March 2, 2026

Muscle, Aging & Longevity: What the Science Actually Says For Men - 81

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Season 1Fitness

If you are a career driven man in your 40s or 50s, you can keep the same body weight for years and still feel different. Softer through the midsection. Slower to recover with less strength and more aches/pains.


A lot of that comes down to a shift in body composition. You lose muscle and gain fat, even when the scale barely moves.


In Episode 81, Coach Brian breaks down the key takeaways from a deep science conversation featuring Dr. Brad Schoenfeld and Alan Aragon.


These are two of the most published voices in resistance training and nutrition. My job in this episode is to translate the research into clear actions you can use right now.



You will learn:

  • What sarcopenia is, and why muscle loss starts earlier than most men think
  • Why resistance training is the main tool for slowing muscle loss with age
  • Protein targets that hold up in research, including what 1.2 vs 1.6 g per kg really means
  • Why effort matters more than the “perfect” rep range
  • How to train 2 to 3 days per week in about 30 minutes and still make progress
  • What to watch if you are dieting, or using a GLP 1, so you do not lose muscle with the fat
  • Supplements with real support behind them for men over 40, including creatine, omega 3s, and vitamin D





Simple scoreboard from this episode:

  1. Daily protein grams
  2. Resistance training days per week
  3. Waist measurement once per month



If your energy is down, your clothes are tighter, and your labs are creeping the wrong direction, this episode will give you a clean plan to protect muscle, improve health, and stay capable as you age.



Learn more about The Call To Rise
Drop 20+ lbs in 100 days and feel the best you have felt in years


www.thecalltorise.com






Research cited in this episode (selected)


Want help applying this to your own health, weight, energy, or lab numbers?

Coach Brian Parana offers Health Hot Seat coaching segments for men who want a clear next step with nutrition, fitness, weight loss, blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, or daily consistency.

Learn more about The Call To Rise, a 100-day coaching program for driven men over 40 who want to lose weight, improve their health, and rebuild confidence:

www.thecalltorise.com

To connect with Coach Brian:
brian@brianparana.com

Disclaimer: This podcast is for education and coaching support only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your physician before changing medication, treatment, or medical care.

  • There are two versions of you. Gentlemen, in your late 60s, early 70s. One that moves well, one that's on his feet, one that his grandkids look up to. One that has a legacy of being healthy, fit, taking care of himself from the people that are closest to him, and everyone else around him in his circle of influence as well.
  • The other one sits on the couch, is too tired, has gained weight, has chronic illness, has fatigue, aches and pains, and feels more like they're 80. The difference between those two men is mostly what happens in the 40s and 50s of their life. That is what today's about. Welcome to Driven for Health. I'm Coach Brian Peraña, episode 81.
  • This is going to be talking about your health, your aging, muscle, longevity, and how to prepare yourself for the years later to come. I don't know about you, life is speeding up on me. It is fast-tracking. My oldest is going to be graduating in 2 years from high school. They were little.
  • In my head, I picture little Levi. I picture my family, I'm driving them around the United States, taking them all different places. But, they're older now, and they they don't necessarily want to hang out with Papa as much as they once did, uh because they're doing other things with their family, with their friends, and and everything else.
  • Today's episode came out of a long research conversation. I spent a lot of time researching, taking notes on, and two of people that I look up to in the space, Brad Schoenfeld, that has close to 400 peer-reviewed studies underneath him, and Alan Aragon, who'd spent decades on in the data, in nutrition, in science, and the real-world training.
  • And we're going to discover what were some of the different things that they talked about, and what their experiences are from the sheer volume of experience. My sheer volume of experience comes with 23 years of working individually with people in their day-to-day lives around taking losing weight, getting better blood panels, and ultimately living a healthier, long-term lifestyle that fits their identity, fits their persona as a person.
  • All right, we're going to discover what the important information is, and I'm going to translate it into the easiest way I can. Let's get the science jargon and all of the other things that come up for just these type of conversations. We don't want to get deep into the data, we want to keep it easy.
  • We're going to cover muscle loss, why it happens, when it starts, how to [snorts] slow it down, what protein targets you should be actually aiming toward, how to train in a way that produces results without breaking your body, breaking your metabolism, and setting yourself for a long-term disaster ultimately, and how to manage it all in a busy life schedule.
  • This is what you need to know and what to do with it. Let's jump into it. And the problem you probably do not know you have, part one. Let's start with something most men have never heard of, sarcopenia. The simple definition is age-related muscle loss. Starting around 40-ish, the average person loses roughly half a percent of muscle mass per year.
  • It sounds insignificant, but it's not. It builds and it compounds over time. Just as if you only gained a quarter pound a week. Quarter pound a week. Think of that that McDonald's hamburger patty, Quarter Pounder, right? Just that much body fat in a week. That's 1 lb a month, that's 12 lb a year, that's 25 lb in 2 years.
  • That's a lot, and it adds up quick. At 50, the rate picks up to 1 to 1.5% and at 60, it can accelerate to around 3%. This is not good for any man or even woman listening into this show. You want to preserve muscle mass as much as possible. By the time you reach your 60s, somewhere between 10 to 20% of the population has already has medically diagnosed sarcopenia.
  • That means a measurable weakness and reduced physical function is one in five people. So, look around, go to the work today, count however many coworkers you got or employees you have, and do some simple math. Right? Five people are going to be out of 25 are going to be there, and just start picking people off.
  • Most men notice this has shift, but they didn't know what the name was. They Even me, at some point I realized, "Hey, I really need to focus on doing squats. I feel like my quads from my yesteryears of running so much and cycling so much are starting to go away." One fear that I have is just ending up as how much I weighed in high school.
  • I'm about 190, 195 right now at 6 ft. I want to maintain all this muscle mass that I've been working so hard to put on for the last So, I've I've lifted pretty much most days every day, you know, at least three to four times a week over the course of my lifetime, and plus all the other activity I've done.
  • I want to maintain that hard work. But, that [clears throat] I start seeing my quads start to go down, or if I take a couple days off, then my belly button looks a little jiggly more than I like, and maybe you feel that, the scale slowly moving up. You feel softer, your stomach might even, if you have belly fat, might start feeling hard.
  • That's not because you have a six-pack. All right, that's that's hardening belly fat that is going to cause you health complications later. You're slower to recover. Right now, I personally have been managing a five-week glute strain, and even sitting here recording this podcast, I feel it. Keep moving my leg, wiggling around to sit differently to keep it from straining or having a lot of compression on my sit bone.
  • It's like way high in the glute, and I think it's it's where my my piriformis attaches to my glute, and that's where I popped it, and it it hurts. I'm not going to lie, it aches and throbs sometimes. Uh I've experienced a lot of injuries in my life. This is just another one that I'll and figure out.
  • You wish you were 25 again. But, Brian has a 25-year-old mind and a 43-year-old body now. And hopefully, I can maintain this body for as long as possible. Quick question. When was the last time you honestly thought about how much muscle you actually have? Not how much you weigh, but how much muscle you actually have. And here's what makes sarcopenia different than weight gain.
  • You cannot see it in the regular scale. Man can hold the same body weight from 40 to 55 and slowly be trading muscle for fat the entire time. Same number, but when you take your shirt off, you feel radically different about your body composition, about how it looks, about the risks that you're increasing to get, about your potential health issues in your bloods and labs.
  • An analogy, I like throwing analogies out here, and hopefully this helps. Think of it like a truck engine. If you drop from an eight-cylinder to a six-cylinder, the truck might still be being able to move and feel like a truck, but when you hook up something on the hitch, you you feel that that power loss. It's it becomes noticeable.
  • The fuel burns less efficiently, and it takes more effort and energy to move the weight. Over time, everything downstream is affected in your body. Muscle being the engine, and less muscle means the entire system has to work harder to do the same job. And I'm not talking about burning more calories to do it, that's not it, because if you have less muscle on your body, you have less active muscle than to burn calories and keep your metabolism high.
  • And let's make this point clear. Talking about skeletal muscle is the conductor of the fuel that you use across the entire body. And this thing is it's the engine, it's the thing that keeps it going, and and it's just not just movement, but it's how your body handles energy from glucose, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and it all connects back to how much muscle you have and how well it functions in your body.
  • This is not necessarily just looking better in a t-shirt, but it's about your metabolic health, your blood panels, your sugars, your A1Cs, your risk for heart attack, and your ability to stay ultimately long-term functional independent in 60s, 70s, and you didn't work so hard to spend it all in assisted living house.
  • I saw my grandmother go through that. She had type 2 diabetes, and ultimately it cost her her both her legs from the knee down, and it cost a significant amount of identity loss. She was the matriarch. We always went to her house, and she just lived in a box basically in five different assisted living homes because she was unable to take care of herself at home and had a multitude of issues that needed taking care of.
  • Not the way that we want to do this. I don't. Definitely not. I'm going to live, live, live, live, live, die. That's what my life is about, and what I'm working so hard for. When does all this start? It's something that the sarcopenia is age-related muscle loss, and most people think that it's just an old person problem, right? You just get old and and you're you're old.
  • Well, literature says that muscle degeneration can start to begin as early as your your early 30s. And it's worth repeating that if you live a sedentary life that sits at a desk, and you drive a car, and you don't move your body, and you scroll too much on your phone, and you don't play with your kids or go walk with your wife or family or do fun exciting things, you just sit, and you don't work out, yes, it could start then.
  • And this is when this the shift from being active in your high school and maybe college years into career mode, family mode, kid mode starts to happen, and that's ex- is what you end up accelerating this process. I have so many people that would still eat the way that they did when they trained, and they gained 15, 20 lb as a result of not changing their nutritional habits coming out of high school or coming out of college when they have more responsibilities.
  • I don't know about you listening in, but I have a mountain of responsibilities that I'm constantly choosing between this or that as the outcome that I need to manage in my day-to-day life between work and family. Most guys aren't going to get a DEXA scan or body calipers pinched. They they used to call me the the the Vulcan the Vulcan grip.
  • I'd pinch an inch in a sense and get a lot of body fat, and people would be like, "Ow! Don't do that. Stop pinching me." Well, I'd I've pinched hundreds and hundreds of people throughout my day giving body fats. And then even at my CrossFit gym, we had a Bod Pod that would do it as well. But the point being is that most aren't going to go do that or go to get an InBody scan.
  • Let's real quick go through these. DEXA is gold standard. You're going to have to go somewhere that actually has a DEXA scan. You search DEXA DEXA d e x a scan near me or in your zip code, and you're going to find some places, usually institutions or colleges are going to have that. There's a Bod Pod. It looks like a giant egg that you sit in.
  • There is What else? We have skin calipers. Your personal trainer could do that. It's something like that or a local person. The InBody is a very popular one that sends bioimpedance, which is an electric pulse to your body to be able to get it to register how fast that the the the speed of electricity goes, and it it gives you some numbers and data.
  • And they also have the smart scales, but problem with those is they run off AAA batteries, and they go from one foot to the next. The fastest, easiest way to get there is basically through your your manhood there. And it's not assessing the other parts of your body, whereas you get something like a Hume scale H U M E scale or similar on Amazon, then that can help at least get your upper bodies, and it's like a cheaper InBody scan that you can do at home.
  • All right. This The point being is that you're not measuring your muscle mass, and you don't have any idea how much you actually have as a percentage. You you have you don't just have your fat weight and your muscle mass. There's muscles, bones, organs, and different water, and muscle glycogen.
  • There's a lot of fluid in your digestion tract or in your bladder that gets into this. So, you don't just think, "Oh, I gained 10 lb of muscle." Chances are if you gain 10 lb of muscle, it's going to take you a natural better part of a year and a half. That's just the process of what it is. And that's something that the scale isn't going to show is body percentage of fat.
  • Now, you can use the smart scales at home just to help as a reference, but we can't hold those to say a truth in a sense. We just have to make sure that you are paying attention to it. Also pointing out something that most people aren't thinking about is in your 30s and 40s who are sedentary, their biology is sometimes older than the fit, well-fed, younger, or people who take care of themselves.
  • It could be literally twice their age. Okay, this is what the research shows. If you are taking care of yourself, you might physically your biological age might be lower, which is what you want. A quick question here is it Is it possible that right now, today, the gap between where you are and where you think you are is bigger than you want to admit to yourself? Wow, that's a that's a question to really stop and think. Pause right now.
  • Stop and reflect on that question. Is the gap where you think you are to where you actually are greater than you think? So many people might think, "Oh, I just need to lose 10 lb." when they actually need to lose 25. That's truth. That is something that I have experienced. I remember this tall 6 ft 190 lb person, which seems like that should work, but he didn't have muscle on his body, and he had to get down to the 160s to finally get some visible abdominal definition.
  • It literally took him 25 to 30 lb to get down and just see some abs. That's even if I where I'm at right now, I could lose 10 lb and and be visibly defined and they say shredded in a sense, but I would have to lose 10 lb. I'm good around about 190, and that's something important. A good analogy here to think about is savings account comparison.
  • Building muscle early is like saving for retirement. The men who protect and build their muscle in their 40s and 50s are making deposits. You're putting a penny in the bank every time you go to there for compounding interest so that you maintain the success of muscle mass on your body long-term. The [clears throat] ones who skip this are actually making withdrawals that they don't know or realize.
  • The other point worth mentioning is activities of daily living, even for fairly active people, are not enough to stop sarcopenia muscle loss. Walking the dog, digging in the dirt in your yard, doing building things in the garage, fixing your car, or whatever guys still do that, taking the stairs. Yes, these things help in terms of overall daily living, but they don't counteract muscle loss.
  • And the research is very clear about this. It's very important that you're doing some form of muscle what I call muscle building activities, strength training of sorts so that you stay strong. Resistance training, especially in our convenient modern day lifestyle, is the only real way to counteract sarcopenia. Okay, I don't want to exaggerate it, but that's really what it is, and that's what data shows.
  • And it matters because a lot of men tell themselves that just being active or staying busy or getting steps. Yes, for for me, steps are a huge part of my Call to Rise program that I have, but that's because so many guys are sedentary, and we need to find a way to burn lots of calories without having to shrink your calorie so much to be in a calorie deficit.
  • So, if I can get you doing neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis and moving and fidgeting more, and keeping you at a modest amount of calorie intake, then you can manage losing weight, and we then also help to mitigate muscle loss and keep it more in the the range and realm of fat loss, which is the only thing I really want you losing.
  • Studies that should change everything. Here's a study that I think about when I hear all of this. The the researcher name Ria Beatrice Errone, went into nursing home. The average age of the subject was 90. Uh there's some senior citizens there. These were people in their last chapter, let's admit. If you're at 90, you're happy to be around and hopefully you have a higher quality of functional life.
  • And if you make 100, then hot diggity, you're in the top percentage of people who have lived this Earth. Uh these were people they did uh studies on leg extension 3 days a week for 8 weeks. That's it, just one leg. Leg extensions each week. And did it for 8 weeks. The at the end of the 8 weeks, the average increase in strength was 150%, meaning their functional capacity went up 50% and the cool part that matters most is three of the 10 subjects were able to walk without assistance of canes.
  • Very cool study to help people in their last phase of life get healthier, get better. That's really important here to make sure that you can stay focused on this and keep things moving. This is in your 80s and 90s. This is the importance of strength training in your older People think leg extension are non-functional and why would you just train that thing instead of doing squats or whatever, but it shows a point.
  • And it can be the the the functionality of this is getting 90-year-olds to walk is incredibly important. What what that means for you. You're not 90, you're in the craziness of midlife. We don't want to have a midlife crisis, we want to have an evolving process of grow living your best self. And you still have decades ahead of you and even if you're in really serious condition, you can still make a difference.
  • As you notice, I'm bringing on different guests that are men in their 40s and 50s that are juggling really busy lives. Uh I'll have in about a week and a half a gentleman that is in his second startup. He started his first startup that he participated in his 50s, now he's in his 60s. His name is Jeff. We'll be showcasing him and how he he's got four kids, too.
  • So, you know he's super busy and and how he managed his life in the 30s being out of shape to ultimately running marathons and being trying to keep up to the younger ones in his startup. And and these are things that that I want to share and expose you to that you still have time. Even if you're 40, you're still hopefully 50% done with this life and you still have time.
  • Research is on your side that you can still make real strength gains that manage better body composition, functionality, that manage insulin sensitivity, blood markers and they really can alter what could happen 10 years from now of saving yourself from a heart attack. Super important. It's possible.
  • That's the point that I'm making and biology can still be on your side if you strength train. Why muscle is about more than how you look. Very important, okay? It's a a secretory organ. What that means is that muscles produce myokines and substances that get released into the bloodstream have effects across multiple systems and the muscle being one of them.
  • So, these myokines reduce chronic inflammation. They support insulin sensitivity. Okay, if you're running around with insulin resistance in your body, doing some strength training can help balance that out for yourself. They interact with the brain, the liver and other tissues in ways that protect long-term health.
  • Muscle is not just something to look good, it has to be a very active part of a functioning system in your body so that you can keep it running properly. We also have two different types of muscle fibers. We have type one fibers that handle endurance and type two that handles strength and power. The research shows that as we age, the type of type two fibers, the strength and power ones, are the most at risk.
  • Because you can say keep walking, but you can't keep jumping or lifting as the older you get. And once they start dying off and you lose the type two fibers, you lose your ability to produce that force quickly or even get it back in the first place. That's a big challenge for you. Why does this matter, you think? Because when you trip and you lose your balance and then something forces you to react, usually your body can just react and that's your type two fibers to keep you upright, keeping you from quickly
  • slowing down the rate of which you fall and engage in the strength is what keeps the stumble from becoming a fall. In your 60s and 70s, if you do not have those type two fibers, when you fall, you might break something. Roughly 50% of people who break a hip at then their 60s and 70s never regain full functional capacity.
  • And I'll also share this is that if you break a hip in your later life, you're very much at risk of not necessarily dying from your hip, but of other major issues like pneumonia. Pneumonia might get you. 6 months of skipped resistance training means that more type two fibers can get lost and this is muscle that you can't really regain.
  • Biology does not pause because you're busy or stressed or you're waiting for things to slow down. Every month you delay is a month that it's harder to get back and you literally it's just like saving money in a bank account or compounding interest. If you don't put money in, then you end up losing long-term.
  • The question is, if you keep doing exactly what you're doing right now listening to this, what does your physical capacity look like at 65? Really be honest with yourself. And not oh, I used to bench, yeah. You used to bench whatever, you used to squat whatever and now it's a fraction of that and it will get even worse. Here's the something the research talks about as well, most coaches don't really explain very well is anabolic resistance.
  • As you get older, your body becomes less efficient at building muscle from the same inputs, okay? Right? You you can't you have to put more reps and sets in to get the same outcome. As a younger person, say my oldest, he can build muscle pretty efficiently and just even hitting some protein right after training session, he's into muscle building mode.
  • Now, for me, I've been training forever and I'm not going to get that same impact like he does. I have to fight. Mhm. I have to do a lot to be able to get my muscle to go and my strength to go because I've been doing this so long and it's a problem for me to do it this way. Now, an older individual often needs nearly double the amount of effort in training and recovery to get the same signaling.
  • Okay? Just you need a stronger signal to send to the muscles and it takes a lot more effort. The decrease in muscle protein synthesis response is something that you want to pay attention to and the system can be stimulated, but it takes a lot more effort to do when it's 30. That's the main take. Uh another analogy to think about this.
  • Like a thermostat that has been turned down. The heating system still works, it'll still keep it warm enough. Say over the winter, it normally sits around 75 in the house, but it somehow it slipped to 62. It's still warmish in your house, but man, the amount of work to get it back up to 75 is going to be pretty significant for you to get it back up there and that's a big problem because that's energy, that's fuel, that's capacity, that is effort that you have to put in.
  • Now, the key finding from any research about resistance training, the prime lever, is what we're looking for is making sure that the workouts stay the the lever of resistance training is stronger for the impact of protein effects and getting enough protein into your body is important and you might even need more the older you get.
  • Uh we'll get to the targets here, but we need to make sure that you're training with real progressive overload and pushing yourself and making sure that when you're you're checking the box in the gym that it actually provides stimulus. Again, having to do a couple extra reps, a couple extra sets makes where the the the muscle move.
  • Or at least helps you get the response that you need in your body to be able to produce the strength and muscle retention and and potential gains there. When you look at your muscle scans at 1670 and they can be compared to active adults for sedentary adults is a significant is significantly different in terms of the muscle mass, the quality of the tissue itself that's muscle tissue.
  • You want the muscle to be responsive, soft, supple, and and strong and function better. There's a big difference between a sedentary person and a non-sedentary person. And then sometimes I have to show up in real life with clients. When we're working through they are having to deal with hey, I want to lose weight. That that's great and all, but you haven't been active for 10 years.
  • The weight isn't necessarily just going to fly off 30 lb in 30 days or something, even in 3 months. It might take 4 5 6 months because your lifestyle is so counterintuitive to keeping you strong and healthy that it is important to note. Protein targets, let's go over some of those what the actual research says. So, the numbers of where lots of men are they're actually under eating protein and not even thinking about it.
  • The standard RDA for protein is .8 g per kilogram of body weight or to 1.6. And what does that mean in terms of body weight? That could be about .8 times your pounds or all the way up to 1.2 times your your body weight. And and most men brass tacks, what does this mean is that this is going to be somewhere between 150 to 180 for most men.
  • If you're a larger man, you might need more. Now, bare basic amount of protein that a man needs just to do the very basic types is about 50 g in a day. All right? And that's that's the truth. All right, I've said looked it up multiple times to just make sure that guys know, hey, this is the minimum amount and you're just barely over it because you're not eating any protein in a day and that's a problem because we need it to get in there.
  • So, for a 200-lb man we need to be eating at least 145 g of protein per day and possibly more to get there. All right? And this is really important and and this is where the sweet spot is, say 145 150 to 175 180. Now, if you're in a calorie deficit trying to lose the belly fat that you gained for so long then you might need to be higher to help preserve muscle mass while you stay in a calorie deficit.
  • This is what the research shows. Men when they're cutting calories while training need more to preserve that muscle mass there. And it might even be closer to 2 g per kilogram or in common terms, say 170 180 190 g of protein in a day. It doesn't have to be perfectly timed in the day as long as the total daily protein numbers equal what they're supposed to.
  • That's the prime number, the driver, the important part of the spot. Okay? You do not have to race home, oh, I forgot my protein shake at the at home and I just left the gym. I have to race home to get a protein shake in. It's not going to matter that much. The total daily protein is the thing that I pay the most attention for my guys.
  • If you hit that number, then great. Then we can focus on the actual, say other areas of the training, of water, of all the other parts that that make this into a lifestyle. How do we actually train for guys? The just referencing some different episodes, episode 5 through 11 is the nutrition pyramid. Episode 17 through 23 is the strength pyramid.
  • You can go back to listen to those to help dive in a little bit deeper into those things, but the actual training is what produces the results. So, you can eat all the protein you want, but you'll still lose muscle over time. The minimum effective dose of someone that is focused on healthy aging is two to three times a week of at least 30 minutes per session and a multi-joint movements, rows, presses, squats, type of hinge movements, think a deadlift, are a basic starting point.
  • I would always encourage even doing more, three, four, or possibly five, and you can work into some body splits to keep that up. One thing that I do with me personally, I will do a lot of these multi-joint movements, big muscle groups, and I will break it into a chest, back, shoulder, or leg components. And maybe I'll just do one focus of area of the muscle or I will break it up into multiple uh sets.
  • Maybe I'd do chest and back or maybe I'd do shoulders and legs or maybe I'd do legs and back or maybe do back and shoulders. It depends on the rotation of where I'm at in the week, when I am working out, who I am working out with. As you know, I try and work out with people cuz I think it's just more fun and I get a lot more out of it.
  • That's really important so that you are showing up and you're maximizing those range of there. On rep ranges, this can be pretty misunderstood, but the research says whether you lift a weight for six or even up to 20 reps that you can still get a response in muscle growth. I particularly like to do eight to 12 as the rep range that I prefer to coach my guys in because eight is on the heavier side, 12's on the lighter side, and that can indicate where we move up.
  • Certainly, we can cycle through different variables of having a higher rep weeks or slower rep weeks just to create a variability in the overall training that you're doing. I think that's really important as well to even mix it up, variety's sake. That's really important. Now, the variable does matter and how close to failure do you do? You don't need to fail on every rep, but you do want the last few reps to be genuinely difficult.
  • Uh you don't have to push through comf- un-being uncomfortable or even risking injury. You don't need to have an intense amount of burning, but you do want to make sure you're completing every rep with great form. Quick question for you. If you're currently training, are your sets hard enough? Are your reps hard enough? Could you do more reps if you admitted it and you had someone standing next to you saying, "Go, go, go.
  • " Uh my buddy Chris he'll he'll start to I'll be pressing and he'll come up to me and get ready to to lift my arms up and all sudden the three more reps come out of me. Right? That means that I still had some reps in reserve. When we push through this comfort zone they a lot of guys that I've worked with, especially back in my personal training days across the days, would say they never trained that hard in their life.
  • And that's a big gap that men think that they're training hard, but they're actually not doing enough to stimulate the muscle. They're working out, but it's not making the big enough difference that they need it to be. Let's talk about rest periods here. Rest periods research shows that less than 60 seconds between the sets starts to compromise muscle development.
  • Above 90 seconds, there isn't any additional benefit unless you're doing a really heavy set. Think of sets of one, three, or maybe even five reps. And you do more specifically strength training in and of itself where you're purposely trying to build muscle or power and strength. Whereas say hypertrophy, we can find that 60 to 90 seconds or 45 seconds to 75 seconds to work in being able to do it.
  • Now, if you're short on time, sure we could superset opposing muscle groups, chest back, biceps triceps, and this will maintain your volume with less total training time in the gym, and that's one of my favorites. I do it all the time. On training to failure it's we want to be clear that training to absolute failure on every set is not required, uh especially on compound heavy lifts like squats and deadlifts and because it can increase risk of injury, and for any of us guys right now, the most important thing is making sure that you are not
  • getting hurt in your workouts. Please, for the love. Don't get hurt cuz if you get hurt, then you can't do like I am right now my glute. I can't run. Like I want to train for a marathon. I've talked about that, and I can't because my butt hurts, and I can't run. I am biking. I recently put up a uh a post on my Instagram of how I created a work station.
  • I found some bed slats from an old bed that we had with my kids that I made into a stand-up desk, upright desk, and it's about 60 in tall, something like that. My bike that I found, I swear this thing someone gave it to me, but it looks like it's from the 1980s. It's a magnetic tension. It's an upright bike, and I found out that I could pedal on it.
  • So, I made this thing, and I can pedal without it hurting my butt, and I can develop my cardiovascular system, which is super important in the marathon training, and I can bike. So, that's perfect cuz then I can ride the bike when I'm doing laptop work or creating these podcasts, and then I can just strength train and focus on pushing myself and maintaining muscle mass that way. So important.
  • An analogy here about safety on training. Think of your training effort like a speed limit. You do not need to hit the speed limit wall every single time. You need to be driving above idling and making sure that you are capable of working. The workout where you finish every set feeling like you could have done five more reps isn't going to do you a lot for your muscle growth, and we want to make sure that the the workout where you have last two reps of each set required real focus is the workout that counts, pushing those last few reps.
  • A little bit more research on actual cardio. It does not show that moderate cardiovascular exercise hurts muscle growth for most men doing a reasonable amount, running, hiking, biking, tennis, pickleball. These aren't going to break down your muscle. It's only in a lot more extreme uh versions of doing lots and lots and lots of cardiovascular training, which will potentially cause you issues long-term.
  • Let's think about recovery now, supplements, and what else matters. On recovery, the most common mistake that I see is insufficient supplements. It is too much volume piling up with you, not enough rest built in, meaning that you just keep working out hard, and and you aren't resting enough. If you're sore all the time, then this is a very important time to take a break, and you want to make sure that your training load is sustainable.
  • There are three supplements that are super important, and these ones matter. The other ones you really have to pay attention to what you're doing. First one, creatine monohydrate. 5 g per day. There are non-responders, roughly 20 to 30% of you the population, that just don't get any uh effect to it, but it helps with strength, with uh helping work harder in the gym to break muscle down to rebuild it.
  • It's super cheap. It's been researched for decades. I'm a big fan of doing I take it uh 5 6 g a day, and then also the importance of doing the uh uh brand on Amazon, Bulk Supplements it's called. The creatine the it's a basic white package with an orange silhouette of a guy on. That works great. That is a preferred one.
  • It's cheap, and I just recently found that they have been flavors, sour apple, uh lemon ice, and that can make it a little more fun. Um but I literally scoop it out and throw it right in my mouth and then swish it down. Make sure I get every last about of it. So, I've consistently taken it over the last 2 years, and occasionally I'll I'll get off track with it, but then I'll pick it back up.
  • Uh for example, I'm going to be going to Peru here in about 2 to 3 weeks. I am going to get back to a a cycle of uh creatine usage after that and be consistent throughout the summer. The second one is omega-3 fatty acids. 2 to 3 g of combined EPA and DHA per day is what the research shows back-to-back, and that's what's super important here is to make sure that you are focused on that part, making meaning that the EPA and DHA really help you stay on track with anti-inflammation, with muscle protein synthesis, with
  • strength gains. And if you eat fatty fish two to three times a week like salmon, then you're going to be a lot closer than you think. A favorite brand is Stronger Faster Healthier. With that, what we do is we focus on getting in that it's a liquid, and it's super high quality. A teaspoon of it can carry over 3 g, and it actually tastes good.
  • There's an orange and a lemon flavor, I believe. Vitamin D3 is a very important one, and you can get uh D3 K2 as well. Might as well get those both in combinations. It's a very common deficit for older adults. Think of our modern society. We don't go outside. Unfortunately, we literally just don't spend time outside, and there is the deficiency from vitamin D, which comes from the sun.
  • And it doesn't impact your musculoskeletal functions. So, saying taking 1 to 2,000 IUs or even more in a day is not unreasonable for you to start building it up. There are 5,000 mg ones that if it makes sense, then sure, take those. You just want to make sure that you understand if that's an appropriate amount for you to take, or and you can take a little less.
  • Or just get out in the sun. Go walk outside and be in the sun. And March, right now March 2nd is according to this one. It's it's super sunny out, but it's cold, and I'm not having a lot of uh skin exposed there. Let's talk about something that a lot of people talk about these days. It's very popular. It's the cold plunge.
  • There's a meta-analysis that Brad Schoenfeld did. The cold exposure decreases muscle protein synthesis and reduces muscle development. If you can enjoy occasional cold plunge for recovery, that's cool. It is not going to ruin your progress, but making it a daily progress around your training is not really a smart strategy, and we don't have to prioritize that.
  • What about GLP-1 drugs? I'll keep diving into this, and we can certainly have its own stand-alone episode as well. This is coming up constantly. Ozempic, Wegovy, semaglutide, even peptides are showing up. All these medic- medications that people are on. It's almost There's a lot of people on them, and unfortunately, people are going to those first over seeking out professional help.
  • The research says that these drugs suppress appetite significantly, keeping you in a calorie deficit, and it's a super powerful tool, but the problem is if you have a suppressed appetite, that often means that you are suppressing your protein intake, and then thereby suppressing your training capacity. And saying broadly, people on these drugs just they literally forget to eat, and they forget to fuel their bodies, and they performance in the gym drops because they're not giving their body what it needs. The risk of muscle loss
  • on the GLP-1 drugs is a real factor that you need to be aware of and pay attention to if you're on it, and it's something that is just not being as focused on, especially with the prevalence of it coming out. You have to really focus on getting adequate amounts of protein in, and resistance training is part of the process so that the the drug can help reduce calories, but you protect your muscles.
  • Some practical takeaways for this week. Here's what I want you to walk away from this episode. Six clear things you can act on right now. Get your protein up. Men in their 40s 50s need to be easily having ideally 150 160 170 g of protein a day. And if you need to track it, Cronometer is a favorite app of mine that I use to help make sure that people are getting adequate amounts.
  • Number two is doing resistance training at least two to three times a week minimum. This could be a push-pull rotation, a push-pull-leg rotation. This could be body splits, chest, back, shoulder, legs. I'd only recommend that if you're doing a high frequency of it throughout the course of the week, then that actually makes a lot of sense.
  • Takeaway three, stop chasing hard complex workouts. Rep ranges anywhere from 8 to 20 have been shown to increase muscle hypertrophy. Again, I prefer 8 to 12. I'd rather just lift something heavier than go so many reps with the occasional variable of just switching it up and doing a high rep workout. Takeaway four, rest anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds is reasonable.
  • If If going over 2 minutes and farting around on your phone, you're wasting time. Number five, consider creatine, omega-3s, vitamin D3, and that will help you get some of the necessary supplements and all the other ones you really have to pay attention to if they are worthwhile. On episode, I believe 10 or 11, I think it was 11.
  • Episode 11 has supplements and it can go over some of these in more detail. Takeaway six, stop waiting for the right time. There is none. You have to do the thing. You got to work. Time passes every single day and if you haven't checked that exercise box in a week or a month or a year or 5 years, no better time than to start now.
  • Just think of those 90-year-olds. They were able to increase strength and functionality in their 90s. What to track? Track your daily protein, track the number of days that you work out, and track your waist circumference measurement. If it's above 40, you're in big trouble for health issues like heart attack and cholesterol. Don't do it.
  • Quick question here. Is honestly, do you know what your daily protein intake is right now that you're consuming? Most don't. Most don't know how many calories they are eating. So, if you don't know those things, you can't accurately control your body weight. It's just how it goes. I hope that you've enjoyed this and I just want to call out if you've been struggling with your health, with your nutrition, with your overall lifestyle, then I have program for that.
  • The Call to Rise. It's a 100-day fat loss challenge. It's built for husbands, fathers, men in their 40s, 50s, career-driven guys that are wanting to take care of themselves, but they're so busy. Uh in episode 60, I talk about three guys, Mike, Andy, and Lucas. All three of them in a 100-day time frame through the holidays lost 98 lb.
  • So, you can listen to episode 60 and go over that to learn how we did it. It's easier than you think, but the simple is easy, easy gets done. Well, weight loss, everyone knows what to do, but they aren't doing it. And that's where this comes into play. There is five pillars in the program. The fifth one is the brotherhood.
  • That's something that men need to do this together. They don't have to just say the 1950s I don't ask for directions. Like that's not real. That's doesn't That's not helpful. So, consider joining it. The call to rise.com. 100-day fat loss challenge. I'm here to guide you every step of the way and really just literally transform your life.
  • Leaving you with this episode, the research is clear. Muscle loss is inevitable in our time, but it doesn't have to happen quickly if you are doing the right strategies to manage it. Okay? Super important. Resistance training is a huge lever. Protein intake and getting an adequate amount is super important and making sure that you have time available to do the exercises that you need are going to be very important to being successful here.
  • You have to do it. Do it now. Start today. And if you can't get the help, then join my program or join someone else's program. Do something. Go walk and start doing some push-ups. All right. This is over and out for episode 81. On 80 episode 82, I'm going to talk about 10 scenarios that you typically go through and see and interact with in your day-to-day life and very specific solutions that will help you free yourself from the challenges of that so that we can really overcome it and be successful.
  • I want to thank you for your time today and as always, share the episode if you found it valuable with someone close to you. Thanks.