What does longevity — a long, healthy life — mean to you? Are you setting goals for your later years?
Finding the right exercises for longevity today will keep you vibrant, strong, and independent into your 90s — or longer.
In our Longevity series’ introductory blog, I covered four core pillars of health that have a profound effect on your longevity:
- Diet and Nutrition
- Exercise and Movement
- Sleep
- Emotional Health
Our second Longevity blog post reviewed the impact of diet and nutrition on your healthy, long life.
In our third Longevity installment, we’ll focus on exercises for longevity.
Exercise Is the Biggest Intervention for Overall Health
Exercises for longevity play an essential role — arguably the most essential — in extending your life expectancy and delivering exceptional quality of life as you age.
Although medical science has produced dozens of life-extending tools, staying active is still the most effective intervention, more powerful than vaccines or antibiotics.
But just as you need diversity in your diet — multiple sources of protein, minerals, and vitamins — you must take a varied approach to exercises for longevity. It’d be best if you had a mix of:
- Cardiovascular activity
- Resistance training or weight-bearing exercises
- Flexibility and core strengthening
Each approach offers vital health benefits.
Exercises for Longevity: Cardio
Cardiovascular exercise raises your heart rate and demands an increased blood supply. Your body responds by creating a rich, dense network of blood vessels to draw blood to the heart muscle.
Suppose you develop a blockage in one of the four major coronary arteries. In that case, the abundance of blood vessels provides an alternative pathway for blood to reach your heart, preventing a heart attack.
For example, an advanced screening revealed that one of our patients had a blockage that had never caused him an issue. His body created a bypass because he’d had a history of hiking at higher altitudes. This bypass circumvented the blockage and delivered adequate blood flow to his heart. As a result, he avoided a cardiac event without medical intervention.
Exercises for Longevity: Strength Training and Resistance
Muscles protect the body from injury by absorbing shock and preventing stress on bones and joints. But after age 60, we lose about 1–1.5% of muscle mass annually unless we actively work to prevent that loss:
- Weightlifting and other forms of muscle-resistant exercise reinforce muscle mass.
- Muscles store the largest amount of glucose (or sugar). Regularly working your muscles taps into that glucose reserve, recycles the energy, and builds strength to prevent injury.
- Excess sugar becomes an inflammatory agent within the body. By regularly depleting glucose, you help decrease inflammation, the root cause of many ailments.
Exercises for Longevity: Flexibility
You might remember riding the merry-go-round or the swing for hours as a child, only to find that your balance and mobility have decreased with age.
Flexibility training can help you maintain greater mobility and better balance so you’re better prepared to step off a slippery, rainy curb safely at night.
When you react and respond flexibly, even to the unexpected, you’re less likely to stress a ligament, joint, or muscle.
The Best Time to Start Is Now
According to recent North Carolina public health data, about 23% of North Carolinians reported not engaging in physical activity or exercise outside their jobs within the previous 30 days.
So, if you don’t currently practice exercises for longevity, when should you start? The best time is always now!
Everyone’s fitness journey begins in a way unique to the individual. At Priority Physicians, we help you get started and improve from there.
Fit Tip: After age 20, we all face the threat of injury whenever we engage in an exercise program. It’s important to find a workout or activity you enjoy and customize it into a sustainable routine, but don’t pursue it to the point of injury. If you’re injured, you might spend two to six months in recovery!
Exercise is a “use it or lose it” phenomenon. Many of us have experienced the challenge of missing a week or two of our exercise regimen, only to struggle with regaining the energy and strength we lost.
Priority Physicians can recommend a safe fitness level to keep your routine as injury-free as possible.
Intensity and Frequency
We aren’t pushing for elite athleticism. Rather, we want you to be the best possible version of yourself.
Perhaps you begin with a daily walking program — for 15 minutes, an hour, or whatever works best for your schedule. Over time, you can add and diversify other activities.
The intensity and frequency of your workouts depend on your goals:
Intensity
- If your goal is a strong heart muscle, push yourself to your maximum heart rate to use glucose and help develop a dense, rich network of blood vessels in your heart. The standard formula for calculating maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age, but it can also vary by individual.
- If your goal is weight loss, engage in cardio zone 2, low-intensity, steady-state exercise at 70–75% of your maximum heart rate. At this level, your body — seeking a slower, steadier, sustainable fuel source — burns fat, breaking it down into usable glucose.
Fit Tip: Trying to perform at 100% of your maximum heart rate in every workout can lead to overtraining — low performance and loss of energy. Most people only need to perform 15–20% of their exercise mix in the higher cardio zones (4 or 5) and can remain in zone 2 for the other 80–85% of their workouts.
It’s sometimes a paradigm shift when people realize they can work less hard for greater benefit!
Frequency
Your Priority Physicians recommend starting your exercise program with your end goal in mind and establishing building blocks to get there.
Workout plans vary from person to person. Look at your schedule and see how much time you have for exercise in a given week. If it’s two hours, we may segment your workouts into zone 2, with some in zones 4 or 5, then factor in a healthy balance of resistance and flexibility training.
Two to three times per week is generally a good cadence for resistance training; varying intensity and frequency aids muscle recovery. Your other workout days may be devoted to fat-burning or flexibility.
In my case, when I lifted weights once or twice a week, I’d overdo it and feel sore on my off days. I soon realized that by expanding my lifting workout to two or three times per week, my body got more accustomed to the routine and became less sore with each workout.
Fit Tip: It generally takes six to eight weeks of repeated behavior before change sticks and becomes routine.
Exercise to Release Stress
The benefits of regular, intense activity extend beyond the physical. Whether you go hard or have an “easy day,” regular exercise reduces stress.
Your body responds to exercise with a cascade of beneficial chemical reactions that support your mental and emotional health. Exercise builds emotional fulfillment because of its competitive nature. Overall, the camaraderie, teamwork, and social aspects encourage a richer quality of life and a longer health span.
Find Your Exercises for Longevity
A repetitive workout focused on just one form of exercise won’t help you live a long, healthy life. Instead, you need a diverse mix of cardiovascular training, fat-burning, and muscle-resistance exercises for longevity.
But if you’re just beginning, don’t become overwhelmed by your workout mix and how to schedule it. Start anywhere you can. You’re already on the road to better metabolic and physical health. The longer you’re in good physical fitness, the more dividends it pays later in life.
Your Priority Physicians are here to help. Let’s get you started!
