Training

Key information:

1. An unloading phase is a temporary reduction in weekly training load to give your body and mind a break from hard training.
2. To unload correctly, you should use the same weights as during your hard training phase, but perform 30 to 50% fewer sets per week and 2 to 4 repetitions less per set.
3. If you have just started training, then you should unload every 8 to 10 weeks. If you've been training for more than three years, then you should unload every 4 to 6 weeks.

In many ways, building your body is a lot like building anything else - the more you put in, the more you'll get...at least up to a certain point.

You need to train hard to build the body you want, but you can't just rely on your afterburners.

Challenge your body week after week with no breaks or unloading periods, and your journey will be slowed by the following obstacles:

• Regular plateaus
• Overuse injuries
• Lack of motivation
• Half-hearted training sessions

This is the reason that top level athletes of all disciplines from field hockey players to cyclists to powerlifters incorporate regularly scheduled periods of rest and recovery into their training.

In fact, the best athletes place tremendous emphasis on this because the consequences of overlooking it are so severe (chronic poor performance, career-ending injuries and more).

When it comes to building muscle and strength, unloading periods are one of the best recovery tools at your disposal.

You've probably heard about unloading phases before, but you're probably not sure why they're used, how to do them correctly and how often you should use them.

Look around the internet for answers and you will find many conflicting opinions:

• Some will say that de-stressing periods are a waste of time, while others will say that you should just give yourself a week off instead.
• Some will say that you should unload by reducing your weekly sets and weights, while others will say that you should just reduce the number of sets you do each week.
• Some will say that you should unload whenever you feel it's necessary, while others will say that you should plan your unloading periods in advance. Who is right?

The short answer is that if you follow a well-planned training program, unloading periods are an effective way to prevent injuries, plateaus and burnout.

To do this, these off-load phases must be planned and executed correctly, otherwise they will either not help to adequately promote your recovery or may even be a complete waste of time.

In this article, we will therefore take a closer look at this,

• What an off-load phase is
• Why so many people don't benefit from off-load periods
• How often you should discharge
• When you should discharge and when you should give yourself a break
• What a proper discharge phase should look like
• And more...

Let's start with the first point.

What is a discharge phase?

An off-load phase is a temporary reduction in weekly training stress to give your body and mind a break from hard training.

By stress, I mean the general mental and physical strain and exhaustion caused by heavy training, as well as the microscopic damage to your muscles and joints.

By alleviating these stressors, you can reduce overuse of joints and ligaments and reduce the risk of injury or burnout. Unloading also reduces the demands placed on your muscles, but this is not as important as the former. There are a number of adjustments you can make to reduce training stress:

• Reducing intensity (weight moved)
• Reducing the volume (number of sets or repetitions performed)

For example, if your training program consists of 5 training sessions of 70 to 80 heavy repetitions (75 to 85% of your 1RM weight), an unload phase could reduce the intensity to 50 to 60% of your 1RM weight or the volume to 35 to 40 heavy repetitions per training session.

Typically, unloading phases are scheduled after a phase of progressively more intense training.

For example, it is common in strength training programs to increase training intensity and/or volume week after week to promote gains in strength and muscle mass, and then after three or four weeks of these progressive increases, schedule a one-week unloading phase to allow your body to prepare for the next round.

Unload periods typically last a week, although some exercisers use longer or shorter unload periods depending on their training plans and goals.

If you are training particularly hard or have been training for a long time without unloading, then a full week may be appropriate. On the other hand, if you're not training that hard or have only recently unloaded, then a few days may be enough to do the job.

Another way to give your body a break is to take a complete break from resistance training. This works, of course, but if you take too many days off, your technique and desire to get back into heavy training can suffer.

I generally recommend an unloading phase rather than a complete break from training, but sometimes it can make more sense to take a complete break from training with weights.

For example, if you're traveling and have limited access to training equipment, it's often better to take a full break and enjoy your free time rather than stressing about finding a time and place to train.

Summary: A de-stress phase is a temporary reduction in training stress to give your body and mind a break from heavy training. Such a phase usually lasts a week and is scheduled in advance.

Why do exercisers unload?

The basic theory of detraining is based on research into how our bodies deal with physical stress

Scientists are still arguing about what is the best way to describe this process, but there is a trend (1):

1. Add a stressor (exercise)
2. Remove the stressor (rest and recovery)
3. Adapt to cope better with the next stressor

In other words, you stress the body in a certain way, allow it to recover from the stress and it will become better at coping with that stressor in the future.

The third step - adaptation - is technically known as supercompensation and allows you to build muscle, increase your strength, increase your speed, improve your skills and coordination, etc.

Like maintaining good sleep hygiene and energy balance, unloading is a tool that falls into category #2 above - rest and recovery - and its purpose is to help with step #3 - supercompensation.

This cycle repeats itself in the short term and long term - both between training sessions and over weeks and months of training.

For example, after a training session, your muscles are exhausted and slightly damaged and if you provide them with enough calories, protein, sleep and rest, they will recover and regenerate and be ready for another training session a few days later.

If this is the case, then why do we need to unload at all? Wouldn't the body's ability to repair itself keep up with the stress and damage caused by training?

The answer is - not really.

Different parts of the body heal faster than others. Your central nervous system recovers from a heavy training session within hours and your muscles are repaired within a few days.

However, some tissue types of the body such as tendons, ligaments, joints and bones take longer to heal (2).

If you regularly move heavy weights, these tissues suffer tiny microfractures and tears and if you don't allow them to heal sufficiently, this damage can lead to strains, tears and injuries over time (3, 4).

By unloading regularly, you give your body the chance to release different types of localized stress that accumulate over weeks of hard training. You can think of it as an insurance policy against injury and overtraining.

Another reason that exercisers unload is that it allows them to do more productive workouts.

If you train for weeks and months without a break, you won't be able to maximize your performance in the long run. Eventually you will reach a point where you are only recovering enough to repeat the same workouts over and over again, also known as plateauing.

This is why unloading is one of the best ways to prevent or even break plateaus in your muscle and strength gains. The extra rest and recovery will allow you to start training blocks fresh and powerful and be able to move more weight and complete a higher training volume.

Simply put, you'll be better off with a month or two of hard training followed by an off-load period and another month or two of hard training than four months of hard continuous training.

Summary: The primary reason that exercisers unload is to improve their recovery, reduce their risk of injury and improve their motivation and ability to train hard.

Why will many exercisers not benefit from unloading training sessions?

The amount of rest and recovery the body needs depends on the level of stress you put it under.

Something significant like several weeks or months of hard training with progressive overload should be followed by additional rest and recovery such as an unload.

Something much lighter like a half-hearted, barely sweaty workout, which we see in many exercisers, does not require special periods of additional recovery. That's why some well-known people in the fitness industry talk disparagingly about unloading - in fact, many people don't train hard enough to need it.

They just show up at the gym, go through the motions, don't log their workouts and therefore don't strive to surpass their performance from previous workouts, and they don't properly control their diet to support their fitness goals.

Unloading has nothing to offer these guys and gals.

The key to improving body composition and performance over time is to regularly push your body a little further beyond its limits and then back off a little.

If you're not following a well-planned training program that revolves around progressive overload, or if you're not pushing yourself hard enough in the gym to make progress, then you have no reason to unload.

However, if you are following such a program and working hard to improve your performance, then you can benefit from unloading and should incorporate unloading periods into your training program.

In fact, I would say that a training program that does not include or require unloading periods is probably suboptimal at best and ineffective at worst.

Summary: You will not benefit from unloading periods unless you follow a sensibly designed, challenging training program that forces you to get stronger over time. However, if you do follow such a program, then you will benefit from unloading periods.

How often should you unload?

There is no universal, one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as some bodies can tolerate more than others.

In addition, the ideal frequency of unloading will depend on the following factors:

1. How strong you are. Stronger exercisers tend to need more frequent unloads to recover from their heavier workouts.
2. How long you have been training. Beginners need fewer unloads because they are not yet strong enough to push their bodies to the degree that more experienced exercisers can push their bodies.

1. How resilient your joints, tendons and ligaments are. Pain in the joints, tendons and ligaments is a reliable indicator that you need a de-stressing phase.

However, there are a few effective rules of thumb:

• If you're new to training with weights, schedule a de-loading week every 8 to 10 weeks of heavy and intense training. If you are in a calorie deficit, you should reduce these periods to 6 to 8 weeks (and yes, you should continue to train heavy even during a calorie deficit).
• If you have been training with weights for 1 to 3 years, you should plan a de-loading week after 6 to 8 weeks of heavy, intense training with weights. Reduce this to every 4 to 6 weeks if you are in a calorie deficit.
• If you have been training with weights for 3 to 6 years, you should plan a de-loading week after 4 to 6 weeks of heavy, intensive training with weights. Use the same unloading frequency if you are in a calorie deficit.
• I would not recommend doing more than 12 weeks of hard training without unloading at least once. In my experience, there is little progress to be made by training longer than this without a break, otherwise the risk of significant disadvantages increases.
• If you never feel the need to unload, then your training program is probably too light.

If you are new to de-loading, I would recommend that you plan a de-loading week in advance and stick to it no matter how you feel. This will ensure that you don't inadvertently increase your risk of injury or overtraining by stubbornly refusing to come off the gas.

Once you've learned more about how your body responds to training, you can take it a little easier with your off-load timing. You'll start to recognize when you need an off-load phase - your progress stalls, your body aches, your motivation to train wanes, your workouts feel much harder than they should, etc. - and you can respond accordingly.

For example, my current training program involves a lot of heavy training with weights and my sleep leaves a lot to be desired for various reasons, which is why I feel the need for an unloading phase every 4 to 5 weeks. Once this happens, I train hard for another week and then unload.

Summary: I recommend unloading every 4 to 10 weeks depending on how long you've been training and how you train. As a general rule, people with more training experience who train intensively need more frequent unloading phases than people who train for less time or train more within their comfort zone.

In the second part of this article, I will go into more detail about what a correctly executed unloading phase should look like and answer a few more questions about unloading.

Source: https://legionathletics.com/deload-week/

By Michael Matthews

Probably not, but there are real issues that can cause problems that people associate with adrenal fatigue.

Like many coaches, I used to believe in adrenal fatigue. The theory goes like this:

When you are constantly under stress, your adrenal glands work overtime and are forced to produce more stress hormones than they should. Over time, they become fatigued and are no longer able to produce stress hormones. The theory is that this leads to the body no longer being able to cope with stressful situations, resulting in a state of chronic fatigue.

The problem? The whole thing is pseudoscientific, has never been proven and is unlikely to actually happen.

This does not mean that people are lying about their symptoms. They are real and can be caused by excessive stress, stimulant abuse and other lifestyle issues that increase the production of stress hormones. However, they have nothing to do with exhaustion of the adrenal glands.

What symptoms are we talking about here? Here is what people generally experience when they suspect they are suffering from adrenal fatigue:

• A decrease in motivation
• Low energy
• A decrease in willpower/discipline
• Anhedonia (a lack of pleasure)
• Mood swings
• Disturbed sleep patterns
• Not feeling refreshed after a full night's sleep
• A decrease in physical and mental performance

What can cause these problems?

The most likely causes are as follows:

1. A depletion of dopamine reserves
2. Desensitization of the dopaminergic receptors
3. Desensitization of the adrenergic receptors
4. Depletion of norepinephrine reserves

Each of these situations will lead to the symptoms that we associate with adrenal fatigue. And all of these situations can occur when you are chronically under stress or overstressing your nervous system.

Depending on your individual brain chemistry, some of these will be more likely than others. For example, a person who is very sensitive to dopamine is more likely to suffer from depletion of dopamine reserves or desensitization of dopaminergic receptors. Why? Because this person is naturally very sensitive to dopamine, which is why this person does not produce large amounts of dopamine in the first place.

A person who is more sensitive to adrenaline has a higher risk of adrenergic resistance or depletion of noradrenaline stores. This is more widespread. About 14 to 20% of the population is dopamine dominant.

Still confused? Here's what you need to understand: Adrenaline and dopamine are neurotransmitters - chemicals that control your brain. They work by docking onto receptors and activating them. These receptors can be more sensitive or less sensitive. The more sensitive they are, the more strongly they react to neurotransmitters.

Dopamine and adrenaline are activating neurotransmitters. They activate the nervous system and increase motivation, willpower, drive, competitiveness and physical and mental performance. They also have their own effects depending on the part of the brain in which they act. Dopamine, for example, is the feel-good neurotransmitter.

The two are closely linked, as adrenaline is ultimately produced from dopamine. Dopamine can be converted into noradrenaline, which is then converted into adrenaline.

The more adrenaline you need to produce, the more dopamine you will need to consume. If you don't produce a lot of dopamine and use a lot of it to produce adrenaline, then you run the risk of depleting your dopamine stores. Let's take a closer look at this.

Depletion of the dopamine reserves

People with low dopamine production risk depleting their dopamine stores if they cause their body to release too much adrenaline by putting themselves in stressful situations. Different training variables will increase adrenaline release:

• Pace: A faster workout will result in the highest adrenaline production
• Volume: More volume means more adrenaline
• Mental stress: A maximum attempt can also increase the release of adrenaline

A person who naturally has low dopamine levels and trains at a high pace and high volume, always pushing themselves to the limit, risks depleting their dopamine stores.

Desensitization of the dopaminergic receptors

Another possibility is to make the dopaminergic receptors less sensitive. In this case, the effects are similar to those of depleting the dopamine stores: you have plenty of dopamine, but the receptors simply do not respond to it. This is far less common. It is unlikely to happen to the average person who leads a normal life and exercises. It is more likely to happen to people who abuse drugs or medications that directly target the dopamine receptors.

What types of drugs can make your dopamine receptors less sensitive? These are the most common:

• Cocaine
• amphetamines
• Ritalin
• methamphetamine
• nicotine

The use of these drugs can generate an enormous stimulus for the dopaminergic receptors. The receptors will adapt to this by becoming less sensitive to prevent continuous overstimulation. People who regularly abuse such substances can easily become resistant to dopamine.

Also, some anabolic steroids can stimulate the dopaminergic receptors, which can be the cause of steroid-related depression.

The other possibility, which is more common, is either desensitization of adrenergic receptors or depletion of norepinephrine stores.

Desensitization of the adrenergic receptors

It is very easy to desensitize the adrenergic receptors. Ask a bodybuilder who has used clenbuterol in the past. During the first day or two, clenbuterol gives a huge boost, causes tremors, provides monstrous energy, etc.

After 2 or 3 days the effects become more subtle and after a week you don't feel much of it. This is because the receptors are "down-regulated" or desensitized.

The problem with desensitizing the adrenergic receptors is that you no longer react to your own adrenaline. And this is what is responsible for low energy, lack of motivation, lack of discipline, poor self-esteem, poor performance, etc.

However, you don't have to use clenbuterol to desensitize your adrenergic receptors. These receptors are like the nitrous oxide injection of a race car: they are meant to provide a short-term boost in a critical situation. They are not meant to be active all the time.

If you are constantly under stress and releasing adrenaline, you can easily make your receptors resistant. This is most often the case when we mistakenly talk about "adrenal fatigue".

Depletion of the noradrenaline stores

A final possibility is depletion of noradrenaline stores. This can be caused by a chronic and excessive increase in cortisol levels. In addition to being an enemy of muscle building, cortisol is also what increases the conversion of norepinephrine to adrenaline. The more cortisol you produce, the more noradrenaline is converted into adrenaline. Symptoms of depletion of noradrenaline stores include

• Low energy
• A lack of focus
• Concentration problems
• Disorganization
• Low blood sugar levels

The bottom line? Excessively and chronically elevated cortisol levels can lead to what we think of as adrenal fatigue, either depleting norepinephrine levels (which is easier to fix) or desensitizing adrenergic receptors (harder to fix).

How do you know which of the two it is?

Apart from blood tests, you can mainly rely on observation. However, there is a test that can help you narrow down the causes.

Take 7 grams of tyrosine in the morning on an empty stomach, wait 30 minutes and then see how you feel. Compare this to how you normally feel in the morning.

• If you feel great 30m minutes after taking tyrosine - much better and more energized than usual - then the problem is probably a depletion of dopamine reserves (tyrosine is used to make dopamine).
• If you feel good - but not like you've found a mash silver bullet - then it's probably a depletion of noradrenaline reserves. In this case, it may take 45 minutes before you start to feel a little better. This is because dopamine is produced from tyrosine, which then increases the levels of noradrenaline.
• If you still feel low after 30 to 45 minutes and you don't feel any difference, then it's probably adrenergic desensitization.

The first two cases share the same basic solution: an increase in dopamine levels. Here it can be helpful to supplement a form of tyrosine and to ensure an adequate intake of vitamin B6, which is needed to produce dopamine. In addition to this, taking Rhodiola can help, which extends the lifespan of dopamine.

If your problem is a depletion of noradrenaline stores, then it may make sense to reduce your cortisol levels by taking 3 to 5 grams of glycine and a serving of magnesium (500 mg) after training and in the evening. Glycine is a neurological inhibitor that reduces cortisol release due to over-activation and magnesium can separate adrenaline from the adrenergic receptors.

If your problem is based on adrenergic desensitization, then taking magnesium (500 mg) three to four times a day may help to prevent excessive binding of adrenaline to the receptors. The same applies to an increase in meal frequency and carbohydrate intake.

A higher meal frequency and more frequent carbohydrate intake will reduce adrenaline production by directly and indirectly reducing cortisol release, which in turn will reduce the conversion of noradrenaline to adrenaline. If you are a carbohydrate-phobe, you may be afraid of getting fat. You may also gain a pound or two in the process. But that's nothing compared to the long-term damage caused by resistant receptors.

In terms of training, all of these situations require that you reduce your training volume by about 40 to 50%, that you reduce your frequency (do only three to four workouts per week), that you lengthen your rest intervals, and that you stay away from intensity techniques until the problem is resolved.

The training of natural trainers vs. steroid users

How important is it for a trainer to know if a bodybuilder they are training is using steroids or other performance enhancing substances? Does this change the way that athlete should train?

This question is super important because you can't train steroid-free athletes and steroid users the same way unless you're talking about a natural trainer who is a genetic freak in the muscle-building department.

But these athletes are rare and make up less than 1 to 2% of the population. The normal steroid-free exerciser does not have the advantages that steroid users and genetic freaks benefit from and cannot tolerate the same amount of training. Here are the main differences:

Frequency per muscle

Anabolic steroids activate protein synthesis and this remains permanently elevated, meaning that these exercisers do not need to train a muscle as often to achieve maximum growth. A steroid-free exerciser will only increase protein synthesis when training a muscle and the increase in protein synthesis will only last for 24 to 36 hours.

Thus, a steroid-free exerciser should train a muscle two to three times a week for maximum growth, while the chemically-assisted exerciser can achieve good growth even if they only train a muscle hard once a week (although again, I think two workouts a week would be better).

Volume

Chemically assisted exercisers can recover better from high volume. For them, muscle damage repair is faster and easier due to increased protein synthesis. This is why the approach of completely destroying a muscle once a week is popular and works well for these exercisers, but doesn't work as well for the average natural exerciser.

In addition, the frequency with which a muscle is trained and the training volume per training session are inversely proportional to each other: the more often you train a muscle, the less volume per training session you can use. A steroid-free exerciser should train a muscle more often for optimal results, which is another reason why they should not do so with a high volume per training session.

Number of exercises

This goes along the same lines as the volume component. A chemically assisted trainee can recover and grow sufficiently even at high volume, which is why they can perform more exercises per muscle group.

If you're like most bodybuilders, then you probably believe that you have to bomb a muscle from every angle. Well, a steroid-free exerciser has to be more careful with exercise selection. Since he can't recover as well and can't tolerate as much volume, he can't use a myriad of exercises per training session. He must choose his exercises very carefully and opt for exercises that offer him the most for his efforts.

He should avoid redundant exercises (e.g. bench press followed by dumbbell bench press followed by bench press on the multi press) and avoid unnecessary volume (exercises that have little to offer in terms of additional benefits).

Whether a steroid-free exerciser can train with heavy weights has more to do with the CNS, meaning that both steroid users and natural exercisers can train heavy if they have the nervous system for it.

How can you find out if you have the nervous system for it?

• Are you at the end 2 to 3 hours after a heavy training session?
• Are you cranky and unmotivated the day after a training session with heavy weights?
• Is your resting heart rate significantly elevated the morning after a heavy training session?
• Do you have a drop in libido after a few weeks of heavy training?
• Do you have trouble sleeping even when you train heavy if you train early in the day?

If this applies to you, then you don't have the nervous system to tolerate a lot of heavy training.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-52

https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-53

By Christian Thibaudeau

Q: How accurate are those watches where you can see how many calories you've burned during a training session?

A: They are not really accurate. A friend of mine recently told me that she did a training session with weights in which she burned 960 kcal. And even though I would really like to believe that - because it would make training with weights the best fat loss tool known to man - it's simply not realistic.

It's hard to know exactly how many calories you've burned during a training session. This depends on the exercises (squats use more energy than deadlifts), the number of repetitions completed, the training methods and the amount of muscle fibers recruited during each repetition.

For upper body exercises, a hypertrophy set lasting 40 to 60 seconds will burn perhaps 7 to 10 kcal, while a set of squats lasting one minute can burn up to 40 kcal (Victor M. Reis, R. S. 2011. Energy Cost of Resistance Exercises: J Hum Kinet. 29A: 33-39).

If you do four sets of this, we are talking about 160 kcal. If you perform another multi-joint exercise during the same training session, this could add another 160 kcal. If four smaller exercises follow, this could add 350 to 400 kcal. Such a training session would burn 650 to 700 cal and would be one hell of a workout.

A hypertrophy training session for the upper body could burn 250 to 400 kcal on top of your normal daily calorie consumption. For the lower body it could be 500 to 700 kcal on top of your normal calorie burn and a total body training session could be in the 300 to 500 kcal range.

I believe that the calorie consumption estimated by these watches/apps is mainly based on the measured heart rate as the basis for calorie consumption. These formulas were developed with cardio training in mind. In this type of training, the heart rate is directly proportional to the rate of energy expenditure because the heart rate only increases in response to the need for the heart to pump more blood to the muscles to provide oxygen for energy production.

However, when training with weights, the increase in heart rate can also be due to a high release of adrenaline. In addition, the heart rate may increase for the duration of the set and then remain elevated during breaks due to adrenaline/neuronal activation even though you are not continuing to exercise. As a result, these tools will dramatically overestimate the amount of calories burned during a training session with weights.

Why is this a problem? By giving you the impression that you are consuming a ton of calories, you can easily be tempted to eat more than you consume. "I just burned 1200 kcal during my weight training session! Now I can eat a hamburger because it only has 600 kcal!"

No, you can't. In the grand scheme of things, this isn't the end of the world, but it's still misleading.

Realistic gains at an age over 40

Q: How much muscle mass can a steroid-free, advanced trainee build in their forties?

A: I'd love to tell you that an advanced exerciser can continue to build tons of muscle in their forties...in part because I'm over 40 myself. But that would be a lie.

It's not even a matter of age (although that does play a role), it's a matter of training experience and adaptation. For me, "advanced exerciser" means at least 15 years of hard training. This means that you have already built up a lot of muscle. The human body has a limited capacity to build and maintain muscle without chemical support. This depends to a large extent on your genetics. ACTN3 genotype, myostatin levels, body structure and many other factors come into play here.

We don't fully understand all of these factors yet, but the fact is that the average man can gain about 15 to 20 kilos of muscle over the course of his training career beyond the weight he would have without training. Of course, anabolic steroids can overcome many of these limiting factors that prevent a steroid-free trainee from reaching the level of a Mr. Olympia.

I'm talking about pure muscle weight here. In addition to those 15 to 20 kilos, you will probably also build up a few extra kilos in the form of glycogen, water and collagen. Not to mention that you can also gain some fat and still look great. Over the course of your training career, you may put on 25 to 30 kilos of weight on the scale, but only 15 to 20 kilos of that will be muscle.

The closer you get to those 15 to 20 kilos, the slower and heavier your gains will be.

So let's take a 40-year-old man who would weigh about 78 kilos without training. Let's say that after 15 years of training he now weighs around 95 kilos with a similar or better body fat percentage.

Because he has been training all these years, he has built up around 15 to 17 kilos of muscle. Realistically, he can now build a maximum of 3 to 5 kilos of muscle.

If a second 40 year old man has only built 5 kilos of muscle over the course of his training career (because he has not consistently trained hard and intelligently), then he has the potential to build more muscle than the person who has trained properly.

Why will the more dedicated and experienced exerciser have a harder time building a lot of muscle? First of all, because of adaptation. His body is already well adapted to the training. It is very difficult at this point to do a workout that is still stressful for the body. If the training is no longer stressful for the body, then the body will not change further because no additional muscles are needed to do the work.

If you want to increase training stress, then you need to:

1. Move more weight or.
2. Complete a higher volume or...
3. Push yourself harder during your sets

But there's a catch here. All three of these things can increase your cortisol levels and hinder your progress. What's more, you can't keep increasing these factors. There will come a point where it will be difficult to increase the weight of an exercise by 5 kilos over a period of 6 to 8 weeks. And if you are already going to muscle failure or close to muscle failure, then there is not much room for an increase here either.

And increasing volume is one of the best ways to stall progress, especially for older exercisers. It's also often not really practical in the real world. A normal person with a job and family can't spend 2 to 3 hours in the gym every day. An advanced exerciser needs an extremely high training stress to keep progressing, but doing so could also do more harm than good.

As you get older, your physiology changes - and not for the better when it comes to building muscle:

• Testosterone levels tend to drop
• Growth hormone and IGF-1 levels can drop
• The number of stem cells decreases due to lower IGF-1 levels. Stem cells are needed to repair muscle damage. Fewer stem cells mean that you can no longer repair muscle damage and build muscle as easily.
• Your body is more likely to suffer from systemic inflammation. This can significantly reduce your capacity to build muscle, partly because inflammation can reduce insulin sensitivity.
• You lose nerve cells and have atrophy in others. This will reduce your strength. And when your strength decreases, it can become harder to maintain muscle or build new muscle tissue. Muscle tissue is adapted to a certain level of load. If your nerves no longer allow you to produce as much force, then the reduced level of muscle tension that occurs during exercise may not be sufficient to stimulate muscle growth.

Lastly, life tends to take over as you get older. If you have a full-time job and a family, then you also have a lot more stress. This can also affect your capacity to make progress.

And now for the good news

Don't stop trying to improve because it's always possible to surprise yourself and achieve more than you thought possible. I'm in the best shape of my life at 41 and I'm still able to improve. Here are a few guidelines that can help older exercisers make progress;

1. don't always train hard

I know this seems counter intuitive, but periods of maintenance training can help make your body more receptive to training again. Call it strategic deconditioning if you like.

Perform the minimum necessary to avoid muscle loss for 3 to 5 weeks. If you are a dedicated exerciser, this will be less than you think. Reduce your volume, don't push yourself so hard on your sets (finish the set 2 to 3 reps before reaching muscle failure) and focus more on technique than load.

I like to do three full body workouts per week, using 3 to 4 exercises per workout. After this phase, you can push yourself hard for 6 to 8 weeks, increasing the demands of your workouts every two weeks or so.

I discovered this strategy when I started doing more seminars. I spent a phase of four weeks working out two to three times a week, not having the energy to push myself hard. However, when I went back to serious training afterwards, I exceeded my previous results.

2. use a specialization approach

This is something I started doing with high level bodybuilders to exceed a growth plateau.

If you are more advanced, then you need a serious stimulus to force the body to adapt. But at the same time, if you increase the overall training stress, eventually you won't be able to recover. Specialization is an excellent way to achieve this strong stimulus without overloading the body excessively.

Choose one or two muscle groups (or a heavy basic exercise) to focus on. Train these three days a week and the rest of the body once a week at maintenance level (either by training everything during one training session or by splitting it into two training sessions. Then focus on different muscle groups or a new exercise every four weeks.

3. focus on the look you want to achieve

There is a phenomenon I call muscle migration. If you reach an overall muscle mass that is close to your limit, you can still achieve an aesthetic evolution of your body by changing where those muscles are located.

1. If I train like an Olympic weightlifter or an athlete, then my hamstrings, middle back and gluteus will improve, but I will lose some mass in my arms and chest.
2. If I train more like a bodybuilder, then my chest, arms and quadriceps will improve, but I will lose some mass in my glutes and hamstrings.
3. If I train like a disc jumper, then my chest, arms and shoulders will improve, but I will lose mass in the lower body. In all three scenarios, my weight will remain in the 100 kilo range, but the visual impression will be very different.

If you are approaching the maximum muscle mass you can achieve, then you should rely on developing the muscles that will give you the look you want. Deliberately place muscles that are not needed for that look second. This is very similar to specialization but without rotation every four weeks.

4. get lean

Everyone looks better when they are leaner. If you can no longer build a ton of muscle, then you can still improve your look by becoming more defined. I've talked about how I achieved my best look at 41. I was indeed less bulky than earlier in my life, but because I was leaner, the overall look was better. Even if you don't build muscle, you'll still look fantastic if you achieve a real 8 percent body fat percentage.

5. reduce inflammation and improve your insulin sensitivity

If you're older, these two factors are largely responsible for preventing you from building muscle and getting leaner. Your lifestyle and diet will play a big part in this.

If you want to take prevention a step further, fish oil capsules and curcumin are great for reducing underlying systemic inflammation.

It would be nice if we could build muscle by the day we stop exercising. Sadly, this will not be the case. But even if building muscle is harder to achieve, you can always find ways to improve.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-57

https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-58

By Christian Thibaudeau