Meet Sethu. Hes an 83-year-old geologist, father or 3 adult kids, and 6 grandkids. He was an avid gym-goer for 30 years before COVID, but with the lockdowns, he couldnt go to the gym anymore, and as a result, aged really quickly.

  • He lost some muscle.
  • He lost a significant amount of strength.
  • He became sluggish.
  • His sleep wasnt as good.
  • There was a chronic low-grade joint ache.

With the gyms re-opening, he decided to hire a personal trainer (yours truly) to turn things around.

And in the 3 months weve been working together, he:

  • Gained 8 pounds of muscle.
  • Lost 4 pounds of fat.
  • Got stronger than he was before the lockdowns.
  • Started to sleep better.
  • Lost his joint pain.

How did he do it? Thats what well cover in this article. But if you want to hear Sethu tell his own story, check this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccN9VVaALko

And if you want results similar to Sethu, we have a special program called Fitness Over 50. If you want to see whether or not you qualify for this program, just email me with the words Fitness Over 50 in the subject line.

Sethu’s Life

                In the past, Sethu was a professor of geology, and currently is a prolific mine finder runs his own mining investment business.

                And he was an active gym-goer for 30 years.

                Fast forward to the beginning of COVID, and gyms went into lockdown. Along with that, there went Sethu’s fitness routine.

                Its weird not exercising after 30 years of consistent exercise.

                But once the gyms re-opened, he was at a bit of a loss.

                Its one thing to exercise for maintenance when you have no particular goal. Its a whole other story to exercise with a deliberate goal (muscle gain).

                So although he was a do-it-yourselfer his whole life, now that he was coming back to the gym after a 2.5-year hiatus, he felt the need to get some professional help.

                Why did he need a personal trainer, even though he was a do-it-yourselfer for 30 years? As he says in his video, there were a few reasons:

  1. He needed a program. Instead of aimlessly wandering around from machine to machine. But he didnt just want a program that he pulled off the internet. He wanted a program tailored to his body.
  2. He needed accountability. Its easy to let yourself off the hook. But when youre paying someone, theyre not letting you off the hook.
  3. He needed safety. He didnt want to build muscle, at the expense of his joints. He wanted to make sure the exercise didnt damage his joints.

Having been getting my newsletters for a few months beforehand, he thought I knew what I was talking about (fooled him, didnt I? ). So after meeting for an initial assessment, it did look like it was a good fit, so we got to work.

Sethu’s Exercise Program

                The goal was to gain as much muscle as possible, as fast as possible. So I designed this program for him:

Day 1

Perform the following exercises for 3 sets of 8-12 reps:

Lat pulldowns

Barbell overhead press

Deadlifts

Seated rows

Incline pushups

Standing calf raises

Dessert:

Cable lateral raises

Lying leg raises

Day 2

Perform the following exercises for 3 sets of 8-12 reps:

1-arm bent over rows

Dumbbell overhead press

Squats

Straight arm lat pulldowns

Standing flyes

Seated calf raises

Dessert:

Dumbbell lateral raises

Cable crunches

But to just look at the program and think this is very simple would be missing a lot of the underlying elements. Theres elegance in simplicity. As Einstein once said, amateurs complicate. Experts simplify.

So the program you see on your screen was not a static program. It was a dynamic, evolving program. As I talk about in my article on the most important factor of an exercise program, its not the exercises its the progression model. Its the subtle adjustment of reps, sets and weights as the clients body adapts to the exercises. Its these micro-adjustments that give an exercise program its effectiveness not so much the exercises themselves.

Speaking of the progression model, Ill discuss that in a later section of this article.

I personally believe that an exercise program shouldnt be random. Every single exercise program has to be put on trial. Every single variable has to be justified, like:

  • The number of exercises
  • The number of sets
  • The number of reps
  • The progression model
  • The order of exercises
  • The frequency
  • The exercise selection. There are dozens, if not hundreds of exercises for each body part. Why was a specific exercise chosen over a different one for the same muscle?

While I dont intend to bore you in this article, with my justifications for each of these variables, here are some of the highlights/mechanisms behind the program:

Why 2 Different Workouts?

Sethu was exercising 3 days per week. So he would follow a day 1-day 2-day 1 schedule one week. Then, he would follow a day 2-day 1-day 2 schedule the following week.

Why?

                Because when youre exercising 3 or more days per week, its important to hit the same muscles from different angles, to create balanced growth of a muscle, and to reduce the risk of injuries.

                Now, if someone is exercising twice per week, I wouldnt use 2 different workouts.

Number of Sets

Why did I select 3 sets per exercise, per workout? Why not more or less? Because of the dose of exercise required for growth.

Just like in medicine, you always want to know how much. How much exercise does it take to achieve a certain goal? In Sethu’s case, that goal was muscle growth.

And the number of sets depends on both a persons training status (beginner, intermediate, advanced), age (older people require more sets than younger people contrary to popular belief. I go into that in more detail in my article on strength training over 60), and sex (women need more sets than men to stimulate muscle growth).

A beginner needs between 6-10 sets per muscle group per week to grow. Because Sethu is 83, he needed to be on the upper end of that. So 3 sets, 3 times per week is 9 sets per muscle group.

For beginners, it appears that theres no difference in muscle growth between 10 sets per muscle, and 20, 30, etc. sets per muscle. So theres no additional benefit. Yet for intermediates and advanced trainees, there is. They may require as many as 30 sets per muscle group per week to grow muscle (but not necessarily strength).

Because:

  1. Sethu had taken 2.5 years off
  2. Even during his 30 years of strength training, he wasnt exactly doing it properly

he was a beginner for all intents and purposes.

Number of Reps

                Why did I select 8-12 reps per set? Why not a higher or a lower number? While its pretty well-established that the number of reps is irrelevant for muscle growth as long as you get sufficiently close to muscular failure, there are other reasons to go for a specific rep range.

                A rep range of less than 8 reps does build more strength than the 8-12 range (even though the amount of muscle size is the same), but it also beats up the joints more. Furthermore, older people respond better to higher repetition ranges.

                So why not go for higher reps, like 15-20? Although they build endurance better than the 8-12 range, they dont build strength as well.

                So the disadvantage of the 15-20 rep range is the advantage of the 8-12 rep range. Thats why its good to cycle through different rep ranges. So maybe theres a 2-4 month span of working in the 8-12 rep range, another 2-4 months of working in the 15-20 rep range, another 2-4 months of working in the 5-8 rep range, and repeating it after.

Get Close to Muscular Failure

                From an exercise perspective, if theres one key to muscle growth (which is not the same as muscle strength), its to get close to muscle failure.

                So every set, we get 1-3 reps away from muscular failure. And on the last set, we would go to failure the farthest Sethu could go without his technique deteriorating.

                Why are we so meticulous about the different exercise variables? Because theres a difference between training and working out. If youre working out, you dont have a goal. So anything will do. If youre training, you have a goal. Youre training for something. When you have a measurable goal, you have to be a lot more meticulous with exercise programming.

                After all, you can spend an hour exercising. Or you can spend an hour exercising the right way. One that brings you progress and results.

Nothing wrong with just working out if your goal is maintenance, but if you have a measurable goal (like weight loss, muscle gain, strength improvement, pain reduction, etc.), then you need to really mind the different variables that go into an exercise program

If you want to delve deeper into all this, I wrote an entire article about strength training over 60.

Nutrition Strategies

                Of course, exercise by itself is not enough to stimulate muscle growth. You need the raw material to make muscle protein.

                After doing a dietary recall of what Sethu was eating, we saw that he was only consuming about 50% of his protein requirements.

                We had to get it up in a big way.

                And yet, we had to do it in a way that fit both his logistics (what he was already eating), and his taste buds. It had to taste good.

                The reason most diets fail is because they dont fit a persons lifestyle and preferences. So we had to figure out how to make this successful. The most successful approaches are actually simple not complicated.

                So heres what I recommended to Sethu to get his protein consumption up:

  • He was already eating oatmeal for breakfast. I recommended simply adding a scoop of protein powder to it. That contributes 30 grams.
  • For lunch, he would typically have beans/lentils with something. I recommended making that something sardines, since he already liked them. And they added 30 grams of protein (and omega 3 as a bonus). Would I recommend sardines to someone who didnt like them? No. There are other ways to get your protein.
  • For dinner, Sethu was already eating either chicken or pork. I had him keep doing that. But he was also eating rice, which as a diabetic, wasnt great. So I recommended replacing rice with lentils which he already liked. Lentils have both more protein and more fibre than rice. A win-win.

Supplements

                Besides protein powder, the only supplement that I recommended to Sethu for muscle gain was creatine.

                Whats creatine?

                The kidneys make it naturally, but when we add it supplementally, it does a couple of things:

  • The muscles store more water, giving them a fuller appearance
  • It speeds up recovery in between sets
  • Although not our goal, its great for cognition

Creatine is one of the best-studied supplements (yep, there’s more research on it than vitamin D, even), and has a long track record of safety and effectiveness.

Sethu’s Results

                Theory is nice, but what were Sethu’s bottom-line results? Astounding. On par with a 30-year-old.

  • He gained 8 pounds of muscle
  • He lost 4 pounds of fat
  • His strength in the deadlift nearly tripled!!! He started deadlifting 33.5 pounds. By the end of the program, he was deadlifting 95.
  • His upper body strength (the lat pulldowns) improved by 33% (went from 60 lbs., up to 80)
  • His chest circumference increased by 3 cm. Grampas got pecs.
  • His waist circumference decreased by 2 cm. He was getting that V-shape.

Lest you think this is due to great genetics, its not. I attribute Sethu’s results to his frequency (3 days per week), grit (the will to push sets close, or right to muscular failure), and compliance to nutritional changes.

Challenges

                But it wasnt exactly a straight line from where he started to where he is now. There were a couple of challenges along the way.

                For one thing, when Sethu started, he had knee pain. That will limit certain exercises. Of course, we didnt want to gain muscle, at the expense of his joints.

                We wanted something thats challenging to the muscles, but gentle on the joints.

                So we replaced squats with knee extensions. Both good exercises, but one bothered the knees, the other didnt. So we went with that.

                The other challenge was scheduling.

                Sethu’s a busy guy. Hes running a business, has a family, and takes yoga classes, meditation, and more.

                Despite that, he was still able to fit in strength training 3 times a week.

How His Life Is Different

                So now that Sethu is beefy, hows his life different, compared to before? Pretty nicely.

  • He has more energy. Something he needs when hes running a mining business, is pretty active with his grandkids, and has lots to do.
  • He sleeps better. Faster to sleep, and more rested when he wakes up.
  • Hes stronger a lot!
  • When his daughter saw him, she said that he doesnt look frail anymore

If you want results like Sethu, we have a special program called Fitness Over 50. If you want to see whether or not you qualify for this program, just email me with the subject line Fitness Over 50.