Podcast Transcription: Your 2026 Body Blueprint — Part 3: How Men Over 40 Should Train for Maximum Muscle in Minimal Time

Ted Ryce: Why do most people lose up to half their muscle by the time they're 70? And why does power, in other words, your ability to move quickly, decline even faster? And why does this predict early death better than cholesterol, blood pressure, or even BMI? Today's episode is gonna be about muscle strength and power, not necessarily as fitness goals, but more as like your insurance policy against aging, or you know, we can't stop aging, but aging in a way where we feel like we're not able to enjoy the type of life that we want. 

We're not able to do the things that we feel give our lives meaning. So in episode one, we talked about how the body quietly falls apart after 30. In episode two, we talked about metabolic health and fat loss, and today we're gonna be talking about this structure that really holds everything together. So let's talk about why muscle is the foundation. 

So a few reasons here. It's not just for looking good in your bathing suit, although that's important too. Muscle is the most important longevity organ. Why? Because muscle is the primary site of glucose disposal. In other words. One of the biggest things that we're facing in terms of health crises is that people are becoming insulin resistant. 

Even if that doesn't lead to pre-diabetes or diabetes or metabolic syndrome, it's still affecting the rate we age, how well we age. And so muscle helps against that by being that this primary site of glucose disposal. In other words, you eat carbs. And the blood sugar or your blood sugar goes up, some of that is gonna be stored in your muscles. 

And if you're using your muscles a lot enough to grow them and maintain them, et cetera, it's gonna be burned up during activity as well. So more muscle equals better. Insulin sensitivity muscle also preserves your balance, posture, reaction time. It protects your joints and bones, of course joints, if you're. 

Lifting properly, which we'll talk about today, and I want you to think of something. Think of every person that you know who struggles to walk up the stairs or down the stairs, who needs help to do basic things and is struggling to take care of themselves. A big reason why that happens barring any sort of major medical condition, it's loss of muscle. 

That leads to frailty. Frailty leads to loss of independence, and loss of independence leads to an early death, or maybe even you just wishing you would die. So I think a good way of thinking about this is people don't die of old age, they die of weakness, right? And here's the part that most people don't realize. 

Muscle loss starts far earlier than you think. In fact, if you do nothing to stop it, muscle loss begins in your thirties, accelerates in your forties and fifties. By the time you're 70, you can lose up to 50% of your muscle. And I wanna tell you something, even active people lose muscle if they don't train properly. 

And we'll talk about what that is today in today's episode. And not only do we want to train properly to build and maintain our muscle, but we want to make sure that we maintain our ability to move quickly. And we'll talk about why in a second. But, uh, and that's known as power. Now, power is not just how strong you are, but how fast you are as well. 

And one thing that's really interesting, uh, I'm not gonna do it too deep of a dive on this, but we know we lose muscle. I just talked about it. But power declines even faster than muscle size or strength and loss of power predicts difficulty climbing stairs. Trouble catching yourself during a fall. So even if you're lifting, if you're not maintaining your ability to move quickly, you might go into the gym and use the machines or even do some free weights. 

But if you're not practicing moving quickly, you lose it even if you're maintaining your muscle mass and strength. So I want you to think about this. You don't stop moving because you're old. You get old because you stop moving. This is why sarcopenia or the age related loss of muscle is so dangerous you don't even know it. 

In fact, I want to tell you just really quickly. I've been doing a good job maintaining my muscle mass, but I started noticing I couldn't move as fast. In fact, I used to be known for being explosive. I had so many people comment on it when I was training Jiujitsu in my late twenties and early thirties, and then I've been training jiujitsu more regularly. 

This year in 2025, and I was like, man, I cannot move like I used to. For a lot of people they'll notice that and they'll say, well, guess I'm getting older. For me, I was like, okay, I need to adjust my training here. What do I need to do differently? Because what I'm doing now, I'm making good progress in the gym, and that's part of maintaining your ability to move quickly is certainly strength. 

You can train quickness or power more directly as well. So let's get into, let's talk a little bit about sarcopenia again. Uh, sarcopenia is the age-related loss of muscle. And this is really important because if you feel like your weight hasn't changed that much, but you notice that you're not as strong as you used to be, you notice that you're not as, let's say, lean as you used to be. 

And you're not as consistent with lifting as you know that you should. You've probably lost some muscle, right? And there's no pain. There's no dramatic symptoms, just gradual weakness until. You start to notice, whoa, something changed in my body. And I work with a lot of clients like this. I've had clients who were very active, very fit, even athletes earlier in life. 

Then they transitioned into growing their business, growing, you know, progressing in their career, had kids, and two decades later they're in their late forties or fifties. And, um. Their weight hasn't changed that much, but their body composition, in other words, how much fat they have on their body is a lot different. 

And that's also what leads people to believe that their metabolism has slowed down. Which by the way, if you do lose muscle, and we'll talk about this a bit later, your metabolic rate is slower. Okay? So I saw this in my own father as well. He didn't collapse suddenly. It just was a slow narrowing of life. 

At first. He wasn't walking so well, then started walking with a cane. Now he had an injury in his hip, but he was not training, he was not lifting weights. Again, not to, not to kind of keep using him as a, you know, as a, making this point. You know, the gift that one of the, my, my father gave me a lot, I'll put it like this. 

My father gave me a lot of gifts and, uh, one that he didn't intend to give me is like, Hey, listen, if you treat your body this way, this is what's gonna happen to you. Because we share the same genetics to a large extent, 50%. Right? So I, not only have I seen this in myself, right, with a. Slowing down of my ability to move. 

I saw into the future with my dad and how he started to lose his functionality. And perhaps you've seen that in your own family as well, or maybe in yourself. So it's really important. And look, again, we start to have some challenges as we get older. So I've had car accidents where I herniated discs. I have a lumbar disc herniation. 

I have shoulder, knee, elbow, injuries from jiujitsu and injuries come with muscle loss. But here's the thing I would want to tell you as well. You need to find a way to build yourself back. That's something I specialize in, by the way, is training around injuries, not rehabbing someone. So if so, if you're fresh out of surgery or. 

Just got a knee replaced, something like that, go through physical therapy. But what happens is that transition from physical therapy back into training can be tricky 'cause you don't want to just jump in and start training again. And there's a lot of things that you can do. A lot of techniques, strategies, methods, some which I develop that help you to come back from those types of situations. 

And I'll tell you. Every time you lose muscle, perhaps you know this from your own experience coming back from injury, you feel like your world gets a little smaller and that's why it's important. For those of you who are struggling with anything like that, the injuries similar. Injury is like I've struggled with. 

You've gotta rebuild it. That's the only way to get your life back, and that's why how you train matters more than how much you train. So let's talk about how to strength train for life. And the principle, what I love to teach my clients is this one good set is the difference between you losing muscle and you maintaining or even building muscle one set. 

And I feel like when I talk to people, this is so. People don't get it. It's like, oh, if I don't have an hour, I won't go to the gym. Oh, I don't even have 20 minutes And all I tell 'em like, look, you need one good set for your legs, one good set for your pulling muscles. One good set for your pushing muscles. 

Is it ideal? Is it optimal? Is it amazing? No, but you know what? You can keep your muscle or at least slow the loss of muscle by just doing one good set. Now a bit of a proviso here. It depends on who you are, how much muscle you have, and how long you've been training. But still, this is the thing that I always keep in mind when my clients ask me, Hey, I'm gonna be gone for a couple weeks. 

Uh, I'm gonna be traveling. It's like, just make sure you get in a couple or like one good set a couple times a week for each muscle group. And studies show this as well. A large review that I looked at showed that one set of six to 12 reps, two to three times a week. Increased strength and size in those muscles. 

Now again, this is gonna be mostly effective for beginners. If I cut it down to one set, two to three times per week, I'm going to be losing muscle. Okay? Because we know also that multiple sets give around 40% more muscle growth. But one high quality sets beats, zero sets. Again, one good set could be the difference between building muscle and losing it. 

So principle number two, when you do that one set, or however many sets you do, push close to failure. So in a meta-analysis of 55 studies, we know that sets taken within zero to five reps of failure produce more muscle growth. I wanna give you an example of this because I had a client one time who was doing four sets of 10 on dips. 

And so he was doing these four sets of 10, and I was like, four sets of 10. How can you even, I, I was actually thinking this, not saying it, but I was like, how can you get four sets of 10 on dips? If you really push it, you're gonna be dropping off every single set. And so what I told 'em, I was like, I don't care about this. 

4 10, 4 sets of 10. You're doing. What I wanna do is I wanna back off to two sets, and I want you to take each set close to failure. And you know what happened? First he told me, whoa, this was way more intense than I thought. It was gonna be, and I got 18 reps on my first set, and then I forget what it was on the second. 

Something like 14, 13 reps, 12 reps, something like that. So he really hit it on that first set, then dropped off. And that's what happens when you're pushing yourself. Now, sometimes you can hit the same amount of sets, uh, I'm sorry, same amount of reps on subsequent sets. But generally there should be a dropping off of performance in consecutive sets. 

So the sets, the number of reps that you do is less important than, did you come close to failure, yes or no? So if you only have one set, if you only have time for one set, make it count. And if you do more than one set, make those count too. But just keep in mind that first set is the money set. Principle three. 

Progressive overload is non-negotiable. What does that mean? So many people focus on, oh, is this the good? Is this the right set of exercises I should be doing, or should I train three or four or five or six times a week? And the answer is, none of that matters as much as you think. What matters most besides what we've already talked about, where you're taking that set close to failure. 

Are you progressing over time? In other words, can you do more reps with the same weight or can you do, can you add more weight and get the same number of reps? It's not gonna be necessarily every workout, but over time. Do you see a trend up, right? If you're being consistent? Do you see that trend going up? 

And what I tell my clients, focus on adding reps first and just add one. Try to add one more rep than what you did last time. And I also tell them to respect their body because let's say you stayed up late, maybe traveled, maybe crossed time zones, maybe. Went out and had a few drinks when you were entertaining clients. 

You may show up to the gym the next day and. Your performance isn't as good, that's okay. But what we want is for you to be able to progress over time. So the way to ensure this is keep a training log. So if your training doesn't progress, your body doesn't adapt. So you can be training six times a week, and if you're not improving your progress, you won't see a difference in your body. 

Principle four, volume is a dial, not a rule. What do I mean by that? We know that. You know, again, coming back to that one set principle, we know that somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 sets per muscle group is where you maximize growth, and that's pretty large per week. So 10 to 20 sets per week per muscle group. 

To maximize growth. The issue is adding more sets costs you more time, and if you have the time to put into it, which sometimes my clients go through these periods where they have more time to dedicate to the gym. Awesome. Add more sets, but it's not a rule. Okay? It's a dial. So whenever you can crank that, dial up. 

And only increase your volume by one set per exercise at maximum. Okay. You don't wanna, oh, I have more time. So normally I do two sets, but now I have a lot of time I'm gonna do five sets. That's how you get injured. That's how you get so sore. You can't move a body part for five days. Five days. So don't do that. 

Just increase by one set. Okay. So. That's how to think about volume principle number five, consistency beats intensity. So think about this, once a week, training can maintain strength, but if you take, let's say a month, two or three off, oh, you're gonna see significant muscle loss from that and probably fat gain. 

So what I want you to do, and what I do with my clients is. I don't talk about what they think they can do short term. I want to know for the next four months, 'cause that's typically the, the starting phase that I work with clients. It's a four month time period for the next four months. What can you commit to doing? 

Two workouts, three workouts. Four workouts. 'cause whatever that is, I want you to stick with it. Okay. So that's how you. Think about training for consistency, because if you start out like so many people do, like, well, I'm crazy to get in shape. I'm gonna work out six times a week. And you do that for a month and then you drop off completely or back off to once a week, you're gonna see a regression from that. 

So what you want is showing up consistently. It sounds so simple, but this is one of the biggest mistakes I see People make. People say they know it, but they don't do it. You might be one of them. So let's talk about how to structure this realistically. So two to three days per week. If you can train two to three days per week, you want to do a full body split. 

That means training your upper lower body together in the same session. If you have four days a week to train, what I want you to do is an upper lower split. So that would mean, for example, upper body on Monday, lower body on Tuesday, rest on Wednesday, upper body on Thursday, lower body on Friday. Don't overthink the exercises. 

Just do the exercises that you feel comfortable. Performing and also not just performing, but oh, I feel like I can go up and wait on this exercise. For example, I used to think that machines were inferior to free weights. I don't think that anymore. It really depends. And machines can be safer and more joint friendly. 

Of course. That depends on the machines and we're not gonna get into that. But just know that. Don't overthink exercise selection. Do what you feel like you can perform well. Do what you feel like you can slowly add. Right? Going back to progressive overload. Do the exercises that you feel like you can slowly load up over time, because that is what's gonna make the biggest difference. 

So if you're following people and they're telling you about, you know, the best exercise, like, uh, there's a guy I follow on Twitter, he is constantly talking about these machines in the gym that are optimal based on their strength curve. And it's just like, oh, I've never even seen that exercise in the gym. 

Right? So don't overthink it. Do what you feel comfortable with, and that's the way to go. Because the best exercise is the one that you can do hard, safely and again, most importantly, consistently. And there's one piece that most people are missing entirely. So let's talk about power training, because earlier we talked about how power declines faster than strength. 

We talked about how it predicts the loss of independence. And it's rarely trained. So what I want you to do is if you are very overweight, lose fat first and focus on strength training. And you know, in episode four we'll talk about cardio. But if you've, if you're at a good normal weight, if you're injury free, what I want you to do, a good way to get back into this, is doing some jump roping to warm up. 

For your weight workouts. Now, I don't love jump roping. It's just, okay, so what I like to do better is the agility ladder. If you don't know what that is, it takes more, you can look it up on, on YouTube, you can see some drills. There are footwork drills. There's also upper body drills, but just those are the two easiest points of entry, the safe entry points into power training. 

So again, jump rope. If you're already strong and lean enough, go for jump roping. Use the agility ladder if you find that preferable like I do. But again, if you're overweight or injured, lose fat. Build strength first. Get your rehab Power comes later because. It is a bit more advanced if you're outta shape, and in a way it's not very advanced. 

It, it's really essential. But a better way to put it is it has its prerequisites. Now this brings us to mobility. A lot of the stiffness that you feel and the range of motion that you feel like, I used to be able to touch my toes and now it can't touch my toes. A lot of it is not that you need more massages or more static stretching. 

It's actually weakness. The best way to restore mobility. You can use static stretching, but a better way to do it is using mobility isometrics. I have a series on this, on YouTube. I really need to link it, but just understand the best way to restore your mobility is through training it because not only will you get more range of motion, you'll also get strength through that range of motion. 

Okay. So here's how I like to structure workout flows. Do your mobility work first. This will warm up your body and prepare your joints. Then again, if you don't have injuries, if you're not overweight or obese, do the light power work, jump rope agility ladder, and then go through strength training. With a full range of motion. 

That's the simple way you can approach taking your fitness to the next level. Okay, and one more thing I'll tell you. Your joints don't need more stretching. They need more strength, all right? They need more strength, but they need it to be done the right way. So let's talk a little bit about GLP ones and muscle loss. 

So we talked a bit in episode two about how this happens, and if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend you go check it out. GLP one Drugs can accelerate muscle loss. So what a lot of people refer to as the ozempic body, it's just weight loss. Where you lose fat, but you also lose muscle, so you don't look as fit as you think without your clothes on. 

And again, why this is important is weight loss without strength equals aging faster. So muscle is mandatory protection. You don't just want to be a smaller, weaker version of your unhealthy self. Okay. What you want is to maintain muscle loss. Or if you did end up losing it, it's okay. Don't freak out. But now you want to build it back. 

You've gotta build it back. You've gotta understand, this is one of the things like I, I'll tell you right now, longevity, we don't have long-term studies and all this information, so we know exactly what leads to the quality of life, the longer health span where you're having. A good quality of life in your seventies or maybe even eighties and beyond. 

But we know this is a big part of it. Muscle strength, and of course power is a big part of it. So just to close out this episode, muscle is the foundation. Strength is the structure. Power keeps you moving in. Cardio VO two max is what we're gonna talk about next is the engine that keeps the system alive. 

Because it's not cardio. Should I be doing cardio or strength training? It's how much cardio should I be doing? How much strength training should I be doing? You need to do them both. So in episode four, we're gonna talk about cardiovascular fitness VO two max, the controversy surrounding VO two max and how to actually reverse heart aging. 

So that is it. I hope you learned a lot from this episode. Again, in episode seven, I'm gonna be tying this all together and giving you a blueprint, but this at least gets you clear on why muscle is important, what the principles are that you need to be following. And again, we're gonna be getting into cardiovascular training on the next episode. 

Hope you're enjoying this series and speak to you on the next episode.