🏋️‍♂️ 10 ways to avoid losing muscle after 40

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Here’s what’s on tap for today:

• Advice for building muscle after 40

• The very best dumbbell exercises

• What you need to understand about body composition

Training

Muscle Begins at 40

When you were young, you envisioned 40-year-olds quietly sitting on a porch in a rocking chair, trying to convince young children that spinning a hoop with a stick was more exhilarating than playing Call of Duty 4.

Now that you’re 40, you probably still feel like you’re in your 20s and you definitely still want to be jacked. Burn that rocker in your fireplace for warmth, and get ready to learn the new rules for middle-aged gains.

The new rules are very much the same as the old ones, just with more aches and pains and slower progress (ironically, the new you is the old you… try to keep up). You still need to train hard, but maybe you need to focus on the lifts that really matter more than ever. Or maybe you need to cool it on the half-reps and focus more on your range of motion and proper form.

You’re not a spring chicken anymore, but you can still lift big and get bigger with the tips below.

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Exercises

Dumbbell University

One of the pillars of the gym lifestyle is the dumbbell. Rows and rows of these symmetrical weights line the walls of gyms worldwide, and there are countless ways to implement them for strength training. But for your convenience, we’ve narrowed it down to the 15 best dumbbell exercises you need for size and strength in the article below.

The beauty of the dumbbell rack is that you’re always mere inches away from the appropriate weight for your chosen exercise. Too heavy for curls? Slide down to the left. Not enough weight to get your motor going while doing rows? Slide to the right and grab something with some more meat on it. The world need not be your oyster; the world can, instead, be your dumbbell.

Weight Loss

Straight Outta Composition

You might know some tips and tricks to lose body fat, but changing your body’s composition is a tougher nut to crack. Here is what you need to know about composition (and how to change yours for the better).

Put simply, your body composition describes the ratio of fat-free mass (FFM) — muscle, bone, and so on — to body fat. Now, understand that no specific ratio of muscle to fat can be considered an “ideal” body composition. The amount of muscle and fat you carry is contextual. From calipers to BMI to hydrostatic testing, there are a plethora of ways to test your body composition. And if you can measure it, you can change it (for the better).

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Everything Else

If You’re So Inclined

• An image of Arnold incline benching on the beach is burned into the minds of a generation of weight lifters, but the move itself still doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. Change that pattern ASAP and learn to incline bench.

• BarBend’s Strength Weekly podcast goes over the 10 best weightlifters of all time and has the temerity to ask if an elite CrossFitter is actually a powerlifter.

• We’re officially living in a time of James Bond-like gadgets. Check out this infrared sauna blanket that aims to take care of all of your recovery needs.