Muscle building or strength training or both for thin person over 40 years old ?

[Raspberry76]

Hi, I am in my 40s. Thin since young and did alot of cardio when I was young. Now I am underweight and super thin. At my age, I believe I have to focus more on strength and to bulk up as I read somewhere that it is dangerous to be thin and underweight as you grow older.

Buy my question now is, should I focus more on strength building or building muscles ? Or do both ?

I am trying to avoid becoming frail and weak for years to come.

[ECGordyn]

Hi, I am in my 40s. Thin since young and did alot of cardio when I was young. Now I am underweight and super thin. At my age, I believe I have to focus more on strength and to bulk up as I read somewhere that it is dangerous to be thin and underweight as you grow older.

Buy my question now is, should I focus more on strength building or building muscles ? Or do both ?

I am trying to avoid becoming frail and weak for years to come.

I started 4 years ago at 39, 135 lbs all my life. Now I'm 185 and I deadlift 430, bench 285, squat 385. Just be consistent, follow a good lifting program, eat to gain weight steadily, sleep well, and you'll do fine in the coming years. Gains are slower than the young guys, but it's still possible to build strength and health at this age.

Strength building is muscle builidng. They're the same thing.

Some good, free programs are:
Candito linear
Fierce 5
AllPros
Stronglifts
Starting Strength

[xTeTe]

You have a problem that most people in their 40s wish they had honestly.

But to answer your question.. why not both?

If you're just starting out, chances are any solid program is going to help you gain both anyway. If you aren't worrying about how much weight you can lift in six months, a year, too years, etc.. then just go with a higher rep routine.

This is just my opinion.. start with a lower weight routine to learn good movements and get accustomed to lifting for a few months. Then move into heavier weights and maybe even a 5x5 routine with the bigger lifts.

[Garage Rat]

Actually being thinner as an older adult is probably much healthier.
It usually means you don't carry extra body fat and your heart is healthy most of the time.
That being said gaining some muscle and strength can also be an advantage as we get older.
Usually when we get older we as men produce less testosterone which can cause muscle loss(sarcopenia is the term).
Trying to maintain strength and keep muscle is a good goal for the long run.
I mentioned this on another post to keep a training and diet journal to track progress.
It sounds like you won't have an issue really gaining fat unless your diet goes bad.
Just eat more of what your eating and track it in your diet journal.
The same goes with training,find what helps your strength and size and go with it.
You can go wrong with basic compound lifts.
Good luck.

[OldFartTom]

...You can't go wrong with basic compound lifts...

fify!

[congore]

I started 4 years ago at 39, 135 lbs all my life. Now I'm 185 and I deadlift 430, bench 285, squat 385. Just be consistent, follow a good lifting program, eat to gain weight steadily, sleep well, and you'll do fine in the coming years. Gains are slower than the young guys, but it's still possible to build strength and health at this age.

Strength building is muscle builidng. They're the same thing.

Some good, free programs are:
Candito linear
Fierce 5
AllPros
Stronglifts
Starting Strength

Yep

[Denverbro314]

Try to slowly incorporate some lightweight squat and deadlifts. This will thicken up your core.

[Eternalstuden79]

Being thin is not unhealthy, being significantly under weight is.

You've already had mega advice listed above. Get on a sensible progressive lifting program and enjoy. You will get stronger and add mass. 😁

[weiss1967]

It was a silly question. Since when strength is separate from muscle? Muscle building, yeah, that is also strength. You can’t do “not both”. Eh

[GeneralSerpant]

It was a silly question. Since when strength is separate from muscle? Muscle building, yeah, that is also strength. You can’t do “not both”. Eh

Different fields of practice I'd say. Muscle building is much more applied I'd say too, just not as multifaceted.

[OldBob2]

Hi, I am in my 40s. Thin since young and did alot of cardio when I was young. Now I am underweight and super thin. At my age, I believe I have to focus more on strength and to bulk up as I read somewhere that it is dangerous to be thin and underweight as you grow older.

Buy my question now is, should I focus more on strength building or building muscles ? Or do both ?

I am trying to avoid becoming frail and weak for years to come.

I think that you are correct in assuming that being frail and weak is a problem especially as you grow older. The new science is that you should not be underweight going into your later years.

If you haven't had your testosterone levels checked then ask your doctor to check that box when he orders your next blood panels. From what you're saying you might very well be low.

Also I suggest you hire a personal trainer when you first start out with resistance training because form is incredibly important if you've never worked out much and its easy to injure yourself without good form and knowledge of how to get started safely.

If you don't want to or can't afford to hire a personal trainer then spend a lot of time on YouTube researching proper form for working out.

[supramax]

It was a silly question. Since when strength is separate from muscle? Muscle building, yeah, that is also strength. You can’t do “not both”. Eh

Of course, there's crossover, but there's a definite difference between increasing contractile tissue compared to increasing sarcoplasm.

Good read: http://archive.is/Zg64T

[ElrondHubbard]

I started 4 years ago at 39, 135 lbs all my life. Now I'm 185 and I deadlift 430, bench 285, squat 385. Just be consistent, follow a good lifting program, eat to gain weight steadily, sleep well, and you'll do fine in the coming years. Gains are slower than the young guys, but it's still possible to build strength and health at this age.

Strength building is muscle builidng. They're the same thing.

Some good, free programs are:
Candito linear
Fierce 5
AllPros
Stronglifts
Starting Strength

Had I been the first to answer, I would ideally have posted something nearly identical to this.

A decent novice training program will build strength and muscle together, and make a world of difference in your life.

[kyle38]

I started 4 years ago at 39, 135 lbs all my life. Now I'm 185 and I deadlift 430, bench 285, squat 385. Just be consistent, follow a good lifting program, eat to gain weight steadily, sleep well, and you'll do fine in the coming years. Gains are slower than the young guys, but it's still possible to build strength and health at this age.

Strength building is muscle builidng. They're the same thing.

Some good, free programs are:
Candito linear
Fierce 5
AllPros
Stronglifts
Starting Strength

That's what I would say. Consistency

[kyle38]

Actually being thinner as an older adult is probably much healthier.
It usually means you don't carry extra body fat and your heart is healthy most of the time.
That being said gaining some muscle and strength can also be an advantage as we get older.
Usually when we get older we as men produce less testosterone which can cause muscle loss(sarcopenia is the term).
Trying to maintain strength and keep muscle is a good goal for the long run.
I mentioned this on another post to keep a training and diet journal to track progress.
It sounds like you won't have an issue really gaining fat unless your diet goes bad.
Just eat more of what your eating and track it in your diet journal.
The same goes with training,find what helps your strength and size and go with it.
You can go wrong with basic compound lifts.
Good luck.

I need to find that peer reviewed paper. There is a study they did on this and found adults over 65 benefited from being slightly over weight. They didn't find out why. My guess, is during stress, like getting sick at that age, it helps to have energy reserves at the ready.

[ElrondHubbard]

I need to find that peer reviewed paper. There is a study they did on this and found adults over 65 benefited from being slightly over weight. They didn't find out why. My guess, is during stress, like getting sick at that age, it helps to have energy reserves at the ready.

There are several perspectives on this, and that's not necessarily wrong. But it's not necessarily right either. If the slightly overweight is being compared to the population that is sickly and wasting away with sarcopenia and osteoporosis, then yeah, slightly overweight is better. But if you're comparing it with actual fitness and a lifestyle that involves healthy eating and exercise, then I doubt that it's a benefit. Unfortunately, the healthy eating and exercising demographic seems to be smaller than the overweight or wasting away demographics.

[Payton1221]

Had I been the first to answer, I would ideally have posted something nearly identical to this.

And if Ironwill had been the first to answer, he would have posted something nearly identical to this AND included a pic of his very narrow 40 year old self. Like you and IW, the OP can make a very positive change in his physique if he follows the good advice in this thread.

[bodyhard]

Hi, I am in my 40s. Thin since young and did alot of cardio when I was young. Now I am underweight and super thin. At my age, I believe I have to focus more on strength and to bulk up as I read somewhere that it is dangerous to be thin and underweight as you grow older.

Buy my question now is, should I focus more on strength building or building muscles ? Or do both ?

I am trying to avoid becoming frail and weak for years to come.

I like you am extremely thin, right now due to the quarantine I lost most of my size and at 5'8" I weigh a 155lbs

Age has nothing to do with my weight as I have been skinny my whole life, however what I could tell you is that food not how you workout is the answer to adding weight to your body.

As far as if you should workout for strength or muscle, well that is a tricky question because working out for strength (functional muscles) will eventually add muscle to your frame, just not as quickly as working out for hypertrophy (Show muscles)

I for one do not train for strength, but from time to time I do, you need a strength routine to build a solid foundation.

[kyle38]

There are several perspectives on this, and that's not necessarily wrong. But it's not necessarily right either. If the slightly overweight is being compared to the population that is sickly and wasting away with sarcopenia and osteoporosis, then yeah, slightly overweight is better. But if you're comparing it with actual fitness and a lifestyle that involves healthy eating and exercise, then I doubt that it's a benefit. Unfortunately, the healthy eating and exercising demographic seems to be smaller than the overweight or wasting away demographics.

www .webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20100129/overweight-older-people-live-longer#1

You could definitely be right. I don't know either if the BMI is calculated properly, so it could be taking into account people with more muscle mass and counting them as overweight

[nkilmart]

Hi, I am in my 40s. Thin since young and did alot of cardio when I was young. Now I am underweight and super thin. At my age, I believe I have to focus more on strength and to bulk up as I read somewhere that it is dangerous to be thin and underweight as you grow older.

Buy my question now is, should I focus more on strength building or building muscles ? Or do both ?

I am trying to avoid becoming frail and weak for years to come.

Get in the gym and lift some weights. Strength building and muscle building go hand in hand. You're fortunate the you will build both quite easily on virtually any program as you're just starting out. If you do nothing you're only going to get thinner and weaker as each year goes by. You can still do some cardio too if you enjoy it.

[OldFartTom]

Raspberry76 posted this question on 17th August and (so far) never posted in the thread again. I'd say it's reasonably safe to treat this as a drive by posting, not reply again - and just let the thread age-out. Just my 2c