2732: The Best Workout, Diet, and Supplement Routine for Men Over 40

0:00If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump. Mind pump. with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, here's what we did. We put together the best workout, diet, and supplement routine for men over the age of 40. We know you're going to love this episode. By the way, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, the world's best probiotic, Seed. Go on our link, get a discount. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump.

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1:15Again, 60 % off across the board. MapsFitnessProducts.com. Use the code BLACKFRIDAY. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. fellas those of you over 40 like me here's what we did we put together a sample perfect routine diet exercise the whole deal supplements too now of course it needs to be individualized but we're going to give you an example of what this would look like if you're trying to get fit lean and muscular let's get into it i feel like this is more justin and i you're more almost 50 wow Yeah, that's a great point, Adam.

2:04Justin and I are in our 40s. He relates to us. We're almost 50, so I feel like this is off a little bit. So tell us what it was like back in the day. Yeah, dude. That's true. I want to put this together because every time we do any kind of content for people in this age group, either men or women, we get a lot of feedback, a lot of interest, and I get it. I think that if you're looking for good information, it tends to come from fitness influencers that, you know, if you're listening to these fitness influencers, you're in your mid 40s, you probably don't identify with them. You know, they're, they'll tell you things like beast mode and get after it and do this, that, and the other.

2:49And you're like, man, I got kids and a job. I haven't worked out in a while. Like, is this going to work for me? And there's a lot of confusing stuff that's out there. So what I want to do is kind of distill it down and put something together that really would work. Because what we put together here would definitely work for most people. Now, like I said in the intro, individualization has to happen. So it's impossible for us to get on this podcast that reaches millions of people and give you, an individual, the perfect routine for you. So there's going to be a lot of variants here. But I wanted to give an example.

3:23What would this look like for the average 40-plus-year-old dude that's just trying to – they want to get strong. They want to look good. They want to feel good. And they don't want confusion. There's a lot of stuff out there. There's a lot of information out there that confuses people. What actually works and why does it work and why should I focus on what you guys are saying? I find it interesting that you reference the young fitness influencer right now in regards to a topic about over 40 training. I just saw a post from our friend Joe DeFranco commenting on the current trend that's happening right now in the young fitness influencer space.

4:02And that is a massive reduction in their volume. Yeah. and so and i think what you're speaking to that happens to a lot of these people that maybe come across that content and then why why does the content that we talk about tend to resonate with this age group is i think something that you start to figure out is as you understand that exercise is a stress on the body a good one right it elicits all kinds of great positive change but nonetheless a stress. And when you are north of 35 years old, most likely have a career, maybe you're married, probably have kids or about to have a kid. And so the level of consistent daily stress that you have is just higher than probably what it was when you were 22 years old.

4:47And because of that, you respond way better with a lower volume training program. And so I think that these fitness influencers, what's happening, I think it's getting around and the message. Because I also would also argue that the more affluent buyer is the 35 to 40-year-old guy or girl, right? And so these people might have found these young people and bought their programs and realized, oh my God, this is just too much not working for me. And I think that the influencers are coming around and it's now becoming trendy. Well, they've been pitching to their emotional pull forever and like trying to get that, that thought process of like, well, I still feel like an athlete.

5:31I still feel like I can get after it. I can still, you know, I'm capable of what I could always do. But yeah, over the years, like you start adding all these stressors, responsibilities, lack of sleep, like all these factors, it doesn't quite work the same. And you do need to really take these things into account and adjust and make these modifications. Yeah. And there's two points here that I think are important to, uh, to understand. Uh, you said it's a stressor. That's true, right? The reason why you get stronger, uh, when you exercise or you improve your stamina is because your body's adapting to a stress and it's attempting to make that stress no longer stressful next time.

6:10So you do 10 pushups today. That's hard. Your body's like, Ooh, we got to get stronger. So that 10 pushups isn't a stress anymore. And of course what you do is you do more pushups and add weight and that kind of stuff. So that's number one. Uh, and the stress has to be appropriate. If the stress is inappropriate, if it's the wrong dose, oftentimes too much of a dose, you're not going to get faster results. You'll actually get worse results, sometimes no results and at worst injuries. There's another point though, that needs to be made here is, and the data supports this now. So we knew this as trainers for a long time and we knew this through experience, but now the data is starting to show this.

6:46When it comes to strength training, 80 % roughly of all you'll ever get at a strength training. In other words, if you can imagine the max potential benefit you can get from strength training is a hundred, 80 % of it is about two days a week. The other 20 % comes from doing more and being smarter and the program. And in other words, you get diminishing returns. So one day a week gets you a bulk of results, two days a week gets you more results. And then it starts to kind of become diminishing returns. So if you're listening to this and you're like 80 % of the max potential two days a week, plus I have a job, I got a family, I'll take that.

7:25I'll take that all day long. So the other thing is I think guys in this age group are like, I don't want to waste time. I don't have the time to go to the gym and do nothing or hang out or do a bunch of exercises for no reason. I want to do something and get something out of it so I can go do the important things in my life, which are my job, my family, you know, taking, taking care of things. And so that's the other point here is two days a week of good strength training. We'll get about 80 % of what you could look for three days a week, gets you closer to 90 % anymore. Now you're squeezing out a couple percent each time.

7:56And that's just, again, the data now supports what we've known for so long. So what we're going to give you with exercise. And by the way, in this episode, we're going to give you examples of workouts, why we're choosing the exercises. We're going to give you examples of diet, what that's going to look like. And then we'll talk about supplements. We're going to give you, what we're going to give you is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. So you're not wasting a bunch of time. You're not, you know, figuring crazy thing out with your diet. You know, you're going to, you're going to hear a lot of things with diet about this oil and that fatty acid.

8:29And, and there's, there's value there, but it's like, look, let's look at what's going to give us the biggest bang for our buck. And again, to be quite honest, I think most men are going to be, would be very happy with a generally fit, healthy body. Yeah. You know, they're not necessarily like, I want to be 6 % body fat and be jacked, especially if it means I'm going to not do anything else and just live in the gym. I just want to be fit, healthy, and strong. I want to look like a workout, essentially. You'll get that from what we're about to talk about. I mean, I'll make the argument you get more than that.

8:5980 % of your potential is a lot. That's right. That's a really fit. That's right. You're happy with that. Especially if paired correctly with the nutrition piece. That's right. I mean, you're - You do them both together. You're doing good. I think from an aesthetic purpose, if that's your main desired outcome, look good, feel good type of deal, you're going to be more than happy. I think most people, when they envision the physique that they're training for, it's not even 80 % of their max. That's right. So I think this exceeds most people's expectations. In fact, I think that what ends up happening to most people is too much, too fast and burnout.

9:40And they stop. Yeah. That's okay. So I'm so, I'm so glad you said that consistency is most important with this. So when you're listening to this or whenever you're embarking on a fitness journey, you're like, look, I'm going to try doing this. And this is now going to be a part of my life. Consistency trumps anything else. I've said this before on the show. I've said this many times on the show as subpar workout, you know, a workout and diet. That's okay. It's not terrible. It's not bad, right? It's okay. Done consistently. We'll outperform a perfect workout, perfect diet that's done super inconsistently.

10:12So consistency is the most important thing. And so you also got to take that into consideration and a two day a week strength training routine, the odds of consistency with that are far higher than a four or five day a week type of routine, especially when you factor in what we said about what you're going to get out of this. So let's start with the workout and we'll start with, uh, you know, what, what the exercise look like and why we pick them. So there's two workouts here that we're going to give you. So day one, day two. Ideally, you would have a day or two off in between. So this might look like a Monday, Thursday routine or a Tuesday, Friday or something like that.

10:47So that's typically what it's going to look like. Now you can do these back to back, but you probably ideally want at least a day off in between. But workout one, we're going to start with squats, but we're going to start with box squats. Box squats are just as valuable as traditional squats. The difference is we've dramatically increased the safety and we've reduced the skill required to perform the exercise. Because a barbell squat, a traditional squat, is a phenomenal exercise, one of the best exercises you could do. The problem is it requires a high level of skill and mobility and connection to do properly to yield those results and also to not injure yourself.

11:24A well-performed squat is a very safe exercise. All exercises done well are perfectly safe, but not all exercises require the same amount of skill. In a traditional barbell squat, You need to have good ankle mobility. You need to have good stability. You have to have good core stability, good form, good connection. And a box squat, with a box squat, what you're basically doing is a barbell squat. But the difference is you sit down on something and then stand up rather than squat up and down. That change in direction at the bottom is actually where you get a lot of the challenges with mobility and stability.

12:00It's that switching directions. That box stops the momentum. them. You pause, brace your body, come back up. Congratulations. You are doing barbell squats, but you've dramatically made them much safer. And most people without big issues with mobility can do a box squat and can progress nicely. Well, this is typically where we start most people. I mean, this is why you put that in pre-phase of MAPS Anabolic is I think we all experience this. As much as we preach the value of a barbell back squat, the reality is that most clients we trained were advanced age or middle-aged men and women. And a lot of them had a lot of mobility issues or dysfunction that we had to address before we loaded a barbell back squat.

12:43And so with no support. So what it looked like was a box squat. And that box squat many times, sometimes depending on their capability and range of motion, could have a pad underneath it to elevate it, depending if they were really limited. And then it just looks like you slowly lowering it over time until they get really comfortable with going deeper into that squat yeah i i you know stan efforting really makes a point with but now remember staff efforting is uh well he was known at one point as one of the strongest bodybuilders uh of all time competed as a power lifter uh now he's i believe stan how old is stan would you say is it is in his mid 40s 40s 50s yeah he's 50s probably uh and he loves box squats uh he's a strong guy like that guy gets under a bar it's going to be 500 pounds 400 pounds and he's like i love box squats because you know the benefits from it and you're literally doing the squat you're just now you're segmenting it so you take a lot of the risk out of it that's right well and also a lot of the damage too i would imagine the bottom of the squat where you are changing direction uh you probably do the most damage that's it and so you eliminate that yeah tissues take a lot of the brunt of that exchange of that stretch reflex which by the way for the listener so we don't get this twisted that that's like like that's a bad thing i mean that's also what promotes a lot of the growth that's right why it's such a beneficial but talking to somebody who's this episode inspires to get moving get started get going this is probably we can work our way there this way most effectively in fact you could do this and if you get really good at this eventually go to a traditional barbell squat but backs box squats are perfectly fine so that's the first exercise.

14:24The next exercise, one arm dumbbell row, hand and knee supporting you on the bench with a little bit of rotation. This is just a great back exercise. It's going to make you strong. It's strengthening the mid back and the lats. It's going to help with posture because you're supporting yourself with your knee and your hand. You're probably going to have better technique. And then if you're doing both dumbbells at the same time, lower skill required, still wonderful muscle building exercise for the back. And I do back, especially with my people in this age group before I do chest. Oftentimes you'll see a chest exercise before back exercise, but back exercise before chest.

14:59And the thing is we're so anteriorly driven to then kind of get your shoulders set back in a good position. So then when you get to chest exercises, you're already fired up those muscles to stabilize. That makes a huge difference. I remember I used to, as a kid in my 20s, always start with bench press. It wasn't until later did I start doing it. And then I remember that light bulb going off. Shoulders feel better. Oh, my God. For sure. Especially with somebody who's 40 plus. Like, we're going to do that. There's so much more fixed in this forward position all the time. Well, yeah, you're building in the priming before you.

15:36That's right. You know what I'm saying? If you do all the upper back muscles before you go into chest, I mean, this is what we teach people to prime before you go into a bench press. So especially if you didn't spend the time priming before you get into that bench press. This will do it for you. You do it if you do the – That's right. Plus, I love the fact that you have a unilateral movement. You've got a little bit of rotation, anti-rotation involved. You've got core stability involved. I think that's such an overall great exercise. And you can regress it so easily for the client. And so this is a great choice.

16:08Next, we have an incline press. Notice we didn't say bench press. An incline press is just as good as a bench press for developing the chest and the shoulders and the triceps. I would venture to say probably more functional, but it's definitely a safer type of a press and just as good. Bench press is actually far more technical than an incline press. Incline press sets you up in a nice position. Here's the other plus of it. Aesthetically speaking, if you're like, I don't care, I just want to have a nice looking chest. Incline bench press will get you a better looking chest than a flat bench press.

16:39just from that upper and bodybuilders know this this is what they do uh primarily is their you know first chest exercise i mean i remember just figuring this out as a young trainer trying to teach the bench press matter of fact bench press was one of the more difficult exercises to teach a new client because just naturally on a flat bench it kind of pushes their shoulders forward and then they press and then they're just exacerbated people get shoulder problems yeah and so i always got would get frustrated and then i realized anytime i put them on an incline bench It automatically pushed their chest up.

17:09Their shoulders fell back down into position. And it was like, oh, this is just easier. I remember pretty much eliminating the flat bench from most of my training protocol with all my clients. It's just sticking with incline bench. And to your point, some of the better aesthetic results came from incline bench anyway. So if it was a safer, better exercise, it was like flat bench was like rarely ever done. And then next up, you have standing overhead press. It's just a shoulder press standing. Dumbbells are probably better. brace your core, press them all the way up, all the way down. Great upper body shoulder exercise.

17:40Also engage the core, trying to arch your back. Very basic exercise. And then finally, a reverse crunch. A reverse crunch, you'll work your abs. A traditional crunch, people tend to mess that up. This reverse crunch is where I always have my clients start. And just on a flat bench, you just bring your hips and roll them back, and you're going to get your core involved. A nice functional ab exercise. That's workout one. You're doing three sets of every exercise. Your reps can be between 8 to 15. Now we'll go to workout two. We're going to start with pushing the sled. Do a couple rounds of driving the sled.

18:15One of the safest, best, most effective lower body exercises. It works the foot, the calf, the hamstrings, the quads, the glutes. There's no negative portion of the rep. It doesn't really beat you up. It's got athletic function. it's one of those few exercises beginners can do and advanced people can do contracting those leg muscles without all the damage that's right it's such a beautiful thing that i wish i knew this a long time ago especially training uh like the elder population was like man what a go-to move uh to take them onto the sled to get them that kind of muscle contraction and then build upon that i was gonna say the same thing it was such a bummer that you know you know we grew up in a gym that didn't have, you know, astroturf in it, didn't have sleds.

19:03That came much later for all of our careers because I trained a lot of people looking back now that, man, I wish I had that tool because I would have done a lot of training on that early on just simply because of the safety. And it's crazy too because you could take somebody who's young, wants to build lots of strength and power. Also, also phenomenal exercise. And there's a stamina component here that you're going to get from this that you won't get from a lot of other exercises. Next up, we have the trap bar deadlift. So this is a deadlift, but we're going to use a trap bar because it requires less skill.

19:36And it's great. You're still lifting something off the ground. It's still considered a back exercise. You're also involved in the legs quite a bit, strengthens your grip, just an overall good exercise for the posterior chain. That refers to all the muscles of the back of the body. Then we have pushups, classic pushups. Now you can do these elevated if you need to, but what's the difference with a push-up and a bench press. Well, a push-up means you need to have good core stability. Your whole body has to stay rigid to do a push-up. So it's a nice, functional, body-control pushing exercise. I just want to comment on the trap bar deadlift because you just went over it because it's similar to your programming with the box squats, which is just, it's a regression to what we would normally preach, which is the barbell deadlift, right?

20:20I can't recall a client that I ever started that I couldn't start, I couldn't go right into a trap bar deadlift. Trap bar deadlift, everybody can do it. Yeah, it was just a great exercise that, you know, even if I had to just start with the trap bar itself, like I could regress it to that. And so, I mean, I had 80-year-old ladies that were trap bar deadlifting right out the gate. And so - And you can get real strong with this exercise. Yeah, and so it's similar. Like if someone's listening and you can train deadlifts and you could train squats, you absolutely could put those where we put, but the idea of this is that anybody listening to this, no matter what level you're at, you should be able to start right here.

20:56Yeah. I said push-ups. And then we got rear flies. That's just for the back of the shoulders. So that's, you lean over, you can lean over a bench and do kind of a fly for the back of the shoulders. Then you got some arm exercises, curls, overhead tricep extension. I don't care what curls you pick, really doesn't make a big difference. Overhead tricep extension for the triceps. And then calf raises. And here's what you've done with these two workouts. You've hit your entire body. By the way, every exercise is about three sets. Keep the reps again, eight to 15. you have here a workout that will last you a long time in fact if you did this exact workout and strong and got stronger and strong because you will if you're getting started you should see some nice progressions and strength this workout will last you a year or two years and you'll be perfectly fine before you have to switch to anything else and get great great progress yeah now let's talk about diet okay now with diet what for the average guy really you want to aim for and this is the magic of what we're going to say.

21:52You want to hit about 45 grams of protein per meal. For most men, 45 grams of protein eaten first in the meal, number one, it's going to build great muscle. It's going to probably naturally control your calories. Protein is very satiety producing. It helps control insulin, helps control blood sugar. It's just a great general target for protein for most men. way to start yes yes yes and i want to give examples now so here's where it gets a little because i'll say 45 grams of protein and people are like all right yeah what does that look like what does that look like so here's what i did i put together two example breakfast lunch and dinners and what this will kind of look like okay so now you know you could definitely just eat exactly what i'm going to say but i'm gonna tell you right now it's not going to work because if you eat the same thing every day this will get old real fast the idea behind what we're about to say is to give you an example of what it will look like.

22:48Yeah, but I want to point out, though, one of the things that I think sometimes we overcomplicate this is one of the neat parts about structuring it the way you have where you have kind of the ounces of meat or whatever. You can rotate through a ton of different meats. It's just the same amount of ounces replace the meat. That's what I mean. People are like, wait a second, but isn't a steak way more? It's like, no. It doesn't make a difference. It's not enough. This is where we overcomplicate diet. Like the big thing is, is getting the macros in place as far as like your, your proteins, fats, and then carbs are kind of can go up or down.

23:20But as long as your proteins and fats are right and you're eating it from whole foods, then the difference of you having a juicy steak versus a chicken thigh versus a salmon fish versus like is so minimally like it's such a, it's so little of a difference that it's not that big of a deal to worry about. So it's like if you want variety, then take exactly what you're about to go over right now and rotate through eight different types of meats. And if you're consistent with this, most men, if you're otherwise active, you know, you're getting 8 ,000 steps a day doing the workout and you're going to do this diet.

23:50Over time, you'll get stronger and you're probably going to fall anywhere between, I don't know, 14, 16 % body fat over time. Nice, athletic, and fit. You're not going to have a shredded six pack, but I think most guys don't care. They just want to look fit. And that's what you'll probably get. So here's a couple examples of what breakfast would look like. Scrambled eggs in the morning. How many eggs do you need for 45 grams? This is where people mess up. They're like, oh, cool, I had three eggs. That's not enough. Eight scrambled eggs is going to give you about 45 grams of protein. So it's a nice big scramble.

24:18And then on top of that, you'll throw a cup of berries. Now, why did I pick berries? Fiber. Berries are a great source of fiber, low glycemic index, carbohydrates. They taste good. They're easy. If you ate eight scrambled eggs and a couple berries, you have yourself a nice breakfast. Really nice breakfast. Here's another option, a little faster if you're kind of on the go. Two cups of Greek yogurt and a tablespoon of honey. There you go. You've got your 45 grams of protein plus some carbohydrates from the honey. The honey tastes good. Throw it in the Greek yogurt. This is a fast, easy example of a breakfast.

24:50All right, let's get to lunch. What does 45 grams of protein look like for lunch? It's about two chicken thighs or seven ounces of meat. I put flank steak. So seven ounces of meat, two chicken thighs, give you a picture. and then what you'll add to that is about a cup of well-cooked greens. Make them well-cooked. That helps with digestion. And then for carbohydrates, a baked potato or a cup of white rice, and you have yourself a nice meal, a nice easy meal. And then dinner, again, keep the meat right around the same, about seven ounces or two chicken thighs. Add a salad if you want or the well-cooked greens.

25:26Again, a cup of white rice, baked potato. Can you have other carbohydrates in there? You definitely can. If gluten is an issue, you can throw pasta in there. If you want, you can throw bread in. I'm going to say this right now, though. I have yet to work with a client where bread is the best option for carbohydrates. Always. I feel like eliminating that's always for most people. Almost always. It's better. I agree. You want variety, go sweet potato, go quinoa. You can rotate some things in there. It's just easier to digest. People feel better. A couple things for me to add in regards to the diet.