Wanna stick around awhile?

So, you want to kick around this place a bit longer, and maintain or regain your energy and physical aptitude? Then you need to move your body, and not just any kind of movement. There are specific ways you should aim to move to keep your body and your mind running and responding in tip top form!

If you missed my recent post outlining the 3 most important areas of the body and how to move, we’ll break them down in more detail here, they are worth repeating, over and over and over. 

MUSCLE. BRAIN. HEART.

Muscle… We all know this is my favorite topic, it’s not just to feel strong and powerful (though we love this about strength training!), we need muscle to live. Elderly folks are often moved to nursing homes and assisted living facilities not because they are ill, but because they lack enough strength to get up out of a chair, or climb a flight of stairs. Will this be you?

1.    Our muscles need to be sufficiently strong in order for us to stay active and perform daily movement, especially as we age! 

2.    Our muscle needs to be of sufficient size, we want to maintain a high muscle mass relative to our fat mass! 

3.    We need muscular endurance, to climb a flight of stairs without getting winded, and stand for a long time with losing posture!

You lose muscle mass faster and faster every year as you get older, if you’re not doing anything to maintain it, you will lose it. And the coolest thing about strength training is you can do it safely, and build muscle AT ANY AGE! 

Muscle is the structure of life, this is where our mitochondria reside! The more muscle we have, the healthier our metabolism, the harder it works for us, the more energy we have!

Do the things of daily life, lifting groceries, grandkids, gardening, housework. On top of these things, yes you can lift weights. Find a gym, a trainer, an online workout you enjoy and just make sure you’re hitting big movements that use more than one joint like squatting, pushing, pulling, picking things up from the floor (deadlift), and move to the front, the side and the back! Or get a bodyweight routine going with some form of push-ups, step-ups, pull-ups, squatting, dips, lunging, crawling, the list goes on, and keep challenging yourself with more reps. You can do this. 

Your Brain… we are talking about the Nervous System here, people, how your body moves and reacts. Think of the Nervous system as the conductor of electricity, responding and sending signals throughout your body, and if you’re not challenging it, the synapses will begin to shred and disappear altogether. 

 1.    Proprioception! The sense through which we perceive the position and movement of our body, equilibrium and balance, depending on the notion of force and gravity. 

2.    High Force Production! We need the ability to recruit, coordinate, and fire as many neurons as possible at one time, we don’t want to lose our ability to generate power as we age! 

Challenge your nervous system to react in space, to respond to uneven surfaces and unstable ground, sitting in a chair all day is a killer! Participate in physical activity that requires you to react, this looks like hiking, running in the yard with grandkids, playing a sport like tennis that requires you to move with agility. 

In order to maintain power, ask your body to produce max force efforts, to work higher than 80% of your max! What does that mean? Lift something really heavy, jump with force, sprint up a hill! Haven’t moved fast in a while? Start small by dropping off a step and landing, throw a ball explosively, pedal your bike hard as possible for 5 seconds! Just try to be explosive in your movement, and do it often!

Okay, lastly… Your Heart and Lungs! The Cardiopulmonary System, the cycle of life.

Make your heart work! At it’s low and it’s high end, for a short time and for a long time. Your heart needs to stretch and let the maximum amount of blood in, and contract as hard as possible to get the maximum amount of blood out! It needs to be able to do this over and over again, and with efficiency. Your heart is the ultimate endurance muscle, the rest of the body only as efficient as the oxygen moving from the lungs to the muscles through the heart, and the carbon moving from the muscles to the lungs. 

Three ways you should be working your heart:

 1.   Sustain a consistent work output over 30 minutes without a break! This looks like a brisk walk, run, circuit training, swimming, hiking, cycling, running, brisk walking.

2.    Get up to your max Heart Rate! This is not the same as a short max effort, this takes a bit more time but also requires max effort! Push yourself as hard as you can until you have to stop (this can take one minute, 2 minutes, but probably not longer than that!). 

Haven’t done this in a long time? Choose a safe exercise you can do well without worrying about your technique or form (like a stationary bike!) and make sure someone is with you, and you have your doctor’s approval.  

3.    Lastly, recover your heart rate at high intensity! Get your heart rate up high, and allow it to come back down, over multiple times! You don’t need to get your heart rate up to max (like #2), but get it high where you are breathing hard and cannot hold a conversation. Let the heart rate come down, as long as it takes, before the next push. 

 If you can do these things each week, even just one time per week, you’ll be bombproof, increasing your energy, mental and physical health, keeping your independence and energy as you age. 

What are you waiting for? Choose one and get to it.