 So in this episode of Vine Pump, we talk about the five must do things that people over the age of 40 should do when they pursue fitness and health through exercise and nutrition. Now, this episode is also extremely valuable for those of you who are trainers. This is very valuable information for you, for your clients. And of course, if you yourself are over 40, you will not want to miss this. Now we talk about all the challenges that come with being over 40. We also talk about all of the pluses that you have. That's right. There are advantages to being over 40 as well. And then of course, we go over the five most important things you should focus on. And we give you specific recommendations you are going to enjoy this episode. Also, all month long, MAPS Split and the MAPS Split t-shirt. So the program and the t-shirt are both 50% off. Now the program is a full workout routine. It is a split based bodybuilder inspired routine. So it's really, really great for people who want to build muscle, people want to sculpt and shape their bodies, people who really want to develop their bodies and who like to work out. This is a six day a week routine. It's advanced. And again, it's very popular. It's half off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapssplit.com. That's MAPS SPLIT.com and use the code split 50. That's SPLIT 50 no space for the discount. So I have something for you guys. Oh, good. Now, because we had both of you guys's birthdays recently. Yeah. I'm a recent 40 year old and I am still under. So I still got a year to train like an asshole. Wait a minute. How old are you right now? 38. Oh, okay. See that's 39 this year. Yeah, 39 this year. And then you turn 40. Finally. That's normally what comes after 39. That's right. So I'm good at math. I've got, I've got a little over a year and a half to make more mistakes, still do stupid stuff when I train, but I want to get mentally prepared for when this, the four O hits. How do I need to train different? And that's a question I get in DMs all the time. All the time, all the time. And to be honest, to be quite honest, and I think we are probably really, really good people to comment on this and I'll tell you why. Cause we're over 40. Well, besides that, that's what qualifies us in the demographic, but here's the deal. You hear a lot about the challenges of working out over 40, but a lot of times you hear that coming from people who are not maintaining their fitness the whole time. Yeah. So then they come in, they try to work out and I try to explain to them most of the challenges you're experiencing have more to do with the fact that you just haven't worked out, right, right. And less to do with your age. All of us have been consistent for decades. I've been doing it since I was 14 consistently. I mean, besides injuries, I never stopped, but there are and it happened. It started happening that at 40, by the way, I started noticing at about 35, 36. Once I went on the back end of the back half of 30, I did started to know to notice some differences in the way I recover my body and that kind of stuff. And then it started to make sense to me. Like, okay. Now, now I understand why this is a category, you know, training over 40 versus training under 40. I used to make fun of my dad all the time because he'd like lube himself up with this Ben gay and all this other stuff. That sounded really bad, but, uh, but he was just trying to get his joints to, to, you know, respond. And even before we'd play just a regular pickup game of basketball, he was hoarse. He greased his whole body up. And I'm like, oh my God, is this really necessary? And now I'm starting to see, you know, like why he did that? And it's really just the prep before he go to do any kind of like real rigorous type of activity, any kind of like heavy lifting. Oh, you can almost guarantee at 5 30 a.m. and 24, if in his locker room, you will always smell been gay. I mean, that's what all, if you're a tiger, if you're in the gym at 5 30 the morning, more likely that you're a businessman or woman there and you're working out your consistent stuff like that. And you're probably north of 40 years old and you can pretty much guarantee that the entire, you know, men's locker room smells like been gay. It's totally true. Here's the biggest thing that I noticed. And again, I think we're good people to talk about this because we've already isolated out the changes that we felt or had to do with our age. Not the fact that we stopped working out. Okay. Here's the biggest thing that I noticed recovery or to be more specific. I don't, I can't get away with stupid stuff like I used to. That's what I like. I like to be a little bit more specific because I still have good recovery so long as I trained appropriately. When I was younger in my 20s and early 30s, my recovery was better for when I did stupid stuff. So if I went, I'll never forget this. I was, I think 30, I turned 30 and for my birthday, I had this wonderful idea that I would go in the gym, I'd put 3 15 on the bar and I would do 10 reps of deadlifts and I'd rest for 30 seconds and do 10 sets. I thought this is, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do for 30 total 30, you know, 10 times three, right? So and it destroyed me. I was so sore and so it was just insane. There was no, there was no rhyme or reason behind it. It was just me turning 30 thinking, oh, this is going to be a cool thing to do. But I was okay with that today. I could still do the same thing. I would not be able to recover like I did when I was 30 something like that. I think there's, let's talk about why that is though, right? I think there's, there's several variables that play a role in why that is. Like, at least for me, things that I've noticed as I've aged, I move less. I move way less today than when I did 10 years ago. That's a big factor. Right. And when you think about recovery, just facilitating movement, more oxygen, more blood, more nutrients through circulating through the body. I think that it's, it's less to do with I'm 40 versus and I was 25 then and it's more to do, hey at 25, I was extremely active all the time. And what just that, what that promotes for recovery because I'm a lot less active. I also have to eat significantly lower to match my, my lower activity. And it is easier to recover when your calories are higher, even if you're burning it through activity. Right. Cause you're, you're giving yourself all those nutrients that I'm probably lacking more often now than what I was when I was consuming 4,000 plus calories. And then that movie. So I think that that has a lot to play with it. That's actually a great point. There's another one too. And that's that when you're 40, you have 40 years of potentially potential cumulative things that have happened to your body. So, you know, at 20, I might not have had any injuries. I've had to rehab, but at 40, I might have had a few to rehab. Now I might be rehab from them, but they start to add up a little bit and that can also contribute to the changes in recovery. Right. You know what I'm saying? Plus you might have built some compensatory patterns, you know, that aren't as favorable as they used to be. Right. Right. Now, of course, age by itself, everything else being equal, age by itself also does play a factor. Of course, the body does age and over time starts to, you know, you're born and then you get older and then it goes kind of backwards. Like it's time now to at some point you go back to where you came from. And so there's that process that happens. Of course, 40 is you're still very young, but the 40 year old body, there are some differences due to age that you that maybe don't see as often as when you're 20 or 30. And those can also play a role. They really can. Here's the other one though that plays a big and now besides that, there's other factors like what Adam said, like what I said with the potential of accumulation of injuries. Then there's also this. It's it's a much more stressful hectic life. When you're 40, does that play a role in recovery? I think so. Absolutely. You know, when you're 20 something years old and you don't have kids, you don't have much to worry about. You worry about eating, go to the gym and you know, whatever. When you're 40, worry about your mortgage and your kids and meetings and business and all that sort of responsibility. Yeah. And does that play a big does that play a role in in your your ability to recover? I think it does. I think so. I think it's important to to note to because there's some 22 year old that's screaming going like, I have a mortgage and I'm going through college and I have a kit. Right. So there's always exceptions to the rule of somebody who may be taking on more, but generally speaking, you know, as you start to get up in your 40s, you're more than likely married kit, a kid or multiple kids, a mortgage, a job in and out and the stress of that absolutely is going to take a toll. It's going to take a toll on your rest. You're right. And we know how important rest is for recovery. We and we dressed this the other day in the podcast. How about those? You don't think about things like that, like just your mind being distracted or like what a low level consistent stress that is and just never allowing the body to get over into that parasympathetic state. Yeah. And it's less of the it's less of the think of it this way because I've been thinking about this a lot. It's forget the fact that it's this low level stress that you're having all the time. It's the lack of break from it. Right. Is really what it is. Yeah. Is the lack of getting out of that state. Yeah. No the no distraction. No, you know, you're just with yourself and you know, being our age, we know the difference between the two because we live two lives. If you really think about it, we live the pre super distracted, you know, technology life growing up and then the post one. I mean, you know, in my 20s, I didn't have cell phones like we have now until, you know, mid to late 20s. Before that, the cell phone was just your regular. You just call somebody or whatever and couldn't do anything else. So all those breaks were like waiting in lines, you know, going to the bathroom, sitting in your car. You just you take you don't realize that those make a difference and we don't have those as well. It's crazy to like you kind of mentioned sleep. I just remember being able to sleep anywhere. You know, like when I was in my 20s and then even like early 30s and I was fine, like I could sleep on a couch. I could sleep like sleep for me. If I don't get good sleep, it really affects the whole rest of my week. It takes days for me to get that back. It's that's one thing I've noticed. If I if I'm not really like adamant about like getting proper rest, like it really screws me. Sal still has this gift. I don't know how you do it. Before the plane. It's a superpower. It is a superpower. No, it's in it. But you're but you're right. It's quite common. It might have a lot more to do with the stress and schedule than it does to related to age. You know, when you're like again, when you're sure you could be stressed out in your 20s and all that stuff, but usually you don't have kids and you know, those types of responsibilities which are a totally different type of worry. I mean, that's something that I feel I can speak to being someone that was 37 years old and didn't have a kid. And another my you realize how how like care for you were before? Oh, yeah. Well, what I what I realized now is that I mean, if to get my workouts in and diet and check like it really takes a whole another level of it takes planning no matter what no matter who you are, no matter how young you are having a child now. It's a whole another level of planning for me to make sure that it's already hard enough for normal people to be consistent. If you if all you have to worry about is yourself when you add in another person that now becomes as important or more important to you. That makes it really challenging schedule wise to make it make it a priority. Yeah, it takes a lot more discipline now to gain freedom. Oh, yeah. You know, like that like I love discipline now because I know that that actually is providing me with more opportunities. But whereas before it was like, oh, I just have to put all this off and I got freedom. Well, no, a hundred percent a great point. I'll give you a great example. You know, you're when you're in your twenties and maybe early thirties and you don't have those kinds of responsibilities. And let's say it's Friday and you went to Vegas with your buddies and you partied till two or three o'clock in the morning. You can sleep in Saturday morning when you have kids you don't you go home from vacation and it's like I wake up early got to do all the stuff with the kids and so for sure generally speaking they're one of the challenges of being over 40 with your workouts is you just have a busier schedule. That makes it more difficult to structure and do your workouts consistently. In fact, when you're younger you might not even need to make a big deal about your schedule. But when you get older your schedule is everything when it comes to your workouts. If it's not in your schedule if it's not scheduled and planned oftentimes it just doesn't happen but you make it real difficult. Yeah, I agree. You know, the next two are kind of the same thing and Justin kind of quickly went over the, you know, ingrained muscle imbalances and that also feeds right into the other one which is chronic pain which I think of all the things of all the challenges at 40 and above that I see for sure dealing with chronic pain slash muscle imbalances is probably the greatest challenge and probably the most important thing for you to put your attention towards when in the pursuit of overall health and fitness beyond 40. Totally. Now ingrained meaning if you have let's say you've developed a muscle imbalance where you move a particular way or you have tight hips or a tight lower back and you're in your 20s or 30s perhaps you've built us imbalance and cemented it for five or 10 years. Well, now you're 40. This is an imbalance that you've continued to strengthen and build for 20 years. It's harder to reverse that. It's a harder. It's a bit of a longer process to correct an imbalance that's been with somebody for a longer period of time than it is to work with an imbalance that was with somebody for a shorter period of time. In fact, it could be with somebody for so long that correcting it can feel quite strange and I've seen this with people before I train them and I correct imbalances and when it starts to correct they feel I've had people tell me like I feel like I'm sticking my chest out. That's a weird way to walk. Actually, that's good posture. You just doesn't feel right because for the last 15 years you've walked with your shoulders forward and didn't realize it. I mean, think the analogy I love to give when I try to explain that to a client is to pick up a ball and throw it with your opposite hand or eat with your opposite hand. Like you've just have not trained your brain to work that pattern. If you would have been eating with your left hand your entire life it would feel as natural as with your right. So that's exactly another challenge I would run into with clients over the age of 40 was oftentimes they would come to me to hire me and they the last time they had really worked out consistently would would have been 15 to 20 years prior. So they'll come to me. They'll say, oh, you know, I'd like to lose weight get in shape whatever and it's okay. What was the last time that you were really consistent about working out for at least six months to a year and they would typically sell, you know, when I was 30 or when I was 25 that's when I was really consistent and then I had kids and all that stuff and it all got in the way. And now now, why is that a challenge? The challenge the challenge and that was because they remembered how their workouts were back then they remembered how to move back then they remembered the their tolerance for intensity back then and they have to get them to realize that it's they're a different person now. Yeah, it's going to take a different sequence to get there now. Yeah, like they would say to me like, oh, I used to work out like, you know, every single day this is the training session they used to do or this is how hard I used to work out like, no, hold on especially athletes. Yeah, I was just going to say one of the hardest clients to train are, you know, I remember getting the 50 year old or late 40s X NFL player and you know, they have been out of shape now for 20 plus years and they want to train and they they a lot of times hire you because they want to get their ass kicked. You know, they take me back to you know, boot camp days and getting ready for the season and that's how I need to get back in shape because that's how they've done it for all of their fit into the pain. Their entire fitness life was surrounded or surrounded centered in sports and so their training mentality comes from that and now they're 50 and they remember how good which is hard too because they remember they could connect how great a shape they were. Oh, I moved. I was strong. I look good. I want to be there. I know what it takes to get there. The reality is it's totally different. It is and it's funny because the your tolerance for exercise pain when you've been doing that for a long time as an athlete even if you stop working out for 20 or 30 years for whatever reason that becomes your gauge. Like when I would train X athletes if I train them appropriately they're always like well, that's not hard enough. I'm not like like crumbly. I think okay that was the pain tolerance and that was acceptable when you were a professional athlete. That is you have to completely relearn what it had to listen to your body because the way you listen to your body before is not going to work today. Now something else that we see a lot in advanced age. We're just going to call it advanced age. It's not advanced age. We're going to call it advanced. It feels moderate. It feels advanced. Middle age. Early. Yeah, it's middle. Middle age. Midlife crisis. Come on. Get it right. One of the most common things though that you that you'll get with somebody that's above 40 is hormone issues. Yeah, they're more common. Yeah, much more common. And I think again real similar to some of the other things we're talking about we always like to we like to try and connect it to oh, it's because I'm getting older and it's like, well, it's it's less of that you're getting older and it's more of all the other things that we're talking about that are probably causing the diet being off balance the not weight training. The your nutrition you're not getting your sleep and stress. Like all these things are probably playing a bigger role on what's going hormonally with you then the fact lack of son the number 40. Right. Yes. I so I've worked with so many clients men and women who've come to me in this age group or older who is part of our questionnaire. They do mention hormone stuff they get tested they come back and say, okay, testosterone is low or my you know, my doctor or my specialist said estrogen dominance or whatever and nine out of ten times exercise and nutrition and sleep corrects it nine out of ten times in my experience with men it's almost ten out of ten times I was very rare where I would get a man who had low testosterone levels that couldn't get significant improvements by changing their activity level their diet and their sleep. So the hormone changes you get when you age this is now by the way this is especially true for men because women do go through a natural and it doesn't happen at 40. It can was for some women but women don't go through the big hormone change menopause or perimenopause typically until a little bit later for a man who is who is appropriately active good diet good sleep his testosterone levels will stay pretty damn high till the day he dies. So if you're 40 and you're you're inactive diet's not good or whatever and your testosterone is low it's probably due to to your lifestyle and probably not do the fact that your hormones are just low but these are challenges right because if you if you if you are over 40 the odds are you're dealing with you're not going to be able to recover as fast or get away with as much stupid stuff your schedule is a little busier so when you work out and needs to be effective you're not in there to mess around or to do things that are inefficient you may have ingrained you know muscle and balances you need to correct that you your 20 year old self might not have to work with and maybe you have some chronic pain you need to move around these are some real challenges that being said being over 40 there's absolutely there's huge perks there are massive perks to being over 40 one of the biggest ones is you tend to be more patient you know when I would get a a 20 year old client or a 30 year old client they want to get their results yesterday I want to I want to do this yet this is when I get my 40 year old clients or 45 year old clients and I talked to them about how it's going to take time we're going to correct muscle and balances you know what they always would say listen don't worry about it I just want to feel better I'm going to do what you tell me and it's it was a breath of fresh air as my most successful clients were typically in over this age group you know what you know I think that is I think that you're just you're older and you're wiser and you've started to connect how most things in life take time the best the best things take a long time right and so I think at that age you start to piece that you've done you've seen it enough times in your life that it makes sense that okay if this is going to be that great it's probably going to take me some time to do this anyways which reminds me of the second piece which is the wisdom part I feel like they kind of go hand in hand oh that experience and that wisdom is extremely valuable when you are trying to create a lifelong fitness and nutrition you know lifestyle it's that makes a huge difference because the inexperienced person will tackle it head on and want to do everything all at once the person with experience like you're saying Adam they've already experienced that you know took me a while to get used to having a kid took me a while to build my career takes a while to learn these things like I know this is going to take some time I'm okay yeah this is too I mean hearing it from guys like us that have actually been in the gym for this long and then got to this point it's like you have tried a lot of different methods and a lot of different exercises and protocols and you know it's about efficiency and it's about you know getting that desired result but like not having to put everything into it and what does that even look like and that's why we're always trying to voice you know certain methods and ways to approach training where it's like you're going to get massive payout if you just do these small things here's where here's a here's a big a good example of how experience with somebody over 40 makes a big difference a let's say all things being equal money goals everything's equal the odds that a 25 year old guy is going to hire a personal trainer are way lower than a 40 year old guy even if they had the same amount of money and everything same goals because the 40 year old is experienced and they are experienced enough to know I'm going to hire somebody who knows what they're doing the 25 year old version of themselves but I'm going to go in there and figure it out well most most 40 year old men and women understand investment better right just all right period you know they understand investment in the market investment in retirement investment in themselves a lot different than somebody who's 25 including myself I remember 25 your thoughts of investing and retirement and investment in yourself like yeah isn't that the same too much to think about I'm worried about today the most the biggest value or the biggest plus that comes from being over 40 again we're speaking generally and this is the one that I think contributes the most to the to success is confidence you're just more confident when you're older you've had you've got more experience you're more comfortable in your body a little bit less insecure so what does that mean that means that if you're a man you're less likely to do something stupid in the gym because you need to lift tons of weight you know 25 year old version of me you know if I if I'm in the gym and I'm learning a new exercise and I'm only using you know 75 pounds I might go fuck I don't want to go up to a hundred pounds even though I don't know how to do this or watching yeah smarter version of me older wiser version of me like I got to learn this exercise and I really don't give a shit what any of these people think what does that look for like for female clients they don't they don't care I'm learning I don't give a shit if anybody's looking at me anybody cares whatever I want to take it my time I want to do this the right way I'm not trying to look a certain way right now and I don't need to look out way tomorrow I just want to feel better and do this the right way and that approach that fundamental approach is massive contributor to long-term success is that confidence in that security because the biggest mistakes you see made when people start a fitness routine typically come from insecurities typically get driven by their their insecurities and it drives diet and exercise in ways that just don't work almost always almost always anytime somebody has got issues about the body body image issues almost always will you see them make poor choices nutritionally and exercise wise not knowing though right like that's that's part of why they make a bad choice is they don't realize it's a bad choice they think they may be doing what's best for them but because it's rooted in insecurity it causes them to make a quick or unrashed decision right where when you're a little bit older wiser less of that insecurities you're a little more slow and patient to go is that probably the best approach to do that or maybe I should listen to what Sal's saying and go a little bit slower and not worry about exactly how much I weigh or what I look like right now because I'm in this for the long game totally totally I mean I remember and I was never that guy that really Kate gave cared a lot about all people are watching me I mean I would say I probably cared more about how much weight I was lifting and people are watching but I really care if I was looking a particular way but I care even less now now is a 41 year old man when I'm in the gym I'm in there for me you want to look at me you want to I don't care I'm in there for me and I would notice this to my clients too if I had a 25 year old female client it was like she had to have the right thing on had to look the right way makeup was all thick yeah my 43 year old female client was like listen I'm busy I'm hiring you yeah I want to do this the right way I'm in my sweats teach me I want to learn don't care about what people think show me how to exercise properly that is very valuable and I would never trade wisdom for youth and I think people in this age group would agree with me for the most part here's another big plus and this one's a big one when you're over 40 you got more money yeah and that makes a big difference totally because you can pay for programs that will instruct you like you know like if you if you wanted to get like a maps program or a maps bundle you're over 40 you have the expendable income you can hire a trainer you have the income this just like reiterates the efficiency component of that now you have resources so you can get even further like I'm going to do this the right way because I hired this coach I bought this program like I'm dialed in and I'm not just like aimlessly like ramping up my intensity and like throwing the kitchen sink at at what I'm trying to do totally you can hire massage therapist chiropractor I was going to say most the clients that towards the end of my career of training clients I dealt with were the and these were some of my favorite your high performing CEOs that you know I was one piece of all they would have the massage therapists already booked every single week you're one of their staff members yeah exactly they said hey again under older wiser understanding the value and investing in themselves and hey I'm going to go hire the best trainer I'm going to go hire the best massage therapist I'm going to go hire a nutritionist I'm going to hire these people that will take care of that that's one of the plus pluses of being older more than likely you have disposable income to be able to do so much doesn't necessarily mean you will right you're more likely to as you get older you can hire professionals and you might be and you're more likely to have the wisdom to know that it's a good idea to do so right all right so let's talk about the things that generally speaking people over the age of 40 should focus on the five must do's I think must do's yeah absolute must do's these are the things if you focus on these things you will have your odds of a successful fitness program the odds that you'll get to your goals and keep the progress and results that you get are going to be far higher if you follow or you know the advice that we're about to give and again we've worked with I'd say over 70% of my clients were in this age group prop mostly because of the the expendable income I was not cheap and I know you guys weren't so so that's the main reason why so we've worked a lot with these people and these are the things that we always focus on number one number one form is everything there is nothing more important than your form and technique when you exercise by the way form is everything for everybody when you work out you just can't get away with not listening to this as you get older there's not as much wiggle room you know like you really do have to make sure your mechanics and everything like posture is everything especially as you get older you want to make sure that like if you're moving in the right direction like you're not going to put that added bit of stress on the joints that is unnecessary like you want to really focus it in on the muscles yeah think of it this way okay let's look at the squat a barbell squat barbell squat is a complex exercise it's multi-joint super effective exercise for the lower body and just overall strengthens everything one of the best exercises you could possibly do when your form is good and you have good control and good stability and good mobility a squat done properly is extremely safe it's very very it's a natural human movement your risk of injury doing everything right with can control good stability I mean the only way you'd really hurt yourself would be a freak accident with all those things you know like I talked about in that context right now a squat where you don't have control stability and mobility or your form is off your risk of injury goes up and the more your form is off the risk of injury is exponential the more it's off the greater the risk to the point where you're guaranteed an injury if your form is off enough now that exponential growth of risk of injury is steeper when you're over 40 than when you're 20 well and this is why you hear crazy advice out there like I'll read blogs and things from doctors that are like making sure like people refrain from doing deadlifts or refrain from doing back loaded squats and they put all this red tape over because you know they're making the case for you getting hurt doing this type of an exercise where really it's about the form has to be like damn near perfect for you to pull it off at this point well this is we got tagged I think all three of us got tagged in a Instagram post just about two days ago and it was a celebrity professional athlete trainer who was making the case that he never squats or deadlifts bilaterally and that he does everything unilateral right so and they were tagging us obviously to see if we were going to stir up shit and argue with it and I said context matters and I can make a case for this like absolutely if I have a client who is battling tons of chronic pain and has tons of muscle imbalances I'm first going to probably be dressing spinning most of my time in the gym with them addressing those imbalances and then maybe the first thing I do progress them to are things like lunges bulgarian split squats single leg deadlifts and stuff like that first to really reinforce their stability and mobility before I start to progress them in strength so yeah absolutely there's a case for not squatting right away but to Sal's point if you've got great form and technique in your squat it's perfectly safe if it's not backing back and saying okay well maybe we'll do things like bulgarian split squats lunges and replace of that for now with the ideal goal of making it to the squat it may take some time it may take that time to really reestablish that like you have support you have control over your joints like you should so yeah like I totally you have to make sure you are in a place where everything is accounted for and you have good form and all that before really just jumping right back into what used to be able to do right so again another example use squats again you have two people doing the squat barbell squat both one person mid 20s or 30 the other one you know 45 years old and they're doing the squats and in one of the reps their weight shifts a little bit to the right so they have to correct by straightening the bar up okay the odds that the over 45 the 45 year old that that'll result in an injury are higher than it is in the 25 year old for all the reasons that we listed before the the more ingrained muscle imbalances the odds that they've had injuries in the past so those all add up and so when the form is off a little bit the risk is higher typically for the older person than it is for the younger person because of that risk form again it's the most important thing regardless of your age but it's far more important when you get older because of exactly what we're talking about your risk of injury goes up quite a bit now here's the other side of this good form is going to give you faster results anyway so this is the good part about this because if you if sometimes people think that sacrificing form will get them there faster that is a myth sacrificing form will get you there slower even if you don't hurt yourself good form gets you better and faster results anyway so there really is no drawback to realizing that form is everything not to mention this is also one of the first ways you start to see you alleviate the chronic pain oh totally all of a sudden I get a client who had chronic low low back pain or hip pain we mobilize them we start teaching perfect great form with squats good full range of motion good control and they get to a place within that even if it's weak ass weight not even heavy weight just working towards getting to a really beautiful squat then focusing on that all of a sudden they the feedback you'd start getting as a coach is oh my god my you don't I notice my back does my low back doesn't bother me oh my hips don't bother me anymore because we worked towards totally traditional resistance training exercises done properly are the best mobility movements you'll find anywhere it's true traditional resistance training exercises if you can do a proper deadlift with good form stability control and mobility if you could do proper barbell squat overhead press row bench press if you could do all of these exercises properly and you just keep doing them properly and make sure you perfect your form those are the simplest most easiest basic and ass also most effective ways of maintaining mobility long term some of my clients that you know in this sort of age range like that would ask me like why like they were they didn't understand why I wasn't so focused on the rep count you know quite as much as I was previously and really it's about the intention of every single rep like I want to see you like really focusing in on what has to to take place in order to kind of you know make sure everything like joint wise is working properly and all the mechanics are established and you're bracing and like all these things like you're really focusing in you get so much more payoff from that alone but even now that's that's such a great way to protect yourself well you saying that also reminds me of what I think is for sure one of the most important which is the importance of priming oh for sure it's it's important for all ages it becomes necessary once you get to this point it makes number one what we just talked about possible yes form is everything and that means when you go into an exercise you want to have good form that's what priming does proper priming sets you up so that you go into your exercise and right away you have good control stability mobility and form not doing proper priming your odds of doing that are much lower and priming is quite individual from person to person if I'm doing squats for example and my issue is my issue is my ankle mobility then doing ankle mobility priming before my squats means when I go into my squats my form is going to look a lot better it's going to feel a lot better same thing with thoracic mobility or you know if you're somebody that has low back pain or shoulder pain priming before you do these exercises means you're going to be able to do them the right way you could get away with not warming up sometimes but as you get older you can't get away with it nearly as much you just can't again for all the reasons that we talked about earlier now luckily people over 40 are smarter and I typically don't have to convince them that this is important like I do with my 25 year old clients where I have to sit them down but why I just jump into it and it feels good and it's not a problem you know talking to my older clients as soon as I would bring this up they would say oh no and if in fact if I didn't bring it up they would tell me yeah this is one of those where you actually can sell like if you're a personal trainer you could sell somebody on your training so much through these priming sessions and you could show them individually how you can help to alleviate pain by just doing these things and making a ritual out of it and not to mention like the ritual is so individualized so if there's like certain issues that I am facing like my shoulders are protracting constantly I'm in this forward position and I'm able to now like constantly pull myself back retract my shoulders and get that external rotation and man that frees everything I feel great like my pain has been lowered so for it's really it's not hard to sell people on that idea. Well I remember when we wrote Prime you know we also included the fortification sessions and you know I would have to say probably 50% is a good guess for me of the clients that I would have to just kind of live there for the first month or two so this is you know right now we're talking about priming the body like before you go into a squat or before you go into your workout but you know when we're talking about above 40 there was probably a half of my clients that age and above spent a majority of their time just in the fortification sessions and just we had the imbalances that we had going on the chronic pain that we had was such an issue that a majority of the workout was just to correct all that so it's basically you know our fortifications sessions think of them like corrective training for imbalances and that's what it looks like and this is also again why this part is so important because if you're going to get to the form of a squat and how it's so beneficial you first got to do the prerequisites which is this piece and when you're getting 40 and above this becomes mandatory. It's one of those things again you can get away with in your 20's just get right into your workout or oh maybe my form is not the greatest I'll figure it out I'll learn. Now when you're starting in the game and 40 and above or it's been years and years since you've been lifting and you're getting back into it at 40 this area priming fortification like this is extremely important. Yeah I think too like this was the appeal of yoga and this is why the yoga really took off it's like a way for people to move their body in ways where it just makes it feel good again and you know there's a way to be a little bit more specific with that and also then apply that in to your regular workouts so you're still getting the benefits of weight training on top of it. Well somebody may you know you may be wondering what's the difference between priming and warming up okay warming up is very general priming is far more specific warming up is trying to prevent injury priming prevents injury better and also makes your your body progress faster you get better faster results just like we did with form just like I said with form the irony of you know you need to prime is priming will get you better results also so even if you're listening and you're like I don't need to prime or whatever fine you might not hurt yourself but you're still gonna reduce the the quality of your results and maybe even the speedy results because being able to connect to your muscles and to movements right out the gates when you do your workout that adds up and you're you'll progress faster or slower depending on whether or not you're doing that or not so priming essential for over 40 but besides the fact that it prevents injury makes you feel better it also gives you better faster results so do them absolutely here's the next one and this one I think people over 40 in my experience are much better at this yeah ties in with the wisdom thing yes then then people who were younger and this is something I like to hammer home which is listen to your body pay very close attention to your body and if you're doing an exercise or a movement or you're eating in a particular way and it doesn't feel right then you should probably you should probably heed that you know listen to that signal I've said this before on the podcast regardless of all the advice and that we give on the show on mind pump there is no better coach than your own body and so even if I say to you on the podcast squats are the best exercise known to man and no matter what squats don't feel good to you don't do them maybe try to get yourself to a point where you can do them but don't do them listen to your body if you feel really super tired from your workout if it's affecting your sleep if you're like hey I thought I was supposed to feel better while working out and yet I feel worse listen to your body not doing so is going to result in your body getting a lot of signals getting louder you know today it might be sore achy muscles tomorrow and actually be an injury and I have story after story of people who failed to listen to their body it's like in fact if you're listening right now and you have a chronic if you have an injury I bet you can think back to how long you were ignoring the signals telling you that you were about to hurt yourself right that's typically that's typically you know at this point yeah all those like signs and signals they come to fruition and so it's like yeah the sooner you address those obviously like you get on top of it the better you're off you're gonna be and what we're what we were gonna talk about too is like like maxing out right like in terms of like like really challenging yourself like it there's there's a point in a time for that but I think in the over 40 kind of category like is there really a need to challenge yourself on that level no there's not and before we get into maxing out I think the you know more on the list in your body one of the things I think that you start to get better as you get older too is you is how sore you feel the next day and understanding that you you didn't need to be that sore to have had an effective workout and if anything it took away right it was detrimental and and you know I think I've said this on the show probably a hundred plus times now that you know there are goals always to do the least amount as possible to elicit the most amount of change and so I really try to drive home with my you know 40 plus and all clients for that matter that you know we if you are listening to your body and you feel so sore the next day it's impeding the way you walk it's impeding the way you move it's definitely impeding into your next workout then we we overreached we stretched ourselves more than we needed to to get the maximum results you could have scaled that way back and still got reaped incredible benefits from the work or more benefits that's the thing you realize that right that it becomes detrimental to cause that much damage to your body so you got to listen but back to the injury you know I used to love having this conversation with with potential clients they would come in and I'd ask them you know questions about their history what not and you know pain and they tell my my you know I hurt my my shoulder I had a shoulder injury now it's okay before your shoulder got hurt was it bothering you it's um well yeah it did kind of hurt a little bit and it would bother me when I would do this and it would bother me when I do that and say how long did that happen for oh for years I kind of my shoulder was a little off and then finally I hurt myself it's okay those were all signals your body was talking to you you just didn't listen and you didn't fix it and then it finally got hurt moving forward we are going to listen to your body that means if we do an exercise and tomorrow you don't you don't feel muscle soreness but you feel joint pain or stiffness you're gonna tell me hey Sal yesterday's workout I noticed I woke up in the morning and my elbows hurt is my elbows supposed to hurt like no no the triceps maybe but not your elbows now I'm gonna change your workout a little bit to address that that's what listening your body really means pay it don't just hammer through because no pain no gain that's not how it works pay attention to your body adjust your workouts accordingly that such a such a profound and impactful thing to well and shameless plug here but I mean this is how we wrote all these programs like someone listening right now is going like okay so you have elbow pain what do you do then Sal well this is why we created Maps Prime Pro is to help guide somebody who doesn't have a coach or can't afford to have a trainer that's telling them every time they have to modify like that and this is how you use that program this is not a standalone program that most people will just follow every single day it's something that you have in your toolbag that oh shit I'm training this way and now my knees are bothering my hips or something and then you go into Prime Pro and you go to the test section that's addressing the joint that you have an issue issue in and it's gonna give you exercises that you should perform before and after you work out to help prevent that so you know when we wrote a lot of these programs we are we are thinking just like coaches and trainers when we have a situation where we have to call an audible what we do well how will we how do we give that to the general population that's an example on how you use Prime Pro when you run into issues like that because that's very common it's coming for everybody it's really common when you're above 40 that you're gonna run into these things you're falling a great program even if it's a Maps program it's going great for you all of a sudden you're just getting chronic hip pain or you're getting like knee pain and you know the the first thing you want to do is stop doing the exercises well the better thing for you to do is to figure out get to the root cause of what that is well how does the average person do that totally you use tools like that but that all starts with listening right not ignoring your body that's the opposite of listening to bodies ignoring your body don't do that okay so Justin you brought something up that I thought is very very jump the gun very no that's great advice it's it's skip maxing out there's no need to test yourself now I know there's a there is some value in testing your performance and it's more of a mental and emotional value sometimes pushing yourself to a limit regardless of age is a great way to test your mental capacity your emotional capacity to give you that fire I get that but you're older you're more wise and the risk is much higher my advice is largely skip that in fact and you're more secure you probably don't even need to do this as much or if you're not think twice before you do so what does that mean there's no need to go to the gym and see how much you can bench yeah or how much you can squat there's no need for you to go and run and see how far you can run how fast or how fast do your workouts in your challenging yourself remember workouts have to be challenging for them to be effective that's that's always that's that's always a part of exercise otherwise your body doesn't adapt but it's the maxing out and testing yourself that you don't need to do anymore that's a surefire way at some point by the way I'm gonna make this statement and I'll stand by it if you max out a lot and test yourself a lot it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when the injury is gonna happen yeah you are gonna hurt yourself I saw such a clear example of this between my dad and his best friend they both they're both named Steve and my his friend like throughout the years have just he's just done very like moderate to maybe I mean he did challenging workouts but he would always stop before it was you know too he put too much into it to where like he knew tomorrow he was gonna like do the next workout and so he was just super super consistent over the years and he's in incredible shape for his 70s and it's just it's it's this attitude of this is a constant thing and I'm just gonna keep this a part of my everyday activities and it's not like I'm gonna blast myself because you know it's very ego driven kind of you know when I'm going to max out like what else I'm just trying to test myself and see where I stand versus like I'm in this for the long game well I blame this on our space this is I mean we've done lots of research and studies of support going to failure and intensity being such an important variable and it is by itself but when you compare it to smart consistent training doesn't come close it doesn't come close and even in workout by workout you're splitting hairs on how much better that extra rep was and that's a lot of the messaging in our space is beast mode all out you know grinding push you know it's this it's all this motivation hype and part of why I think I've always hated it as a trainer and a coach because I've trained so many normal average day people that are not in the fitness space and that message gets misconstrued and that's normally when injury happens they think that I gotta give it my all I got it the same just like what we see in Biggest Loser right now Sal you brought up a point about knowing somebody that's behind the scene saying that you know they don't really push that hard that's only the little clips to show that that makes me even more mad about the show because what they're doing is false advertising right exactly they're putting emphasis on the push and grind and you know making them throw up even if it's not a reality of what they're doing most of time like that's terrible it's terrible messaging to the majority because most people see that and then they as soon as they decide their new way of life and they're going to be going back to the gym that's how the way they apply it and and that couldn't be further from the truth as far as the best way to be training especially being north of 40 years totally this is so I'm going to start training my dad pretty soon on a on a semi consistent basis and it's this is one of the main reasons why my dad has a very you know he's got a very competitive background he's got a competitive attitude and his attitude is when I go work out if I can't go hard then I'm wasting my time if I'm not going to go and use the whole stack and see how strong I am right then it's a waste of time and so I have you know right now he's dealing with some major back pain some really really back it was pretty deability I've been going over to his house in stretching him can't even do anything else with him right now just taking him through stretches and I told him as soon as this pain is better because it will get better at some point I'm going to train you because I know you don't know how to work out you go in the gym and you think you got to go hard otherwise it's a waste of time I need to completely change his paradigm and understanding of exercise and this is a big one it's not about look unless you're if you're a power lifter and you're a competitor okay it makes perfect sense you need to know where you stand you're competing against other people but the vast majority of you listening or the vast majority of people that go to work out never compete in anything yeah there's no there is no reason for you to max out aside from the again the mental and emotional satisfaction of knowing that you accomplished something but now that you're over 40 you probably don't I mean do you really need to do that like you did before I don't think your ego need don't need these competitions either you don't need to sign up for all these things to get you to a place you really want to be you just need to just keep doing little bits all the time well there and there's there's ways to test yourself or or push yourself without maxing out yeah to be smart I mean most good programming is going to have you know five rep range and above in it very few programs unless you're doing a powerlifting specific program is going to recommend singles doubles or triples but hey you know if you've been training five five by five type of training and you've gotten really strong and you're like man I you know I want to see if I can lift a little bit more well put a little bit more on the bar and then stop short three or two right right you know you there's no there's no reason to try and find your absolute limit of what you can load your back with no here's what I like to do right I like to I have a mental understanding of about 85 to 90 percent of my effort so I know what that feels like because I've been working out for a while I can move within that range and add weight I just don't go above it in other words if I lifted you know 200 pounds and that was 90 intensity and I tried this week and 200 pounds felt like 80 intensity I'll add weight but I won't go up to 100 intensity I'm not going to go up to maxing out because again the risk of injury is nowhere near worth the whatever you're going to get from testing yourself a maxing out so skip that part all right here's the last one and I think this one is important just like all of them are important for everybody but it's especially important and valuable for people over the age of 40 and that is to place your health over your performance in terms of priorities or your mobility over strength is another way to put it health is far more important than how well you can perform how strong you are how fast you can move because focusing on your health is going to take you to the finish line at the very end of this game we called life focusing on performance at some point your body is going to stop you and it's going to stop you hard and if you don't believe me just look at the highest level athletes that that exist look at professional athletes and you can see how well they do typically after they retire and oftentimes they're riddled with pain and injuries and things that prevent them from doing a lot of awesome things but if you make your focus your health if I go to the gym and I eat in a way to make to really nourish and feed and fuel my body to feel good then I'm going to stop when I decide to stop my body's not going to tell me to stop well this is also one of the safest and smartest ways to prevent injury right it's just having this mentality I mean I think of even something like I'm going through personally I myself like a 2020 goal for me is to get back to playing basketball since I tore my keelies I haven't played ball now the young mind of mine wants to just like grab the ball get back on the court run some games let myself naturally get back in the shape of that start training some explosive type movements but instead like I know I'm doing all the boring tedious type of work to build up to that because I'm prioritizing my overall health more than my performance as much as I want to get on the court and start just getting better and like oh throw myself in it I know the age that I'm at now and the because of you know torn ACL MCL and a torn a keelies and you know creeping up on 40 years old that if I do that I'm at such a higher risk of potentially injuring myself even longer so just keeping the mindset of healthy joints being healthy mobility wise that that comes first then I'll build the performance piece on top of totally now again here's the the the wonderful kind of beautiful irony of all of this right form is everything prime your body listen to your body skip maxing out you know prioritize health over performance not only are these things that are going to give you longevity with your fitness you know your fitness lifestyle but they're also going to get you better go better results a healthy body performs better that's it at the end of the day I mean that's that's one of those things I think people just forget that and they want to you know challenge and press their body to the limits of whatever they can you know wherever they can go with it but you know realizing that you know rest and and feeding your body appropriately and also like backing off weights gives you even more performance to then you know fuel back into those workouts and those sporting events and all those other things you're trying to do now and in along those lines I'll this is a hundred percent true my best performing clients I'm talking about clients that did the some of the most awesome everyday clients I'm not talking about my athletes I'm just talking about average people the clients that were that did the most incredible transformations the clients that got really strong and just were impressive the ones that were were doing triathlons and runs that were blowing people's minds the ones they got shredded and did so the right way they were all my over 40 clients they all some of my best perform if I had to take generally just a lot of people and and rate their performance my over 40 clients were the ones that crushed that before and after picture that is somewhere on Doug's Instagram of Doug going from overweight to shredded he was in his 40s when that happened and he accomplished the best fitness of his life never had a six pack his entire life never was able to deadlift uh 400 pounds which was a tremendous feet for somebody his size he did so in his late 40s and it's because he did everything right and he had the wisdom and the money to hire a good trainer and it all worked out shameless and it all worked out exceptionally well and if you're if you're listen if you're over 40 yourself and you want to follow a good first off hiring a trainer is the best possible thing you can do hire a good trainer someone who's experienced who knows what they're doing that all that's all the best thing you can do but if you want to do something a little less expensive the best program I think for people in this age group who have a little bit of experience working out would be maps anabolic hands down and you could do two days a week in the gym or three days a week in the gym as the program is laid out I'm going to challenge that a little bit just that I think that if you're going to have anabolic you have to have prime and prime throw them on there yeah just because because that makes sure that encompasses anybody over 40 if you're in good shape no chronic pain feel pretty good as far as your form and technique goes as a 40 year old then I could say just go anabolic you'll be just fine but if you've got chronic pain you know you have tight muscles you know that your form may not be the best you absolutely in my opinion have to have prime and prime pro to complement that if you really care longevity wise if you really care about setting this up the right way long term I think those have to go with that well we actually have an over 40 bundle that includes maps anabolic and maps prime and maps anywhere which is good for travel and stuff because the time that we tend to find what professionals in the age group so that works out really well we also have free resources so if you're listening and you just want more information you don't want to pay anything for it we have really really good resources and guides that we wrote that have that help with fat loss and muscle building we have exercise specific guides like we have one that teaches you how to get a better squat we have guides for personal trainers you can find all of those free resources at mind pump free calm you can also find the three of us on instagram you can find justin at mine pump justin you can find me at mine pump salin adam at mine pump adam