Here is why you need My Top 5 Exercise For More Muscle And Strength After 35!

Ever since I fell in love with lifting and getting strong at 17. I love going to the gym lifting heavy and grinding some hard sets.

As we get older, we have to be smarter and can’t always go hard in the same ways.

Even more than that we have to change our exercises, because going hard in certain exercises isn’t worth the risk.

But, I have found there are a handful of strength exercises where the risk/reward ratio is on our side. It is harder to get hurt.

Allowing us to push hard so

• We make a gain in muscle, strength, and athletic performance
• Don’t beat up our spine or joints
• Make us feel young again

I’m going to share My Top 5 Exercise For More Muscle And Strength After 35! . Read on and let’s get strong.

My Top 5 Exercise For More Muscle And Strength After 35!

Trap Bar Deadlift

The first one is the trap bar deadlift. This is going to be better for building very strong legs, than packing on muscle.

It is safer than traditional or sumo deadlift, because the bar placement is right underneath your center of gravity.

There is a blast to do, load up some heavy weights and go to town.

A few tips

• Keep slack out of arms
• Drive your feet through the floor, and once the bar comes off the ground drive your hip forward.
• Brace into your abs breathe in and push your abs out before you lift.
• Keep your spine in a neutral position, not rounded
• Lift with a bar with mats if you feel it in your lower back

Slight Incline DB Press

The DB’s allow for a better shoulder position that won’t kill your shoulders, elbows, and wrist.

The slight incline helps avoid any shoulder impingement, which can cause pain.

Personally, I’ve always gotten way more pec activation with this than the typical bench press

Better shoulder stability for shoulder health.

But, not so much that you can push this really hard and build really strong push strength.

This to me is the ideal push exercise for guys who do BJJ and older dues who want to make gains without all the shoulder pain.

A few tips

• As you lower the weight think like you are rowing.
• Focus on 2-4 sec negative with 1 sec pause at the bottom.
• Keep your chest out shoulder blades back

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Bench supported T-bar row or Seated Row

Horizontal rowing is my jam.

These two are my favorite. I love these because you can lock yourself in and go hard on your back, biceps, and shoulders. With little risk of injury and you’re able to load heavy enough to see some major gains.

A strong upper back is the foundation of healthy shoulders. As you might know for healthy shoulders we want to have a strong back and in general do more volume for our back than our pec and front shoulders.

With both of these, I prefer a neutral grip to make it more shoulder friendly.

A few tips

• As you row pull your shoulder blades back and contract you’re back hard.
• Focus on tension, squeeze the grip hard, row to your chest, big squeeze for 1-2 sec and 3-4 sec negative.
• Avoid jerking motion and just using your arms

Rear Foot elevated split squat

This is a much-hated leg exercise, but it works all the big leg muscles without killing the lower back or compressing your joints.

It can improve your mobility and work on core strength at the same time.

They can be very hard. when you train them with decent weight.

This is a great option to get strong legs, build muscle and become more athletic.

Trap bar RDL

RDL’s are purest form of a hip hinge or deadlift. Driving more hip mobility and targeting the hamstring and glutes.

Although, this one has a little more of a learning curve. It is a great one to learn. If you can’t bend over without pain, you’re bound to pull your back at some point.

I love Trap bar RDL, it is one of the best variations to get us to load an RDL without putting too much stress on the lower back.

Even clients who have sensitive lower back pain can load this RDL variation with little to no pain.

Because the weight is right underneath our center of gravity it tends to work well.

A few tips

• Soften your knees before you start the movements
• Think about driving your hip/tailbone to the wall behind you.
• Try to get a big stretch on your hamstring and glutes(ass)
• Then stand tall.
• Focus on most of the movement coming from the hips without much additional knee bend or rounding of the lower back.
• Brace your core/abs on the way down and exhale on the way up

Bobby

That is My Top 5 Exercise For More Muscle And Strength After 35, I hope you learned a ton and try some of these exercise. If you have any questions be sure to let me know.

Bobby here. I am going to teach how to Never Need A Personal Trainer.

As a personal trainer, I don’t want to provide you with results.

But.. give the self efficiency to train alone. To that is what most personal trainers, should strive to do.

If I went on vacation my clients would always say

“It’s just not the same without out.”

I’ve heard this over the years when clients of mine need to train alone.

Although it is a confidence boost in some ways, my goal for everyone is to build confidence to be able to train by themselves.

I want to give them the skills of fitness for life.

Just like anything, this is a skill.

Not only training by yourself but enjoying it and being able to push yourself hard.

So, I came up with some tips to train solo and have it be awesome.

I have mainly done this for the past 15 years. I have had some awesome gains and a lot of fun as well.

Never Need A Personal Trainer Again

#1 Music/podcast and audiobooks. When I need to do something I really don’t want to do , like do the dishes. It so much easier to do it and get through it. If I throw some music on or my favorite podcast. Working out is no different, putting on some music that will entertain you, inspire you and have you run through a wall.

#2 Caffeine, getting a little artificial boost to kick some ass in the gym is a great thing. If it’s through a strong coffee or supplements. This can really do the trick and help you get moving. Enough of this and you’ll Never Need A Personal Trainer. lol

#3 If you’re training at home, it is best to have an isolated space, where you can train. Where people won’t bother you or you won’t get distracted. If you have a very hard time with this, I would recommend just going to the gym, until you get into the routine of working out consistently.

#4 Pencil you’re workout in each week, with the time you know you’ll have. Don’t let anything get in the way. Circumstances don’t change our responsibility. Don’t let minor things or lack of motivation stop you. Build discipline.

#5 Struggling to workout, just do 10 minutes worth of your workout. Maybe that is just doing your warm-up and then leaving the gym or calling it a day. Do that for a few weeks , until you feel like doing more. I guarantee in a month you’ll be crushing workouts in no time.

#6 Growth mindset. This is when we have the mindset of I can’t do this yet versus I can’t do this ever. Be patient, this is a skill, which may take time but don’t give up. You can do this.

#7 Reflect on your struggles with training alone, ask yourself why and ponder a few solutions, and give them a try and see if it helps.

#8 Keep a training journal and record the weight, reps, and sets you to do. Each week try to improve if you can. Training with intentions of improvements versus just going through the motions. Can make a big difference. Knowing you’re improving each week or every few weeks will inspire you to keep going and make it fun.

That is all I have for you. Do you have any tips to add to How Never Need A Personal Trainer Again?

Check out my daily tips on Instagram, to learn how to get strong and build muscle.

I almost didn’t write this because who cares about Pain-Free Strength and muscle Gains and joint health, warm-ups, and mobility?

I don’t think too many do. The only time I looked into it, besides when I learned about it for my education.

Is when I have gotten hurt or banged up. I bet you are the same way.

But, Pain-free training is something, that has been on my brain more and more these days

Since, turning 36, I want to be strong and do BJJ for a very long time, hopefully until I die.

I like to train in a way that will help me with that goal.

Here are the 3 steps I do to make pain-free gains.

They are mobility, pump, and joint-friendly exercises for Pain-Free Strength & Muscle Gains

Step 1 Mobility

Mobility is how much range of motion you have control over a given joint.

Often it is when we are forced outside our mobility, where we don’t have strength and control.

Where we end up getting hurt.

Certain joints in our body need more mobility than others.

These are our ankles, hips, T-spine, and shoulders.

When we don’t have it, it can not only beat up that given joint but the joint next to it as well.

A good example is if your ankles and hips are tight, that could beat up your knee joints.

Mobility exercises

Any exercises that will help increase our mobility, are where you want to start.

These can be

• Soft tissue work like rolling out your muscles with a foam roller or lax ball
• Stretches to release tight areas like pec stretch for your shoulders
• Corrective drills, that help open these areas like 1/2 knee T-spine rotation.

Here are some of my favorite mobility exercises by joint

Ankles

• Rolling out feet and calves
• Calf stretch
• wall ankle mobility
• Heel Walk
• Toe raises

Hips

• Rolling out quads, hip flexors, glutes, adductors and hamstrings
• Couch stretch or hip flexor stretch
• 90-90 hip stretch
• frog stretch
• hip switches
• pigeon stretch
• adductor rocker
• Hip capsule stretch
• Squat and Pry

T-spine

• Roll out the T-spine
• windmills
• T-spine extension against a wall
• 1/2 kneeling rotations
• Torso twist stretch

Shoulder

• Roll out pec, lats and traps
• Bar hang
• Pec stretch on pole
• Y pec stretch
• Lat stretch with bands or straps

Getting A Pump For Pain-Free Strength & Muscle Gains

The next step for Pain-Free Strength & Muscle Gains is to get a pump on the weaker muscles.

We usually have tight and overdeveloped muscles, and on the opposite side, the other muscles tend to be weak.

A Common one is really tight pecs with a weak upper back or tight hip flexors but weak glutes and hamstrings.

We want to pump and strengthen these muscles.

After stretching or mobilizing the tight one, we are going to go right into pump work. In most cases, these are the muscles on the back side of our body upper back, glutes, and hamstring.

Here are some of my favorite drills for each area

Upper back pumps

• YWT iso holds
• Band pull parts
• face pulls of all kinds
• Any horizontal row

Lower body pumps

• Bridges
• Band walks or banded abductions
• Banded pull throughs
• Frog pumps
• Banded leg curls
• Sled dragging of all kinds

These first steps are, what you should do before you work out or can be done daily as a way to increase mobility and reduce pain.

The next step is going to be, what you want to do in the gym, improve your mobility as well build strength/muscle.

But, without beating up your joints and undoing the first two steps

Joint Friendly Exercises for Pain-Free Strength & Muscle Gains

This is my favorite part we are going to lift and put in some serious work.

Pain-Free Strength & Muscle Gain as well as Joint friendly doesn’t always mean easy, boring, and lame.

We want exercises that have a high upside and very little downside.

This is what personal trainers learn in every course the risk-reward ratio.

Most of the time we want to stay away from exercise that :

• Compresses or beats up our spine
• Too many pronated or elbow flared-out upper body exercises
• Limited overhead exercise
• Less barbell work and more strength work with DBs and KBs
• Less hip-dominant exercise if you have trouble with your hips and low back
• Less knee dominant exercise if you have trouble with knees
• Less pushing exercise, if we have shoulder pain(at least for a little while)

Pain-free upper body exercises

Too much benching or pressing with a barbell is going to cause trouble.

Overhead stuff as well, as most people don’t have the mobility to do it safely.

In general, a neutral grip is just going to feel better on your shoulders, elbow, and wrist.

Here are some options I love for upper body

Pain free upper body option

• Db bench press variation ( flat, incline, decline, floor alternating 1 arm)
• Push-up variations, I love ring push-ups and weighted push up
• Landmine presses
• Pulling option
• Ring rows
• Banded pull parts or face pulls
• Bench rows
• 1 arm db or kb row
• neutral grip lat pull down
• Plus, loaded carries are a great option for farmer walk and rack walks

Pain Free lower body exercise

With the lower body, we want to pick exercises that don’t compress the spine , and leg exercises that will activate your core .

You want to work leg-dominant exercises, that are opposite of your trouble area.

If your knees are beaten up, focus on hip and hamstring-focused lower-body exercises

If your hip or lower back is beat up , focus on knee-dominant lower body exercise.

Here are some of my favorites, I’m putting them in 2 different categories, knee-dominant and hip-dominant.

Knee dominant

Goblet Squat

• Box squats
• Back squat
• Front squat or Zercher squat
• split squats
• lunges
• step-ups
• elevated split squats
• Backward sled drag

Hip-Dominant

• BB deadlifts
• DB/KB/Trapbar RDL
• Good morning
• Trap bar deadlift
• Single leg rdl
• staggered stance rdl
• hip thruster
• leg curls
• Back extension
• Reverse hypers
• Forward sled drags

This is not an exhaustive list of every exercise you could do, but a good list of the ones my clients and I had great success with.

Let’s review to get tout pain or less pain

• Address mobility
• Pump the weaker muscles
• Use joint-friendly lifts when you strength-train

Any questions, be sure to reach out and sure to check my Instagram for daily Strength tips for BJJ