Stronger Everywhere: The Benefits of Full-Body Training After 40
The Problem with the Bro Split
Hammering one muscle group with endless sets in a single day can be unnecessarily hard of tissue that’s already carrying decades of mileage. Also, miss one of those days and the whole rotation gets thrown off; now you’re negotiating with yourself about what to skip, what to double up, and what will have to “wait till next week.”
You end up with weeks where some muscles get worked, others get skipped, and you walk around strong in narrow ways and fragile in others.
More Frequency, Less Wreckage
“Full-body” can sound like you’re doing a little bit of everything and spinning your wheels. Done right, it’s the opposite. It’s you saying: Every time I train, my whole body gets better. Muscles respond well to being trained often.
With full-body sessions, you hit your major muscle groups multiple times per week while keeping the total work in each session reasonable. Instead of annihilating your chest once every seven days, you might press for a few smart sets several times a week.
The fatigue is spread across the whole system instead of being dumped into one joint or movement pattern. Over time, that steady pressure builds strength and resilience without leaving you wrecked. After 40, your body likely prefers a consistent push over shock and awe.
Kinder to Your Joints
Full-body training naturally limits how many hard sets you pour into any one joint or muscle group in a single day. That means your elbows aren’t taking twenty sets of curls in one session. Your knees aren’t carrying every squat variation you know crammed into one workout. Tendons and ligaments get enough stress to adapt, not enough to revolt. For a 40+ lifter, that’s often the line between “getting stronger” and quietly collecting injuries.
Strength That Feels Like Real Life
Real life is full-body whether you train that way or not. You don’t pick up your kid, carry luggage, or move a couch with one isolated muscle. You bend, brace, pull, push, twist, and carry all at once. Full-body training mirrors that reality.
Less Mental Load, More Follow-Through
In your forties, willpower is not infinite. Every extra decision is friction. Full-body training strips away some of that friction. You don’t have to remember what “day” it is. Every time you show up, the mission is simple: hit everything.
Consistency: The Real Superpower After 40
Full-body work supports consistency. If life only leaves room for two sessions in a given week, your entire body still gets trained. If one workout isn’t perfect, you’re back to a similar pattern in a day or two. When training is built this way, it’s something you can stick with over time. And at this stage, that’s the game you’re actually playing.
How EVRMV Uses Full-Body Training for Men 40+
Whatever the split used in a current EVRMV cycle, the sessions are built from the same repeatable block: Lift. Breathe. Stretch. Reflect. In a full-body workout, that means you’ll usually hit all the major patterns like push, pull, hinge, squat, core in a single session.
Every EVRMV workout:
Uses evidence-informed lifting for men over 40
Bakes in guided breathing to manage stress and heart rate between sets
Builds Stretch-to-Rest™ moderate mobility into the rest periods to reduce muscle tension
Ends each block with a short Thought Trigger that points your mind at an idea you can apply to your day
You don’t have to spend time and energy programming and pacing your workouts. You press play, move with me, and the system takes care of the structure
Where to Start If You’re Over 40
You can begin with something as small and concrete as pressing play on a single 10-minute EVRMV follow-along. There’s even a full-body option for the days when all you’ve got is ten honest minutes where you lift, breathe, stretch, and reflect. If you have more time (or as you get stronger), you can run it twice, three times, or stack different 10-minute blocks together. Pair a warm-up, a full-body segment, and a cool-down and you’ve built yourself a complete full-body session one block at a time.