that is how I feel about exercise... spending 10 hours per week in my youth at a gym for 40 years to buy me an extra 10-20 years at the end of my life.
This is misguided. A healthy lifestyle doesn't simply mean extra decades at the end of your life and everything else remains the same. It means many health issues also start later and you have more healthy years available to in your younger years as well. Many turn 30 and already find some things ache or don't work quite the right way. Take care of your body and those risks drastically go down, it doesn't take ten hours a week.
> Many turn 30 and already find some things ache or don't work quite the right way
it also goes the other direction: Men in their 20s and 30s get hurt doing the same risky activities they did in high school (rock climbing, basketball, soccer, etc) resulting in lower back pain, damaged hands, etc.
I've wanted to get into swimming, but swimming requires a lot more planning (prepping a towel, getting changed, drying off, managing wet objects after).
Whereas non-wet activities have similar requirements to my regular laundry management
Exercise starts paying off in midlife by fixing your back pain, letting you go trampolining, steadying your balance, not getting winded or having to breathe through your mouth on stairs, and just generally making your body spend its repair cycles on things that make you feel healthy instead of inflamed. I develop so many aches and pains that exercise helps fix. Without the exercise you might not even want the extra 10-20 years.
It’s not about buying extra years but making your life a hole lotta better as well.
Am not kidding. I hated exercise, I still hate it, but it objectively makes everything else so much better I keep at it.
There are simple and effective protocols. You don’t need to be ”in to it”. You don’t need to buy extra equipment (necessarily) nor do you need purchase anything from anyone (unless you want to).
Running, pushups and kettle bell swings are enough (with a good strategy). Having a daily stretching/mobility routine is advisable the older you get.
Just do it! If you think it will totally suck, it probably will! If the question ”what are you training for” irritates you it sure as hell will keep irritating. There are _zero_ lifestyle things you need to buy into. But it’s medicine. Pure medicine.
Not really an expert here but happy to share my path. My current goal is to maintain minimum flexibility, do some resistance training and keep some aerobic fitness.
If you have very little exercise from recent years, I really recommend finding a local personal trainer, explain you want a bare minimum personal program and start from there.
Once you know what your body can do under supervision you can think about how to develop routines that last your life.
Personally I bought some courses from GMB fitness for mobility and for some kettlebell stuff read the book ”Simple&Sinister” whose basic program I did for a year, and then started doing ”The quick and the dead” program from the same author. Now - the books are a bit weird and the motivational narration may be offputting but the exercises seem legit and effective.
I don’t know if any of the above is usefull at all for anyone else. But the basic science sort of goes you need some basic aerobic exercise and some resistance training. Free weights like kettlebell seem to offer best bang for buck since the basic exercises actually train a lot of the muscles at the same time.
The ”lets isolate the muscle groups and pinpoint these exercises” regimen might have it’s use but’s imho it’s sort overcomplicating the basic equation if you really are not training for anything particular and have no handicaps from injuries.
I understand the deadlift is a super effective and simple technique but I hate going to gym and don’t have space for anyhting else except kettlebell.
Like Scott Hanselman tipped - plan a routine that gives you least amount of opportunities for excuses.
It's not just about the extra life span, it's the quality of life until then.
I wish the same focus was given to weight loss, smoking, etc. No one really cares about living an extra 10 years from 70 to 80 if it means giving up 40+ yesrs of enjoying bad habits.
Exercise is especially neat because there are enjoyable ways to do it
> I wish the same focus was given to weight loss, smoking, etc. No one really cares about living an extra 10 years from 70 to 80 if it means giving up 40+ yesrs of enjoying bad habits.
It’s the same thing, right?
That is, exercise may not necessarily make your life longer, but has a good chance of making your life higher quality.
Similarly, bad habits can shorten your life, and even if it doesn’t, will most definitely make your life lower quality (eventually).
I mean most of the anti-smoking, weight-loss, campaigns are focused on trying to convince people thats its bad for you because it increases the chance of lung cancer, or heart morbidity. Ergo, you shouldn't do them because you won't live as long.
Instead, I think we need to focus on "you'll feel better, like right now".
Exercising makes you feel better. It’s a necessary component of living a good life. Extending your life is irrelevant. However, strength training is necessary to ensure the later parts of your life are worth living
Who says you have to spend that much time in the gym? Unless you're really going for pro, nutrition and maintaining healthy blood pressure will get you most if not all the way to a longer lifespan while saving you countless hours. Even just an hour of high intensity exercise a week can maintain muscle and provide cardiovascular benefits.
30 min a day or 3hrs a week in a gym is all you need. I’ve been working out for 10 years, and if I can pull 3 hours in 1 week, it’s a great week! And it’ll keep me real strong. Plus, makes you sleep better, which means you probably need to sleep less. Working out is almost always a “you get more than what you gave” kinda deal.
