Note: The material here has been incorporated and enlarged into my comprehensive Training Program and Principles, as well as my thoughts on the Spirituality of Physical Training.
I first fell in love with lifting weights at age 12, when my dad enrolled me in a weight lifting course at our local community center. That followed with a summer in a non-air-conditioned hardcore gym near my mom's house on the coast. I was hooked. I felt awesome, I looked good, and I enjoyed the ability and resilience of my body. By the time I was 18, I was benching just less than 400 and squatting just less than 700. Weight lifting followed me through college football and into young adulthood.
Then, as often happens, life got in the way. Career. Marriage. Divorce. Marriage. Grad School. Child one. Job change. Child two. Move and job change. Child three. Keeping up with a busy family of five. I would hit the gym a few weeks a year. But for the most part, I lapsed completely, became very over weight, and generally uncomfortable in my own skin. Then, right before turning 40, and after my Dad was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes (like many others in my family), I decided I wanted to lose weight, and get in shape, and return to a habit that was as spiritually formative as it was physically helpful: Weight lifting.
The first 5 years or so back in the gym were awesome. I enjoyed feeling strong again. I enjoyed living and moving at a healthier weight. But above all, I enjoyed the visceral feel of the iron in my hands and knowing I had just moved something heavy a bunch of times. I love everything about the kinetic experience of lifting heavy iron: The knurled steel in my hands, the callous formation on my palms, the two days of moderate soreness after a good workout that lets me know I am alive. Even my posture and the gait of my walk changes.
Age 39 to 44 in the gym was not without drawbacks. I learned early on that my body would not take "maxing out" anymore. I tore a bicep and a hamstring pushing to much, too hard. So, I limited my lifts to weight that I could perform for 5 reps or more on before failing to lift it. That kept my lifting form tight, and the weight light enough not to tear anything. And I saw progress. For those first 5 years, I was consistently gaining strength from workout to workout. And overall, it was immensely helpful for my enjoyment of life and my physical resilience, as well as my strength and mobility, to regularly put my body under strenuous load, and take my joints and limbs through a full range of motion. Nothing works better than this for me to keep myself healthy and vital and mobile.
But at about age 44, it became apparent that I was hitting a wall in terms of muscular growth and strength development. Clinical studies have consistently shown that males tend to peak at muscular growth capacity sometime in the mid 20's, and at about age 30 reach their genetic limit for skeletal muscle mass. After age 30, skeletal muscle mass decreases approximately 3–8% per decade, and this rate of decline is even higher after the age of 60. Physical activity is a major driver for muscle conservation, and people who regularly lift weights stay closer to the 3% loss per decade, while sedentary couch potatoes trend toward the 8% loss. Or to put it another way: If a 50 year old person starts lifting for the first time, they WILL gain muscle and size, and probably be in better shape than they were at 30. But, that muscular size gain will 6-18% less than they would have gained if they had lifted at age 30. Furthermore, once you are in the ballpark of your maximal skeletal muscle mass because of training, you will still gradually lose muscular size and strength as you move into, and beyond, middle age.
Assuming that you are regularly lifting weights, the only thing that will hinder or reverse this decline (temporarily) is to take anabolic steroids, or to gain a large amount of body fat. Steroids will trick your body into quicker recovery and conservation of muscle, but again, that muscle will be less than the same person would have if they were taking those steroids at age 20 or 30. And steroids often have a great many side effects, from acne to puffy nipples to mood swings to liver damage to cardiovascular issues. But perhaps the most troubling thing about steroids is that it shuts down your body's own testosterone production and often leads to a lifetime dependance on the drugs, which is costly and time consuming and potentially addictive.
The other option, especially for strength sports, is to put on a bunch of body fat. This optimizes the leverages for lifting weights and allows for greater compression of the body to support heavy loads, especially in squat and deadlift and even bench press. The problem, of course, is that such weight gain leads to obesity and harms every other metric for healthy life. And while weight gain might be helpful for someone in their 20's or 30's who has a shot at a world record, it just is not for the older lifter. And yet, when you see your maximum weights stagnate or even decrease despite your best efforts, it is very tempting to put on an extra 20 pounds, or even to think about steroids, to stay "competitive" with your past self. But I am not willing to give in to these temptations and potentially harm my overall health for temporary strength and muscular gains.
So, over the last year or so, I have come to the realization that I am not going to get any stronger. At least not in an absolute sense. And this has been a hard blow for me. Especially since I am a highly goal motivated person. It has led me to less motivation in working out (because why bother?!?), missed workouts and even missed weeks of workouts (because does it even matter?!?), and even to poor diet choices (because who cares?!?). After all, if the goal is no longer to slap more plates on the bar week after week, and year after year, what's the point? And it is depressing to get 8 reps with a weight you used to get 10 reps with, despite consistently training for several years.
So, I wondered: In a state of overall slow muscular decline, how can I stay motivated and have clear progression, even though I will not lift as much as I used to? That's when I came up with the idea of a Bodyweight Quotient (or BWQ) which would measure progress not so much based on absolute weight on the bar, but in a ratio between the weight lifted, the number of reps, and my body weight. My initial equation for Bodyweight Quotient (BWQ) was:
BWQ (version 1) = Weight lifted x Reps / Bodyweight
So a person who weighed 200 who squatted 300 for 10 reps would have a BWQ of 15 (300x10/200). A person who weighed 150 who benched their bodyweight for 8 reps would have a BWQ of 8 (150x8/150). This would allow me to progress in BWQ, even if I was not able to progress in absolute poundage, by increasing or decreasing reps, by increasing or decreasing weight lifted, or by decreasing bodyweight. So far so good.
Then I realized I would need to limit the number of reps. For instance, if a 150 lb person did 50 lb squats for 50 reps straight, that would give them a BWQ of 16.7. Whereas if they did 350 lb squats for only 5 reps (which would be a much harder feat) that would only be a 11.7 BWQ. This would skew the exercises toward very light, very long, very boring sets, which would not be enjoyable at all. Lifting weight is enjoyable for me because of the feel of hefting something heavy. And I have never enjoyed interminable sets of pushups and air squats and sit-ups. Many people feel the same. So, I have limited my BWQ calculations to top sets performed to failure in 5-10 reps.
The other thing about BWQ is that it ties healthy bodyweight directly to the progress equation. Like I showed above, it is easy for an unhealthy weight to be desired in strength sports in order to give an edge to lifting more weight. But for each of us, there is an optimal bodyweight to achieve our highest BWQ. If we are too skinny, we will not have the muscle mass to maximize our BHQ. But, if we are overweight, it will quickly sink our strength-to-weight ratio. So, the BWQ actually encourages me to optimize my weight in the "goldilocks zone" which is not too skinny, and not too fat, to achieve my highest possible BWQ.
But there was one thing still missing: Even the strongest and fittest among us will decrease in BWQ as we age, because we simply are not able to generate as much force with aging muscles. I showed this to my friend who is a science teacher, and he encouraged me to find a way to account for age, and factor in the 3-8% loss of muscle mass for each decade over 30 years old. Now, granted that muscle loss and strength loss are not exactly the same thing. One can lose muscle mass and keep strength (this happens with many Olympic lifters). And one can also gain large amounts of muscle mass without getting stronger (which happens with many body builders). Yet, they are close enough that I figure I needed to include a multiplier into BWQ equation that would accommodate for about 3-5% loss in strength per decade after age 20, because I assumed that the active lifetime lifter would be on the "lower" end of the muscle loss range. But the equation also needs to be simple and understandable and easy to calculate in the gym while logging workouts.
After crunching numbers and running several spreadsheets, I found a very simple multiplier which offsets for a 4% loss of strength per decade of life. The updated BWQ thus looks like this:
BWQ = Weight Lifted x Reps [5-10] / Bodyweight x 1.[1/2 age]
So, if a 20 year old 200 lb person squatted 300 lbs for 10 reps, it would look like this:
300 x 10 / 200 x 1.10 (which is 1. 1/2 of 20) = 16.5 BWQ
But if that same person gets to 40 years old, and can still do the same weight, it would yield:
300 x 10 / 200 x 1.20 (1. 1/2 of 40) = 18 BWQ
But if they got to age 60, and could only do 8 reps at 300, it would yield:
300 x 8 / 200 x 1.30 = 15.6 BWQ
But if they could still do 10 reps at age 60, it would yield a whopping:
300 x 10 / 200 x 1.30 = 19.5 BWQ
Or, put another way: If a 250 lb person wanted to maintain a 15 BWQ on 10 reps of squats, here is the approximate weight they would have to use, decade by decade:
340 lbs at age 20325 lbs at age 30315 lbs at age 40300 lbs at age 50290 lbs at age 60280 lbs at age 70
Thus, the Bodyweight Quotient (BWQ) offers a clear way to chart progress and challenge oneself across a lifetime of lifting, even if after 30 years old there is a slow and steady decrease of overall muscle mass available to build on. It allows the weight lifter to manipulate several other variables besides adding weight on the bar, including changing reps, and changing bodyweight. It creates a way forward to sustainable lifelong fitness, which encourages healthy bodyweight and strength development. It allows the aging lifter to realize they are accomplishing just as much with 2-3 plates on the bar as they did in their 20's with 4-5 plates on the bar.
Using the equation of:
BWQ = Weight Lifted x Reps [5-10] / Bodyweight x 1.[1/2 age]
I hope to motivate myself to continue weight lifting, as well as to keep a healthy bodyweight, by reframing the goal of weight lifting in a way that I can challenge myself and increase using a tangible metric. Using six Core Exercises-- Pullups, Rows, Overhead press, Floor press, Romanian Deadlift, and Squat-- I will record my "top set" of 5-10 reps. Those numbers will be used in the BWQ equation to chart my progress over time. And hopefully, 40 years from now, I will have quite a data set which represents decades of successful workouts in the gym. If you think the BWQ might help you embrace lifelong lifting, or if you can think of a way to improve the BWQ, please comment or email me to let me know. Thanks, and may the Lord of Life empower us all to live our healthiest lives and become our best selves.
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