Exercising for health and longevity

For those of you who are in tune to what’s going on in your mind and body you will have noticed some changes happening around the age of 30.  Metaphysically speaking 30 is when most of us get faced with our first real hurdle and or questions about life, astrologically speaking the planet is in the same position it was when you were born and biologically speaking the first of the top 5 biological makers of aging start to show.

Top 10 biological makers of aging.

1. Decrease in Muscle mass
2. Decrease in strength
3. Decrease in basal metabolic rate (the amount of calories your body needs to burn to maintain it’s self in a dormant state)
4. Increase in body fat percentage
5. Decrease aerobic capacity
6. Increase in blood sugar tolerance
7. Cholesterol rate ratios start to move in an unfavourable direction
8. Increase in blood pressure
9. Decrease in bone density
10. Poor body temperature regulation.

Muscle in the body is made of protein and the body is a protein-producing machine and a decrease in the body’s ability to produce / maintain protein levels or our ability to increase its break down will increase our aging.

Typically speaking aerobic activity puts us in a catabolic state, and generally causes the body to break down its protein tissue an example of this is an endurance athlete.  You don’t see big bulky endurance athletes because it’s just too hard for the body to keep pushing all that bulk around so it starts breaking it’s self down.  The exact opposite of this is a physique athlete who does resistance training and increases muscle mass, this puts the body in an anabolic state.  Compare the bodies of a sprinter and a marathon runner.

If you have a specific aerobic goal like a half marathon then your training needs to be specific to that goal i.e. you have to run. However if your goal is to stay looking younger and healthier then we need to look at ways of maintaining and or increasing your levels of muscle mass and resistance training coupled with good nutrition is the key.    Resistance training allows us to slow the biological makers of ageing by maintaining / increasing our muscle mass, increasing our strength and increasing our metabolic rate which in turn keeps our body fat percentage down.  You can even maintain basic aerobic conditioning through resistance training. NB My definition of resistance training is not sitting around in the gym on machines “pumping tin”.  Resistance training needs to be functional to what you like to do.  If you like to come home from work and pick the kids up and play with them then you need to train those specific movement patterns.  If you want to be strong enough and have enough energy to cut some firewood, play golf, do some shopping, catch up with friends and still have enough energy to have a wrestle in the bedroom then your resistance training needs to be functional to those activities.  In short you need to maintain / increase your muscle mass with movement patterns that are functional to your everyday life activities.