The Big Five-Oh: 48 hours or 72?

[Charlocity2]

For those men my age (50) or older that do whole body workouts, do you wait 48 hours between workouts or 72?

I just turned 50 today and I got 2 big gifts for my birthday:

1. A copy of PPST2 from my son, which I am just starting to read.
2. A 5 to 30 pound break per lift on the age adjusted strength standards.

[Oldman]

I usually go either 48 (between Volume and Recovery Day and between Recovery and Intensity Days, on TM, using a T-Th-Sat schedule), but then 72 between ID and VD. Sometimes, though, when life gets in the way, I might do a volume workout on Monday night and then a recovery workout on Tuesday night. This gives me extra days to recover before lifting heavy. I have also done just Volume and Intensity, skipping the Recovery, if necessary, due to work or negotiating with my wife on who gets to lift three times that week and who gets to lift twice.

[Gene61]

Andy Baker advises working out every 3rd day for older lifters. I've been managing 3 workouts per week, but plan to move to Andy's program early next year as I am starting to feel a bit under recovered during the week. I'm 61.

[Mark E. Hurling]

No offense to the OP but God I hate that question! I can never figger out whether every 48 hours means every other day (3 times a week) or whether every 72 hours means twice a week.

But at 62 I hit 2-3 exercises a session 3 times a week. I have played around with twice a week and even 3 times every 2 weeks from my mid 40's onward and I did reasonably well with linear progression. Then again 3 times a week seems to working well for me just now having down regulated the total volume of exercises per session.

I repeat myself here a lot, but Kilgore's age adjusted charts are really good benchmarks to work toward. I know a few older folk here resist that notion wanting to go for the standard charts up to age 30-40. But it's worth saying again. The elite level lift poundages would do well in a raw and drug free PL meet. I've looked at meet results and they track right along nicely.

[hbriem]

I'm 50 and I usually train Mon-Wed-Fri.

[Packard]

I'm sixty-four and I split my workout like this:

Monday: curls, hammer curls, reverse curls, cardio
Tuesday; bench press; pec deck; shoulder press; upright rows; plus machine for medial delts and posterior delts; cardio
Wednesday: Pull downs; dead lifts; rows; cardio
Thursday: off
Friday: triceps extensions, cable V-bar; triceps extensions, cable, rope; French press dumbell; cardio

I do crunches, leg lifts and stretching with each workout. Weekends are rest days.

I'm in the gym about 90 minutes each time (except on Fridays, only about 60 minutes. That includes 20 minutes of cardio.

So that is one workout per week, split over four days. This gives each muscle group plenty of time to recover. Weekends give me overall rest.

[Charlie Davies]

I'm 46, on SS advanced novice: Sun/Tue/Thu with light squats and no pulls on Tuesday.
Once my squats got around body weight I couldn't recover from 3x5 in 48 hours.

[DPMuller]

Andy Baker advises working out every 3rd day for older lifters. I've been managing 3 workouts per week, but plan to move to Andy's program early next year as I am starting to feel a bit under recovered during the week. I'm 61.

I've taken Andy Baker's advice and it made a huge difference in recovery, even for a 45 year old newbie.

[Oldster]

Its whatever you are in shape to do. For me...

Monday
Close grip bench
Militaries
Ab wheel
Tuesday
Squat
Deadlift
Curls
Wednesday
Close grip bench
Tbar Row
Friday
Close grip bench
Dips
Ab Wheel

So you can see I take 48 hours between my pressing movements and an entire week between everything else.

[Charlocity2]

I usually go either 48 (between Volume and Recovery Day and between Recovery and Intensity Days, on TM, using a T-Th-Sat schedule), but then 72 between ID and VD. Sometimes, though, when life gets in the way, I might do a volume workout on Monday night and then a recovery workout on Tuesday night. This gives me extra days to recover before lifting heavy. I have also done just Volume and Intensity, skipping the Recovery, if necessary, due to work or negotiating with my wife on who gets to lift three times that week and who gets to lift twice.

Good advice.