For women over 40...Can we build muscle?

Ernestine Shepherd is a 75 years old bodybuilder and she did not start until she was 56.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIxmj_HHfWA

Inspirational!!!

Ernestine Shepherd is a 75 years old bodybuilder and she did not start until she was 56.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIxmj_HHfWA

Inspirational!!!

Oh I love her too!! Amazing!

:laugh: :bigsmile:

I'm a nurse in a long term care facility.
A few of my residents need to see this.
Love it!

Your muscles are there.. they are just wasted. The MINUTE you pick up a weight, even if its 1lb you are going to activate the muscle.
The MINUTE you get on your knees and do one half push up.. the process begins.
Wall squat with no weight... placing stress on your leg muscles which may shake and carry on because they arent used to it, will activate the muscle and get it working.
Muscle isnt limited by age... its limited by disuse.
Get onto bodybuilding.com and check out all the over 40's competitors and then you'll have no more questions about building muscle.
I am 42 soon, and I adore lifting weights and being strong.
Dont ever feel limited by your age. Pump those weights!

Of course you can gain muscle past 40. I hope nobody actually put this idea into your head that it can't be done. I've had muscle hiding under my arm fat for quite some time. After the fat stripped off, wha-la, muscle. Then, there's the little sinewy muscles down my back and side (and my abs starting to show). I've never had those before and have been training 2-3x per weeks with weights for a few months now. One day with a trainer, then two days with New Rules of Lifting for Women workouts. Check it out. Great book.

Of course, you will have to up your lean protein and not sit around eating bread and coffee and expect to gain muscle.

Anyone can build muscle! It takes a caloric excess though. There are about 1800 calories stored in a lb of muscle (like there are 3500 in a lb of fat). You can't expect to gain more than about 1/4-1/2 lb of muscle in a week (NOT like .5-2 lbs of fat you can lose). So you only need about 100-200 extra calories per day when you're in a muscle-building phase. You also need to train HARD. It takes a lot of energy to build muscle, so your body will only do it if you constantly overload the muscles you have now and force it to adapt to that overload. That means training to failure, either through moderately high reps with moderately high weight, or fairly low reps with really high weight. Super low reps (<5) will primarily train the nervous systems and super high reps (>20) will train energy systems rather than cause muscle growth. Either direction will have to result in failure (inability to produce another rep with fair form), which indicates that you've recruited and exhausted all available muscle fibers.

That said, if you need to lose 15 lbs, lose the 15 lbs first with a modest caloric deficit (nothing like 1,000 calories a day or you'll lose what muscle you have). Then concentrate on building. You can't pedal both ways on a bike, know what I mean?

This +100.
But expectations of gaining even an ounce or two of muscle a week may not be realistic for most folks, especially as one gets older.
And a slow (3-5 second) lowering of the weight benefits you more than the raising of the weight.
Hit all three types of failure on every set. (Can no longer raise the weight. Can no longer keep the weight from lowering. Can no longer slow the lowering of the weight.)

Go "beast mode", but maintain perfect form (no squirming). Keep telling yourself that it's not really pain, it's only discomfort.

I'm a 57 year old woman, which has been fairly active all my life, exercise, dance etc. But the dreaded flab has crept up on me through the years. I'm not over weight 5'3 118 pounds, but loose arms and a roll around the middle prompted my husband (62) and I to work with a trainer.

Even though we had been going to to the gym for 6 years, we had settled into a comfortable but now I see low results workout. We both looked around and thought there's 500 thousand dollars worth of equipment here and we are only using a fraction of it. So we searched for a trainer that would understand the 50 something situation and we found James. James is a 64 year old competitive body builder with a killer physique. He went right to work checking our body fat and working us up to the point where we were working out in the Advanced Training Center, (muscle man place).

We are 2 months into it, feels so good to know there is something we can do at this age to improve our body, not just wait for nature to take it's course. There are days when I get discouraged, especially when I start looking on the internet and see "total transformation in 8 weeks", I don't think that's real, at least not for me, it may take 6 months or a year to really transform, but it took me 30 years to get this look, what is a year to get a new one? Our trainer James says that we are just babies now, which kind of gives me an idea of how far we need to go!

Of course you can build muscle at any age. I do not like qualifiers such as age, gender or whatnot. That is posing a question in a negative light before you even start -- such as, if one does try and fails, the built-in qualifier is there -- not the shortcoming of the person. So, never say never. With that, you must lift heavy without compromising form (do not look at men lifting weights -- most have it wrong -- too heavy, half reps, i.e., no gains) sorry fellas -- talking about the majority not the pros. And no new muscle will be evident without a cleaned-up diet. And I mean cleaned-up -- track all your food -- most people eat in a constant calorie surplus. This mean that you will, obviously, GAIN weight. And most people do not know what 1600 calories (or whatever your appropriate calorie allotment should be to lose) looks like. Use this app or another and really see. You must keep your calories high enough so that when you plateau you have room to adjust down. Yet enough of a caloric deficit to lose. Cardio should be a tool, not a means to an end -- your primary fat loss is through diet, not cardio. Cardio is done just enough to keep fat loss optimal, not as much as you can endure. Overuse of steady state cardio will backfire and over a long period of time, wreck your metabolism. HIIT, steady state and intervals all should be used sparingly, but used. Also, it's true what other poster said -- lose the 15 lbs. first, then start a serious muscle-building program by increased calories. You will obviously gain weight but there is not other way to gain muscle. After a good long period of building, you will diet down again to lose gained fat, all while continuously lifting heavy to maintain that new muscle. If you are serious about this, you can always hire a coach that will give you your diet and exercise program. The right ones are well worth the money.

I've lifted weights now for 4 years; 2 years seriously with diet and my results have been unbelievable. And I'm well over 40. Good luck!