The Forgotten Exercise That Could Save Your Health After 50

A lot depends on this:

Your heart is also a “use it or lose it” muscle

It’s well-known that muscles in general require maintenance (by regular exertion thereof), or they will atrophy and weaken. However, this is not only true of our skeletal muscles (the ones people think about when they say “muscles”), but also muscles like the heart.

Now, of course, we are all using our heart all the time, every day. One might be tempted to think it’ll be fine. It won’t; the body will not maintain anything beyond necessity. Thus, the prescription here is to regularly get our heart out of “zone 1”, its regular resting rate, which is usually about 50% or so of its maximum rate, and into “zone 2”, in which it beats at 60–70% of its maximum rate.

To find your maximum rate: as a general rule of thumb, 220 minus your age will usually give a fairly accurate estimate, unless you are unusually fit or unusually unfit.

Alternatively, if you have a fitness tracker, it can probably give you a number based on actual observation of your heartrate.

The benefits of doing so, as mentioned in this video:

• Improves heart health, circulation, and lowers blood pressure.
• Burns belly fat by using stored fat as energy*
• Boosts aerobic capacity, making daily activities easier.
• Enhances insulin sensitivity, mental health, and sleep.
• Helps manage arthritis, osteoporosis, and high cholesterol.

*note that this won’t happen in zone 1, and if you spend more than a little time in zone 3, it will happen but your body will do a metabolic slump afterwards to compensate, while doing its best to replenish the fat reserves. So, zone 2 is really the goal for this one, unless you want to do HIIT, which is beyond the scope of today’s article.

He recommends activities like brisk walking, cycling, or swimming. You don’t have to become a triathlon competitor if you don’t want to, but just pick what you like and do it at a fair pace. If it’s the brisk walking or cycling*, then (unless it’s very hot/humid where you are), if you break a sweat, you probably broke out of zone 2 and into zone 3. Which is fine, but wasn’t what you were aiming for, so it’s a sign you can go a little easier than that if you want.

*of course the same statement is also true of swimming, but you’ll not notice sweating in a pool 😉

As for how much and how often, averaging 20 minutes per day is good; if you want to condense that into 40 minutes 2–3 times per week, that’s fine too.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More

Take care!