It’s Rob Richley, Personal Trainer, Fitness Competitor and Founder of Lean Over 40 for Men and today I want to answer a popular question.
Can you get a six pack at 60?
In general, you can get a six pack in your senior years and beyond. This might require some changes to your lifestyle factors such as eating a higher protein diet, strength training to preserve lean muscle tissue and getting at least 30 minutes of low intensity cardio training each day.
What men often think is that their metabolisms will slow as they age preventing them from ever seeing their abs, but the research is clear that our metabolisms only start to slow after age 60 by approximately 5% each decade.
That means if you could lose fat eating 2200 calories per day, you would only need to deduct 100 calories to lose the same amount of fat.
Beyond that we’re still capable of losing fat and building muscle at age 60 and that means we’re still perfectly capable of getting six-pack abs as well.
Here are 6 tips to make six-pack abs a possibility for you:
1. Know Your Starting Point
In order to see your abs, you should know your starting point i.e., scale weight, current body fat percentage and waist measurements.
Body fat percentage is probably the most important. This can be measured by getting some body fat calipers. To see your abs, you will need to get down to 13% body fat and under. So, if you measured your body fat fat percentage at 20% today, give 3 to 6 months to lose the fat to see your abs.
To reach your goal, you should target a fat loss of no more than 1½ pounds of fat loss each week.
2. Get the Correct Number of Calories Each Day
To get a six-pack over 60, you need to know how many calories you should be eating each day. There are 3500 calories in one pound of fat, so deduct 400-500 calories off your BMR (maintenance calories) to lose 1 pound of fat every week.
The bottom line is you will need to be in slight calorie deficit to lose fat. Drastic calorie hikes can backfire, aim for no more than 400-500 less than your BMR calories.
From the calories you are consuming set your protein at your goal body weight, for example if you weigh 200 pounds at 20% body fat, you will need to lose 20 pounds of fat to get down to 10% body fat and reveal your six-pack.
Therefore, your goal weight would 180 pounds, so consuming 180 grams of protein each day is ideal. Protein is thermogenic and very filling.
Getting 35-40% of your calories from complex carbohydrates such as vegetables, brown rice, potatoes etc is ideal to keep you feeling full and to provide energy for your workouts.
Get the remainder of your calories from healthy fat sources such as avocado, extra virgin olive oil, nuts etc.
Break your daily total calories up into 2-3 easily digested meals per day containing protein, carbohydrates and fat.
3. Strength Train
When losing fat to see your six-pack at 60 and beyond I cannot stress the importance of strength training! If you just restrict calories and add cardio, you will lose weight, but more than half of that weight will be lean muscle tissue.
Losing muscle as you lose weight, is one of the worst things you can do for your overall appearance and metabolism. The more muscle we have, the more calories we can burn each day, even at rest.
And as we age, we tend to lose muscle mass through inactivity alone. By lifting weights at least 3 times per week and focusing on compound movements (those that train 2-3 large muscle groups in one movement) we are able to build lean muscle, which will have a dramatic impact on getting a six-pack at 60 years old and beyond.
Some examples of compound movements include the bench press, trap bar deadlift, dumbbell shoulder press and leg press.
4. Add Walking for Cardio
One of the worst ways of trying to get a 6 pack as a man over 60 is doing excessive amounts of cardio coupled with a very restricted diet and zero weight training.
Make strength training your most important exercise activity coupled with walking. If you aim to get 6-10k steps per day as well as lifting weights and following a good diet, you will be well on your way to losing at least 1 pound of fat per week and revealing that six-pack.
The great thing about walking is it doesn’t interfere with recovery from weight training workouts or make you very hungry. In fact, walking has been shown to have a neural impact on appetite which is perfect for men that simply want to lose fat.
Walking is also very easy to do and enjoyable, simply get outside and go for a walk or get on a treadmill and walk for 30-45 minutes if the weather doesn’t allow you to go for a walk.
Note: The last time I leaned right down to under 10% body fat for a fitness competition I did nothing but walking on a slight incline to help me burn more fat!
5. Be Consistent
Too many men want results over night but it’s going to take a while to lose the fat and reveal your abs. You cannot speed up this process by doing too much cardio or restricting calories too much, it simply doesn’t work like that.
The best thing you can do is accept that it’s going to take many weeks or months to go from where you are today to a low body fat with six-pack abs.
The best way to get there is focus on today, making sure you get each day’s nutrition right, each day’s training right focusing on losing that next pound of body fat each week.
If you can get today right, you can get tomorrow right too. Keep repeating the process over and over again and long-term success will take care of itself.
6. Follow a Proven Plan
In today’s world with a sea of information overload it’s very easy to get caught up in all the maybe’s and trying to piece everything together to devise your own training and nutrition plan that is going to simply work to help you lose fat and reveal your six-pack.
Consider hiring a trainer or enrolling in a course such as my popular course, Ripped Abs Over 40. With many years of knowledge, I will teach you how to set your goal calories, how to train and how to eat to lose fat and reveal your abs no matter what your age.
I hope you have found this article informative and if you train today make it a good one!
