Reverse Muscle Loss with Just 3 Exercises (50+)

Past the age of 50, unless we do something about it, we lose muscle at a rate of almost 10% per decade. But it doesn't have to be that way. And in today's video, I'm gonna show you exactly how to reverse some of that muscle loss with age and even grow new muscle tissue, no matter your age. My name is Will Harlow and I specialize in the treatment of people over 50, specifically helping them to improve their muscle mass and their health and their strength. And that's exactly what we're gonna be doing today. So this video is perfect for anyone over 50 who started to notice their precious muscle mass slipping away each year and wants to reverse the process. And in fact, we're going to be doing just that with a simple three exercise routine that targets a massive proportion of the body. And I chose these exercises because they target muscles that do tend to waste away with age unless we do something about it. And they're also super important to keep you mobile and independent. Now, the routine I'm gonna share with you today is the exact routine I gave to a gentleman I'm helping who's in his 70s. He was worried about muscle loss with age. He had noticed some of his muscle mass slipping away. But in three months, not only did we reverse that process, he also felt that he'd gained muscle compared to baseline. So it's absolutely possible to do it. And we're gonna be showing you exactly how to do it today. I just need to first make you aware that these exercises are not gonna be suitable for everyone. Do get checked out before you give them a try. And if they cause you any pain, please just avoid them. Anyway, let's have a look at the program so you can have a go at home now. Many people will notice a loss of strength in their legs as they get older. And there are two muscles in your legs where if they become weak, you're really going to feel a difference. And those are your quads and your glutes. So the first thing we're going to do is we're gonna strengthen those two muscle groups back up. And that's gonna make a massive difference to how strong you feel. Now, what we're gonna do first is I'm gonna show you a very basic version of an exercise to strengthen these muscle groups. And then we're gonna get progressively harder. So I just want you to find yourself in the next couple of exercises, pick the one that seems about right for you. One of them requires no kit whatsoever. The other two require a small weight to hold. So the first thing we're going to do is a sit to stand. And I love the sit to stand because most people can do it. It works both the quads and the glutes, and it's super effective for building practical strength. It's a movement we do all the time. So all you need for this is a chair, okay? And you're gonna start sitting. We're gonna bring you right to the edge of your chair like this. You're gonna just be perched on your sitting bones. Your hands are gonna come out the way like this. Your feet are gonna come just underneath your knees. Back stays nice and straight. Then we come forward and up at the same time, and then straight back down into reverse, slowly, slowly lowering yourself back down to the chair. And I want you to count to somewhere between four and six seconds to get right down to the chair. So if we go down, we're going one, two, three, four, five, six. That would be a perfect repetition, okay? So we're going really, really slow on the way down. The tempo is super, super slow. And that's because we're contracting the muscle in a way called an eccentric contraction. And that's when the muscle is getting longer. So as we go down, that muscle is lengthening and lengthening and the research has shown that if we can control our eccentric contractions better, we can actually gain more muscle and strength if we really focus on slowing that phase down. It's super effective for the body. So the sit to stand is the first thing I would do. If you can do 10, 15 of those, that's amazing. But if you get to your 15th repetition and it's just really easy, you probably need something a little bit tougher. So now we're gonna progress to the next level. And for this next level, we need something to hold. So a small weight. And I'm gonna show you with a small dumbbell. You don't actually need to use a dumbbell. You can use a bag filled with books or just something heavy that you've got lying around the house. Dumbbells work great, but absolutely not necessary. And what you're gonna do for this is exactly the same thing, but this time the dumbbell's gonna come super close to your chest. You're gonna hold it like this with your palms upwards. We call this the goblet position. It comes right into your chest like this. You keep your back straight and nothing else changes. You're just gonna come forward and up and then super slow on the way back down. So again, we're gonna try and get you to five or six seconds to reach the chair. And because the dumbbell, this one weighs seven kilos, that's added seven kilos to my body weight. So simply the dumbbell's just making the same movement a little bit harder. Now it's super important that you keep your back straight throughout. We're not trying to collapse at the bottom. So if we get down to here and then we slump, that's not ideal. We wanna keep the back straight throughout and hinge at the hips. Now if you find this very easy, try and find something at home which is a bit lower down. So a lower chair would be ideal. If you've got a bed that takes you right down low, if you can use that, that's even better. But if you can do more than 15 of those, you haven't got anything else heavy at home that you can hold and you haven't got access to a gym, then let's move it to a full goblet squat, which is our next progression. So we're gonna get rid of the chair. We're gonna use the weight again and we're gonna do it with nothing behind us. So I'm just gonna move this out to one side. And this is how the full goblet squat looks. So this time we start standing holding the dumbbell, have it nice and close into your chest. I'm gonna face this way so you can see the movement. You're gonna have your feet about shoulder width apart. You're gonna stick your bottom out and bend your knees at the same time. Squat down, keeping your back nice and tall, and then bring yourself back up. So again, down into a squat, only as far as you can, and then back up. Down into the squat, and then back up. This is a really nice way to work those quads and glutes. And because we've got the weight in front of us, if we get into trouble, we get down here and we get stuck, you can drop the weight, there's no problem whatsoever. It gives you that emphasis on your posterior chain, the back, to keep yourself nice and upright because we don't wanna round like this. It will feel unnatural. So it helps you improve your posture as well. Just an all-round brilliant exercise. So work up to sets of 15, maybe even 20 if you can do that. Three sets of those with a minute's rest in between is a brilliant first exercise to help you reverse any muscle loss in these areas. Before we go any further, I just wanna tell you about a very special bonus I've created for viewers of this channel. It's called the Complete Guides to Building Muscle and Strength Over the Age of 50. And if you're someone who is a little bit confused about how to go about starting the process of building muscle and strength, you don't know what equipment to use or what exercises to choose, this is perfect for you. It's an exclusive 25-minute video that you can't find anywhere else where I teach you all the ins and outs of building muscle and strength specific for people over the age of 50. So it's one of the best things I've created. I'm giving it totally for free to viewers of this channel. All you need to do is scroll down below this video. There's a link in the description where you can sign up. I'll send you the video straight away and you can get started. It's some of my best info, and if you use it, I hope you enjoy. The second area of the body that we're going to strengthen and reverse that muscle loss is down here in the calves. And the calves are another area of the body that is very common to lose muscle mass as we get older. And in fact, research has shown that older people tend to have 25% less calf muscle mass than their younger counterparts. And that correlates with a pretty equivalent 25% loss of forward propulsive power when you walk, which means you lack the kind of propulsion, the gas, if you like, when you're walking. You get fatigued more quickly, and it's just not great, especially for people who like to walk. So I'm going to show you how to put that muscle loss into reverse by strengthening the calves with something called the heel raise. And we're going to do this in a very specific way. So the way we're going to do the heel raise is using a step. So you can use your bottom step, or you can use a plastic step that you can get very, very cheaply online if you're in a bungalow. And we're going to start off standing securely, holding onto something with just the front half of our foot in contact with the step. And the back half of the foot, including the heel, is going to hang down as far down as we can go. So ideally, we want to feel a bit of a stretch in both calves at the bottom. So when we're in this stretched position down here, the exercise is really simple. We're just going to come up three quarters of the way, and then straight back down into the stretch. Hold for a second, then up three quarters, no hold at the top, straight back down, and hold. Then back up three quarters, back down, and hold. So what I'm purposefully doing here is keeping the movement going until we get to that stretched position, and I'm really trying to feel that stretch, okay? And now, there's a really interesting research paper that's come out recently to show that people who do calf raises from a stretched position had better results in terms of muscle growth than those who did the full movement. And it might be because you can move more load when you're in that kind of half position as opposed to doing the whole thing. It might be that because when you're really focusing on that stretch and then contracting, it's more stimulative of muscle growth, or it's something we haven't yet discovered. But whatever the cause, I think it's a great thing for people over 50 to explore. Now, because the calf raise is an exercise where we're just moving our body weight and the calves are super strong compared to other muscles, you might find that very, very easy. And if you can do more than 25 or 30 repetitions, you need to make it a little bit hard for yourself. So one thing we can do to make it harder is to add some load. So we can use the same weight we used before. I'm gonna use the dumbbell. Just hold it in one hand, doesn't matter which hand, because it's gonna be working on both sides, just because it's adding to our body weight, and just repeat again. So it's hanging down, feel the stretch, up three quarters, back down, feel the stretch, up three quarters, and back down. Now, if you don't have anything lying around at home, or you've got something, but it's super light and it feels really easy, I would recommend trying this just on one leg at a time. So that would look something like this. I'm gonna show you on my left foot. So half the foot goes on, the other one comes up, hang down, feel the stretch, up three quarters, and back down, and hold. Now, I'll let you in on the secret. I actually do this at home. If I can't make the gym, and I still want to get a bit of a calf workout, I find that if I can do 25 or 30 repetitions just on one leg, it's such a burn in the calf. It's almost as good as having been to the gym and loading it up with a load of weight. It really, really does give you the same kind of outcome. And this is just another great example of how you don't need much kit to get a huge result in terms of building muscle. You can do absolutely all you need to do from the comfort of your own home with minimal kit. So choose one of those variations. You don't need to do all of them. Just repeat until you get that working ache. That is super important. It must feel hard at the end of the set. Then you pause, have a rest for one minute, maybe 90 seconds, repeat three times over, and then we'll move on to the final exercise. The final exercise we're going to do to help you reverse muscle loss is the good old-fashioned press-up. I'm going to show you three variations. So hopefully you can find yourself in one of these variations at home. And if you say, well, I can't do a press-up, don't worry because we're going to start super easy and then build up. So to make this work, ideally you want to use a mat on your floor, but you can use your bed, especially if you've got bad knees or bad wrists because the bed gives it a bit more of a cushioning. So I'm going to start like this. Well, the first thing I want to point out is many people do press-ups like this with the palms flat. Now I know that many people in my audience can't get their palms like this because they've got bad wrists or they've got stiffness down there or arthritis. So it's absolutely fine to use your knuckles on a nice soft surface like your bed or a mat. And if your mat on the floor is not soft enough, you can put a towel down or a pillow to cushion your knuckles even more. Now I'm going to show you with my palms like this, and we're going to start off with a knee push-up. And the reason I like this for people is, first of all, it's a bit easier than the full push-up, obviously, but secondly, it allows you to get a really nice contraction of your chest, your shoulders, and your triceps right throughout the movement, okay? So we're going to start like this, and we want our knees just a bit further back than the hips. You want to bring your arms just underneath your shoulders, and then you're going to go down like this, try and touch your nose, and then come back up again. Really, really good for our pushing muscles. So the chest, the front of the shoulders, and the back of the arm, these are all muscles that we use to push. And obviously, pushing is a super important movement. If you want to open a heavy door, if you want to push a shopping trolley, if someone gets too close to you and you have to push them out of the way, you need that pushing power. So if you lose it, it's really, really not good. So that would be how I would start. And as with the other ones, you're going to be working on sets of somewhere between 10 in a row. So you would go at this kind of tempo. So down and up, down and up, right up to maybe 20 or 30 repetitions in a row, three sets in total with a minute's rest in between works super well. Now, if that was very easy for you, the next thing I would recommend you do is just space the gap between your knees and your hands out a bit. So you're still on both knees, and now we've got a nice long gap. So our knees are starting to go out behind us, and then repeat. And as you do this, you'll notice that the further your legs go back, the more your core has to switch on. Your core is your collection of muscles around your tummy that wraps all the way around. And it's a really good thing if we activate the core because it helps us stay strong in our middle, protects the back, and it basically just improves the strength of your limbs if you've got a nice strong core. So like this, you're going to keep your tummy button in and then down, try and touch your nose and come back up. Down and back up. And if you can do more than 20 of these, then I would have a go at a full press up. And I know this is out of reach for many people. Don't worry if you can't get there. There's absolutely no necessity to do a full press up. But if you can, might as well give it a go. So what you would do for this is, not sure if I'm going to have enough room on the bed, but you want to go up onto your toes as well as your hands like this. Keep your body nice and straight, a nice straight line. And then down, touch, and back up. Proper military style. Down, touch, and back up. And again, as many as you can before you start to shake and it's almost like you could just move. That's a great place to stop. Have a rest for a minute, repeat three times over. And if you do that a few times a week, you're going to make massive progress in the strength of your pushing muscles and reverse any muscle loss that's been happening over time. So those are three exercises to help you reverse the process of muscle loss with age. I hope you found this video helpful. If I've helped just one person to reverse the process of psychopenia, I'll be delighted with the outcome of this video. And if that person is you, drop a comment below and just let us know because it does help us to improve these videos so we can bring you better and better content with each passing week. So make sure you like the video, subscribe to the channel so you don't miss anything else. And if you want to get more from me, the best way to do that is to pick up a copy of my brand new book, Thriving Beyond 50, the 2024 edition. This is the best piece of work I've created to date. It's 450 pages long. It's got all of my best advice, best strategies, all the things we use in my clinic I've put into here to help people over 50 to restore their health and their mobility. You can find the book by following the link below this video in the description, take you to Amazon where you can place your order. And if you get it, I hope you absolutely love it. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me in this video. You really let me do the thing that I love to do. So I really appreciate your viewership and I'll speak to you again on the next video.