• Fitness & Health
• Sport & Exercise Science
• Physical Education
• Strength & Conditioning
• Sports Medicine
• Sport Management
• Dance

How exercise supports healthy aging

This is an excerpt from Smarter Workouts 2nd Edition by Pete McCall.

Up to this point, you have learned important information about how your body adapts to exercise as well as how to do a variety of workouts to improve mobility, muscular strength, or metabolic conditioning using only a single piece of equipment. Now it is time to address how to make exercise a lifelong habit and achieve and maintain the long-term benefits of living a healthier lifestyle.

Typical fitness goals such as losing weight or improving muscle tone are outcome goals, which means that they are the result of a short-term approach to exercise. As mentioned in chapter 6, having a process-oriented goal, such as learning how to enjoy the process of exercise, can help you to make it a part of your daily habits, which is the real secret to long-term success.

A strength training program can make some changes to your body in the short term, but for optimal results, exercise has to become a habit—one that is practiced for the rest of your life, like brushing your teeth or buckling your seatbelt. If you have repeatedly started a workout program but can’t find the drive to be consistent, this can seem like a daunting, unattainable goal; but, have you ever considered that maybe it’s time to change your focus? Instead of using exercise as a means of losing weight or achieving some popular culture definition of what a body should look like, why not change your mindset and focus on using exercise as a means to improve your health and enhance your quality of life?

One of the most important benefits from consistent exercise is that you will have choices for how you live your life. Forget about appearance; the real goal of an exercise program should be to develop and maintain the ability to do any activity you’re interested in. Improving your fitness gives you the physical ability to do what you want to do when you want to do it.

Said another way: Being fit gives you the freedom to do your favorite pastimes as well as the ability to learn how to do new activities so that you can live your life to its fullest potential.

Find Your Fountain of Youth

The aging process can greatly diminish the metabolic, hormonal, and neural systems that control how our muscles move. However, regular exercise and physical activity, especially moderate to high intensity, can help ensure that these systems function at an optimal level of performance as we get older (Taylor and Johnson 2008).

From plastic surgery to Botox injections to antiaging clinics that specialize in prescribing injections of hormones, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent every year pursuing the elusive fountain of youth. The harsh reality is that until time travel is invented, the aging process cannot be stopped (and getting older certainly beats the alternative).

The good news is that a healthy lifestyle—which includes high-intensity metabolic conditioning and strength training—can slow the aging process. Consistent exercise, especially strength training, functions as a true fountain of youth. And here’s a little secret: Rather than expensive, invasive medical procedures or costly and painful injections, investing your time in moderate-to-vigorous strength training could minimize or mitigate those effects of aging.

High-intensity strength training and metabolic conditioning programs can be the stimulus to produce the hormones that promote muscle growth (Candow et al. 2011; Godfrey and Blazevich 2004). If you follow the workouts in this book, you can increase the level of difficulty and intensity to the point where exercise can have a significant impact on your quality of life, helping to maintain or retain your youthful energy and appearance.

More Excerpts From Smarter Workouts 2nd Edition

---