Tips To Continue Building Muscle Mass While You Age

January 23 2014

Tips To Continue Building Muscle Mass While You Age

It’s no secret that muscle becomes harder to build once you hit the age of 30. Depending on your physical activity levels, it’s not uncommon for men to start losing 3-5% of their muscle mass each decade past 30. This is why it’s important to maintain a proper exercise and diet regimen; otherwise, all of the sweat you’ve invested into the gym will be gone once you hit the “golden years.”

Watch Your Recover Times

Note: as the body ages, muscle recovery takes longer. This is due to the lower levels of testosterone and human growth hormones (HGH). While you may have recovered after a good gym workout in just 24-48 hours, it might take you 3 days or longer once you hit 40+.

For maximum muscle-gaining benefit, you should wait until your muscles are fully healed before hitting the gym again. Constantly lifting weight and performing other high-intensity interval training (HIIT) exercises without proper rest will continue to wear down your muscle fibers without allowing them to grow.

On your recovery days, you can still perform some cardiovascular workouts or target different areas of your body. For instance, you could work out your shoulders one day, arms the next, followed by legs, abs, and chest. The key thing to remember is that you want to avoid working out the same muscle groups multiple days in a row.

Boost Your Metabolism

One of the reasons why muscle growth slows as we age is because of the body’s lower metabolism. Metabolism is the rate at which the body performs chemical processes. And when the body’s metabolism is low, it’s not able to build or repair muscle fibers as quickly; thus, slowing down your muscle growth.

So, how do you keep up your body’s metabolism levels? Along with regular exercise, you should also focus on high-protein, low-fat foods. Be sure to check out our previous blog post here for some quick and easy energy boosting snack ideas.

Get More Sleep

As we age, a good night’s sleep becomes harder and harder to come by. And when you toss and turn or stare at the alarm clock for hours on end, you’ll wake up in the morning with a lack of energy. This lack of energy will not only sap your desire to work out, but it may also lower your metabolism levels.

If you’re struggling to get a good night’s sleep, try the following:

• Perform longer bouts of cardiovascular workouts during the day so your body is tired at night.
• Avoid eating heavy meals at least 2 hours before bed.
• Turn off the TV and make your bedroom as dark as possible.