How To Keep Doing What You Love ("Longevity" Approach To Training) PT1

Shoot the way I look at this, we could all die TODAY (I know pretty morbid), so why would we train with an approach to longevity?

If you are like me, and all my clients, we are not looking to leave this existence any time soon. So with that, wouldn’t we want to make sure our bodies are at their best for whatever age we may be by keeping up on our training? Now I am sure you are thinking exactly what I was 8 years ago when I first started getting into all this training stuff “Well then, how do I train to get the results I want right now but also keep my future self in mind and don’t end up injured?”

The biggest thing I want to emphasize with this blog series, are you paying attention, good. 

EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT. The answer really can be spun a million and one different ways for each SPECIFIC person. So I will not be going into specifics for those who are training for performance, hypertrophy (muscle building), or even strength. Better yet, with this blog series, I am going to give you my TOP GENERAL TIPS to focus on NO MATTER your training routine, so you can start to put the longevity approach into your routine right away!

One last thing before I give you the first of these tips. While you are reading them, stop and think about your training (and if you are looking at getting into training some more, then use these tips as you start your training journey to make sure it is in the front of your brain when picking exercises, sets, reps weights, etc.). Now that you have taken the time to pause & think of your own training, let’s get into the first tip!

No matter what your goal is, daily movement has seemed to be one of the biggest things we can do to ensure we can keep moving the ways we want as we age. Now, this can vary as I said from person to person, from goal to goal The most important part is using this as a guiding light into how to stack your day for yourself. 

There is no specific form of movement that I will say is “best” but, I will say if anything a walk each day is great. Have you ever heard of the saying “Motion Creates Motion”? Well, I am a firm believer in this, and my clients have come around to believe the same. If we are just sitting all day at work, then sit in our car, then we sit for dinner when we get home, and guess what, after that most of us are sitting down and enjoying our TV time for the rest of the night. Now how can this affect us overall through a longevity lens? 

Well first let’s hit you with a quote from a study I will tag below, “Exercise is not the perfect antidote for sitting” - Marc Hamilton, an inactivity researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center

So why would our couple of training sessions through the week not be a perfect antidote for us sitting the majority of our day? Well, the key word here is MAJORITY, what is the majority of your time spent doing? If the answer is sitting, then you are like the majority of us! So let's start to make some changes so we can shift our mindset into doing this to feel our best as we age. 

I have mentioned how we could go on a walk, which is GREAT, but I am also a father of two, own multiple businesses, and am still trying to make something happen with my skateboarding career, so I get that even this for 30min can sometimes be missed if not taken diligently enough. So here are some examples of some things you can do throughout your day to add in more movement! The goal should be to shift the majority of your time to things that include you moving, or at the very least standing or sitting in different positions. 

Here is an example of what MY daily movement looks like:

• 10-15 min mobility session 
• Going for 10 min walks after each meal
• Playing with my kids (not toys, but running and rolling around)
• Skateboarding
• A nice chill bike ride
• Nightly stretch routine
• Change the way you are sitting (if you are sitting in a chair, sit on the ground with your work at eye level, sometimes I even do little stretches while working on my computer with it on my coffee table)
• Bike rides

Here is an example of what one of my clients does over the age of 80:

• 10-15 min mobility session or x3 5 min mobility session throughout the day
• Going for a 1 mile walk every morning and night
• Nightly stretch routine

Now that you see what I mean, you can now think of some of the best ways for you to sneak daily movement in. This goal here will be to get you to realize that some days just do not go as smoothly as others, and sometimes that means we miss any training for that day. So do we just sit on our butts all day and just let the GAINS go to waste?! NO! Utilize daily movement to keep the joints moving and grooving, and to keep that heart ticking.