Welcome to your modern fitness daily news report! Every weekday, we break down the trending fitness news, tips, and insider scoops to keep you informed. Each read will be under 3 minutes so that you can stay shredded and thumb through no-nonsense fit-quips. Thanks for reading!
TODAY’S LEVEL UP:
Coach's Corner: Strength Standards After 40: What You Should Actually Be Able to Do
Supplement Spotlight: CoQ10 — The Energy Cofactor Statins Quietly Deplete
Did You Know?: Power fades about twice as fast as strength does
Quick Tip: Run a 20-minute benchmark day and write the numbers down
Fit Trivia: Which Victorian-era strongman's bronze likeness is handed to the winner of the Mr. Olympia every year?
Strength Standards After 40: What You Should Actually Be Able to Do
Most men train for years without ever answering a basic question: am I actually strong? The scale doesn't tell you. Neither does how you look in a shirt. And "strong for my age" is a phrase that quietly does a lot of work.
What follows aren't entry requirements or a judgment of your training. They're targets worth working toward — a rough map of what a healthy, trained man in his 40s or 50s can usually build within a couple of years of consistent work. Pick the ones relevant to you, test honestly, and use the gaps to direct your programming.
A reasonable set of benchmarks:
Push — 20–25 strict push-ups, chest to fist height, no sagging hips. Or a dumbbell bench press with one-third of your bodyweight in each hand for 5 reps.
Pull — 1 strict pull-up minimum, 5 as a solid target. For most men over 40, this is the hardest item on the list and the most worth chasing.
Hinge — a trap-bar or Romanian deadlift at roughly 1.0–1.25× bodyweight for 5 controlled reps. Quality of position matters more than the number.
Squat — 20 unbroken bodyweight squats to parallel, then a goblet or barbell squat at about 25–35% of bodyweight for 10 reps with a flat back and heels down.
Carry — a farmer's carry with about 75% of your bodyweight total (split between both hands) for 40 yards, walking tall.
Hang — 30 seconds from a bar, with 60 seconds as the target. Cheap to test, very honest.
Chair stand — 15 or more sit-to-stands from a standard chair in 30 seconds, arms crossed. This is the one that matters most at 75.
How to use them: Don't chase all seven at once. Test the list, find the two weakest, and build the next eight to twelve weeks around them while maintaining everything else. Retest quarterly, not weekly.
And hold the standards loosely if you carry an old injury or a joint that doesn't cooperate. The point isn't the specific number — it's having a number at all, so that "I'm in decent shape" becomes something you can actually check.
Supplement Spotlight: CoQ10 — The Energy Cofactor Statins Quietly Deplete
Coenzyme Q10 is a compound your cells use to generate energy, and it's concentrated in the tissues that need the most of it — heart, liver, kidneys, and muscle. Your body makes its own supply, and production declines gradually with age. That's the pitch. The evidence is narrower than the marketing.
Here's what it does: CoQ10 sits in the mitochondrial electron transport chain, where it's essential for producing ATP, and it also acts as a fat-soluble antioxidant. The clearest clinical interest is in statin-associated muscle symptoms — statins reduce the same pathway that produces CoQ10, and some men on them report muscle aches. Trials testing whether supplementing fixes those aches have been genuinely mixed, with several showing no benefit over placebo. There's also ongoing research in heart failure that looks more encouraging. For a healthy man with normal levels, expect little: it is not a proven performance or energy supplement, and the "more energy" claim on the bottle isn't supported for people who aren't deficient.
How to take it: Common supplemental doses run 100–200 mg per day, taken with a meal containing fat — absorption is poor without it. The ubiquinol form is more expensive and somewhat better absorbed, though plain ubiquinone works for most men. Give it 8–12 weeks before judging anything; levels build slowly.
Worth knowing: CoQ10 is well tolerated, but it can modestly reduce the effect of warfarin, and may lower blood pressure or blood sugar slightly — relevant if you take medication for either. Talk to your doctor before adding it, and never stop or adjust a statin on your own.
We recommend treating CoQ10 as a targeted option for men on statins with muscle complaints, not a general energy supplement — and having that conversation with the doctor who prescribed the statin first.
FROM RYAN’S DESK
Thinking about change won't create change. At some point, you have to stop analyzing and start moving. You don't need every answer before you take the first step. Make the decision, take the action, and adjust along the way. Be the guy who moves forward instead of waiting for the perfect plan. That's how momentum is built.
Did You Know?: Power Fades About Twice As Fast As Strength Does
When men worry about aging, they usually think about strength. The research suggests power — force produced quickly — is the more urgent thing to defend.
Maximal strength typically declines somewhere around 1–1.5% per year after about 50. Muscle power tends to fall roughly twice as fast, because it depends on the fast-twitch fibers and the rapid nerve signaling that age hits hardest. Two men can have an identical leg press number, while one of them can catch himself on a stumble and the other can't.
That's why power work belongs in an over-40 program even though it sounds like something for athletes. It doesn't mean Olympic lifting. It means a handful of fast, controlled, sub-maximal reps — step-ups driven up quickly, light jumps or low box step-offs if your knees allow, medicine-ball throws, or simply moving the concentric half of your normal lifts with intent rather than grinding.
3 sets of 3–5 fast reps, early in a session while you're fresh. It's the cheapest insurance on the list.
Quick Tip: Run a 20-Minute Benchmark Day
Pick a day this week, warm up properly, and test five things. Write them in a note on your phone with the date. That's the whole tip, and almost nobody does it.
A workable 20-minute version: max strict push-ups, max strict pull-ups or a max dead hang in seconds, 30-second chair stands, a single-leg stand per side in seconds, and one top set of 5 on your main lower-body lift. Rest fully between items — this is a test, not a workout, and fatigue makes the numbers meaningless.
Two rules keep the data honest: same conditions each time (same time of day, similar sleep, not the day after a brutal session), and stop each item when form breaks, not when you physically can't do another rep.
Retest in 12 weeks. Progress over a quarter is visible in a way that progress over a week never is — and on the weeks when training feels pointless, a logged number from last spring is the most convincing argument you'll get.
Our Picks: Supps We Actually Use
Some of our coach’s favorite supplements:
Creatine (Travel Packs) - $36
Add this to your water in the morning or in your post-workout shake. Creatine is one of the few supplements that has a mountain of data proving its benefits. Don’t miss out on it!
A great way to hit your protein goals. Don’t rely on a protein powder alone, but add it as a post-workout shake or midday shake to increase your protein intake and hit your protein goals. Remember, high protein equals higher muscle and higher satiety.
Replenishes essential electrolytes. Use this if you sweat a lot, do intermittent fasting, or go on long-distance walks, hikes, or runs.
We are a proud partner of Thorne Supplements! We are affiliated and use these products. We may receive commission from your purchase.
Fit Trivia: Which Prussian-born Victorian strongman — a vaudeville showman managed by Florenz Ziegfeld who posed in imitation of classical Greek statues and organized what's widely considered the first major bodybuilding contest, at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1901 — is memorialized in the bronze statuette handed to the winner of the Mr. Olympia every year?
Answer: Eugen Sandow! He's generally credited as the father of modern bodybuilding, and he sold the idea that an ordinary man could deliberately build his physique — a genuinely radical claim at the time, and the premise the entire fitness industry still runs on.
Ryan Engel, Intl. Fat Loss Coach
Ryan is a leading fitness coach and one of the most known professionals in the space.
He specializes in Body Recomposition and visual body aesthetics and has reached millions worldwide with his powerful messaging. He brings a unique, non-nonsense, yet sophisticated approach to body change.
Publisher: Ryan Engel
Editor: Michael Pender
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