Fitness after 40
Part 3 of a series
In my last article about my fitness journey, I discussed my nutrition and how I had to make changes to achieve my desired goal. For this article, I will discuss my workout routines from where I started, to where I am now.
Well, stupidly enough, I went into my fitness journey last year without a plan. My first day back in the gym was kind of an adventure to say the least. I hadn’t consistently been in the gym in nearly 15 years, so the only thing I could go off of was my workout routine from when I played collegiate sports.
Yes, I know that was dumb. I was a track and field athlete, so using the same methods I used in the weight room as a teen would not be the best way to approach a workout at the age of 43. That thought never crossed my mind as I just wanted to get started.
My first day back, I couldn’t decide where to start. I didn’t know whether I should do upper body or lower body. I also thought maybe I should just concentrate on a couple muscle groups and call it a day, since it was my first day back. I did neither. Instead, I chose to do an entire full body workout and was in the gym for nearly two hours. Once again, I know that was dumb.
When I woke up the next day, I was in more pain than I could ever remember. Literally every part of my body was hurting. I was in so much pain I could barely take a shower as I could not raise my arms very high. Needless to say, I didn’t last very long at work due to muscle soreness and left to go home early.
I know some of you are asking if I stretched before the night of my workout, or even the next morning, and the answer would be no. I know, I know, very stupid on my part as I was setting myself up for failure. That soreness lasted almost a week, even though I went back to the gym two more times during that span.
After suffering through that muscle soreness, I realized there has to be a better way to approach my workouts. I then started reading and researching workouts for people over the age of 40. What I found was most information was geared toward either losing fat or gaining muscle. But I wanted to do both.
I went down a rabbit hole for over three hours, reading and researching information online from medical doctors, fitness experts, social media influencers, and bodybuilders. I even reached out to a few of my friends that have gone through what I was attempting to do.
Instead of working my entire body every workout, I realized that I need to break down my workouts to hit specific muscle groups twice per week. I work multiple jobs and have a family, so I didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the gym each week. I had to figure out a method that worked around my schedule.
After a few weeks of trial and error, I was finally able to nail down a workout regime that worked for me. I decided to go with working out three days per week. On Mondays, I would work chest, back and shoulders. On Wednesdays, I would work arms, chest and legs. For Fridays I would work back, arms and shoulders.
That split seemed to work great for me and what I wanted to accomplish. I soon realized I was leaving out something very important, and that was cardio. I would sprinkle in cardio every now and then, but didn’t have a dedicated routine for it because I was too focused on the weightlifting aspect.
What soon changed my mind was the start of basketball season. Once basketball season started, I found myself officiating multiple games per week, which added to the number of calories I was burning. The pounds literally started falling off quicker than I could count. That’s when the light bulb went off in my head that I needed to incorporate more cardio into my routine.
I did a little more research and found that low intensity cardio works best for burning fat. On the days that I worked out, I would finish my routine with 30 minutes of cardio on the treadmill at 13% incline at 2.5 mph speed. That allowed me to continue dropping the pounds.
Once basketball season was over, I quickly realized that only doing cardio three days per week was not sufficient as I saw tremendous results during the season. Instead of just working out Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I chose to incorporate two additional cardio days (Tuesday and Thursday) and it has been working out great thus far.
One aspect of working out that I didn’t consider until I was six months into my journey was recovery. I thought just taking rest days was enough, but I quickly found that it wasn’t. I would get little aches and pains periodically that I ignored. Then I had a conversation with a friend of mine that is a bodybuilder and he suggested I start getting massages, at least one per month.
I took his advice and got a membership at Massage Envy and needless to say, that was one of the best decisions that I have made in my life. I like to get a massage every two to three weeks and it has helped my journey tremendously. Getting routine massages helps recovery more than I could have imagined and I truly recommend it for anyone who lifts weights.
I am sure my routine will change slightly as I continue to read and research. Good luck to everyone on their fitness journey. Stay tuned for my next article on my fitness journey.
