What is the baseline amount of exercise for a person to be healthy?

The human body is built for movement.  If we do not move frequently, we become weaker and life is shortened: "Being upright and able to move freely" is a cynic's definition of being alive!  It is not a question of whether or not exercise is good for you: The real question is 

"How much and how often should we exercise to remain healthy throughout life?"

I am convinced that the keys to longevity are:

• Nutritional balancing which is increasingly important as we get older.
• Harmony in one's life - loving, healthy relationships and community and not holding grudges.
• Regular, moderate exercise.
• Being free of disease and the need for medication.

What do we mean by "moderate"?  Probably the easiest measure is steady exercise that is sufficient to have you puffing while still allowing you to keep a conversation going.

The baseline amount of moderate exercise necessary for health, as determined by one study after another, is surprisingly little.  Most experts recommend accumulating 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least days a week: Exercises such as digging the garden, swimming and walking.  Notice I used the word "accumulating".  Whether it is 5 minutes of exercise here and there, such as walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift and walking home it really does not matter.  What really matters is the total time per day.  Pedometers can be very handy for keeping track of cumulative exercise by the way.

While most adults probably meet the daily and weekly minimum, I wonder how many of their children get anywhere near it?

Excessive exercise, on the other hand, may shorten your life.  Four or more hours of intense exercise, such as running, per week may be all it takes to negate the benefits of exercise for health and longevity.  I am convinced that excessive exercise does impair health and shorten life - I do not need any research to tell me this.  I can see it around me.  However, in case you think I am contradicting my own behaviour which is as a practitioner of extreme, intense exercise, I exercise as such with an intense awareness of the dangers of doping so and take preventive measure.  How I do this will have to be the topic of a future article.

The "Lift and Press"

People often ask me "What is the single most important exercise to do daily for health?"

Other than walking briskly, there is one exercise that is most beneficial: The "Life and Press".

One of the characteristics of getting old and fragile is the slumping of posture, often to the point where the person may still appear to be slumped in a lounge chair, even when standing.  Incidentally, this slumped posture is now quite common in our children.  What will they be like at 60 years!

The lift and press exercise - the lifting of a modest weight from the ground to press it and hold it above the head, is the best exercise one can do daily to counter the effects of gravity, weak muscles and sloppy postural habits.  Of course there are more; but let's just do the lift and press.

As a general rule of thumb, choose a weight that can be lifted and pressed above your head 15-20 times in a continuous rhythm.  If you can do more than 20 repetitions, increase the weight a wee bit.  Done once a day, five days a week will do the job.  You do not need expensive weights: Some cans in the pantry inside a couple of pillow cases that are then knotted shut will be sufficient.

The bonus of this exercise is it counts towards your daily exercise quota of 30 minutes!

A strong, upright posture - one of the keys to health.

The "Lift and Press", starting early in life and
continuing this single exercise daily forever.

"Fit Kiwi" doing her daily lift and press dozen

Is exercise really the panacea for all ills?

A friend recently commented: “The reason you are so healthy, Gary, is because you make regular exercise a priority in your life”.  

I corrected him: “The reason I am able to exercise the way I do is because I am healthy.  The exercise is important for health; but it has not made me healthy”

There is a popular misconception that getting out and beating the body into shape through punishing exercise is the panacea for all ills.  This is wrong: You do not need to exercise beyond a daily early morning walk and a little gardening now and then to be healthy.

Some of the most unhealthy people I know are marathon runners and triathletes.  Some of the healthiest people I know do hardly any exercise at all.  These “light exercisers” will probably die peacefully in their sleep after hitting the ton.  

By the time I was 50 years old, I was burned out as an athlete - and as a parent and in business - I was crisped.  Every muscle hurt, my left knee was arthritic, blood pressure and cholesterol were on the rise.  My head was full of cotton wool.  My skin required regular visits to the dermatologist to have sunspots removed.  I was so tired.  I walked out of work at 51 years of age and never went back because I could not bear another day.  At one point my maximum heart rate in the exercise physiology lab was just 109 beats per minute (It should have been nearly 190).  109 beats equated to little more than a brisk walk.  This was hard to take for an athlete who used to bang out marathons consistently under three hours (PB: 2hr 34m).  My adrenals were exhausted to the point of cardiovascular collapse.

Seven years later, with much study in between, I am officially in better physical health than I was in my 20’s.  That is official because the times I am now producing in sporting competitions are better today than they were 30 years ago.  The stop watch does not lie.  The funny thing is this: I am not doing anywhere as much training as I did during my 20’s.  So, what has changed?  

I stopped competing in sports and cut right back to nothing more than relaxing exercise (Walking, cycling with the family and gardening) and commenced a lengthy and detailed process of restoring my physical and mental health through rest, massage and nutrition.  This included yearly Hair Tissue Mineral Analyses to guide my diet and use of supplements to correct nutrient imbalances within the body.  I commenced a painful regime of weekly deep tissue massages.  Although it has taken a long time to turn things around, the outcome has been nothing less than miraculous and there is more to come.

Maximum heart rate is back to about 180 beats per minute.  Muscles no longer ache during exercise.  My knee does not bother me any more.  Blood pressure and cholesterol are healthy.  Body fat has dropped to less than 10% while muscle and bone have increased (These normally decline with age).  My skin has cleared and I have had no need to consult a dermatologist for the last four years.  I wake in the morning and feel alive, instead of dead tired.  I am working again, loving it and more productive than ever.

Now 57 years old, my peak physical work output and endurance are the best ever.  This goes against everything I was taught in exercise physiology about exercise and ageing.  In the 50+ age group for mountain bike racing, there might be just one cyclist in New Zealand who can beat me.  Along with my two brothers (both over 50), we have never been beaten in the 40+ age category for multi-sports team racing in New Zealand and Australia.

Without doubt, 2010 has been the best year of my life, health-wise, business-wise, relationship-wise and sporting-wise.  What a way to finish a decade that started on such a low!

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Do you have a question?  Email Gary: gary@myotec.co.nz. Include any relevant background information to your question.  Please be patient and be aware that I may not be able to answer every inquiry in detail, depending on workloads (My paying clients take precedence!). I will either reply by email or, most likely, by way of an article (Personal identifying details will be removed before publication).