WORKOUT ADVICE

High-Intensity Workouts Are Great… Just Not For The Over 40s

Step away from the Battle Rope, and put down your Tabata Timer

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Shortcuts and ‘Hacks’ — we bloody love them.

It’s why we:

• fall for get-rich-quick schemes instead of making sensible investments;
• try hardcore diets instead of slowly chipping away at the excess weight;
• buy sketchy supplements promising to make us look and feel like skinny 20-year-olds again instead of just sleeping more and drinking less alcohol.

Fitness and Working Out are no different.

Super-short workouts like Tabata/HIIT for all-round fitness, and High Intensity Training to build muscle sound great in theory when you’re 40+ with so much else on your plate.

“A total of 1 hour a week of workouts to get in shape? Where Do I Sign Up?!”

The problem is these workouts just won’t work for YOU.

Now wait…

I’m not saying you aren’t young, disciplined, or hardcore enough.

You just:

• won’t like them;
• won’t make progress on them;
• won’t stick with them; and
• will give up working out.

So let’s briefly look at why they won’t work for you as you get older.

But then we’ll steal some of their ‘best bits’ because they are based on solid principles, and have worked well for my clients in my 15 years of coaching folks over 40.

We can build our own ‘minimalist workout plan’, spend as little time as possible exercising (while still getting in great shape), AND keep all our work, family, and life plates spinning too. Nice.

Why High-Intensity Training Won’t Work For You

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Let me first make an important distinction:

• Training at a high intensity sometimes in whatever you do will work great for you after 40. It’s something you should definitely do.
• Trying to get in shape by following a program designed to be high-intensity all the time will not work for you.

I’ll give you some examples.

Tabata Workouts

Tabata workouts involve repeating multiple circuits of cardiovascular and resistance training exercises for say 4–5 minutes non-stop, having a quick break, then going again.

Think burpees, sprints, push-ups, lunges, etc.

This style of training is extremely efficient in theory, as it burns as many calories in 20 minutes as an hour of brisk walking.

But to burn that level of calories you need to be operating at an intensity that’s so high as to feel extremely uncomfortable.

Lung-bursting, head-pounding, vomit-inducing stuff.

If you’re over 40 and haven’t been working out like this (or at all) for a while, you simply cannot push yourself as hard as you need to to get the benefit.

You’ll burn nowhere near the level of calories that attracted you to these workouts in the first place. You end up hating working out, messing up your relationship with exercise, concluding that exercise needs to be hardcore and uncomfortable to ‘work’ or be worthwhile and that you just don’t like it.

High-Intensity Weight Training

Popularized by behemoth bodybuilders like Mike Mentzer and Dorian Yates, High-Intensity Training involves using just 1 ‘work set’ per exercise.

That work set is done to (and beyond, with help from a ‘spotter’) complete failure (unable to complete 1 more even half-assed repetition), to build significant amounts of muscle mass in just a few super-short workouts per week.

So far so awesome-sounding.

Studies have shown this style of training builds more strength and muscle than 3 work sets completed at a slightly lower intensity.

Here’s the kicker again though — good luck trying to hit that intensity level in each workout if you’re a mere mortal in your 40s or 50s.

We simply don’t have it in us, mentally or physically. What you think is the last rep you could possibly do is nowhere near the point you need to go to.

Instead, as with our Tabata example, when we try to train like this our results are disappointing. The intensity levels we are capable of aren’t high enough for one work set to create a sufficient amount of muscle damage and make progress.

How To Use Minimalist Training for YOUR Training Goals

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So high-intensity programs in their purest form won’t work well for us as we get older. We feel like we’re trying to train at the required intensity, but we just aren’t.

And that’s OK because this doesn’t make high-intensity training useless for us.

In fact, the success that some folks can have with these programs leaves clues for us older folks.

Namely:

The higher the intensity you are able and willing to train at, the less work you need to do on a weekly basis.

So if we can commit to pushing ourselves into that high-intensity, uncomfortable place even just a few times during each workout, we can save ourselves a lot of time and effort!

Instead of a whole 20-minute Tabata workout, we can blast out a few 10–20 seconds of sprints on our cardio machine of choice at the end of a workout. This builds a healthy heart, and lung capacity and gets the heart rate up for a just-about-doable length of time.

Or with weights workouts, taking Leg Training as an example:

• doing 3 sets of high-repetition (10 reps+) Squats where the last few reps have you thinking “I really really despise this feeling, I think my legs are going to give way”, is much better than…
• 3 sets of Leg Press, then 3 sets of Hamstring Curls, then 3 sets of Calf Raises where you stop as soon as a bit of discomfort kicks in, happy to just tick each set off your Workout Plan.

See what I mean? We can benefit from a sprinkling of high-intensity work in our training after 40, cutting workout time to a much shorter, sustainable level, without the entire workout being a hateful experience that leaves us traumatized and zonked.

Ready to Work Out Less Often But A Little Harder?

If you are used to working out for over an hour a few times a week, doing the standard 20+ sets of weights and 15–20 minutes of ‘cardio’, there can be a fear attached to intentionally working out less:

Surely a minimalist approach isn’t enough unless I go Super Hardcore, busting a gut every minute of every workout?

Believe me, working out less in terms of frequency and volume is ‘enough’ if you’re willing to be very uncomfortable a few times in each session. But you don’t need to go down the Tabata or Mike Mentzer route.

If you’re still skeptical though, think of it this way:

If your body shape, fitness and strength haven’t improved over the last 2 months despite all your workouts, it’s a pretty safe bet that doing the same thing for another 2 months will yield the same (lack of) progress.

You have nothing to lose with trying this Higher-Intensity-But-Not-Horrible approach, and a whole lot of time, energy, strength, and fitness to gain in your 40s, 50s, and beyond!

Over 40, fed up and out of shape — get free access to my Programs Vault (40+ friendly programs for diet, workouts and healthy lifestyle) and you’ll be subscribed to my weekly newsletter too!