How Much Muscle Can You Build Naturally Over 50?

I want to talk about the guys in the thumbnail of this video, myself included. One of the first things you’ll notice is that we’re very lean and shredded.

This is different than muscle growth, this is more about displaying the muscle you have, and I can say that I am a good example of how lean you can get naturally over 50, but if your goal is to build muscle, then you don’t want to be this lean.

Okay, I gotta talk about Mike O’Hearn. He’s 54 years old, claims he’s natural and has been drug tested a lot; never failed a test, but his fat-free mass index is around 27, which is a full 2 points over what’s considered naturally possible for the genetically gifted, making him a poor example of what the average guy over 50 can achieve.

But something that’s a good indicator of how much muscle you can naturally add is health. Maximizing our health reduces the amount of age-related decline we experience, allowing us to build muscle like a much younger man.

If you would like help losing excess body fat and building muscle, please email me at [email protected] for information on my personal training services.

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Over 50? Age well with these researched backed tips.
https://youtu.be/VV2-hfVK_cc

Optimize your hormones
https://youtu.be/qH9LlK3QJ0Y

Genetic muscular potential calculator
https://mennohenselmans.com/ffmi-calculator/

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-10-508

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991130/

https://youtu.be/8w1WTqP7EPc

https://youtu.be/AhvuLe2_sNE

Before we leave the topic of health, we should talk about testosterone; it’s a primary hormonal driver of muscle growth, and statistically, it goes down as we age. But research is discovering that it’s more connected to health and body composition than age. Again I’ll leave a link in the top comment to a video that explains this.

Next, we’ll talk about genetics, including muscle and bone structure. Philip Ricardo Jr is the guy in the thumbnail I haven’t talked about a natural Masters Olympia champion.

To compete in the natural Olympia, you must be drug tested and agree to be randomly tested throughout the year to the World anti-doping agency standards.

He’s 5’ 9”, and his competition weight is between 175 and 180 lbs., which for a natural, is a big guy. It’s commonly thought African Americans can build muscle better than Caucasians. But is this true?

I found a few studies indicating they naturally have more muscle mass, with one study stating it was about 5% more than us white guys.

I could only find one study related to muscle growth, and it found no difference between the races' ability to build muscle

It could be broken down even further; for example, there is an exceptional amount of strong men that come from Iceland and they have a reputation for being big and strong.

Muscle insertions affect how big individual muscles can grow. If you have high calves, it will be much harder to build that muscle.

With biceps, when you flex your arm, the less distance between your forearm and where the bicep peak starts, the better your genetics for building big biceps.

This can happen with any muscle. Our lats can have high or low insertions, those with low lat insertions are able to build bigger and fuller backs. The good news is just because we have one area that doesn’t have good insertions doesn’t mean our whole body is that way.

The larger your skeleton, the more muscle you can build.

Casey Butt has done the most research on this and has developed a calculator using our wrist and ankle measurements to help us determine our natural potential.

Menno Henselman has a version of the calculator, and I like it the best.
I am currently about 13% body fat.

my desired fat percentage, 10%. height is 5’9”, I weigh 161.

My wrist circumference is 7,” and my ankle circumference is 8.25.”

my natural maximum weight would be 183.8 lbs at 10% body fat. I see 165 to 170 lbs at 10% body fat as a more realistic goal, bringing my fat-free mass index in between 22 and 23