Legs for the 40's Club

I had a really good leg workout today with my buddy Chris. It made me think about how much my leg training has changed from my 20's to my 40's.

For you guys in your 20's, there is no substitute for the bread and butter squats. No matter what anybody tells you, there is no substitute. Just remember work the muscle not the weight, good form builds good form. Keep you stance just a little wider than shoulder width, head up, chest out go down with a very controlled pace. Stop just below parrellel and drive up as fast as possible driving until just before your knees lock out. If you have a problem slumping your shoulders, drive your elbows and hips forward. This will keep your body in line and straight, Trust me it works. Try to keep you reps at a minimum of 6, anything below that is just for ego. The name of the game is squating effectively. Try to keep your time between sets around 1.5-2.0 mins that is more than enough recup time for the next set. If I remember correctly and feel free to correct me your body recups 80% within 30-40 seconds. Enough about squats for you young studs. Lets move own to the 40's guys.

What I have done to warm my knees and old muscles up is start my leg workout with off course some good stretching. Next I start off with walking ludges with dumbells, approximately 20 yards, 2-3 sets. I then go to machine controlled squats, total leg by paramont or hammer squate machine 4 sets 8-12 reps, and you cant go wrong with 21's on the hack squate, or leg presses, pick your poison. We finished them off with supper setting leg extensions with ham string curls. Final exercise was one legged hammy curls, be sure to concentrate on good form on those hams. There is nothing better than a great set of hams, it just makes a legs. FYI, another slang name used for hams back in the day, was thigh bicep, appropriate dont you think.

A little advise for you 40's guys, premedicate the day before legs workouts with a good
anti-inflamatory, and for sure use a good pre workout booster. I use Endorush, work great and dosnt make you short winded like alot of the energy drinks do. Please dont be to hard on me for the mispelled words, could not get the spell check to work.
Look forward to hearing comments from everybody, sorry I could not put 25 years of leg workout experience in one blog. My next blog I will try to take a shot, getting ripped in your 40's or maybe your 20's and 30's. Heck, everybody wants to be ripped. Have a great week and God Bless.

I am Legend

Yes, I am Legend: Man how did I get that nick name, dang hard to live up to. My buds at key supplements sure give me a hard time. Hope you guys like my quote, I promise I completely made that up on a really good day. I have recently re discovered my training again, I have never stopped in some 27 years, but just lost that fire. Training with Matt, William, and Chase has really helped me to understand these young guys are a bunch of chumps, just Kidding. It gives me hope that generation X has good work ethic and can caring the torch for us old guys. I am trying to talk myself into competing again, possible this summer at the Masters Level. I would love for my sons of 12 and 20 get a chance to see the old man show his stuff just one more time. Jury is still out on that subject, keep you all posted. For any unwanted great advice on just about any subject please feel free to drop me a line. I promise it will be interesting at the very least.

OUCH!!!

One of the first injuries that usually occurs to a person when they begin heavy weight training is the in their joints, and especially their shoulder joints. At the local gym that I workout at, almost every other guy who has lifted weights for any extended amount of time has had a shoulder injury of some sort and it is usually in the joints rather than a muscle strain or tear. It is a common mistake that many people have and I have recently experienced it so it is a problem that a couple of months ago I could relate to myself.

Prevention...

There are several prevention methods to avoiding a joint injury. The first precaution you should take is learn the proper form when you are preforming an exercise. Many people do exercises very wrong and do not even realize it be cause either their training partner showed them the exercise incorrectly or they have never even seen anybody doing it properly. And even though it is less common, some people can even hurt thenselves on machines by not ajusting it properly, beacause the odds ar that you are not the same exect body structure as the person who was on the machine previously.


Another thing that people do is get a sperman mentality and try to push weight that they cannot support. Just because you CAN lift a certain weight does not mean your joints CAN support it. Your joints are like your muscles and even though they may be weaker to begin with, you have to build up the strength in them as well because often times peoples muscles get stronger than their joints quicker than they realize and that will often times lead to injury.

Now...

For those who have already experienced joint injury or are experiencing an injury in your joints at this very moment, there are steps to recovery. It is always good to have an open mind toward going to a doctor and getting it checked out if the pain presists over some time or is too servere. If the injury is not to the point that you cant exercise, the best thing to do is usually lower the weight that you are using and maybe not use as much free weight until you can build up the strenghts in your joints. Use a weight that you can preform a fairly high amount of reps for more than a couple of sets until your joints are strong enough to move up in weight and don't jump up to quick if your not sure of your recovery. One other thing that might help aid you from preventing further injury is to supplement yourself with produst that help libricate the joints such as Fish Oil and Glucosamine. Glucosamine can also help used to support mobility and flaxability in the joints also.

If you are lifting weights and you haven't had a injury yet then consider yourself lucky but with the proper precautions you can keep your joints healthy and injury free.