For Those Who Started Lifting After 40...

How much lean muscle have you since put on? You read about 18y.o lads who slam on 25Ibs of muscle in a summer without thinking, but what about those of us who started after 40?

Anyone here added 30, 40 or more?

Good question. I’ve lifted since I was 18, but didn’t know much back then - ate terrible, bad form, stress, etc. As the years went by, kept learning a bit at a time. By the time I turned 50, was finally putting it all together. In the past year, I put on between 25 and 30 lbs of bodyweight, mostly muscle. About 5 or 10 lbs I had had before, but the rest was new. Now at 212 lbs, the heaviest I’ve ever been. Don’t know if this helps.

[quote]cavalier wrote:
Good question. I’ve lifted since I was 18, but didn’t know much back then - ate terrible, bad form, stress, etc. As the years went by, kept learning a bit at a time. By the time I turned 50, was finally putting it all together. In the past year, I put on between 25 and 30 lbs of bodyweight, mostly muscle. About 5 or 10 lbs I had had before, but the rest was new. Now at 212 lbs, the heaviest I’ve ever been. Don’t know if this helps.[/quote]

Your case reminds me of a theory I have, that training is partially cumulative in benefit, ie if you don’t supplement it with good rest/diet over the years, you make very slow gains but after that, if you introduce good food/rest even at our late stage, you will see a spectacular leap in lean muscle from all the work you put in during those earlier years.

Not as effective as training simultaneous to solid diet/rest, but I don’t think the work is wasted. I’m sure there’s a biological term for that cellular change that can wait dormantly for years for protein/diet, and suddenly take hypertrophic effect when they are supplied.

Bump

Last year,
Squats and Milk program
from 234 @ 20% to 275 @ 30%, so for 41 lbs, 15 muscle.

Trying to cut down to 250.