I, along with many other men, have found that as we get older, time for training goes down as career and family life intensifies.
It is one of the accepted facts of current culture that getting older means more pain, less progress and an ever expanding waist line.
I am here to tell you this bullshit needs to stop.
In this piece I will show you how to get/stay strong and muscular whilst managing to stay on top of your other family commitments.
*A lot of the principles will apply to someone looking to do the same with endurance and/or both.
Let’s get straight to the point. You may well be super busy, but no matter what, you will have to find a way to carve out some time each week to get into the gym/garage/garden to move some weights or your own body. I will be writing more on how I do this with clients soon.
For the time being let’s assume you can find 3x45 minute blocks of time to train a week.
That you go to a gym with all the basics.
That you know how to lift weights safely.
There are three pillars of building muscle and strength and keeping it.
1 - Training; you need to create a stress response in the muscle and nervous system to promote and maintain growth
2 - Food; you need to fuel appropriately if you want to add muscle
3 - Recovery; you will have to get adequate sleep in particular to promote growth and recover from the training
Pillar #1
Training. You need to do weights, and they need to be sessions that are put together in a sustainable, progressive and enjoyable way.
A basic layout for three sessions a week could easily be a full body training plan, so every day you hit the whole body. This is something that definitely works well for beginners. We would just aim to hit each bodypart from different angles in each session and leave at least 36-48hrs between sessions.
With this model, we would take our sets close to failure (assuming we have safe and effective technique). Each bodypart would only need to used 2-3 sets per session.
Another option would be to split the training into different movement patterns. So maybe Squat/Upper Pull on day 1, Hinge/Upper Push on day 2, Whole body on day 3. This would be more focused around building strength as each movement pattern gets a break in between the sessions.
No matter the way the programme is put together, with just three sessions per week you will need to be VERY focused in the gym.
Choose movements you can do without an ultra long warm up. If you struggle with squat mobility then maybe do box squats, leg press or hack squats instead of spending twenty minutes warming up for three sets of back squats.
It is all about training smart, not getting stuck in dogma about including specific movements. Yes ideally, long term we would love to squat heavy, but you also can be really strong and muscular, AND healthy without squatting under a heavy barbell.
My warm up for sessions like this would be something like 2-3 mins cardio at increasing effort followed by a slow build in the first movements. No fucking about.
The training then needs to be done at a decent level of intensity BUT if you are injury prone, or dealing with high amounts of stress, low sleep or struggling to fuel properly then you do need to drop intensity.
If life is really just a manic whirlpool, then maybe we just try and focus on steady training for a while. Once that is nailed on as a sustainable practice, we can address other areas of life. Once they are nailed we can increase volume/intensity.
Pillar #2
Fuel thyself!! For building muscle and strength we need to make protein a priority. 2g per kg of bodyweight is the aim. I would aim for most of this to be coming from animal products, a mixture of lean and fatty meats mainly. Why? Well the amino acids we get from animals are more well rounded, they are delicious and red meat/fish in particular can be very nutrient dense, micro nutrients are incredibly important for all of the processes our body needs to be healthy long term.
You do not need to track your protein like a fitness nerd, but have some way of tracking what you eat roughly each day. I often recommend clients just aim for a big hand sized portion of protein every meal, eating 4-5 meals a day as a good starting point.
For example;
Meal #1 - Smoked mackerel and scrambled eggs.
Meal #2 - Post workout protein shake and bowl of fruit
Meal #3 - Sliced chicken thighs/rice/roast veg
Meal # 4 - Sliced steak and home made potato wedges with salad and olive oil
Meal #5 - Greek yoghurt with almond butter/fruit/whey powder mixed in
Track how you are doing on something like this and then add or subtract the protein element of each meal. You could, if you wanted, do a few days of food planned out on a macro calculator like myfitnesspal and once you know you have the right amounts, just use those days on a rotating basis. Habits that are easy to stick with is key here, so pick things that are easy for you to prepare around family/work commitments!
Carbs are essential when building, make sure you are not skimping here. If we track aim for 3-5g per kg of BW depending on how you feel on carbs - some get a little bloated. My favouriet sources are; potatoes, rice, oats, pasta (sometimes), lots of fruit and veg. Again, we really do not need to dive into the details of exact amounts and tracking like crazy. Just aim to eat a good solid handful of whole food carbs around your training and into the afternoon, I prefer less carbs at brekkie and most people seem to do better off this.
On non training days I would aim for a slightly lower carb approach and higher fats - fats from animal products (fish, meat, eggs, dairy).
I avoid heavily processed or high sugary carbs. Getting stronger and building muscle is not a cue to just eat tons of junk food.
There is no doubt that pillar #2 is probably more of a challenge than the actual training, it is effort and it’s relentless but fuck me it is worth it. We are told by culture we can have whatever we want whenever we want it (social media, next day delivery etc).
Well if you wanna be a physically capable man then this is just not true. Soz.
Don’t get too bogged down in the weeds of the detail, start simple and build. Making protein intake the starting point and embracing real meat as the cornerstone of this.
I have given you a whirlwind tour of eating there, it’s complex but don’t make it overly complex.
Focus on; protein at each meal, mostly from meat, eggs or dairy. Focus on wholefoods. Avoid processed or junk foods as much as possible - I exclude whey powder/yoghurt from processed foods here. Make sure you get carbs in, especially around training sessions and before bed.
Pillar #3
Sleep is king.
This is fairly common news nowadays. Yet people still struggle.
Some basic guidelines for you;
- Try to avoid screens an hour or so before bed.
- Wear blue light blockers after sunset if you are watching screens.
- Try to be as consistent as possible with bedtime and waking - avoid sleeping in at weekends etc.
- The magic is in 7-9 hrs of sleep a night.
- Get morning light in your eyes within an hour of waking every day
- Avoid stimulation before bed when we are trying to lower cortisol and increase melatonin.
These are the sleep basics. If you are getting less than 6-7hrs per night this is a big problem for any sort of training. You will struggle to eat right, make good decisions and honestly it is just shite for your long term health. Make fixing this a priority.
Busy men…
So, how do we make all this work for the busy man. Family and work often create tight time schedules for us. No doubt, it can be hard. You need to go through your diary with a fine tooth comb, and look at how you are spending your time. There should be assigned slots each day for things that are important to you. This is a key starting point for everyone.
If your diary is blank, we have a big issue. Start there before flapping about how many deadlifts to do or what split to follow. A big learning curve for me is that if I want to achieve something - eg getting strong and muscular around a busy schedule. Then I need to think like someone who is already like that and try to become that type of person. This is key.
That type of person would have their shit together and diary planned out. The other key point here is to work out the big barriers to finding the time in your schedule (trust me, everyone reading this has the time).
A common one I hear is that people can’t get up early to train. Too tired. Then when you dig into their routine they are actually wasting the last hour or two of their day watching telly or doom scrolling on insta, whilst having a cheeky beer or glass of wine. Quite quickly we see that if actually they did the hard thing and let go of this need to be watching a screen (huge dopamine hits and natural light exposure) in the late evening then you would have the energy to get up and do 45 minutes of training at 6am.
So the difficult thing isn’t actually getting up to train, it is putting your phone down at 9pm and going to bed.
It is these small, unseen acts that add up to creating huge results long term.
How do we change these habits? I like the idea of cue + action. What is the cue that creates the action of scrolling? Maybe it’s just the phone next to us. It is hard to resist picking up isn’t it?
Why not try putting the phone on a shelf out of the way when we get home from work? Or turn it off? Or put it on greyscale? Take the cue away. Or commit to changing sequence of events leading to the action.
“I finish putting the kids to bed and collapse on the sofa with my wife. We have. a glass of wine each and watch telly, but most of the time we are both on our phones.”
Change that to;
“I finish putting the kids to bed and sit with my wife and chat about our respective days. At 8:45pm an alert goes off on my phone reminding me to get ready for bed. We turn our phones off, tidy up and go to bed where we read (or stretch/have sex/shower/foam roll/meditate) for 10-15 minutes.“
It is all doable. It will require changes, it will require work. Particularly it will require a mindset shift to living more like the person you want to be.
I will leave you with this one, possibly triggering thought that I heard from another coach.
‘Change your language and mindset - you are not too busy, you have priorities’
This is a mind blowing and truly resonant piece of advice. I use it often for myself when I catch myself moaning about being too busy. I hope it helps you too.
If you need help with anything I have talked about above, or have questions. Please feel free to fire me an email at tom_mcpartlan@hotmail.co.uk