How’s that lifting progress going?

You been hitting the gym for two years with very little to show for it? You try the “optimal” cable angles? You run the highly optimized, “science-based” TikTok routine some 22-year-old influencer swore by, bro?

And after all that, you still struggling to put up decent weight? You still got that same stubborn gut? Bench press barely budged?

Your results suck because you’re distracted by shiny objects.

When you look in the mirror, you probably want to blame your age. You want to blame a slowing metabolism, a demanding career, or the kids. That’s a comforting lie. You’re too busy swiping through your feed looking for a magic bullet. You’ll spend three hours researching the perfect biomechanical bicep curl, but you refuse to spend three minutes tracking what you actually put in your mouth. You’re stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.

It’s not all your fault.

The fitness industry is designed to keep you confused so you keep buying things. The truth is much colder and much simpler. Your body adapts based entirely on inputs and outputs. It’s a strict equation. If you ignore the baseline math of caloric control and heavy iron, no amount of trendy training will save you.

You’re failing because you refuse to run the numbers.

The Bio-Hacking Delusion

You see them every day at the gym. They’re the guys wearing $150 compression tech, sipping neon-colored “intra-workout” formulas, and checking their wearable rings every five minutes to see if their “readiness score” is high enough to pick up a dumbbell. These are the same guys who have looked exactly the same for three years. They’re obsessed with the “1%“—the marginal gains, the supplements, the cold plunges, and the “bio-hacks”—while their 99% is a total disaster.

It’s stupid. There’s no other word for it.

You’re failing because you’re treating your body like a laboratory before you’ve treated it like a bank account. Fitness, especially after 40, is a simple ledger of inputs and outputs. If you aren’t tracking the big numbers, the small numbers don’t matter. You’re trying to use a $60 bottle of “test-boosting” garbage to fix a lifestyle that is mathematically insolvent.

Buy Food, Not Lies

Let’s look at the “supplement stack.” The industry loves a guy in his 40s because he has disposable income and a fading sense of his own invincibility. They sell you on the idea that your “hormonal optimization” is just one proprietary blend away.

Run the numbers. If a supplement claims to increase your recovery speed by 5%, but you’re only sleeping five hours a night, you’re still operating at a massive deficit. You can’t supplement your way out of a $3,000-a-month mortgage if you only earn $2,000. It doesn’t work in business, and it doesn’t work in your physiology.

Stop buying the lies sold by influencers who are on $500 worth of “pharmaceutical assistance” while they tell you their “super-greens” powder is the secret. It’s a scam. Most of these supplements end up as expensive urine. If you’re shopping at the local grocery store, buy some steak and eggs. That’s your supplement. Everything else is just a distraction from the fact that you aren’t doing the hard work of tracking your actual food intake.

Sleep More, Scroll Less

Take sleep, for example. It’s not a luxury. It’s the primary variable in the recovery equation. You can run the most “science-based” routine in the world, but if your body doesn’t have the downtime to repair the tissue you tore down, you aren’t building muscle. You’re just digging a hole.

If you’re staying up late finishing work reports or scrolling through TikTok looking for a “new” way to hit your side delts, you’re actively sabotaging your gains. Your body does its best work when you’re unconscious. If you aren’t getting seven to eight hours of shut-eye, your testosterone levels drop, your cortisol spikes, and your body clings to fat like it’s a precious resource.

You don’t need a $2,000 “smart mattress” or a red-light therapy panel. You need to put the phone in the other room, turn the AC down, and go to bed. It’s free. It’s effective. But it’s not “flashy,” so nobody wants to talk about it.

Audit Your Ledger

Why do guys focus on the latest greatest supplement instead of their caloric intake? Because tracking is boring. It’s a job. It requires you to be honest with yourself about that extra serving of chips or those three beers on a Tuesday night.

It is much easier to swallow a pill than it is to weigh your food. But the math doesn’t care about your convenience. If you are eating 3,000 calories and burning 2,500, no “fat-burning” supplement in the world is going to change the fact that you’re getting softer.

I don’t care about your “optimal” nutrient timing. I don’t care if you eat your carbs in the morning or at night. I care about the daily total. If you aren’t hitting your calorie and protein targets, you’re just guessing. And in your 40s, guessing leads to a “dad bod” and a plateau that lasts for a decade.

Stop looking for the hack. There is no hack. There is only the ledger. If you can’t tell me exactly how much protein you’ve had today, you have no business worrying about “bio-hacking.” You’re trying to decorate a house that hasn’t even been framed yet.

But, we’ve talked enough about what doesn’t work. What does?

The Only Reason Your Body Changes

If you aren’t adding weight to the bar, adding reps to the set, or improving your form, you aren’t training. You’re just exercising. Most men at the gym are doing the same 225-pound bench press for the same 10 reps they did in 2022. That is a mathematical stalemate. Your body is an adaptation machine, but it is also efficient; it will not waste energy building expensive muscle tissue unless it is absolutely forced to do so by increasing demands.

It’s the law of Progressive Overload. It is the gradual increase of stress placed upon the body during exercise. You don’t need a “new” routine every three weeks to “shock” the muscle. You need to do the same fundamental movements and systematically update the equation. In my book, I show you a strategy called Adaptive Progressive Overload to implement this without burning out. If the numbers on your logbook aren’t moving up over time, your physique won’t either.

The Science of Forcing Growth

Muscle growth, or hypertrophy, happens when you apply mechanical tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress. When you lift a weight that challenges your current capacity, you create microtears in the muscle fibers. Your body then repairs these fibers to be thicker and stronger to handle that specific load in the future.

However, if you lift that same 225 pounds for the same 10 reps forever, the “damage” stops occurring. Your body has already adapted to that specific input. To keep the repair process (Muscle Protein Synthesis) active, you must increase the stimulus.

Three Ways to Update the Equation

You don’t just “try harder.” You run the math on your sets. There are three primary ways to implement progressive overload:

1. Increase the Weight: This is the most direct route. If you hit your target reps with perfect form, add 2.5 to 10 pounds to the bar next session. Even a small 5-pound increase is a signal to your nervous system that the environment has changed.
2. Increase the Repetitions: If you aren’t ready to jump in weight, do more work with the current weight. Note that for older people, this is typically the best place to start to avoid injury. Moving from 8 reps to 10 reps with the same load increases the total volume and tension placed on the muscle.
3. Improve the Form and Range of Motion (ROM): Doing the same weight but with a more controlled tempo or a deeper range of motion is a form of progress. Moving a weight through its full extension and contraction recruits more muscle fibers than “ego-lifting” partial reps.

The Logbook Reality

In the gym, I see guys chasing “the pump” or “the burn.” Those are feelings, not data points. Feelings are liars. I want to see your logbook. Whether you use an app like Hevy or a notebook, you need to track your lifts.

You have everything you need: barbells and dumbbells. You don’t need a $5,000 selectorized machine. You need the discipline to look at what you did last Tuesday and beat it by one rep or five pounds. It is a slow, methodical grind. Aim to progress every 1-2 weeks. You are building a body through compound interest. It’s not flashy, but it’s the only thing that works.

Total Daily Energy Intake: Calories and Protein Targets

You can’t out-train a garbage diet, and you definitely can’t guess your way to a leaner physique. Most men fail because they’re chasing “superfoods” instead of managing their energy ledger. Your body operates on the strict math of Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).

If you aren’t running the numbers on your Total Daily Energy Intake (TDEI), you’re just hoping for the best. Hope is not a strategy. To lose the gut, you need a caloric deficit. To build the frame, you need a slight surplus. If you aren’t tracking, you’re guessing, and guessing leads to the same “dad bod” you’ve been carrying for five years.

The Energy Balance Equation

Your TDEE is the sum of four variables: your BMR (roughly 60-70% of your burn), your non-exercise activity (NEAT), your actual training (EAT), and the thermic effect of food (TEF). Once you have that number, you adjust your TDEI by a mere 1-2% to force the body to change. You don’t need a massive, metabolism-crashing 1,000-calorie deficit. A modest 10-15% reduction is the “sweet spot” for fat loss without sacrificing the muscle you’re working so hard to build.

The Protein Floor

The most important number on your daily ledger is your Protein Floor. Aim for 1 gram of protein per pound of desired body weight. While research shows that 0.7g to 1.0g per pound is the optimal range for muscle growth, hitting that 1g mark is a reliable rule of thumb to ensure you never leave gains on the table.

• Thermic Effect: Protein has the highest thermic effect of all macros, meaning your body burns roughly 20-30% of those calories just trying to process the meal.
• Satiety: High protein intake keeps you satisfied, making a caloric deficit actually sustainable rather than a test of willpower.
• Source and Convenience: Get the bulk of your protein from staples like steak, eggs, and chicken. Protein powder is a tool for convenience, not a magic bullet.

Managing Fatigue: The X-Factor

Training hard is only half of the equation. If you aren’t managing the stress you place on your body, you aren’t building muscle; you’re just digging a hole.

The Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)

You have a specific ceiling for how much training you can actually benefit from, known as your Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV). For most guys chasing an aesthetic look, the optimal range is 10-20 sets per muscle group per week. If your strength is dropping, you have low energy, or you’re persistently sore for more than 72 hours, you’ve likely blown past your MRV and need to scale back.

Deload to Reload

To reset the ledger, you must implement a deload week every 4–8 weeks. This isn’t a week off; it’s a planned reduction where you cut your sets by roughly 40–50% and lower the intensity. This allows your central nervous system (CNS) and joints to catch up to the work your muscles have been doing.

Sleep: The Missing Link

Sleep is the foundation of your entire fitness journey.

• The Target: Aim for 7–9 hours of quality sleep nightly to maximize anabolic hormone release.
• Hormonal Repair: During deep sleep, growth hormone peaks, driving muscle protein synthesis.
• Stress Management: Sufficient sleep lowers cortisol, which can break down muscle tissue and promote fat storage if elevated chronically.
• Optimization: Keep the room cool, ideally 60–67°F, and dark. Avoid blue light from screens 1–2 hours before bed.

Your 24-Hour Action Plan

Stop overcomplicating the process and start executing the math:

1. Establish Your Baseline: Use the Mifflin-St Jeor Equation to determine your TDEE.
2. Set Your Nutrition Floor: Target 1 gram of protein per pound of desired body weight.
3. Audit Your TDEI: Adjust your daily calorie intake by 10-15% for a sustainable deficit.
4. Execute Progressive Overload: Every session, aim to add weight, a rep, or improve form.
5. Manage Your Volume: Stay between 10-20 hard sets per muscle group per week.
6. Schedule a Deload: Every 4-8 weeks, cut volume and intensity by 40-50%.
7. Fix Your Sleep: Aim for 7-9 hours in a cold, dark room.
8. Track the Data: Use an app like Hevy for your lifts and Cronometer for your nutrition. If it isn’t tracked, it isn’t happening.

If you’re ready to stop guessing and start running a predictable system, download the 40+ Blueprint here and get the exact math I use to get it done.