help protect your body from injury. Aim to lift 3-4 days each week.

Set a realistic goal for this new season. My goals used to be pretty lofty. I loved to set goals that seemed unattainable but I knew deep down I could reach them if I tried hard enough. I almost killed myself trying to reach some of them. But this new season of over 40 is not the time to push past what’s realistic and healthy. Ripped and shredded abs? Probably not that realistic unless you’re a genetic freak. And if you’re a woman, your hormones are working against you so something a little more realistic will set you up for success. Maybe it’s losing 20lbs in 4 months or running a half marathon or climbing Mt. Rainier (okay, maybe that’s just me)…set a goal that you can work towards but make sure it’s realistic.