Question

My question is about training for Longevity, that is a long and healthy, disease free life. Everywhere I look, people are talking about performance, improving your squat weight, DL, olympic lift numbers etc. No one in the S&C world has set out to program a training regime with the sole goal of a long life. I asked Justin Lascek this question and he said slow lineal strength gains, address imbalances (both in mobility and weaknesses, eg dont allow a strong squat if you have a weak press, work on the press) and sprints or HIIT no more then twice a week.

Do you have any thoughts on a training regime for longer life?

All I have found is the Movenat guys who seem to be heading along the right path.

Thanks.

Answer

Thanks for the email! This is a great question because, like you pointed out, most of the informed posts you’ll find (including here at E.M.I.) are geared more towards athletic performance or even body recomposition; however, neither of these are 100% directly related to longevity. Part of the problem right from the start is defining ‘longevity’ as different people tend to view it a bit differently.

You personally outlined it as “a long, healthy, and disease free life,” which requires us to break each of those three aspects down a bit further.

Long

The first question that needs to be addressed is one of specific quantity: using years (a common and comprehensible metric for age), what exactly is a “long” life? Average U.S. life expectancy is just under 78 years while it’s around 72 years in the Philippines. A seemingly acceptable general range for a long life would be 70-80 years old. Understanding what could stop one from reaching this age takes us to our next point: disease.

Disease Free

To hash out possible reasons someone might not reach 70-80 years old, I’ve listed the top four causes of mortality in both the U.S. and the Philippines (which is where this question came from).

Top Four Mortality Causalities in the United States

• Heart disease
• Cancer
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases)
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases

Top Four Mortality Causalities in the Philippines

• Lower respiratory infections
• Ischaemic Heart Disease
• Tuberculosis
• Hypertensive heart disease

The very large commonality we see here is that the root of most of these problems is essentially in the heart, lungs, and blood vessels (which we’d group as the cardiovascular / cardiopulmonary system). We’ll definitely be addressing ways to keep this system functioning well, though diet plays a major role in this.

Healthy

Beyond simply avoiding disease, we’ll assume here that “healthy” will also imply: to be as free of injuries as possible, especially those that are chronic and recurring; maintaining a level of mental health that would avoid self-destructive behavior; and competency for general daily life activities.

Injuries seem to be extremely prevalent among all sorts of people, from desk workers to construction workers to fishermen. While no one can realistically expect to be 100% injury free for life, our aim here is to live and train in a way that will help minimize these injuries as best we can.

Quite a few common chronic injuries occur in the lower body, which have been VERY thoroughly analyzed in the article Shoes, Sitting, and Lower Body Dysfunctions. The overall commonality we pick up on is that lack of flexibility, strength, and awareness in mainly the hips and ankles tends to cause a whole host of issues. In the upper body, rotator cuff issues are an extremely common problem with issues at the elbow coming in second to that. Back pain is almost a standard for anyone over the age of 40. We’ll keep all of this in mind.

Daily activity competence covers a pretty broad range of movements and physical needs seeing as everyone’s daily life will be different (and so general activities involved in his or her life will vary) and each person has his or her own preset strengths and weaknesses. Here we’ll simply base it on what seems to be daily frustrations for a lot of people.

Bending down to pick an item up tends to be a huge problem, progressively so as we age. Not only does a lack of flexibility tend to make this movement harder by nature, a lack of awareness of proper biomechanics (and properly practicing this movement accordingly) also predisposes us to injury, mainly in the spine.

Ability to grab items overhead, move items overhead, or simply reach overhead in itself tends to degrade over time as flexibility in the shoulder diminishes along with scapular stability.

All kinds of other activities tend to get harder and harder: walking up stairs gets progressively more tiring; having to move a couch is surprisingly exhausting; the dog walks YOU; and chasing the kids around feels like an olympic event. Again, specifics are hard here because demands from work, family, errands, and personal enjoyment will vary a lot from person to person.

Mental health is a crazy (no pun intended) complicated topic that would require a SERIES of articles in itself to cover exhaustively (as exhaustively as it can be based on the little we know as a whole). For simplicity’s sake, we’ll allow this to come as more of a side effect benefit from everything else: improved cardiovascular function, not having to deal with the annoyance of injuries, and feeling physically competent for day to day tasks.

The General Recommendations

• Cardiovascular/cardiopulmonary health seems to be by far the most important factor in preventing disease
• The hips and ankles need to be flexible, strong, and proprioceptive to avoid common lower body complications
• A strong, enduring back will be needed to avoid spinal shearing and consequent back pain day to day (hip flexibility plays a role here also)
• Leg and/or back intensive movements such as picking up relatively heavy items and going up stairs will benefit from the strength and flexibility work being done
• Rotator cuff issues stem from not only relatively weaker rotator cuffs, but also inflexible anterior shoulder musculature
• Overhead mobility, stability, and strength also should be addressed

The challenge here is defining a specific guideline for training based on general, potential issues. For clarity, we’ll split the cardiovascular work away from the strength & flexibility work since the two approaches are quite different.

Cardiovascular work for general health is well structured by the ACSM and isn’t complicated or all that extensive. Simply get 20-60 minutes of easy (we’ll define further in a moment), steady work for a minimum of three times a week. This type of work usually isn’t an issue to do more than three times in a week if one desires and makes great activity to do on off days from any other training that might be taking place.

“Easy” in this scenario tends to be defined by heart rate but using the standard approximation formula for maximum heart rate has a great chance of being inaccurate because of a high degree of individual variance. An easier and equally valid method is using the RPE (rating of perceived exertion) and aiming for a 3 or 4 on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being the easiest and 10 being the hardest). You should be able to hold a broken conversation during this kind of activity.

Some common examples: riding a bike, going for a walk / run / hike, playing some tennis with friends, using an elliptical machine, grabbing a pick-up game of basketball, rollerblading, and so forth.

No specifics are needed outside of that and variety is a powerful tool. In fact, variety is arguably the most important factor since we have a whole lifetime here to do activity and if it gets too boring it’s likely that the individual simply won’t do it anymore. Mild intervals (alternating higher intensity with lower intensity) tend to be included with some of these activities (like picking up speed when you have the basketball to try and make it to the opponent’s end of the court during some portions of the game while other portions you may find yourself standing completely still for a few seconds) and doing these intervals intentionally offers some other benefits. Again, simplicity and variety are most important here.

Strength and flexibility work, as a bare minimum, should include two major movements (or the work needed to build up to them): a full squat and an overhead press. A full squat (as defined by the superior iliac crest coming at least as low as the patella while maintaining spinal extension) represents a standard of flexibility in the hips and ankles. Similarly, the overhead press represents a standard of flexibility in the shoulders.

If either of these movements can’t be completed, a major goal of training is to do work that will work one towards having the ability to complete these movements. Once they can be done, they are a large part of the core of the program. Variations such as the low-bar back squat versus the high-bar back squat or the dumbbell overhead press versus the barbell overhead press are acceptable and encouraged for variety’s sake.

To keep things in balance, compound pulling should be included. Cable rows, bent over barbell rows, pullups, pulldowns, deadlifts, or any other large movement that involves pulling is great. Don’t be afraid to alternate them to keep things fresh.

The major change in programming we use to separate beginners and those who are more advanced is frequency. Two days as a minimum is sufficient and would be preferred for someone who has a very physically demanding job (and so is getting a high frequency of resistance work as it is) or doesn’t care too much for doing strength work. Time restraints are a common limiting factor as well. As one advances, bumping the training up to three to four days will help further progress and a basic upper / lower split routine would typically be used, especially for a four day schedule (with the full squat and overhead press as the core of the day, respectively).

Five days of resistance training wouldn’t be necessary from a general health standpoint, but if the individual seems to take well to resistance training and truly enjoys the experience then that would be an option to cater to that individual’s preference. Again, remember that adjusting the training to what the trainee likes more will help with adherence which is critical.

Different repetition ranges should be targeted while the others are maintained. Training with a 1-5RM will heavily improve neural strength factors and have a high effect on bone density, though it can be very mentally stressful and rough on the joints. Training with a 5-8RM will give a good mix of strength and muscular growth but is still pretty heavy to work in as far as connective tissues go. Moving into 8-12RM will lighten up the loads on the joints and start to work muscular endurance and offer overall growth, while moving into 12-15RM will be moving more deeply into muscular endurance which is arguably equally important as strength for life tasks.

For general health, there’s not much of a need to go beyond sets of 15-20RM (which are useful for technique practice and retention and as a break from all the heavier stuff, given the intensity is low). A reasonable exception might be to simply test common markers that the general public tends to have set in its mind (at least here in America), e.g., sit-ups in a minute, push-ups until failure, air squats, or miscellaneous bodyweight circuits. To reiterate, these would simply be used as tests or for the fun of trying something a little different rather than be used consistently as an effective training stressor.

Using all of these ranges in some fashion or another is recommended since variety is helpful to fight staleness and each offers different yet important benefits. Understand that there is crossover between the ranges and they lie on a continuum, not in distinct, separate groups; using a 8RM will confer some benefits of the 5RM and some benefits of the 10RM. The further away the ranges lie on the continuum (say 3RM vs. 11RM), the less the crossover.

Amount of rest time in between sets can affect performance during those sets and consequent improvements. Strength work (1-8RM) should have higher rest such as 2-5 minutes between sets while endurance work (12RM+) should keep rest lower such as 30-120 seconds.

As a good general guideline, one to three sets per exercise is plenty. The higher the repetition range being used, the lower the sets can be. This also allows for changes in mood and overall tenacity during the workout. Some days will just simply suck and cutting back the sets helps reduce the overall load and time needed to complete the workout. Don’t forget about the big picture here.

Continually increasing the load of these stressors is important, too. With 1-8RM, focus on really increasing the weight being used. With 12RM+, aim to increase overall volume and / or decrease the rest time between sets. That weird middle range of 8-12RM can go either way, so volume and weight increases will help but so will decreases in rest time. The trainee should pick whichever he or she tends to gravitate toward naturally.

For programming, one could use simple undulating periodization where one day of the week a certain range is used and another day a different range is used. Alternatively, one week could be focused solely towards one range and the following week is focused on another. It’s important to note that one range shouldn’t be ignored too long and done at least at maintenance even when other ranges are the focus. In a similar vein, once a satisfactory level of fitness is achieved, everything could be switched to maintenance to allow time for other pursuits in life.

To train at maintenance, one can cut back to both 1/3 of the volume and 1/3 of the frequency as long as the intensity remains as high. For instance, let’s say a bench press was trained 3 times a week for 3 sets of 10 which brought the trainee’s usable weight in that range to 180 lbs. If the trainee now chose to simply maintain this, the setup could use 1 set of 10 once a week but the weight must remain equally heavy at 180 lbs. As a general rule to fall back on, one specific range as defined above shouldn’t be completely left out for longer than a month.

And that pretty much covers what needs to be covered. We’ll finish off with a recap of the major needed points and a sample program modeled after someone who only wants to cover his or her bases with the bare minimum.

Guiding Factors

• Cardiovascular work should be done at least three times a week for a solid 20-60 minutes straight. Aim for an average intensity of a 3 or 4 on the RPE scale of 1-10. Variety, variety, variety!
• Strength and flexibility work should be modeled towards the full squat and overhead press. Some form of pulling like rowing or pullups should be included for push / pull balance. Variations of these movements are completely fine and helpful to adjust for equipment limitations and boredom.
• Repetition ranges are typically categorized as the following: 1-5RM which offers heavy neural strength and bone density improvement but is harder on the joints; 5-8RM which offers a very good fall-back range for strength and growth; 8-12RM which eases stress from the connective tissue and begins to enter muscular endurance while providing good overall growth; 12-15RM moves more into muscular endurance; 15-20RM is good for backing off of any significant weight while allowing practice of movements and even further muscular endurance; 20RM+ is reserved for testing things for fun
• Rest time between sets of 1-8 should be high (2-5 minutes) whereas sets of 12+ should have short rest times (30-120 seconds)
• Progressive overload is very important. The 1-8 range should rely on increases in weight used while the 12+ range should increase overall volume or decrease rest time. Sets of 8-12 can progress well through either.
• Working all of the different ranges is important to keep training helpful for the goal here: general health and fitness. Alternating the focus on different ranges is encouraged and allows for a lot of variety in the program.
• When a range isn’t being focused on, it should at least be maintained. Don’t ignore a range for longer than a month.

Bare Minimum Sample Program

Monday: Recreational hockey game with the old buddies. Takes about an hour, give or take 10 minutes.

Tuesday: Weights day. Low-bar back squat done for 3 sets of 5. Barbell strict overhead press done for 3 sets of 7. Weighted pullups done for 3 sets of 6.

Wednesday: Full rest day.

Thursday: Morning run for twenty minutes. Lots of hills here so no choice but to do intervals. Gym workout at night. Goblet squats done for 2 sets of 15 (dumbbell weight doesn’t go high enough for working in the heavier ranges anyway). Dumbbell overhead press done for 2 sets of 15 (might as well keep the theme). Pulldowns usually feel good here so 3 sets of 12.

Friday: Full rest day + social life.

Saturday: No obligations midday on Saturday so it makes a great day to ride the bike outside. If the weather’s not so hot or time does happen to be shorter, all out for 20 minutes. Relaxed days could go up to two hours though ( since the scenery is nice and fresh air tastes good).

Sunday: Either full rest or bowling.

For further information on setting up a workout, be sure to delve into Fundamental Exercise Concepts Part 1 and Part 2

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