Strength training for men over 40: where to start

From your thirties onward you lose muscle every decade unless you give your body a reason to keep it. The research estimates vary, but a loss of several percent per decade is the common finding, and it speeds up later in life. Less muscle means a slower metabolism, weaker bones, worse blood sugar control and, eventually, less independence.

The good news is that muscle responds to training at any age. Men in their fifties, sixties and beyond gain real strength and real muscle when they lift consistently. You have not missed the window. You are just being told, fairly loudly, that it is time to use it.

You do not need forty exercises. You need to push, pull, squat, hinge and carry. A push is a press-up or a dumbbell press. A pull is a row. A squat is sitting down and standing up with control. A hinge is picking something heavy off the floor with your hips, not your back. A carry is walking with weight in your hands.

Those five patterns are how you move through a normal day. Train them and everything else gets easier, including the sport you used to play and would like to play again.

Two or three full-body sessions, thirty to forty-five minutes each, with a day between them. Pick one exercise from each of the five patterns. Do two or three sets of eight to twelve reps, stopping when you have two or three good reps left in the tank.

That is it. Canada's movement guidelines ask for muscle strengthening at least twice a week, and two honest sessions beat five ambitious ones you abandon in March. The how-to-lose-a-dad-bod plan uses three sessions a week because that is the number most men can keep.

Start lighter than your ego wants. The first four weeks are for learning the movements and letting your joints and tendons catch up with your muscles, which adapt faster. When you can do all your sets at the top of the rep range with good form, add a little weight or a couple of reps next time.

Write it down. A notebook or an app, it does not matter. Progress you can see is the best motivation I know, and it stops you repeating the same weights for a year without noticing.

They start at the intensity they trained at when they were twenty-five, get sore for a week, tweak something, and stop. Or they follow a programme built for a twenty-two-year-old with no job and no kids. Neither is a strength problem. Both are planning problems.

I train less now at 49 than I did at 25, with fewer hours and less intensity, and I am in better shape. Consistency beats intensity every time after forty. Build the habit first, then the load.

Keep walking, and keep some cardio in your week. The guidelines also ask for 150 minutes of moderate activity, and your heart needs it. But if time is short and you have to choose, strength first. Walking fills the gaps. Lifting is the part most men skip, and it is the part that protects you as you age.