Finding Your Path to Aging Well

At 57 my goal is to look after my health and wellbeing as well as  possible. 

As a younger person, my training emphasised cardiovascular exercise.  I would describe my old self as a ‘cardio junkie’. With the prevalence of reputed research, I now understand the benefit of strength training.

Previously I thought that the perfect balance to hours of running was yoga and copious amounts of stretching. Turns out that I was wrong.

We are now inundated with reputable research that being strong is an essential part of aging well and avoiding fragility and falls for as long as possible. I witnessed the devastating effect that falls can have with my own mother.  Falling was the beginning of her demise.  Sadly she was more concerned about being thin, than being strong.

Over the last 8 years I realised that I did not need more flexibility. I needed to be stronger. I needed sufficient (not maxima) strength to enable me to embrace the activities I love. My training has evolved to achieve balance and to respect my tipping point. My weekly training now makes time for cardio and strength training, but I now always listen to the signs of over-training, fatigue and injury potential. In have targets and goals but not at the expense of my health. I am always conscious of, eating real food and avoiding UPF’s, drinking less alcohol, practising sleep hygiene, and spending time with quality people. I feel fitter, stonger and trimmer than I did 10 years ago and I am able to embrace the activities I love.

I have been fortunate to learn from many insightful people in my personal and professional life. Most recently training with Professor Stuart McGill and I learnt about his “biblical training week”. This acknowledges the wisdom of major religions that advocate 6 days of work and one of rest for the week.

 Professor Stuart McGill’s Path to Aging Well with the ‘biblical training week’:

The body continually adapts and tries to regenerate, not degenerate. This relationship is influenced by necessary stress and the fact that each system has a tipping point. The key to stimulate positive adaptation of the musculoskeletal system is to maintain the stresses below the tipping point. Exceeding the tipping point creates cumulative stresses leading to pain and injury. You influence the stress by managing loads, postures, motions and activities. This informs my daily training in terms of specific exercises and intensity. The goal is to stimulate regeneration.

Finding the optimal loading for each individual is an art and a science. People have different injury histories, responses to load, different recovery rates etc. Good movement, good fuel and exercise, a healthy mental state are all important. Here are some of the specific actions I can suggest after studying as a scientist for 40 years, and as a clinician seeing the patterns in those people who have been successful in living well.

Every day: Rise early and do your chores. Move often, eat well but eat half.

Train 6 days per week: 2 days train strength, 2 days train the thing that are a bit stuck (mobility), 2 days something for the ticker (cardio work). And the seventh day is for rest/adaptation. This is what keeps me pain-free, more or less.

Details: Optimal health is achieved with sufficient strength, not maximal strength, sufficient mobility not maximal mobility etc. Our investigations on police, firefighters, athletes etc show higher pain in those who are stronger mainly due to the training needed to obtain max strength. Even when we measure athletes who dominate their sport they rarely test to be the strongest (powerlifting excepted). Instead, they had sufficient strength and a balance of strength throughout their body.

Having too much mobility can be as compromising as having too little. The great athletes in many sports use the elasticity provided by joints with tuned mobility. For example, some of the great endurance runners have tuned mobility where they use the springs in the tendons of their feet and ankles just as a kangaroo does to bounce along storing and recovering the elastic energy with each stride. Those who have too much mobility or a stretched out joint system have to use muscle. This results in higher eccentric and concentric contractions with each stride which means they fatigue faster. Using active muscle contraction also increases the load on the joints. You may want to reconsider some of the cushioning shoe soles that reduce the tissue spring action that can actually increase the joint loads.

Challenging the cardio-vascular system goes without argument but as with all other variables, where “sufficient” is better over the longer term over maximal CV fitness. Having a higher VO2 Max (a measure or cardiovascular fitness) means that the person does not have an explosive neurology. These two systems are mutually exclusive. A moderate blend is best for most people. 

Try not to have two similar days (meaning two consecutive strength days or mobility days) in a row. This means that the body has time to adapt from the previous day adding robustness. Similarly, there are days when I perform an activity that challenges strength, mobility and cardo demand – for example when splitting firewood. I do not do this chore two days in a row and I do not get sore. The goal is to be harder to kill without killing yourself.

Strength thoughts: Train in general patterns (squat, push, pull, carry), then add supplemental practice, for example specific exercises for the hands, feet, and neck.

Mobility thoughts: I try and perform 1 Deep squat per day. These may be assisted with overhead bands to reduce body weight and knee loads, or perhaps accomplishing a deep goblet squat with a lateral sway and knee pry with the elbows to challenge hip mobility in a sustainable way. In my own case I also focus on Psoas stretching and Thoracic spine extension.

Cardiovascular thoughts: I enjoy the Sauna a couple of times per week with contrast dips in the water (an electric stove at BFP HQ and a wood fired stove when at the cabin lakeside). I walk after each meal achieving zone 2 training with occasional short bursts in intensity. This might include walking backwards up hill, or having a few sprints while on an exercise bike watching a YouTube video. I am also conscious to never be sedentary for very long. I limit screen time.

Rest and adaptation thoughts: Rest means rest. A conversation with a new friend, a sit-down beside a lake. But nothing taxing on the day of rest.

Things I have learned: I do better when I make a list to plan my next day before retiring to bed. It is a to do list that also includes the training objectives for the day. I have done this my entire adult life almost everyday. Be sure to include the “fun” activities. I recall a hack my father gave to me as a young boy who hated doing school homework: put a clock in front of you and give yourself a reasonable amount of time to complete the task. You are not allowed to exceed the time. You do your best in the allotted time then go have fun.

I have done many experiments on myself – I know how my body responds. For example, in terms of Blood glucose, a single glass of beer or wine does not cause a spike – for me a fried and sugary apple fritter does. So they do not suit me. Going for a walk after a meal always blunts the glucose spike and often completely eliminates it. However, stress spikes my blood glucose. It appears to trigger a flight or fight response and an adrenaline surge - I can see how stress really creates a vascular insult. I need to manage this better. 

Sleep well. Make it dark, the right temperature, the right pillows.

Find ways to challenge balance: Standing on one leg, play games when getting dressed to make movement challenging – holding postures. I play with movement for example I brush teeth with my non-dominant hand.