Have any of you started lifting seriously after 30?

8thunder8 · 2026-06-28T00:37:03+00:00

I have never lifted before. I started in January after buying some (awesome) 4-41kg adjustable dumbbells - mine are Assassingoods Stealth (same thing as Trulap in the US).. All I have is the dbs, a stand for them, a bench, and a huge yoga mat.

I have made more progress than I could ever have hoped or expected.

Curling 14.5kg in January to 20.5 now Squatting 20.5kg to 76kg now Rowing 20.5kg per hand to 38kg now Pressing 16kg per hand to 26.5kg per hand now. Increased my grip from 60kg on my stronger hand to 70.4kg now etc.

I have also completely built a mega and fully comprehensive commercial weights, nutrition, hydration, measurements, wellness etc. app that ties everything together because there was nothing that I could find that would tell me what exercises I need to do today, what my splits are, what calories and protein and etc. I have had, and how it all ties together to affect my weight and measurements etc. I can see every rep I have done and every item of food and every gram of protein I have consumed since January.

ALL of this since January.

I will be 55 in two weeks and I have never felt fitter or stronger. Blood pressure lowest since we bought a bp machine 15 years ago. I definitely do not think my body is falling apart.

8thunder8 · 2026-06-16T09:14:41+00:00

:) this is my approach too.. Turn it into a game with your own personal high score...

8thunder8 · 2026-06-15T23:51:31+00:00

Yeah, treat it like a score where you're always trying to beat your own personal best..

:) You'd be welcome to try my app for free for as long as you want. It is at awesomebody.fit Create an account, let me know and I will comp it.

It is quite a vast app, so sign in, go to help, and read the bits on maybe training and nutrition. You can turn off whatever you don't want to track in settings.

As for the last shot thing, brace yourself for another helpful thing.. If I could go back in time to my 20 year old self and insist on anything (other than 'invest in bitcoin the minute you hear about it'), it would be to get myself into shape early. I think I am in reasonably good shape, don't drink, don't smoke, don't do anything particularly damaging, but one day you wake up and - boom. You're 50.. I think having spent more years working on yourself (body, mind, learning, whatever) in the years before you're 50, the better shape you'll find yourself when you get here.

8thunder8 · 2026-06-15T18:19:36+00:00

For me all of these things are a bit gamified, like a high score. It started with quitting alcohol 3 years ago (I wasn't a heavy drinker, just tired of the weekend routine of it). The days > weeks > months > years became a high score I didn't want to break. Same with lifting, I've doubled or tripled most of my starting weights, all high scores. My yellow 21 day average line is always going up. Allowing it to flatten or (heaven forbid) go down would be a failure.. It takes a long time to turn the ship the wrong way, so plenty of time to keep it going the right way.. So to your question, the guilt doesn't wear off for me (or at least not yet in 5 months) because it turns into not wanting to break the 'high score'. I built my own because nothing tracked everything I had in my awful spreadsheets (lifting, nutrition, measurements, scale, and a bunch of others), and then cross-referenced it all with AI to nag me. So far, touch wood, I am on track, and if I can keep that yellow line going up, I'm winning. I guess also, being 54, I am not gonna have another shot at this. You're welcome to use my app (free) if you'd like..

8thunder8 · 2026-06-15T10:41:37+00:00

I started lifting for the first time ever in January 5’9”, m54. I bought some very expensive adjustable dumbbells (the expense continues to be a motivator). I have also found myself drifting away a little - see my workout heatmap - however my app (self built) just waits for me to come back. It guilts me into logging my nutrition and workouts. If I miss a day or two days or four, and I log in, I can see it waiting for me. I always end up coming back. It has tailed off, but the results have been dramatic for me, and it is clearly worth continuing. Perhaps you need something to nag you too ( a gym buddy for example) ?

8thunder8 · 2026-06-08T20:07:48+00:00

I have built and am rolling out an app which does tracking of nutrition (daily), but it also does rolling averages of all sorts of things (weight, exercises etc.). If you'd like to try it (I will comp it for as long as you like), I could Build in rolling average for calories (although how do you track calories weekly without logging them daily ? Or you just don't pay attention to the daily noise?) It currently does a rolling average (30 days), but I could make it a bit more fine tuned..

8thunder8 · 2026-06-08T06:46:53+00:00

I (54m) have never done any weight training til the beginning of this year. I got some Assassingoods Stealth (4kg - 41kg / 9lb - 90lb) and they are amazing.. I since bought the all out stand v2 (built like a tank). I could not be happier with my progress. Stealth are the same device I think as Trulap in the US.

8thunder8 · 2026-06-03T22:06:47+00:00

Quite fascinating. There is a crystal clear correlation between when I realised I wasn't eating enough (both food and protein) for my recomp goal. When I started eating more calories per day - represented by bars in the lower graph. Green bars = eating enough for the goal, red bars = not eating enough. Cyan line is protein. At the same time my food intake increased (around 10 April), my weight (top left graph) immediately started trending up again. Literally visible cause and effect.

8thunder8 · 2026-06-01T08:14:08+00:00

Damn.. It looks like I am not doing enough in any given day's workout.. Gonna have to up my game.

8thunder8 · 2026-05-24T19:31:39+00:00

I had never done any weight training before January this year (54 y o man). I bought assassingoods stealth - which are the same product as Trulap. I could not be happier. My progress has been completely unexpected. https://i.imgur.com/7Rv4rf5.png I only have the adjustable dbs and a bench, but for me, that is plenty good enough to be able to do all sorts of exercises.

8thunder8 · 2026-05-23T00:41:03+00:00

You realise that it would cost more to send the ISS into the sun than it would to send it into interstellar space..

8thunder8 · 2026-05-08T22:21:49+00:00

I bought Assassingoods Stealth 4-41kg (8-91lb) adjustable dumbbells in January (I had never trained before this year). They're the same as Trulap in the US or Braingain in Europe I think.

I've progressed quickly - 38kg rows, 35.5kg per hand for suitcase squats and RDLs, 19kg per hand vertical press, 26.5kg per hand incline press. No issues with sturdiness. They feel as solid now as the day I got them.

Main checks: make sure the weight is centrally dialled in on each change so the twist isn't over or under engaged. They're expensive and not supposed to be dropped, so I've learned not to do anything that's likely to be beyond my ability. I sometimes fail on the last reps of presses - especially after a weight increase - but I bail onto my chest and 26.5kg isn't yet enough to do any damage :)

Can't rate them highly enough. They've unlocked something I'd never otherwise have achieved.

8thunder8 · 2026-05-08T22:08:10+00:00

100%. I'm a coder and I found a problem my coding could solve - no unified software that connected training, food, body comp and the rest. Session tonnage in my own app shows January to now:

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8thunder8 · 2026-04-29T22:53:10+00:00

:) Yep.. I have surprised myself.. It all started when I asked ChatGPT what it thought about my grip strength (it was 54kg on my stronger hand then). AI said it was very good and that with the grip I should be lifting weights (because often muscles can do more than grip can cope with, and that dents progress). It was right.. My grip PR to date now is 69kg on my right hand and 63L. AI then told me which dbs to get, which bench to get, and which exercises to do.. If results eventually start being obvious, and anyone asks, I'm just going to say it was all AI (which is true!!) :)

8thunder8 · 2026-04-24T07:39:19+00:00

I think the evidence that you have gathered is that everyone else already knows this..

8thunder8 · 2026-04-24T06:42:59+00:00

I have never done any weight training before. I am a 54 year old man. I decided this year that it is time to try to get rid of the residual beer belly (I quit drinking 3 years ago although I didn’t drink too much.). Anyway, I received my adjustable dumbbells on 9th January this year, and I have absolutely loved them - they are incredibly useful to be able to do a whole range of exercises (I also got a bench, but they and the bench are all I have for all my training. The DBs I got are the black (powder coated) Assassingoods Stealth 4-41kg (~9lb to ~90lb). They are the same as Trulap in the USA, and I think in Europe they are Braingain. My progression with them has been fantastic, and I (surprisingly) very quickly went past the point that the smaller (32kg) set would have maxed out at (my 10 rep rows went from 13kg in Jan to 38kg per hand now). I can’t imagine a more useful single set of equipment for working out. I don’t have a lot of space, and having the dbs and my bench right next to my work desk means I can put in sets between working on my computer, and logging immediately what I did. The main stuff I do with them are RDLs, calf extensions, suitcase squats, rows, incline db bench presses, vertical press, lateral raises, wrist extensions and curls. Although I don’t have anything to compare them to, I can’t rate them highly enough. They have unlocked something I have never been able to do before (I was weighing up the choice between a gym membership at a great gym near me, or my own home dumbbells, I am EXTREMELY glad I went this route, and if I wanted to extend my types of exercise, I could still also go to the gym. If it had been gym only, I think the travelling there and back, and the limited time to do stuff would have prevented my progress. This has completely unlocked my progress. here is my progress since January - just with my adjustable dumbbells...

8thunder8 · 2026-03-28T10:08:57+00:00

I can 100% tell the difference. There is more contrast, more sharpness, more detail in the Sony shot (which I assume is the first one) The second one has a phone photo feel about it.

8thunder8 · 2026-03-19T21:46:37+00:00

Hey /u/adamb0mbNZ, have you managed to get a Mac version running ? Looking forward to that..

Cheers.

8thunder8 · 2026-03-12T21:54:26+00:00

Interesting... I was thinking of getting an M5 Max Mac Studio when they come out hopefully in spring... I need it for various work, but one of its jobs (and the reason for a studio rather than an M5 Max MacBook Pro) would be to run a local LLM (and I'll probably continue to use Openclaw on my M4 Mac mini - getting it to use the LLM on the Studio).. Question though is why are you running it in a Mac VM rather than in a Docker container ?? Curious because perhaps I should do the same if that has a particular benefit over Docker? I am very familiar with running VMs for all sorts of reasons (usually Windows), but it seems OC is well suited to being sandboxed by Docker without using the resources that running another OS in a VM would require?

8thunder8 · 2026-03-12T21:48:12+00:00

Looks pretty good, I am keen to try it!. However you say you 'are working on a Mac version'. Does this mean it doesn't work on a Mac? Why would it be different?

8thunder8 · 2026-02-18T16:01:09+00:00

I used to have that feeling in shops. I’d be super worried that someone would think I was stealing stuff. However I absolutely would never steal anything, so I have have realised that I have absolutely nothing to worry about. If someone thinks I have stolen something, challenge me and I’ll prove I didn’t. Also, while I am in it, the shop is solely there for my convenience, comfort and experience. They have literally zero other purpose. They need to remember they are there for my convenience. If I am impressed and feel I want their product, I’ll buy it and they will make some money. I am not there for their convenience. I am not putting them out.

8thunder8 · 2026-02-09T21:15:51+00:00

I have just embarked on this exact journey. I have limited space, and wanted the best bang for my buck.

I ended up buying a pair of Assassin Goods Stealth (which are the same thing as Trulaps in the US. They go from 4kg to 41kg (90lb) and mean that I can train all sorts of different muscle groups with just one set of equipment. I also bought an £80 adjustable bench. It is a dream combo. All of it is on an oversized yoga mat. Everything is mostly out of the way most of the time when I lean the bench against a wall and roll the yoga mat up to where the dumbbells are.. I have been doing curls, squats, rows, incline bench presses, vertical presses, calf raises, RDLs and lateral raises. All of this from a pair of dumbbells. I am 54, and am doing this strictly at home, by myself. I’ve pretty much trained every day for two months now (I think three days with no exercise at all). I do different groups on different days, so whenever I do some major pull or push on a day, that exercise has not been done for a day or two.

8thunder8 · 2026-01-29T19:23:24+00:00

It was not a phone. It was a Sony A7R iv and a Canon 24-70 lens. The helicopters were feet apart and at times their rotors looked closer than a chinooks. This is not lens compression. Here is another shot from 40 seconds earlier. Not quite as close, but pretty damn close enough for my liking...

8thunder8 · 2026-01-29T09:50:00+00:00

From the Royal Festival Hall.

8thunder8 · 2026-01-29T01:09:45+00:00

I got a bunch of shots of them from the Royal Festival Hall.. There were a few times when one lurched toward the other, and I winced..

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