up:: Health & Fitness

Principles of Exercise

With the right exercise, you only need a little bit to stay healthy.

The main goal of exercise is to maintain muscle, especially as you get older. The older you get, the more important strength training becomes.

Cardio training is not optimal. It takes a lot of time and (comparatively) doesn't burn a lot of calories. After strength training, the body needs to recover which uses a lot of energy, and afterwards the new muscle burns more energy even when you're doing nothing.

The Cornerstones

• As much as possible low-grade movement
  • Stand up from your desk every 25 minutes
  • Take the stairs when you have the option
  • Walk with every opportunity you have
    • You're not wasting time if your travel time takes longer but you exercise in the meantime
• Use Free Workouts
  • Take the bike to grocery shopping. You're shopping anyways but now there's a workout included!
  • Do manual labor in the garden. You're cleaning up plus moving!
  • Help friends out when they're moving.
• Short bouts of high-intensity exercise
  • The higher the intensity, the shorter the exercise can be
  • Body By Science (book) explains a 15 minute-a-week hyper-efficient workout: 5 exercises each, heavy weights on a machine, move them slowly for as long as you can. Should be so heavy that you need to give up after 1 minute 30. Increase the weights every week (unless you fail after less than 1 minute).
  • 10X Method is in large part very similar to this, but adds more balanced other elements and tries to be a more holistic health approach.
  • Stronglifts 5x5 is roughly what I do now. Strength training with a barbell. This trains more of the body as a whole, and I like these exercises more than the machine exercises of Body By Science.