The Best Workout Plan For Men Over 35

Today I’m going to go over the Best Workout Plan For Men Over 35 . I’m Bobby Collins, I have been a fitness trainer for 15 years, and been lifting for almost 20 years.

At 36 years old, with more aches and pains, plus responsibility as a father.

My training has evolved.

Today I’m going to go over the Best Workout Plan For Men Over 35, so you can stay strong and healthy.

Best Workout Plan For Men Over 35

Warming Up

No one likes to warm up, including my self. But, when you are 35 + it’s just stupid to skip it.

Your asking for trouble and injuries.

You don’t have to do these crazy long warm up, 10 minutes is a good amount time to get it done.

From a high level perspective, I want you to accomplish 4 things

• Mobilize and open up what is tight.
• Activate the posterior chain and core(glutes ,upper back and core).
• Practice some movements, you’ll do in your session.
• Do something explosive, to stay young and prepare for an intense workout .

Although the best warm ups are customized for your needs and weakness.

After 15 years coaching people like you, there are issues that are constantly present, that most guys will benefit from

• Tight pecs, lats and upper spine(T-spine).
• Tights hip and hamstrings.
• Weak core, glutes and upper back.
• We will address these in the warm up.

Here is a sample warm up to use, this is full body warm up.

Which is great even if you do a, split routine. Your 35 + self, needs that extra mobility work.

• Pec stretch 30s per side
• Lat stretch 30s per side
• Lying hamstring mobility drill 10 per side
• 90-90 hip strtech 30s per side
• Lying windmill 3 per side
• Plank 20s
• Side plank 20s
• Bridges 20 reps
• Banded pull parts 30 reps
• Squat and pry 5 reps
• side lunges 5 per side
• Box jump or MB Slams 3x 5 30s rest(Pick one and alternate each workout )

This might seem like a lot, but once you learn it, goes by quick. And will keep your joints healthy and you’ll have better training sessions. You can look these exercises up on my youtube channel

Note-if you’re enjoying this article so far, I enjoy my daily BJJ strength and conditioning content here.

The 3 training methods

Their are three training methods, I recommend you use to get strong and build muscle are:

• Sub-max strength work
• Dynamic effort
• Repetition effort

These will build the most resilient body as well change your body composition (get leaner and build muscle mass)

Sub max effort– This is like max effort where you would max out for 1 rep but, for safety reasons we are going to do sub max. Which is working up to a heavy set with great form and control for rep of 3-6. This will get us really strong and give us a better base to build some solid muscle. We want to use exercises that won’t kill our joints.

For legs I like trap bar deadlifts and box sqauts(I prefer a safety bar if you have it)

For upper body I prefer DB presses or chin up variations.

Usually we do this for 4-6 sets.

We will start light here and slowly build up to heavy sets of 3-6 . When we do this, we want to leave 1-2 reps in the tanks. This will allows us to stay away from injuries and not make it hard to recover from.

Dynamic Effort/Power Training

This training method is about moving fast. Build power, speed and quickness.

We are using light weight and moving it fast.

Or we may be doing pure power work like jumps, sprints and throws.

This will improve our performance and longevity in life.

It also helps get us stronger on our heavier lifting days.

If you like to lean more about power training, check out this article out.

We want these to be low reps of 1-5 with moderate rest and around 5-10 sets.

The low reps allow us to be explosive as possible for every rep, if we were to go too high on our reps. They would stop being explosive.

We need a decent rest time too, so we can be explosive. If we accumulate too much fatigue, this will slow us down as well.

For lower body I like

• Banded deadlifts
• Banded box squats
• Box Jumps or jump squats
• KB Swings

For upper Body I like

• Plyo push ups
• Landmine press variations
• Medicine ball throw or slam variations .

Repetition Method

This is what most people think of, when they lift weights.

6+ reps with great control and focused on building muscle.

This can also build some muscular endurance to help with sports.

The main focus here to triggered muscle building .

We want to use good form , control and focus on hard sets.

A hard set, is a set taken close to failure.

Another way to think about this, is your last few reps should significantly slower to lift, then the first few reps.

We want to rest between 45-90s for most of these lifts.

Typical workout , the first one or two exercises might be the max effort or dynamic effort focused .

But, everything after that is going to be focused repetition methods.

An example of sub max effort upper day

• Heavy Incline DB Press Workout to heavy set of 5
• Ring push ups max reps 3 sets
• 1 arm KB row 4x 12/ per arm
• Lat pulldown 4x 10 reps
• Lat shoulder raises 3x 15
• Rolling Tricep extension 3x 12

The best cardio for men over 35

To be honest many people think they need more cardio , then they do.

You could get a strong, lean and jacked body with strength training and eating right.

But, cardio has some unique benefits such as

• Increasing recovery and making your strength work more effective.
• Helps you live longer at high quality of life.
• Dealing with stress better

The cardio to get these benefits are aerobic based workouts, your aerobic system is the most used system in your body to create energy for the majority of your live.

We want utilized aerobic training, which is a moderate intensity form of cardio.

To do this we want to stay at this level by keeping our heart rate between 120-150 BPM for 30-60 minutes. For 1-3 x a week.

You should feel like your working, but still be able talk like you normally do.

Cyclical exercise seems to be the most effective like jogging, biking, or other cardio machine etc.

Although, these workouts are important. They are boring 🙁

I have two ideas for this

1. Jump on a machine and just watch TV/movies or sports on a tablet .

2. Do circuits to keep it fun, while blasting your favorite music or podcast. Here is an example

• 5 minute incline treadmill walks
• Farmer Walk 200 feet
• Sled drag 100 feet
• repeat for 40 minute, non stop

If you do this consistency enough your recovery and health will got through the roof.

2 ways to track progress, check your morning HR first thing in the morning and on an average it should start getting lower.

The other way, you should start seeing your body to do same work, but with lower heart rate.

Recovery

What sucks as we get older, is our recovery slowly starts to plummet. For guys who love to train and push hard.

This can be suck, big time.

What we got away with in our 20’s will not fly anyone.

Here are a handful of my favorite ways to recover faster .

Protein

Protein is your best friend, It will speed up your recovery .

Add slabs of muscle to your frame and support building a strong and resilient body.

You should aim to hit 1 gram of protein per body weight or goal body weight.

Spread them through how ever many meals, you like to consume.

The most important thing is you get those grams at the end of the day.

For example a 200lbs man, would shoot for 200g per day.

From a muscle building goal, you might see, better gains by spreading these thorough at least 4 meals a day.

We are looking for high quality protein, and usually leaner versions. So we don’t get to much fats and extra calories from the protein we eat.

Here are some of my favorites

• low sugar and low fat greek yogurt
• Chicken
• 93% lean ground beef
• Bottom round
• Fish and shrimp
• Whey protein shakes

Carbs around training

Carbs get a bad name.

But, they are amazing for building muscle, getting strong and improving your performance in the gym as well as in life.

The problem is carbs are way too easy to over eat. Especially the highly refined kind.

By eating better carbs most of the time like

• Potoatos
• Sweet pototaos
• Rice
• Oats
• Bean
• Fruit of all types

We will feel better and these foods are harder to over consume.

Try to have the majority of high carbs meals around training and at night.

The carbs around training will help you perform at your best within your workouts and speed up recovery.

Carbs at night will help you get a better night sleep, improving almost every health out come you could want.

Hydration

Drinking enough fluids, so you can perform at your best, make healthy food choices and aid in better mobility.

I would try to shoot for half your body weight in ounces and add a cup or two for every hour you train.

If you do multiple sessions a day, a salt supplement like LMNT may be helpful. So, is a magnesium supplement too.

Sleep

Sleep is the king of results and health out comes.

This is one of simplest ways to recover faster, get stronger and build more muscle.

The recommendation is 7-9 hours per nights.

The more of that sleep, you can get before 12am the better.

Sleeping from 10pm-6am is better then sleeping from 12am-8am.

If you have trouble sleeping here are a few tips.

• Carbs with dinner
• No screen before bed
• Breathing drill or read fiction before bed.
• Take magnesium supplement before bed.
• Get sunlight as ealry as you can each day

Supplements to cover wholes, in my nutrition

I’m not the biggest supplement guy. I like the ones, that cover up some blind spots in your nutrtion .

• Fish oil, because I don’t consume enough much omega 3 fats
• Whey protein, because it easier to hit my protein goals
• Vitamin D for immunity
• Zinc and magnesium to boost testosterone levels and recovery

High-low method

As we get older the recovery, that we had in our twenty’s is simply not their.

You can’t just beat your self in the gym, day after day.

Here comes the High-Low method.

The ideas is simple.

Never have two back to back hard training days.

By having an intense day, then an easier day. We will recover better, make better gains and feel more energetic.

Workouts can stress the body physically and neurologically. Just, because your not sore, doesn’t mean your nervous system doesn’t need resting.

Here are some workouts, I consider intense and will need more recovery from. These may be your high days

• Heavy lifting/powerlifting
• Power Work
• HIT or other form of intense cardio

Here are some workout which tend to be easier to recover from.

• Aerobic training
• Light lifting or isolation focused lifting like an arm or ab day
• Walking
• Yoga or other mobility focused workouts

If you’re a busy guy the low day, might just be an off day. Here is what it might look like look like.

Monday Heavy Lift

Tuesday Aerobic training

Wednesdays Heavy Lift

Thursday Long Walk

Friday HIT workouts

If your looking for a free workout to get you started, try this one.