I’m JJ Virgin, Ph. D. dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions.

Digging for answers and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism, to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness.

Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100.

All you’ll need is a few key pieces of equipment to get started. Here’s the deal. Starting at around age 30, we start losing muscle. You’ve probably heard about this 3 8 percent a decade. But actually, that’s not the biggest problem. The bigger issues is that when we’re losing up to 1 percent of our muscle, we’re losing 2 4 percent of our strength and 6 8 percent of our power.

And that’s annually. Now, how can you tell if this is happening to you? Check yourself out with what I call the jar strength. There is something called a hand grip dynamometer that can test your grip strength. You can get it on Amazon for like 20 bucks. I highly recommend this, but one of the easiest ways to tell, think about opening a jar.

If you used to be able to open all the jars and now you’re handing it over to your, your son or your husband to open, you’re losing some of that strength. Next one is, how fast can you get up the stairs or how easy is it for you to do a big jump? Because. That’s really a sign of your power. Now, beyond just losing your strength and power, you also start to lose balance, flexibility, and stability.

You can tell if you’ve got a problem there because you’re going through security, you took off your shoes, and now you’ve got to stand up and put the shoe back on. Can you do it? You can also do something that’s a little balance test where you literally lift a foot up, you cross your hands, And you close your eyes.

This sounds really easy. Try it. It’s way harder than it seems. And for someone who’s 40 to 59 for men, you’re gonna wanna be able to hold this for 11 and a half to 26.9 seconds. And for women, 9.7 to 23.3 seconds. So those are the norms. So give that one a test. Again, one foot up. Cross your arms, close your eyes.

Time it and see how you do with that one. I’ve put together a simple set of exercises that you can do at home. Now here’s what you’re going to need. You’re going to need a set of dumbbells, you’re going to need a kettlebell, and you’re going to need a heavy ball. This is also called a medicine ball. And I’ve created a resistance training cheat sheet if you want to plan that you can download it, print it, put it on the wall.

That you can get at jjvirgin. com forward slash power. So what we’re putting into this program are a couple things. Number one, three big areas, upper body pushing, and That involves your chest, your shoulders, your triceps, so that’s things like a push up or an overhead press. Upper body pulling, that is something like a bent over row or an upright row.

Those are things that involve your lats, your shoulders, your biceps, and then hip and thigh hinging for your glutes and your quads. Then, of course, in this we’re creating something to build your strength, to build your muscle, to increase your power. We’re going to have your core engaged throughout, and we’re also incorporating Balance and flexibility and stability.

Now, the other thing that I’m making sure is in this program, that was that we’re moving in all the different planes. We’re going to move front to back, we’ll move side to side, and we’ll rotate. The whole point of this is as Dr. Andy Galpin says, is to look, to feel, and to perform better. So all of these things are super duper functional.

We’re going to start with ball squat throws. I actually just want you to do this with no weight, no ball at all. And you’re just going to move your body through the motion. And what I like to do with this is if you feel unstable at all, just put a chair behind you to tap down on. But that first one you’re just doing as if you’re doing the yoga chair pose where you have your arms straight up and you’re just coming down.

And up for your first set. In all of these, I’m going to have you work in the hypertrophy range, which is 6 to 30 reps. But I’m going to have you just think about doing 8 to 12 reps. If you can’t get to 8, lighten it up. In each of these exercises, you’re going to start out with a bodyweight warm up. Easy one.

And then you’ll add the weight in. And then we’re going to move into the squat with an overhead throw. So you’re going down, tapping the ball, coming up, and throwing the ball. Now that we’ve done your squats, and what’s cool with squats with an overhead throw is we involved Power with the overhead throw.

We got an overhead pushing exercise as well, which is really functional. Think of all the different times in life, because I always say you get, you train to get better at life, not to get better at working out. What you have to do to put things up in that higher cabinet, or maybe in the airplane, to put it into the overhead compartment.

The next one is going to move you to the side, and this is a side lunge. And this is going to involve some balance as well. It’s also going to have some power. And this is where you just do a side lunge, and lift back up. So again, I’m balancing, I’m having to do some speed and pushing, and when we’re doing these, you’re not looking at how slow you can go, you’re looking at how fast you can push yourself back up.

We’re doing these to improve your balance so that in life you’re able to catch yourself so that you don’t fall. Now the next thing you’re going to do is do this with a kettlebell. Here’s the thing, when I’m demoing exercises, I do not do the heaviest weight that I can handle. What you want to do with these is always use the heaviest weight you can in good form.

Holding with both hands. And I’m just going to show you a modification if you needed to. This could always be your modification. All right, the next one is a double or single legged deadlift. Now, and I’m doing what’s called a Romanian deadlift. What you would do is knees are slightly bent, abdominals pulled in tight, and I just come down and back up again.

And what’s important here is that my hands are coming down just below my knees, but see how my back stays extended and my hands stay close to my knees. The muscles that you’re using here are your glutes, what’s called your erector spinae and your spine that are keeping you extended, and your hamstrings.

Okay, now the other one that I love is something called a woodchop. One of the reasons I like this is because this is a way for us to get that rotation happening in our trunk. We’re also going to get our quads, our glutes. Our core. And this is one where you’re going to use that medicine ball, but you can just start right at first with the movement, just so you get used to doing it.

And what you want to make sure of is that your knees don’t fold in. You’re coming down to a little bit of a squat. It’s really moving your trunk. It’s as if your trunk is moving. in your arms. We’re all one unit. Then we’re going to do something called a superset. And a superset is where you do two different exercises that work opposing muscle groups.

In this case, we’re going to do a bent over row, and we’re going to do a set of those, and then we’re going to alternate that with a set of push ups. My hands on my knees, so I’ve got my back extended. When I come up, I’m squeezing my shoulder blades together. I’m rotating my palms in, and we’ll recruit more bicep muscles.

So I’m doing this and down. Now what you’re going to do is you’re going to alternate that with your push up. You can do a push up on your hands and toes, you can do a push up on your hands and knees, or you could do a push up against a bench. Whichever way you need to do it. It’s hardest on your hands and toes, it’s easiest on your hands and knees, in between on a bench.

Now with all this hard work, make sure you’re supporting your efforts in the kitchen. I’m going to tell you about the Best foods to help build muscle and burn fat, how much protein you need, why food timing matters, my favorite protein sources, and so much more in this next video.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great, and more importantly, that you’re built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and my website, jjvirgin. com, and make sure to follow my podcast so you don’t miss a single episode.

See you next time.

Hey, JJ here. And just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

See If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on this show or read in our show notes.

The use of any information provided on this show is solely at your own risk.
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