Recomp and limitations with Weights

vms4evr

Looking to recomp. I've read bunches of notes on it. Need a little help.

Age: 60, Ht: 6.0, Wt: 161, BF% 17. Workout ~5 days/week./ Mostly HIIT (T25, P90X). Started adding in weights 3x/week and removing some cardio. Maybe 3x weights and 2x cardio. Not including riding mountain bike, hiking, or evening walks.

My goal is same weight. A bit more muscle. Remove some belly fat leftover that refuses to die! Pretty lean over the rest of my body. If I gain a few pounds that is muscle I'm good. Don't want to do the bulk and drop routine.

I have back issues and can't be doing big squats and dead lifts. I'm stuck at about 100lbs max before the hardware in my back jams my spine. So 1-3 rep max weight stuff is out because it'll kill me. I had tried Beachbody Beast and that helps without getting crazy on the weights. I have Strong Lifts and decided that the 5x he uses might not be so good for me.

I do T25 and P90X. I don't consider it pure cardio in my mind. You use your own body weight a lot. Think pushup, plank, pullup, chinup, crunches, squats, dips, lunges, etc. I do use dumbbells for a number of these.

For weights. Just started again. I added a mix routine with Push, Pull, Lower. Each is only exercise that day and I do them 1 day apart. So my week looks like, Push, T25, Pull, T25, Lower, Rest, Stretch only.

I used a couple of sites to help me with TDEE and my macro splits. Here is what I came up with.

BMR: 1580. TDEE: 2726. (w 5-6 hours/week aggressive workouts).
Carb: 45%. Prot: 25%. Fat: 30%. Daily grams C/P/F is 305g/170g/90g.

I had another option to run TDEE at 2450 to be more conservative since eating 3K cals / day is hard for me.

Any insight would be appreciated.

cgvet37

I have a bad back and knees. I do leg presses, lunges, and balance squats. You can still get a great leg workout without squats or deadlifts.

sijomial

At 60 progress will be slow so have realistic expectations of speed of progress.

Us older folk have had longer to acculumlate injuries!
My back won't tolerate large vertical loads so weighted squats and deads are restricted to the point of being almost a waste of time.
Rules out a lot of the 5x5 style programs (they would bore me to tears anyway so no great loss).
Heavy shoulder press seated doesn't upset my back but standing does - experimentation required.
A strong core helps enormously with back injuries though.

I can't lunge at all. Can't do heavy leg press due to knee injuries, goes bone on bone at about 150 - 170kg. So I use lighter weight/higher volume.
Can't run more than 3 or 5k but can cycle all day.

You may have to or want to use different rep ranges for upper or lower or just different exercises. I train down to 3RM on upper body only. I never go lower than 3 reps as that's when things go "ping".

There may be an optimal way to recomp but with restrictions you have to find your own balance and methods. For me avoidance of injury makes the biggest difference to progress (I often use pyramid style of weight training as that seems to work best for me as an example).

TDEE or MFP eating back exercise calories is personal preference, I prefer the MFP way with my protein and fat as minimum goals rather than fixed percentages. Carbs fall wherever they fall.

briscogun

I'm in a similar boat as you. 46 with a history of throwing my back out and a bad knee. I can't do StrongLifts because I don't have a gym, but I'm attempting the recomp as well.

I starting using body weight exercises, like startbodyweight.com, also look at convict conditioning, but I settled on You Are Your Own Gym (YAYOG). Structured program, 4 days a week, has 4 different levels from novice to advanced.

Recomp is sloooooow. Especially for us more "advanced" gentlemen. In theory the scale won't change, but your proportions will. Take photos to track your progress.

Good luck!

vms4evr

Thanks guys.

Agreed on realistic expectations. I've been working out seriously now for about 6 years and taking diet serious for about 3. BF% is pretty good at 17%. Trying to get below 15% would be painful and it makes me look like I'm sick...

Some of the workarounds suggested to replace big deadlifts and squats is good. I have the same problem with vertical loads. I'm doing dumbbell squats fine up to about 100lbs. Walking lunges ok around 50lbs. My form goes down the hopper after that. Doing goblet squats is ok. Step up and Bulgarian squats I can do with lighter weights. They kill me energy wise.

Upper body I can do most things but real careful with flyes. Tore my bicep and some ligaments a couple of years ago doing a OCR. Flyes are scary and my PT prefers I just not do them at all. Do lots of pull ups, push ups. Presses, curls, rows, etc...

I want to trim down the variations of exercises and do fewer types and just add more weight. Do a lot of 15,12,8,8 sets and some 15,12,8,8,12,15 presently. I think I'm going to try 12,8,(5 or 3), with higher weights where I can.

I do all of this at home and don't belong to a gym.

I'm doing mostly MFP diet but looked at TDEE to see if I wanted to switch. I do log everything. Fats are my weakness. I usually set it to 30% and go over. Protein pretty good. Carbs vary, especially when I get in a mood and eat junk.

I like the "advanced gentlemen" and "avoid injury" statements. Makes the most sense at our age. Grow old is not for sissies. Recovering from big injuries sux even more...