How I Got Long, Lean Toned Arms at Age 60 (Goodbye Batwings!)

Hey, it's J.J. here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything. They just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating, and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order. Hey, JJ here. Can you believe how fast the holidays are knocking at the door this year? One minute it's pumpkin spice season, the next you're getting your guest room ready and wondering where their wrapping paper went. And that's when I turned to Wayfair. From bedding and towels to holiday decor and last minute stocking stuffers, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home and holidays together fast. And for way less. With Wayfair, I know I can refresh my guest room in no time. Maybe I'll add a soft new comforter or a few holiday throw pillows. With Wayfair, it's so easy and everything arrives super fast. Plus, there's free shipping for any order over $35 easy and total peace of mind. So whether you're hosting, gifting, or just adding those final festive touches, Wayfair has your back. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair. Every style, every home that's W a Y F A I R.com.

Some people think nature is like this. But actually, it's like this. Mother Nature's not all sunshine and rainbows. Nature can be hotter than a sauna and colder than an arctic skinny dip. That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever.

I'm JJ Virgin PhD dropout. Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can.

And that's why I created the well.

Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies.

To help you thrive.

In each episode, we'll talk about what's.

Working in the world of wellness, from.

Personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday school things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spirit spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time, and that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin.

Welcome to Walgreens.

What can I help you with today?

Hi, I need a last minute gift for a secret Santa. Something thoughtful, impressive, not a fruitcake.

We've got Ferrero chocolates, artisan coffees, even a spa kit. Any vibe you're going for, whatever says.

Wow, this guy's great at giving gifts.

How about this premium skincare gift set? Just needs a bow.

Will look like you planned it weeks ago.

Well, happy holidays gifts, holiday decor and more. The holiday road is long.

We're with you all the way, Walgreens. How did you get those arms? So I get asked this all the time and you may be surprised to learn that it's actually not that hard to get ripped, lean, toned arms. It's actually the easiest body part to transform if you follow the strategies I'm going to share in this video. Now, there are three parts to building great arms and the last one is super critical. And I find it's usually the one that gets ignored. So first, obviously you have to work them. The thing that's critical for hypertrophy, building muscle is volume. In order for you to build muscle, we've got to look at a couple different things. We need to look at the exercises you're going to do, the sets of those exercises, the reps with in these sets, and how much per week. That's a lot to unpack. First of all, you have an exercise like let's call it a push up and you are going to do a set of push ups. A set is how many times you do it, that's your repetitions. And then you're going to do multiple times a week. And we're going to divide it into upper body pushing and upper body pulling. I want you to do that at least twice a week. But ideally it's going to be better off if you do them three times a week. Now, your repetitions, let's talk about that first. You can actually work within a pretty broad range of repetitions to build muscle. Anywhere from as low as six repetitions per set, all the way up to 30 repetitions per set. So it's really where you feel more comfortable. But there is something important here. You have to get to a point at the end of the set where you feel like you could maybe only squeeze out one or two more. Again, you're going to want to hit each body part, the pushing and the pulling minimum, two times a week, ideally three times a week, and with a good rest break in between. So when you're looking at building these great arms now, this might surprise you. I'm going to focus on compound movements first rather than just my arms. So I focus on upper body pushing and upper body pulling. When I think of upper body pushing this is going to involve my chest, my shoulders and my triceps. And these are exercises like a push up or a chest press. That's chest, shoulders, triceps, an overhead press and a dip. So the reason I focus on compound rather than single, like just doing a tricep extension is that I've got to pull in a lot more muscles. And the cool thing is I'm still using my triceps. Anytime I'm pushing, my triceps are involved. But if I'm just doing say a triceps push down, I'm only really crossing the elbow joint. If I'm doing a dip, I'm crossing the elbow and the shoulder and the shoulder blades, the scapula. So I'm using a lot more joints. So I try to do compound movements because they're way more metabolic, costly and they will still work my arms. That's the first piece. Now when I think of upper body pushing, I'm going to have you start with these things. I want you to do some kind of a chest focused exercise. So again that could be a push up chest press. Then I want you to do some kind of a shoulder focused exercise. Easiest one there is an overhead press and then I love dips. Those are more tricep centric. On the other side, we're going to look at upper body pulling. Anytime you're pulling, you're going to involve your bicep. But when I'm doing pulling, I'm also using my lats, shoulders and the back of my shoulders. So I'll start with something like a lat pull down or a pull up bent over row or a seated cable row and maybe an upright row. So that's the first part is making sure that you're working them, focusing on those compound movements and making sure that you have that volume in place that you're doing multiple sets of each exercise and you're getting to that point where you're got one or two more that you can eek out, but you're really starting to feel fatigued. The next thing you have to do is make sure that you can feed those muscles. You have to have the right fuel on board. This is really twofold. Number one obviously is protein. And I've got a protein cheat sheet for you@jjburton.com protein cheat sheet. But basically you're going to eat 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight of protein. And that's about 30 grams to 40 grams at each meal minimum. 30 grams animal 40 grams plant hundred grams overall that's minimum. But we want that 30 to 40 grams because we want to have enough of an amino acid called leucine to trigger muscle protein synthesis. Remember, as we age we have a phenomenon called anabolic resistance that starts to hit where it's harder for us to build muscle. We need more protein, not less, to be able to have that trigger. And so in when we're younger, a lot of what we can do with building muscle is hormonal, 30 plus, not so anymore. We've got to make sure that we've got the protein that we need on board. Along with that resistance training, a little hack is also taking some essential amino acids and there's some pretty interesting research around essential amino acids helping with sarcopenia as we age. So I think this is a great thing to add in if you're not quite hitting your protein needs at breakfast or dinner as well. A couple other things I like to do. I especially love fish protein, but I also think fish oil can be something important to add into it's anti inflammatory, which is really important because if you're inflamed, you actually can block muscle protein synthesis. And fish oil helps with insulin sensitivity. And again, the things that can get in the way of you building muscle are being insulin resistant and inflamed. Another thing that I think is super important, especially for women is taking creatine. I think there's a lot of misinformation around creatine out there. So if you are concerned about creatine and fluid retention in the muscle, which is good, and if you're using a bioimpedance machine to monitor your body composition, you'll actually see this as increased total body water and increased muscle. What you can do is instead of just going straight up to taking 5 grams grams of creatine a day, start with 1 gram and just bring it up every couple days until you get to 3 to 5 grams overall, the big thing that's going to help you do is work out harder. And if you can work out harder, then it's going to improve the quality of your workout, which is going to help you build muscle. The other one that I take every day is something called mitopure. So one of the things that happens as we age is our mitochondria. We are constantly in a state of being breaking down and building up. You go to the gym, you break down a little bit, then your muscle has to go through muscle protein synthesis and build back up. And we're constantly breaking down and building up. We just want to make sure. We're building up more than we're breaking down. The cool thing is there's a product called Mitrepure. It's Urolithin A. This is something that you take, I take it every day. It helps your mitochondria repair and regenerate better. And then the other part of it is you have to be able to, to show them. And that means you got to get rid of any fat covering them, right? You got to get lean. Now what do you need to do to drop your body fat? Well, there's two things that matter here. One of them is caloric restriction. Caloric restriction. What I like to have you do to get yourself lean, to get your body fat down is, number one, just take a week and track how much you eat. Don't change anything. Now, I'm already considering that you're already optimizing for protein. You're already doing that, but you're just seeing how many calories you eat each day to maintain your weight. Once you can see that and you do it over a week because of course will fluctuate. But you should be able to see an average after you do it for a week of about how many calories you eat a day to maintain your weight. Once you know that number, then you're going to do caloric restriction to lean out a little bit if you want to drop your body fat. And I like to do formula. I learned from Dr. Bill Campbell, five days of caloric restriction, 25% lower than what you need. So if you're a 2000 calorie a day average person, go to 1500 for five days, then go back to 2000 for two and cycle that until you get to where you want to be. Alongside that, I want you to also track your overall activity. You can go work out three days a week, hit that upper body hard, but if you sit the rest of the time, it's not going to help you. So what we want to make sure is that you've also increased your overall activity. And there's two things that are going to help you get lean here. Number one, just moving more all throughout the day. So that's where you want to get your 8 to 12,000 steps a day in and high intensity interval training. The research shows that doing high intensity interval training is really good for helping you lose body fat. And so high intensity interval training is where you do cycles. There's a variety of different ways to do this. There's everything from Tabata where you do 20 seconds all out and 10 seconds recovery 20 seconds all out 10 seconds recovery to a 1 minute on 1 minute off Norwegian 4x4 which is 4 hard minutes and 3 minutes of recovery. I like to mix it up. So some days I'll do a Norwegian 4x4 and I'll do four minutes of a really hard circuit and then I'll do three minutes of walk around and go back. Some days I'll do one minute on my sprint treadmill and then one minute walking. Mix it up. But that's going to help your body use more fat for fuel. It's going to help you drop body fat. So we talked about what you need to build them, we talked about what you need to do to feed them, and then we talked about how to drop your body fat so that you will show them. Because you got to have your arms lean so you can see that muscle. All those things matter. And by the way, little hack, a little bit of bronzer helps there too.

Be sure to join me next time for more more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast@subscribetoj.com so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make up a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional.

Make sure that you do not disregard.

Avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because.

Of something you may have heard on.

The show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books. They love one book. They don't and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And, of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now, wherever you're listening to this podcast, and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.