How to build the perfect male physique over 50

Can we even build the perfect physique over 50? No question, we are not as young as we used to be. But we can still build muscle and improve our bodies.

When I think of the perfect physique, I think of Frank Zane or Steve Reeves. There’s even an online calculator where you input your joint measurements, and it gives you what your body part measurements need be to have a Reeves-like physique.

It breaks down to a V tapered look with broad shoulders, a muscular back, strong arms and a narrow waist. I’m going to add one more body part for us guys over fifty, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

First I want to talk about our waist. The more muscular your abs are, the better they’ll show through a little extra body fat. But a poll of 108 women found that the V cut of a man's abs was sexier to them than the actual six-pack. To build this, you need to work on your external obliques. One way to do this is twisting knee raises.

Not everyone is going to want shredded abs. But to maintain that V taper from your shoulders to waist, you have to keep your body fat levels reasonable. I would target 15% or lower. I keep mine around 12 or 13%

Having a higher testosterone level helps maintain lean body mass and keep our hard-earned muscle. In a study, they looked at 252 men between the ages of 18 and 85 and found that the ones with the most muscle mass on their lower body had the highest testosterone levels.

This is why to build the perfect male physique over 50; I’m recommending leg training. The big mass builders are best, like squats and deadlifts.

A muscle that stands out on our legs and I’m working to improve is the teardrop muscle right by our knee called the Vastus Medialis. You target this muscle by doing VMO split squats. You’ll not only feel it in your vastus medialis but your glutes as well, and the perfect physique has to have great glutes.

To do a VMO split squat, we set up similar to a regular split squat. Take a large step forward. Keep your feet shoulder-width apart. Don’t put one leg behind the other, as this will create a balance issue.

Keep the weight on your front leg as you lower down. Now here is what makes it different than a regular split squat, you drive the knee forward over your toes. When executed perfectly, your hamstring should touch your calf.

With a regular split squat, the movement is more downward than forward. If you’re not used to doing split squats, start with the normal version and work your way to a VMO.

A broad back is key for getting that V taper shape. Pull-ups and lat pulldowns are great for building width.

A tip to get a better contraction in your lats is to twist to one side as you pull the bar down. You can alternate from one side to the other, always starting with your weaker side.

To cap off those wide lats, we need great shoulders. This is one body part we can have trouble training because of joint issues.

For those with shoulder impingements, try hanging from a pull-up bar every day for a minute or two. I had a couple of people in the comments recommend it to me to help with my impingement, and it worked wonders. I can now shoulder press pain free.

I’m using bands for all of my workouts this summer. Doing a neutral grip shoulder press because it puts less stress on my shoulders. After which I superset low anchor flyes with high anchor flyes.

The low anchor hits both rear and lateral delts, with the high anchor targeting just the rear delts working towards that 3D shoulder look.

Most people struggle with rear delt development, and you can see that I do too when you look at this comparison picture of my physique to Hollywood actor Frank Grillo’s.

This brings me to arm training. Great guns will always be a symbol of a muscular physique. To get the most out of your bicep training, try adding in a set of dumbbell cheat curls and take advantage of a slow negative.

But instead of overarching our back haphazardly, use your legs and hip drive to get the dumbbells up. Then slowly lower the weight in a controlled manner. Once you can no longer control the weight on the way down, the set is over.

Triceps are two-thirds of our arm size. So we don’t want to negligent them. My favourite Tricep exercise is still the overhead triceps cable extension. For more exercises to help you build bigger arms, watch this video next and keep working out while having fun.

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