How to be fit and healthy forever with only 2 forms of exercise!

In today’s world we are bombarded with so much information.  With smartphones in all our pockets, we can literally look up information on any subject, no matter how unique or obscure.

(And I hate using the word literally.  Like when people say, “I literally did the hardest workout yesterday. I was literally dying on the gym floor….”).

With health and fitness being a multibillion-dollar industry, every Personal Trainer, blogger, social media influencer, expert or whatever will sell you the “secret” to all your fitness dreams coming true.   Whether it’s Crossfit, F45, Paleo, the 5:2 diet, eat for your blood type, etc. if you read enough information and listen to everyone, eventually it all cancels out to zero and you’re back where you started.

So, to cut through all the crap, and because we’re all too busy to dedicate ourselves to working out and food prepping, here’s what actually works.

As a Minimum, you only need to do 2 things:

1)     STRENGTH TRAINING 

You know there’s one subject that gets me super excited than any other and that’s the subject of Anti-Aging!  I dig around and hunt for any strategy that’ll help me stay younger for longer.  And I don’t mean medical or surgery (that’s cheating, expensive and usually looks pretty bad) but I mean natural, healthy and fantastic ways in which you can hit the pause button on Aging.

I have many friends, clients and family members whose quality of life is really hampered because they didn’t take care of themselves when they really needed to.  Whether it’s joint pain, diabetes, obesity, low energy, bad injuries, high stress levels, high cholesterol or high blood pressure, I’m constantly reminded of why I bounce out of bed every day really early to stretch/meditate/sauna/eat clean and train hard.

I mean, how much would you pay to actually stop aging???

So, when I come by a new article or a new piece of research that shows me how to do this, I get nothing but joy to share it with you all.

What’s the best exercise to combat and reverse Aging???  Weight Training

That’s right, lifting heavy stuff.

How does it reverse aging?  Well as well as up regulating your hormones (such as Growth Hormone and Testosterone) as well as staving off bone degenerative conditions like Osteoporosis, today I’m going to introduce to you the Telomere.

Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that affect how quickly cells age. They are combinations of DNA and protein that protect the ends of chromosomes and help them remain stable. As they become shorter, and as their structural integrity weakens, the cells age and die quicker.

In recent years, shorter telomeres have become associated with a broad range of aging-related diseases, including many forms of cancer, stroke, vascular dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity, osteoporosis and diabetes.

Basically, the quicker your Telomeres shorten, the faster you age!

Now, study after study are showing that Weight Training actually SLOWS down the rate at which your Telomeres shorten.  And they also discovered that Telomere length in people who lifted weights regularly are longer and more durable than those who are sedentary.  In short, those who weight training are biologically younger than those who don’t.

So go lift some weights and if you’re not doing so, introduce it as part of your training regime.  Remember, we’re not doing this to look like body builders, we’re doing this for a longer, fuller life!  Tell me something that’s more important than that…

Step 1 – Here’s your weight lifting protocol. (Remember this is a minimum, you can always do more than this.

            * 2 x Weight Lifting Sessions per week.

            * Full Body Workouts (both sessions should include Upper and Lower body movements)

            * Include compound movements like Squats, Deadlifts, Lunges, Chest Press, Rows and Shoulder presses.

            * Here’s the final trick.  The last rep of each exercise should be as close to your limit.  (This sends a signal to your body that muscle is important, needed and must be maintained.  Therefore you’ll maintain your muscle whilst you’re losing weight.)

2)     Walk – 10,000 STEPS PER DAY

One of the secrets of people who were living in the world’s “Blue Zones” (the pockets of the world where people live longer, well in their 100’s.), was exercise and how they approached it.

Moving and exercising was by far one of the most shared traits of the long lived people groups. Most were farmers who had daily chores. One woman in a study was over 100 years old and every day walked up a few hundred stairs to sell her eggs in the village. A Study shows that smokers who exercise live as long or even longer than non smokers who don’t exercise!  That’s how important moving, sweating, and exercise is – we all hear how bad smoking is but apparently not exercising is even worse.

Let me tell you a little training secret that Personal Trainer’s don’t want to admit, the single best exercise you can ever do is…..Walking.  Why is walking awesome???

Walking – has been proven to improve cardio fitness

-        Reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart disease

-        Reduces the risk of diabetes

-        Lowers the risk of obesity

-        Improves sleep!

-        Reduces depression and anxiety

-        Improves mood and happiness

-        And most importantly, it increases your life span!

And the best thing is everybody can walk.  It doesn’t matter your age, gender, weight, busy-ness, etc.  Anybody and everybody can walk.  If you get nothing else from this 5-step course, please take this.  Walk more.

But why 10,000 steps Jerome???

Great question.  (You see, I tried to read your mind there)

You see, we live in a sedentary society right now.  We sit down to drive to work, we then sit down to do our work, then we get home, we sit down to eat dinner, and then finally we sit down to watch tv or read a book before bed.

By setting the habit of walking 10k steps per day, we consciously find ways to incorporate more daily movement in our life.  It gets us off our bums!  It gets us out of the office and seek fresh air, it gets us out of our homes and walk the neighbourhood, it gets us moving.

So, grab a step tracker and start tracking your steps each day.  It’s the single best thing you can do for a longer, healthier life.

And finally, here’s my Dad Joke of the day:

I told my wife I got a job in a bowling alley. She said “Ten Pin?”. I said “No.  Permanent”