I’m 38 in a couple of weeks. Certain things just don’t work the same any more. I swear my groin takes as long to get over a football match as it takes to get over an England penalty shoot out.
However, advancing years doesn’t mean that you need to start acting and talking like the Grim Reaper is knocking on the door or pretending that you’re out of shape just because the calendar keeps moving on.
The problem has little to do with the actual calendar but more to do with the fact that by your 30’s you usually have more responsibilities meaning less available time or you have more accumulated physical and emotional baggage. Neither are excuses to give up just reasons to shape things differently.
If you stop moving, stop taking care of yourself and keep listening to your own bullshit, you WILL look and feel older and then it is a very slippery and fast moving slope.
Here are 20 ways you need to change your approach to working out and training when you get over 30.
1 – Nutrition REALLY counts now
We all remember being 19 eating and drinking whatever we liked and never putting on a gram of fat. Now you’re unlikely to have a body that ‘gets away with it’ or a lifestyle that involves lots of activity so you simply have to get a grasp on your nutrition.
You definitely don’t need to be a saint but if you spend just an hour or so making a plan for yourself to follow based on your personal calorie requirements, and perhaps spending some time with an expert who can help with gut health, both your energy and physical profiles will change rapidly. If you don’t, it’s only going to get worse year on year and you’ll spend more time worrying about it al than getting set once!
2 – Get your alcohol under control
Let’s do this one early. I love a pint or two over a game of pool or with friends but if you are drinking regularly to alleviate boredom and bad days, you are going to pile on weight, tie down your energy levels and set yourself up for health problems.
Alcohol typically increases oestrogen levels which often encourages weight gain in both women (round the hips) and men (around the stomach).
If you can become aware of what you’re drowning in wine and change the outlook and/or environment that leads to it, you can feel 5x better in a matter of weeks.
What can you replace drinking sessions with to disrupt the mental circuitry that ends in a drink? A walk, the gym, a swim, painting?
3 – Stop weighing yourself if you’re not going to make any changes
When you were young and broke you probably didn’t check your bank account or asset profile very often because it was just depressing and didn’t change anything.
Your weight isn’t going to change because you had one day of eating salad or did one spinning workout.
Unless you are consistently working out and eating well, don’t put yourself through the distress. If you can admit you’ve been making mistakes and change them, then crack on and use scales (or more importantly body fat measurements) to track progress. If you can’t admit those mistakes yet that’s fine but don’t keep weighing yourself and then justifying the results with lies about age.
You can be older and lean and you can be young and fat. The reason is the overall trend in your habits not your age.
4 – Spend more time warming up
If you’re turning up to the gym without stretching and mobilising those rusty joints, it’s like driving your car with the wheel alignment wonky. You are going to crash sooner or later then you won’t be going to the gym at all.
You don’t realise how well you can still move until you get some blood in those joints and loosen up the tight bits. Again it’s not ‘the age’ but the accumulation of crappy postures and restricted range of motion in your daily activities.
As a standard approach I like 5 minutes of light to moderate cardio followed by a full body mobility routine focusing on the hips and shoulders to open up the space in your joints for the movement that makes the workout effective.
If you train early, you need to do this, If you sit all day, you need to do this. Just do this.
5 – Exercise for a purpose not a distraction
For many over 30’s exercise becomes their escape from the stresses of life such as work and kids. That’s fine at the start and the fact you are doing anything at all and enjoying it is crucial for habit formation and mental/physical health.
In The Secrets of Showing Up that’s exactly the approach we take in Phase 1.
However, like anything that goes unstructured you will soon hit a wall in terms of what effect it actually has on your body.
If you’re going to spend 2-3 hours per week exercising why not make sure it has maximum impact on your strength, body shape and cardiovascular fitness? As harsh as this may sound to some people, nobody ever got their body in the best shape it could be by doing the same aerobics class every week or running the same 10k.
You’ll be amazed how in as little as two weeks, your body responds to a structured weight training and cardio plan with what we call ‘progressive overload’ which is a fancy way of saying “Progress something every week.” Obviously this needs to be tailored and altered to your current abilities so don’t go nuts!
6 – Prioritise weight training especially if short on time (3-4 times per week)
The single best way to change your body shape (provided nutrition is on point) is to lift weights. What that means for you as an individual can only be determined by an experienced fitness professional.
This is especially important as you get older and naturally start to lose strength and muscle mass (before endurance). Women need it to maintain bone density in the face of osteoporosis risk and men need it to maintain muscle, testosterone levels and well, feeling less manly as life goes on.
The typical start point is to go jogging or hit some intervals on the treadmill. This can be an important part, but if you imagine a pyramid of priorities, that should be Level 2 or 3 after the base of Movement Improvement and Weight Training.
There are a million ways to structure a good weight training program but generally 3-4 full body sessions made up of 2/3 weights and 1/3 cardiovascular conditioning will have a huge impact. You can keep progressing the weights you lift, reduce the rest breaks, choose more challenging exercises and so on to keep challenging your body in ways that running and cycling never can.
You should also become more aware of exercise variations or get a trainer to walk you through them. Strength training doesn’t mean becoming a powerlifter with barbell squats, deadlifts and bench press as the staple. The magic lies in improving your movement in the key human patterns of:
– Vertical push
– Vertical pull
– Horizontal push
– Horizontal pull
– Squat
– Hinge
– Loaded carry
Around these you can use a variety of tools to suit your current capabilities.
7 – Don’t copy 20 year olds because they look how you want to
“I can’t do what I did when I was 20”.
That’s the point of this post, so it makes little sense to get your training and life advice from a 20 year old who has minimal physical issues or responsibilities. Things are different now and you need to learn from an expert how to navigate the world of training at an older age with more miles through your joints and a busier lifestyle.
You might harbour dreams of looking like that again and you might even be able to do it, but you won’t by doing all the crazy workouts on a daily basis that a 20 year old body can handle.
8 – Do 3 x 10-20 minutes of mobility work each week
Believe it or not there was a time when you moved pain free, could touch your toes and reach the top shelf for your June 1989 edition of Mayfair magazine without putting your shoulder out.
A combination of reduced full range movement, 15+ years at a desk and now smart phones means you’re likely to have crappy range of motion in your ankles, knees, hips, spine and shoulders.
You might never be a gymnast but doing some simple stretches and mobilisation exercises for 2-3 x 10-20 minutes per week can make a life-altering difference. The best bit is you don’t need to go to a yoga class to do it (although that’s a great option). Just get a little routine designed for you and do it in front of the TV at night.
9 – Aim for frequent ‘average to good’ workouts
A great teacher of mine Dan John once said something to the tune of “In any ten workouts, you’ll have 2 amazing ones, 6 good ones and 2 terrible ones”.
That’s why showing up and working out regularly is the key without expecting Instagram worthy performance every time. Do it for the habit, do it for the movement, forget a bad one and don’t get carried away with a great one.
Aim for 3-4 sessions per week (plus some walks, swims and cycles if you can) and just make them ‘good’ so you’re not too sore or beat up after and have to miss a week to recover.
The results from accumulated ‘good’ will vastly outweigh sporadic shock-and-awe sessions.
10 – Do more speed and power work
The first thing we lose as we get older is our strength, speed and power. We already said you should be doing strength work 3-4 times per week but this should also include some speed and power work.
Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean racing Usain Bolt or hoisting 100kg over your head. It means performing exercises that require rapid and strong muscular contraction such as throwing things, jumping over things and sprints appropriate to your capabilities.
In my fitness camps we also use ‘reaction lights’ which help maintain agility and multi-direction movement. This is important at a basic level to prepare your body for those times when you slip and need to be able to react fast and stop yourself falling and breaking a hip.
This is also crucial if you want to keep playing your favourite sport.
11 – Pay more attention to rest
Given what we’ve discussed already, some people panic and try to out run their advancing years.
Getting older does mean you likely take longer to recover no matter how well you live your life, so try not to go to the other extreme and perform hard exercise every day. You’ll eventually end up in some form of physical hole whether it be injury or exhaustion.
Keep 48 hours between weight training sessions or High Intensity Interval workouts. That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything, but on ‘low intensity’ days stick to a walk, swim or cycle to give your joints a break from the weight lifting.
12 – Defend your sleep at all costs other than death
I dedicated an entire chapter of The Secrets of Showing Up to sleep because it impacts every area of life in such a big way. Evolution is fairly smart so if ‘it’ decided that humans need to give 1/3 of their daily cycle to sleep, it’s probably worth giving some attention if you want to feel and perform better.
Sure it’s hard if you have a newborn but beyond that, speaking to your partner about bed times and evening activities as well as doing all you can to manage stress levels will do more to improve your life than any exercise program or vegetable platter. I’m deadly serious about this. You will only realise what you’ve been missing out on when you sleep well for a few weeks consistently.
You’ll have fewer food cravings, less aches and pains and more energy. Fat loss will be easier, your mood will improve and you’ll train harder and recover faster.
As an Over 30 your extra stresses and dilemmas are the reason you SHOULD do what you need to do to get more sleep not the excuse for not doing it.
13 – Care about fewer people
That sounds harsh but it doesn’t mean be an asshole. Again, life over 30 generally means you have accumulated more contacts, friends and general connections.
Trying to please them all is exhausting and impossible. Giving time to fewer people and saying no to more requests will give you more time and energy to go deeper with those that matter.
Importantly for this article, you’ll have more time for you. As a good friend said to me this morning “Someone can only have a cup to pour for others if they take time to fill it up.” Think about that before you use ‘helping others’ as an excuse for being sick, fat and tired all the time.
If you’re a people pleaser, framing your own own health as the means to being a better friend or family member can be a great way to motivate yourself if serving your own goals never does.
14 – Accept that health is still the root of long-lasting happiness
When you’re Over 30 and being in the best shape of your life to attract a partner may no longer be THE goal, you need to realise that health and fitness still make EVERYTHING better.
Whether energy for your family, maintaining a sex life, mental acuity for your career, joints that can keep playing your favourite sport at weekends or just having body confidence to smile and enjoy social occasions is your important thing, they are all achieved much more easily by doing the daily things that keep your body, mind, immune system and hormones firing as they’re meant to.
15 – Be honest with significant others about how you feel about yourself
It’s generally harder to think about yourself beyond 30 for all the reasons above.
As such it’s important to open dialogue with your partner, parents, siblings and close friends about why your new fitness routine or nutrition plan is so important to you. Nobody likes change and often when one half of a relationship makes positive changes, it can cause negative reactions.
Often this happens because the onlooker feels backed into a corner. They either have to take the same difficult actions or watch you get fitter, lose fat and in their eyes, put them to shame.
Having this conversation early can be crucial in setting up a successful change as you can make it a team effort. Alternatively, you may sadly find that the person you rely on isn’t as supportive of your own individual goals as you would hope and you have some deeper thinking to do!
16 – Assess how much of your day is your choice
A big part of happiness is personal freedom and having the availability for your exercise and the willpower to follow a new diet often depends on knowing that it serves your personal purpose.
If your day is filled with watching other peoples’ stories, running after kids, serving your partner and obeying your boss, it’s unlikely that any part of your day really means much to you so there will never be any motivation to be in better shape for it.
Making some time for yourself will not only enable you to exercise and prepare better food but you’ll also find your relationships get better not worse because any underlying resentment starts to ebb away.
Ultimately everybody wins but it will only happen when you acknowledge that you’re not happy giving every minute of your life away to other people. Remember, we’re not talking about being selfish but re-energizing and focusing so you have more to give to whatever is important to you.
17 – Assess adult behaviours rooted in outdated childhoods
“Stop acting like a child!”
You’ve probably yelled that at someone in your life! The fact is that a lot of our behaviour is rooted in things we missed out on or found painful in the past. That’s how we learn and protect ourselves.
The problem comes when perspectives and ideas that you’ve either outgrown or no longer apply because the person responsible no longer has influence over you (parent, teacher, coach etc) keeps directing your thoughts and actions as an adult.
This can come in the form of being scared of the gym because you think it will be as scary as PE class, feeding yourself comfort ice cream just like your mum did and so on.
Look at the behaviours you know hold you back from losing fat or getting fit, look at why they happen and consider what thoughts are controlling your response – a response that is no longer required to protect yourself. In fact it’s likely doing more damage than good now.
18 – Realise your ducks have NEVER been in a row
“I’ll start next Monday/January/after my birthday….”
No you won’t – and you don’t need to either. Stop thinking there will be a time when all the stars align to make it possible to get fit. The chances are the exact opposite will happen. You’ll be given more responsibility at work, you’ll get more engrained in your Netflix habit and your family will always have things they need help with.
Start small NOW and grow into the new habits, improving as you go. It will never be the right time.
19 – Involve the kids instead of blaming them
I know parents with 5 kids who have done fitness modelling shows. And won.
Yes, life is harder with kids as they need your time and energy, but there are always things you can do to work around it and get started.
I’ve known couples where the dad comes to our 6pm group fitness session and mum comes at 7pm. The kids come with mum at 7 and dad takes them home. Both get to exercise and the kids have to sit in the car for 10 minutes. No biggie.
I’ve known mums form a running group of five mums. One day per week, one mum doesn’t run but stays and looks after all the children together. Each mum gets to run four times per week out of five. Perfect!
Those options may not work for you for other reasons but you get the idea. Look for answers not road blocks.
20 – Play the calorie game to be in shape and have a life
Finally we give a little time to social life because another excuse is often that because of client dinners or weekend parties, people think they can’t get in shape.
Fat loss is largely about calorie intake versus calorie output. Sacrificing food for alcohol or binge eating is not recommended as a habit but if you plan out your week or the forthcoming day, you can cheat the game.
If you’re having a three course client dinner on Tuesday evening, try fasting over breakfast and lunch so you can eat bigger at night without eating excessive total calories that day.
If you’re having 2-3 glasses of wine, cut your carbs down from your meals (keep the protein up) so again, you keep total calories down.
These might not be long-term solutions but they are simple ‘hacks’ to help you find the balance of improve health and fitness whilst living your life rather than thinking you either have to be a saint-like fitness model or give up completely and become obese.
Do these twenty things with 90% consistency and, unless you get hit by a truck, I can guarantee you will live a more productive, happier and longer life.
What if you’re over 40 or 50?
All the same rules apply you’re just more likely to realise how you should have done them in your 30’s and they are now 3x more important!
I’ve organised all of this into a simply formula…
