Best Exercises for Strength After 40: What to Do and What to Skip - 20

Coach Brian Parana (0:2.573) Welcome back to Driven for Health. I'm your host Coach Brian Piranha and we're diving into the next level of the strength pyramid. If you've been following along, which I hope you have, we've covered adherence. Then that was episode 17. Episode 18 was BIF, meaning volume intensity frequency. Coach Brian Parana (0:30.837) Episode 19 was progression. Each layer of the pyramid builds on top of the other one to help you train smarter, more efficient, more effective, spend your time wisely in the gym and in just the time that you have available, which is most important, or even with the equipment that you have. And I to say, after recording these episodes, Coach Brian Parana (0:58.541) feel like my squat is going up just by talking about it. Now, I haven't squatted a lot of weight. A reference that 325 was my best squat. I was very proud of that. I've come from a long running background. ran under three hours in the marathon and there you go. I haven't spent a lot of time on my squats, but working up to that, I felt great. I have no idea where my squat max is at this. Coach Brian Parana (1:26.795) moment in time which is fine it's not as relevant no one's ever asked me actually how much I squat to be honest I mean I guess in my CrossFit days they would but nowadays no one cares in their 40s how much you squat I guess if you're at a bro gym maybe but where I'm at now nope it's not important so but my squats getting stronger just by talking about this joking Coach Brian Parana (1:56.429) aside. The pyramid is built to help you understand what truly drives your results. It gives you a system to organize your training. Really want you to perform better. I want you to stay healthy, right? Joint health, muscle health, body health, energy health, and keep progressing for years to come. Before we start, just want to give a quick shout out to my Coach Brian Parana (2:24.972) client John he's 62 years old he's been crushing it on theory and we decide before he decided joined the orange theory he wasn't working out at all he'd go to plan a fitness but he thought he knew what he was doing and working out and he had no idea I introduced them to the exercise pyramid it should do something to that nutrition period most importantly I dropped 60 pounds I'll probably have him on as Coach Brian Parana (2:54.860) testimony on the podcast at some point to share his story of how he's juggled all the things in life from being a father, a grandparent, a husband, obviously important there, in the equation a business owner, and how he let his health slide by letting his belly grow and we were able to come together. Coach Brian Parana (3:22.272) He thought he knew what he was doing and he didn't. And we decided that Orange State would be a great place for him to do strength training. And he does strength training at Planet Fitness as well. And we have him on a periodization schedule and routine when he is at the weight gym, the weight room, the weight floor inside Planet Fitness. Just a great example of what staying active looks like. Coach Brian Parana (3:51.530) long term. So in fact, I probably will just have him on maybe even the next episode to share his story. And then we'll resume the strength pyramid. right, recapping previous levels. Level one is adherence. Consistency over time is the most important thing in all of these areas. Doing the right techniques, the right habits, right behaviors that create success for you long term. Coach Brian Parana (4:21.142) You have to have a plan to fit your life. You have to do exercises that you enjoy. You have to look forward to exercising, not necessarily every day, but most days you should. The best program is one you can repeat week in and week out without burning out. My adherence level is scheduling workouts with my buddy Chris or my buddy Dan. It's a lot of fun. Coach Brian Parana (4:50.524) We actually watched Predator during our workout session. The first Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger was awesome. And then I have a TV in my barn that we watch music videos to and every once in we'll watch a movie. We're watching Fight Club now as well. So it really gets the juices flowing. I watched all six Rockies with Levi. And then we also watched all Coach Brian Parana (5:18.677) three creeds he'd never seen a 16 he really didn't have the exposure to it we watched out while we worked out it was was awesome took a couple weeks to get through it but it was sweet we did it this summer all right level two I digress level two was volume intensity frequency volume intensity and frequency very important these control how your body adapts to the training intensity is building strength Coach Brian Parana (5:48.917) you must lift heavy. For muscle growth, moderate rates of six to 12 rep range usually work very well as well. So again, we classified those. Lower reps, higher weight strength, moderate weights, medium reps, muscle, mass, volume, more training volume, Coach Brian Parana (6:18.912) more stimulus. You're gonna get the muscle to be stimulated and break it down to be able to build it back up. And doing too much volume actually slows down progress. You have to stay within the boundaries of where your body's physically at, what your recovery rate is, especially what your nutrition is to coincide with the training. Coach Brian Parana (6:43.464) Most intermediate lifters see the best results in that rep range of 40 to 70 per muscle group for each session, trained at least once, but ideally two, possibly three times, depending on what your split is in the week. Frequency. If a workout feels too long, recovery becomes difficult. You spread the work over more sessions if we need to. Coach Brian Parana (7:12.894) be able to do that. And the goal is to be recovered well and keep improving. I love this as well. This simple phrase of can I work out tomorrow? It helps keep this blend of intensity, volume, and frequency in check. Level three was progression. That was our last episode. The rate of progression should match your training experience. Coach Brian Parana (7:42.024) Newer lifters can add weight and reps quickly. Experienced lifters need more structure, more routine, possibly more deloads, different rates of testing, tracking your weights of course to keep progress moving forward. Coach Brian Parana (8:3.079) Level four is exercise selection. And that's what we're talking about today. It's how to choose the exercises that are gonna make the biggest impact for you and your body. Right, we want to change the body physically. When you take your shirt off, you say, wow, I feel amazing. I'm in some of the best shape that have been in years. The key idea here is that progress is specific to the movement. Coach Brian Parana (8:32.711) you train. If you leg press you get better at leg pressing. If you squat you get better squatting. If you bench you get better at benching. You have to train the movements and the movement patterns to be able to improve. Research shows that strength gains happen in specific movement pattern that you practice. Coach Brian Parana (9:0.665) that means that if your goal is to improve a certain lift most of your training should be based around that lift okay a good rep range is half to three-quarters of your total training volume okay for that particular rep it's gonna that that particular exercise is gonna take out the majority of the workout there Coach Brian Parana (9:31.407) skills of learning, exercise, and muscle hypertrophy. When you're learning new exercise, your body first develops coordination and control. Think of the first time you ever benched. If you can remember that, you probably was really wiggly and uncontrolled or even the first time you tried to do a dip. It was probably awkward. During this period, your Coach Brian Parana (9:56.873) training your nervous system more than say your muscles to get into the firing sequences that your nervous system needs to be able to control your muscles and activate the strength that's inside them. Coach Brian Parana (10:11.674) A study comparing leg press and bicep curls found that the biceps grew faster earlier because the movement was simpler. There's only one joint moving at your elbow to squeeze the small muscle of the bicep. Whereas the leg press took longer for muscle growth because there's so many more joints, so much more coordination, so many more muscle groups. Coach Brian Parana (10:40.826) If you are constantly switching exercise, you stay in that learning phase potentially longer and actually could slow down potential progress by doing that. If you are early on, maybe stick with a couple of the big muscle movements, bench press, squats, presses, pull ups, deadlifts. Those would be perfect for your long-term progress. Coach Brian Parana (11:9.830) before you start differentiating until you build some strength at some point and you start seeing strength go up, muscle mass pack onto the body. Now, at the same time, you should not train only one exercise forever. There's a study that compared Smith Machine Squats with a mixed routine of squats, lunges, deadlifts, and leg presses that found that Coach Brian Parana (11:36.039) using multiple lower body movements improve both strength and balance the growth out. Of course, we're gonna wanna do that. My programming, I'll do, we haven't done back squats in a while. I have a Smith Machine. If you've seen my Instagram, every once in a while I'll post what my podcast setup looks like or if I'm releasing a new podcast episode on what it is. Coach Brian Parana (12:2.092) and we actually use the Smith Machine for squats quite a bit now instead of back squats and we do a hex bar deadlift doing regular deadlifts doing Romanian deadlift styles and that's been super helpful to differentiate what we're doing but also keep it easier on the body. My main takeaway when I work out is I do want to be able to work out tomorrow. I don't want to be so sore beaten up that I feel Coach Brian Parana (12:30.568) older than I actually am at 42. I do not want my low back hurting. Deadlifting over 300 pounds doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense for me. Sure I'd want to be strong but I'm plenty capable. I can do reps at 225 no problem and that's sufficient enough. If I have to lift something over 300 pounds I'm going to recruit my kid to help me. That's just the way it is because he's 16 and my other one's 15. Coach Brian Parana (12:59.367) 14 almost 15 here in about a little over a month ever to be 14 15 excuse me Alright, so we keep the main lifts going and you still need some variation to develop different parts of the muscle mass anyways muscle groups different ranges say incline Regular bench or flat bench could be an easy example of that Coach Brian Parana (13:26.449) Comparing compound and isolation movements. Compound lifts should make up the majority of your training. Funny enough, my son Levi must have known I was going to be talking about this because he asked me even literally last night, I don't understand exercise programming. He just hasn't been exposed to it. He always asked me for a workout and I give it to him when he works out on his own. Coach Brian Parana (13:56.101) tomorrow is Thursday but the day after is Friday and I actually probably gonna wake up at 5 to work out with him before he goes into school and when we come out here to the bar that's where I'm at I will actively help coach teach him what is happening there and in the workout that we do we're gonna do back bicep type stuff Coach Brian Parana (14:23.951) I'm probably going do some more legs and calves that day too, because that's my prerogative. I want to make sure I get legs in twice this week. Now going back to compound lifts, think of squats, deadlifts, presses, rows. They have several muscle groups that are firing all at once, multiple joints, usually two or three that are working in the process. And this creates Coach Brian Parana (14:54.630) lot of movement, a lot of calories burned in the time that you have. If you have lots of time, then isolation you can do way more of that. Even single arm or single leg type exercises can definitely fill your exercise regimen because of that factor. All right. These are going to be Coach Brian Parana (15:22.566) curls, extensions, other targeted areas that really help address weak points or add volume where it's needed, but they shouldn't take over the main part of your programming. Just think of it, if you went to the gym and you just did arms and abs and because you wanted bigger biceps, you always did arms and abs. Well, there's not a lot of muscle mass and there's not a lot of Coach Brian Parana (15:50.681) calories that are gonna get burned and not necessarily a lot of change is gonna happen in your body overall from lifting weights. Coach Brian Parana (16:0.090) We do also want to address weak points. These occasionally show up in your body and your muscles and the muscle growth or the strength. If you are training for muscle size, as an example, we need to find that balance of strength and muscle connection to be able to stimulate growth inside the muscle belly. Coach Brian Parana (16:28.669) Maybe your triceps take over your bench press or biceps take over your back work. We need to maybe adjust grips, change range of motion, or maybe just add targeted work to help those different areas grow. Think of, I talked about long partials the other day. That could be a really useful tool. Coach Brian Parana (16:52.936) in your exercise toolbox to strengthen a bench or strengthen a back where you're focusing on the back muscles to do the work, not the arms to finish the rep and say rowing. You do the first half of the exercise and you're to really pinch your shoulder blades together and pull, pull, pull hard with your glats and pinch your rhomboids in the back there. Coach Brian Parana (17:22.893) and then you're not gonna finish all the way inward, it's start to increase the amount of bicep action that you'd be going there. Coach Brian Parana (17:35.400) If the goal is strength then weak points are going to show up in different parts of the actual lift itself. Say in a deadlift or a squat you might have some form breakdown at different points of the movement that then force you to shift your technique and then be ultimately challenged to get to finish and complete the lift. Coach Brian Parana (18:3.619) that's not great. If your deadlift slips out your hands that is generally just a great rule that the bar is too heavy for you. Okay, certainly you could use grips and straps but if you're relying on those because your forearms aren't strong enough that's a clear weak point and most people would say hey, build up your grip strength so you can hold the bar and Coach Brian Parana (18:33.016) that's going to be in alignment with what your body is actually physically capable of. Now, of course, if you're a beast and you can deadlift over 400 pounds, then you might need to have grips regardless, either way. But if you're not, then you should consider focusing on strengthening your grip. Now, if your squats is another example, Coach Brian Parana (19:1.070) Folds you forward as you bring up you get to the bottom of the Squat with your thighs parallel or maybe hip crease slightly below the knee and as you come up your hips shoot up a little bit sooner than your your low back does leaning your shoulders forward and down as your hips rise This is a problem. We need to bring your quads up with maybe more front squats or specific leg presses if you wanted to target Coach Brian Parana (19:31.075) quads on the leg press and we're going to go a narrow stance and your feet closer to the bottom of the platform that you're doing it on. That will target your quads a lot more. If your bench press hurt your shoulders, try lowering the frequency of the amount of reps and sets you do or the amount of times in the week that you do bench and supplement with dumbbells or close grip pressing. Coach Brian Parana (20:1.036) The goal is to find where your limits are and then strengthen that to then get stronger. It's the most common constraint that you're dealing with that you need to address. That's so important. Coach Brian Parana (20:23.843) Practical application how? Just do we apply this information well if strength is your goal Around half or three quarters of your total training volume should come from your main list think of if you're gonna do a hundred reps as an easy example then 50 to 75 percent reps of the workout are gonna come in the main lifts and then the other 25 or 50 Coach Brian Parana (20:52.813) could come from the auxiliary. The rest always is associated with the amount of work that you're doing to support the lifts. Going more strength, you need two or three, possibly even up to five minute rest, depending on how crazy strong or hard you're going. And if we're into hypertrophy, it's a little bit different. If that is your goal, use one or two compound lifts for each muscle group, then add one or Coach Brian Parana (21:22.238) accessory movements that support full or balanced development. Again, can put this is one of my favorite setups is having three major muscle movements with an auxiliary. I think that is a very suitable easy way to allow you to build muscle, get a lot of umph out of the workout that you're doing and it really gives you a lot of bang for the buck. Coach Brian Parana (21:51.382) when you're there. Coach Brian Parana (21:54.176) Now we want to make sure that either way you're developing balance in your training and you're mastering the movements with proper technique, most importantly. We look at efficiency and periodization. Training efficiency comes from focusing on the lifts that give the most return on your effort and the efficiency in your time. Compound movements are going to Coach Brian Parana (22:24.269) build the base, foundation, isolation can exercise, you can fill in the gaps and having variation keeps your body balanced. So meaning that on say push days or chest days, you can do bench press on sometimes, but maybe dumbbells on others or bands on others or body weight on other days to have some variation and doing different angles and positions of the hands, the elbows, the rotations of the Coach Brian Parana (22:53.942) hands this makes a difference in how your body trains and allows you to build more strength and more muscle mass in key areas. Just know that too much variety isn't necessarily always the best thing and you never actually address weak points in your weightlifting game so to speak. Coach Brian Parana (23:23.116) Goals find steady process, rhythm to get efficiency and progress happening. Now we go back to periodization. Again, that helps us stay organized. It allows you to start with more variety and accessory work during general phases. And think of, say the first four to six, eight weeks could be a general strength training. Then we can work on speed or strength specific where you're Coach Brian Parana (23:51.455) changing the rep range or even the tempo, which we'll get into later to get different responses back from your muscles. All right. We want to have specific lifts. We want to go in plan. want to go and prepared, have a good idea of what exercise selection looks like best for you. Again, using Coach Brian Parana (24:19.132) major muscle groups first, then isolation works second. You don't have to get too fancy with all these other crazy workouts or routines or whatever else that they've come up with throughout the last couple decades of exercise just trying to make it fun, different. Think of say Men's Health Magazine. Sometimes they can get a little varied in their exercise creation. Coach Brian Parana (24:48.640) But when it's all said and if you benched with dumbbells or presses or pushups, you did shoulder press, you did a pull down or a lat pull down, you did legs as a squat and a deadlift, you're gonna be super fit, super functional, and just stay consistent. Coach Brian Parana (25:12.649) That's it for our exercise selection portion. We're going to go into the fast five questions. If someone's short on time, what's the best three exercise combination for total body strength? This is number one. If you are pressed for time, I'd go with squats, pull ups and dumbbell presses. The squats going to train your lower body and your core. Coach Brian Parana (25:41.984) Pull ups are gonna hit your back, your arms, and your core too. If you bend your knees up a little bit and engage them, they definitely hit the core, you'll feel it. And dumbbell presses cover your chest and your shoulders. Say an incline press would be phenomenal. Then you're not only all the muscle parts, but even movement patterns of a vertical and horizontal pulling motions. Coach Brian Parana (26:7.658) They cover all your muscle groups, they move your body in full range of motion, keep your heart rate up. And if you did those consistently for a year, you'll get a huge change in response in your body and you will stay healthy. You will stay joint healthy because you're balanced. Too many guys just always go to International Chest Day on Mondays and never do legs or. Coach Brian Parana (26:36.031) back because they can't see their backs so why train the back you just gotta train them the the chest and the biceps all right question number two what's one movement most men over 40 should stop avoiding in the gym Coach Brian Parana (26:56.687) deadlifts. A lot of guys avoid them because of fear of injury but if you learn the proper hinge technique it's one of the best things that you can do for your spine, your posture, for your strength, your functionality. You will have to pick things up off the ground the rest of your life. So for a musky you got to be controlled and you need to leave the ego at the door no matter what you do. Once you figure out that Coach Brian Parana (27:26.067) hip hinge safety and understand how to do it, you'll definitely notice better performance in everything you're picking up from your kids, to carrying groceries without pain. And I de-lifted yesterday. It's just part of the hex bar de-lift. I just do a rep range that's appropriate for me. Number three, how often should someone actually change up their exercises? Well, Coach Brian Parana (27:55.527) Most people change exercises too often. We don't want to get willy-nilly. But if you do a say a traditional strength training protocol, it's going to go eight to 12 weeks of following a program and then changing the exercises. Why? Because then you spend a lot of time developing that muscle connection, that's the movement patterns, the Coach Brian Parana (28:23.986) the nervous system is firing on our sons and you'll see consistent strength programming in that process. Coach Brian Parana (28:34.254) is important. I do like a little bit more variety than doing that but I am consistently always doing chest exercises, back exercises, leg exercises, shoulder exercises in my training. Number four, what's your favorite way to fix a weak point in a main lift? Me, Coach Brian Parana (29:1.609) dart by identifying where the breakdown happens. This is exclusive to every single thing I ever do with anyone. Why did someone eat the candy bar? Why did someone make a bad choice around me? Why did someone stay up late? Why did someone do this? Why did they make this choice? Why did they do a push up and they got down but they couldn't get back up or Coach Brian Parana (29:27.227) whatever we had to find where the breakdown is happening and that's when we can find the the solution. If your deadlift falls at the top we need to strengthen your glutes as an example. If your bench stalls halfway we need to focus on building some triceps to finish the movement off all the way up. Then isolate that weakness with a lot of accessory work for those key areas. Coach Brian Parana (29:57.394) while still trying to keep the main lift in your program. You would just do extra accessory work after you're done with your main stuff. This is about balance. Other ways you can do it, adding pause traps or tempo work that help create a little bit of variety but also focused effort. And question number five. Coach Brian Parana (30:22.414) If you could only do one lower body exercise for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? Squats, right? What else do you think I was gonna say? Step ups or something or the inner thigh machine? Silly enough, we're not gonna do that. Squats, it's the most bang for your buck. It's the king of all exercises. Coach Brian Parana (30:48.167) Great, leg strength, core stability, mobility, range of motion, joint health, and it challenges your body in so many different ways. That would be it. The second one for me, personally, I love pull-ups. I would do lots of pull-ups. Coach Brian Parana (31:5.489) Well, I want to thank you for that and shift into wrapping these things up. Now, I do have a 30 tips in 30 days sequence, an email that you can have free for you. It's going to give you simple, easy, actionable tips around fitness, around nutrition, around exercise, around recipes, around any different things that make it easy from coaching thousands of people for Coach Brian Parana (31:35.485) 23 years I've tried to break it down into easy simple tips. Here you'll learn how to eat smarter, move better, build daily routines that actually work. Just clear steps you put to work right away. To join the list it'll certainly be in the show notes but go.brianprana.com backslash 30 days. Coach Brian Parana (32:2.525) and this will start building a healthier, happier, more confident you. I want to thank you for listening to Driven for Our Health. This is our 20th episode. I'm super proud that I was able to get here and even do it so fast in under six weeks. And I really enjoy doing the podcast and I hope you do too. Please comment and let me know what other topics you'd love to cover and I will add them to my list. I already have the next 10 literally. Coach Brian Parana (32:31.933) structured out on what I want to talk about and there's I want to get to over a hundred episodes with this podcast and then all it's gonna take is a little bit of time and a whole lot of talking now if any of my episodes help you and you think they might help someone else to share them with a friend that'd be awesome well next episode we are gonna go and talk with John about his progress literally I worked with the guy Coach Brian Parana (33:0.848) and he's made amazing progress. So you'll hear his story and what he's doing and how he's doing it. And then we're to get to the next level of this pyramid on level number five. This is level four, the level five of the pyramid, which is rest periods. We'll talk about how they affect both strength, your growth, your recovery. I'm coach Brian Prown to signing off. Build that muscle, burn that fat.