An Exercise Program for Life, Not Instagram

The Basics of Fitness Explained

Exercise is the number one thing you can do to improve your long-term physical and cognitive health. The physical benefits are well documented, but it also comes with an array of cognitive benefits as well. It improves focus, creativity, problem-solving, emotion regulation, stress tolerance.

If exercise could be turned into a drug, it would be a trillion dollar blockbuster.

Which begs the question: what is the best exercise routine to follow?

While maximizing performance in a specific sport requires complexity and nuance, when it comes to health, longevity, and performance outside of sport, the best way to exercise is actually pretty simple. This may come as a surprise if you spend time in the health and wellness social media or podcast world. Look around and you’ll see references to various protocols containing all sorts of acronyms (HIIT, SIIT, LT, VO2max). Some are better than others, but everywhere you look it seems like someone is giving you a complicated mess of a program: do this, do that…until that goes out of fashion and it’s time to do this again. And around and around you go.

If I wanted to complicate exercise, I certainly could. I can get into the weeds and talk complexity with the best of them. And there’s a time and place for that if we’re talking about going from a 4:01 miler to a 3:59. The edges of your performance requires nuance. If anyone wants to have an argument on fitness acronyms, I am here for it.

But at the end of the day, for the vast majority of folks, they don’t need a fancy protocol that feels cool to talk about. So if you care about health and longevity, and aren’t trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon or hit a 1500 pound powerlifting total, what actually matters?

Here’s my keep it simple principles of exercise for health, longevity, and all-around life performance:

1. Do something long and easy three or more days per week:

How long? Shoot for a minimum of 30 minutes, but if you can build that up to 60 minutes, great! Why 30 minutes? Anything is better than nothing, but if you look at a long history of research from mice to humans on aerobic adaptations, 30 minutes is where you start to get the biggest gains, and taking that up to 60 minutes continues to accrue substantial benefits. There are still benefits to going longer than 60 minutes, especially if you enjoy what you’re doing, but the returns diminish once you hit the hour mark.

What type of exercise? Whatever you enjoy and can stick to consistently. Running, cycling, ellipticaling, rucking, ski-erging, swimming. Pick something you like doing and do that.

How hard? This should be easy. You should be able to have a conversation, with just the slightest hint of needing to catch air. If you can’t maintain a conversation, you’re going too hard; slow down.

Also: don’t lose your mind trying to stay in “zone 2.” The truth is that zones are a mostly arbitrary dividing point and are meant to help researchers categorize training. They aren’t laws. If you are feeling good on a certain day, it’s fine to go a touch harder. If you feel like trash, there is nothing wrong with slowing down. The whole point of easy training is accumulate enough volume where you can do it again and again, for weeks and months on end.

Why three or more days per week? It’s a reasonable amount where you get most of the benefits for mental, physical, and cognitive health. If you enjoy it, do it more!

2. Strength train two days a week for 30 minutes or more:

What kind? Think compound movements that utilize lots of muscles. Squats, lunges, push ups, pull ups, wall sits, step ups, kettlebell swings. What you target depends on your goals. But for general health and overall life performance, you get nearly all of the benefits from compound movements.

If you are time crunched, you can work through a circuit where you alternate muscle groups with short breaks in between (e.g., squats to push ups to lunges to pull ups). As these circuits become easier, add some weight. You can use dumbbells, a weight vest (which can double for rucking), or a backpack filled with books. Get creative and think progressive overload (gradually adding stimulus as you improve).

Sets and reps? There are dozens of set and rep schemes out there. Some push more towards growing muscle size, others toward speed and power. But for general health, you don’t need to get lost in the details. The basic gist is that with whatever strength routine you use, you should have a few reps in the tank when you finish. You are looking for a moderate, doable challenge. If you’re older, throw in some balance and stability work in a brief warmup.

Sustainability beats perfection any day of the week.

3. One day per week, go (kind of) hard.

What does “hard” consist of? Usually harder sessions are done with interval training. But here’s the beauty…there is no magical interval training. You can do short and fast, longer and a bit slower, with long rest or short rest, jogging or standing. Every interval workout has a slightly different stimulus, but for health the most important thing is that you do something somewhat hard. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that there is a special interval training workout that is the best. That’s a lie. We have 120 years of training history that shows we can attain similar benefits with a variety of intervals. It’s all about how you manipulate the variables (intensity, duration, and recovery)

How hard? About a 7 or 8 out of 10. Or feel like you could do 1 or 2 more intervals. You aren’t lying down on the track, gasping for air, feeling like you are going to throw up. The reality is, if you were training for performance, you would only very rarely go to this place anyways. If you are training for health, you benefit most from going hard, but not so hard that you are completely spent.

Start simple and easy: The reality is this. The hard and higher intensity work is the icing on the cake. In fact, research and training history tells us that intense work gives us more benefit if it’s preceded by building an aerobic base. Why? That aerobic foundation allows you to handle, absorb, and bounce back from the intensity. Without it, you’re just surviving, and not adapting well. If you are a true beginner, spend a lot of time doing the easy work, and then slowly introduce some intensity. Start by adding in anywhere between 4 and 10 fifteen second pickups to an otherwise easy workout, taking as much rest as you want between each burst of effort. The purpose isn’t fatigue. It’s to get your body and mind used to going a bit faster. These are a great transition workout to intensity.

Vary it up: Go short and fast one week (e.g., 8 x 30 seconds quite hard with a super easy recovery); longer and slower the next (4 x 5 minutes with 3 minutes rest at a pace you could sustain for 45 minutes); and in between the next (e.g, 6 x 2 minutes with 2 minutes rest at a pace you could sustain for 20 minutes). Use hills, the track, the road, an assault bike, a treadmill, whatever. Varying things up changes the stimulus. It allows you to run up and down the gamut of intensities, which does a better job of making sure you are getting a wide variety of adaptations across muscle fiber types. This is advantageous versus sticking to the same supposed “optimal” interval training workout every week.

Why one day a week? If you are training for performance, say to run your best 10k, you’d do more volume and have two hard workouts a week. The increase in volume (and aerobic fitness that comes with it) allows you to handle and bounce back from more hard workouts. Even if you are training at an elite level, seldom would you have three hard workouts per week. So once a week is a good happy medium. It’s a level most people can handle, without overwhelming the system. If someone tells you to go hard three or more days per week, you shouldn’t listen to them. Yes, that’s a bit harsh, but it’s also the truth.

And… that’s it. If you want to train for health, the above will get you 95 percent of the way there. If you have more time, feel free to add more easy bouts of exercise, or occasionally do another hard workout. But if we’re talking about what it takes to get the vast majority of the benefits for living a longer and healthier life, the above makes the program. If you want to qualify for Boston or hit a big time deadlift PR, it’s going to take more focused and specific work. But that’s not what this post is about. Now, let’s briefly talk about a few other important concepts for building a consistent exercise habit.

1. Stress + Rest = Growth. Don’t stack intensity!

A few months ago, I listened to a podcast that described a program for novices that went: tempo run, interval run, fartlek run in back to back to back days. For the uninitiated, that’s three hard or moderately hard workouts in a row. Don’t do that. Even if you are elite. It’s dumb. Listen, more than 60 years ago, legendary coach Bill Bowerman coined the Hard-Easy principle, which essentially says after you do a hard workout you need one (or more) easy days to balance things out. Follow that principle. Doing back to back hard workouts, especially for non-elites, is a recipe for disaster. Your favorite podcaster who tells you otherwise is either way outside of their expertise; has no idea what “hard” actually means; using steroids; or some combination of the three.

2. Don’t go there until you need to go there.

Progress gradually. Don’t jump from a 30-minute run to a 60-minute run. Don’t try 400m repeats in 90 seconds until you’ve successfully done them in 92 seconds. Gradual progression over the long haul is the name of the game.

3. Consistency over intensity. Don’t be an Instagram hero.

The most important piece of your exercise program is that you stick to it for a long time. Don’t try to be the workout hero who smashes a hard workout, but then takes a week off.

The easiest thing to do with exercise is create fatigue. But that’s not what you’re after. You are trying to gently embarrass the body so that it adapts. For the vast majority of folks, and especially those who aren’t trying to maximize performance, embarrassing the body doesn’t mean going anywhere near all-out, lying on the track, writhing in pain. That’s humiliating the body. And even in elite training, such efforts are incredibly rare.

Other ways to foster consistency:

• If you can, exercise with other people. It’s easier (and more fun) with others, so join a run club, local gym, or rucking group.

• Don’t overdo it. Don’t go “all out.” Don’t do dumb things. Injury is often the death knell to any consistent exercise program. You can’t avoid injuries altogether, but you can minimize them by following a smart, logical training plan.

• Make it simpler to move. Can you go for a run or walk near your home? Is there a nice park nearby? Is your gym on the drive home from work? Do you have a strength routine you can do in your hotel room when traveling? Make it easier to get something in, now matter where you are.

4. Think years, not days.

When legendary marathon runner Frank Shorter was asked about his training, he said (and we’re paraphrasing): two hard workouts, a long run, and as much mileage as you can handle. Repeat for years. The last part is the key. You want an exercise program that is sustainable.

5. If you want to move from health and longevity to something more performance based, get a coach!

There are a number of wonderful coaches out there in all sports. Find one that fits with your goals, and preferably someone with a history of coaching experience in that sport or activity.

-Steve

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