31/01/2025
Excellent advice from the https://thegrowtheq.com espousing principles of exercise for health, longevity, and all-around life performance, that aligns with the mindset behind the coaching at www.findyourfitness.sg :
1. Do something long and easy three or more days per week:
How long? Shoot for a minimum of 30 minutes, but if you can build that up to 60 minutes, great! Why 30 minutes? Anything is better than nothing, but if you look at a long history of research from mice to humans on aerobic adaptations, 30 minutes is where you start to get the biggest gains, and taking that up to 60 minutes continues to accrue substantial benefits. There are still benefits to going longer than 60 minutes, especially if you enjoy what youโre doing, but the returns diminish once you hit the hour mark.
What type of exercise? Whatever you enjoy and can stick to consistently. Running, cycling, ellipticaling, rucking, ski-erging, swimming. Pick something you like doing and do that. How hard? This should be easy. You should be able to have a conversation, with just the slightest hint of needing to catch air. If you canโt maintain a conversation, youโre going too hard; slow down.
Also: donโt lose your mind trying to stay in โzone 2.โ The truth is that zones are an arbitrary dividing point and are meant to help researchers categorize training. They arenโt laws. If you are feeling good on a certain day, itโs fine to go a touch harder. If you feel like trash, there is nothing wrong with slowing down. The whole point of easy training is accumulate enough volume where you can do it again and again, for weeks and months on end. Why three or more days per week? Itโs a reasonable amount where you get most of the benefits for mental, physical, and cognitive health. If you enjoy it, do it more!
2. Strength train two days a week for 30 minutes or more:
What kind? Think compound movements that utilize lots of muscles. Squats, lunges, push ups, pull ups, wall sits, step ups, kettlebell swings. What you target depends on your goals. But for general health and overall life performance, you get nearly all of the benefits from compound movements.
If you are time crunched, you can work through a circuit where you alternate muscle groups with short breaks in between (e.g., squats to push ups to lunges to pull ups). As these circuits become easier, add some weight. You can use dumbbells, a weight vest (which can double for rucking), or a backpack filled with books. Get creative and think progressive overload (gradually adding stimulus as you improve). Sets and reps? There are dozens of set and rep schemes out there. Some push more towards growing muscle size, others toward speed and power. But for general health, you donโt need to get lost in the details. The basic gist is that with whatever strength routine you use, you should have between 2 and 4 reps in the tank when you finish. Youโre not trying to be Brad and see how much you can deadlift. You are looking for a moderate, doable challenge. If youโre older, throw in some balance and stability work in a brief warmup.
For example, Caitlin, Bradโs wife, has the following strength training routine:
She does five to eight movements from a menu of goblet squats, dumbbell rows, push-ups, crunches, reverse lunges, planks, wall sits, kettlebell deadlifts, dumbbell overhead presses, calf raises, curls, lateral delt raises, bird-dog holds. She does 3 sets of each movement and she aims for 8 to 12 repetitions. She often breaks it down into two or three circuits. She does this three days per week in the basement and each day takes about 25 minutes. Her only equipment: 25 and 50 pound kettlebells; 5, 12, and 15 pound dumbbells; and a bench.
3. One day per week, go (kind of) hard.
What does โhardโ consist of? Usually harder sessions are done with interval training. But hereโs the beautyโฆthere is no magical interval training. You can do short and fast, longer and a bit slower, with long rest or short rest, jogging or standing. Every interval workout has a slightly different stimulus, but for health the most important thing is that you do something somewhat hard. Donโt listen to anyone who tells you that there is a special interval training workout that is the best. Thatโs a lie. We have 120 years of training history that shows we can attain similar benefits with a variety of intervals. Itโs all about how you manipulate the variables (intensity, duration, and recovery)
How hard? About a 7 or 8 out of 10. Or feel like you could do 1 or 2 more intervals. You arenโt lying down on the track, gasping for air, feeling like you are going to throw up. The reality is, if you were training for performance, you would only very rarely go to this place anyways. If you are training for health, you benefit most from going hard, but not so hard that you are completely spent.
Start simple and easy: The reality is this. The hard and higher intensity work is the icing on the cake. In fact, research and training history
