It is January 2020. It is time for New Year’s resolutions. How about a new decade resolution? If your are going to make a ten-year commitment it has got to be something you are willing to stick to for the long haul, and if you are going to do it that long it better produce significant changes worthy of the commitment.
Cathy, a client at our Austin strength training facility, is 75 years old and she has been exercising with us for 10 years now. Reflecting back on the ten years she said, “It is the best thing I have done for myself. It’s phenomenal”.
For ten years Cathy has been strength training once a week for thirty minutes. A lot of exercise programs work; the number one reason they don’t work is compliance. Often people get hurt, or they just can’t seem to find the time. A thirty 30 minutes once a week commitment is something most people can stick to for ten years, for life really. It helps to set the bar where you are willing to jump over it each week and keep jumping.
Another consideration is finding an exercise program that produces the most positive measurable change for the time spent. Seeing that quantifiable change serves as motivation to continue getting those results. Such a program will not be designed to find how much exercise you can tolerate (a recipe for quitting and increased likelihood of injury), but how little you need to produce the most ongoing positive change. Each week do a little more than your body is used to handling. As self-protection the body will make a positive adaptation. Repeat that each week and over time the cumulative change will be dramatic.
The high intensity strength training (HIT) we do at our facility, will positively affect:
There is more. From the website Body By Science, some of less familiar more esoteric benefits of high intensity strength training:
· HIT/BBS enacts a hormonal cascade that is the antithesis of the metabolic syndrome.
· Gut motility correlates with muscle mass. Risk of GI cancer inversely correlates with gut motility.
· Organ mass correlates with muscle mass. Get in an accident or severely burn yourself and the time you have in the ICU before you die is correlated with organ mass. You have more time on the clock.
· Get in a car wreck and this kind of conditioning may be the difference between 3 days of whiplash symptoms and a lifetime in a wheelchair (which will be a shortened lifetime).
· BDNF elevations with high intensity exercise staves off/reverses age related decline and dementia.
· Enhances nitric oxide synthetase: you will have good blood pressure and will never need a little blue pill. You will not need to worry about “being healthy enough for sexual activity”.
· Bone mineral density correlates with muscle mass. Even in osteopenia, strong muscles absorb forces and prevent fractures.
· Basal metabolism and hormonal profile that fight obesity.
· Reversal of age-related gene expression.
The cumulative improvements facilitate a longer, fuller, more productive life. What will your life be like ten years from now if you don’t exercise? Would could your life be like a decade from now if you start exercising now? For Cathy, “It is the best thing I have done for myself. It’s phenomenal”.
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