How to Get Ripped at 50

Getting ripped at 50 is a matter of discipline. No different than getting ripped at any other age, it requires a great diet, regimented exercise and large quantities of quality rest.

Understand, there is a difference between being ripped and being in great shape. If you exercise for your health, you may be in good or great shape.

If you want to be ripped, you workout for a look, a physique.

You must evaluate your body and determine its needs. First and foremost, you must lose extra fat. A man must be under 20% body fat to be ripped, a woman under 30%.

Diet

Design a diet in which you eliminate foods without nutritional value. Learn what each food you consume does to your body. You will discover that the more simple the food, the more information is available, and the more positive the effects are on your body. For example, studying the effects of an apple on your body in relation to the research required to understand the effects of a generic brand salad dressing with 20 ingredients and dyes, is profoundly less difficult.

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Increase your complex carbohydrate intake and monitor your intake of simple sugar. Complex carbohydrates provide a source of sustained energy as complex carbohydrates require time for your body to ingest. Your body digests simple sugars almost immediately and burns the sugars quickly as well. The effect is a jolt of energy for a short period of time, then a body lull. Vegetables, whole grains, brown rice, bran and wheat are examples of foods high in complex carbohydrates. Milk chocolate, refined and enriched breads, and alcohol are foods packed with simple sugars that provide little to no sustenance. Avoid anything with high fructose corn syrup. By doing so, you eliminate a huge portion of the foods that prevent you from getting ripped.

Consume protein and from a wide variety of sources. Red meat provides iron which your body utilizes a great deal of when you workout hard, but it is difficult to digest. Consume chicken. It has less fat than red meat, but only 2/3 of the protein per gram provided by red meat. Consume fish. Once again, it does not have the same protein ratio of red meat per gram, but it provides your body with fats and oils crucial to your body's reparation process. Eat eggs. Eggs are the only non-supplemental food source that provides a complete protein. All other protein sources lack one or more essential amino acids. To get ripped, your body must repair the damage you do during a workout. Without amino acids, this is impossible.

Working Out and Resting

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Lift weights aerobically. Getting strong and being in great physical shape is often a matter of anaerobic exercise. Being ripped is a matter of having a low body fat percentage. High sets with high reps is the key. For example, do five sets of an exercise with 20-repetitions before you move onto your next exercise. This will increase your heart rate which in turn burns fat. Ripped is fat-less.

Cycle your heart rate. Aerobic exercise means sustained movement. However, it does not mean sustained heart rate. To cycle your heart rate up and down increase and decrease the speed of your exercise. For example, if you are running, do not run at the same speed the entire length of your run. Move faster, increase your heart rate, then slow and allow your body to recover, then increase your speed again, then recover. Military workouts, the 300 Workout, most pro-athletic trainers and Tour De France cyclists, while they may not all call it the same thing, base their workout principals on heart rate cycling.

Rest. Your body must mend and it does so best when you sleep. Sleep when you are tired and take brakes. Do not over-train your body or your workouts will suffer. If becoming ripped at 50 is a priority, make rest a priority, regardless of your busy schedule. You can not achieve your personal expectations with a great diet and honest workouts alone. You must allow your body to mend the damage you do during exercise.