What's the best exercise just to stay healthy? And what frequency? I would hate to exercise for years just to find out it actually harmed my health.
Every hour or so while working at the computer, I'll get down and knock out twenty pushups or so. You'll be surprised at how fast you build up muscle endurance, and your lower back pain will be gone.
Just one data point, I know. But since that data point is 100% of me, I'm sticking with it.
Planks build core strength and the lower back is part of your core.
I would add squats to the pushup routine (even unweighted). They will develop the quads and glutes somewhat.
https://www.t-nation.com/training/neanderthal-no-more-1
https://www.t-nation.com/training/neanderthal-no-more-2
https://www.t-nation.com/training/neanderthal-no-more-3
it's easy to do almost anywhere, but far from best full body workout if you can use gym equipment. Free weight squats and deadlifts are far better.
good form is required for these, but that is valid for any exercise. a friend of mine messed up one of his shoulder from just push ups.
better than swimming?
Get in a pool and just go as fast as you can, for as long as you can. Take a short break, repeat. Do this for 15 minutes a day and you will experience a massive difference in your life. High intensity training is very good and a pool exercises a lot of muscles, great cardio and very little strain on your body.
Aim for 20 minutes each day, 5 days a week.
Has this been your experience too ? I used to bike an hour a day earlier, but swimming has done something else to my well-being and productivity.
The transformative aspect that I was referring too however was not that, more that swimming as an exercise form is strengthening, incredible cardio and learning to breathe properly is a result of getting better at it.
If you are male, you can also do intense instead of moderate exercise.
For types of exercise, endurance exercise like running or cross country skiing have been found to extend most lifespan, followed by team sports and last strength training
If all that sounds complicated, my advice is to find a job or a hobby that involves moderate exercise. Gardening as a hobby is a good example. Or commit to commute by bike every day
Being on a bike, your priorities shift to keeping yourself alive occasionally, but mostly just thinking while moving forward. It's generally a good place to solve problems for me too.
Most of the evidence I'ev seen points toward cardio for longevity. My goal isn't longevity, though.
Doing anything s better than doing nothing, so you should pursue the fitness routine that suits your goals, so that's cardio if you want to live forever, but I don't, so I squat.
Running 30 minutes or more 3+ days per week until you can run a 5k in less than 20 minutes. (Any form of cardio is acceptable and has an equivalent distance and pace.)
The above are goals that are achievable for most people given time and not overly complicated training (probably a year or two with competent programming, adequate nutrition, and recovery) and easily maintained once reached until you're quite close to death. They are, to some degree, arbitrary, but represent a good area to target to reap the most benefits without risking injury from training volume.
Our bodies were meant to be used.
(This, of course, doesn't address diet, which is probably more important.)
I feel like these goal would barely be achievable for your average man who is 200 lbs and in his 30's or 40's without a fanatical devotion to weight lifting, a high protein diet, and probably a large supplement intake(creatine).
Even then I would be surprised if greater than 50% of the 200 lb + men could achieve a sub 20 minute 5k, do 30 pulls ups, and a 400lb dead lift.
I'm not certain about the 5k goal at 200+lbs, but I think the pullups should still be achievable on a good program.
At any rate, just aiming for them in good faith and with honest effort will provide many health benefits, which was the point of my comment.
And while goals can be motivating, un-achievable goals can also be demotivating.
Regarding the comment about exercises forcing you to be lean, you might not familiar with most of the research on exercise and how it affects weight. But the best way to summarize it is "Exercise is a great obesity preventative, it is a completely ineffective cure."
I meant that getting leaner through some combination of diet and exercise will make those goals all more achievable, which has obvious health benefits and is something I had in mind when deciding on those goals.
Studies that rely on self-reporting eating history skew the results to ambiguity, but studies in which the experimenters have full and unambiguous knowledge of calories and macronutrients consumed by subjects reveal that the difference in calories digested and the calories burned explains pretty much all changes in weight. It gets only slightly more complicated when talking about body composition (basically, eat enough protein to support your lean body mass and any athletic activity), and even more complicated when talking about long term health (e.g., micronutrient levels that support long-term physiological maintenance mechanisms which are neglected in the sub-clinical nutrient deficient states most people find themselves in).
Fairly simple linear relationships can be used to freely manipulate one's weight, as shown by pretty much any bodybuilder or athlete competing in a sport with weight classes.
Studies aside, it's obvious that relationship between calories digested compared to calories burned is the main determinant of weight as starving populations around the world can tell you. You can't create or maintain mass without the required energy to support cellular metabolism. The physiology and biochemistry is understood well enough for this not to be an issue. The problems professed by the media reporting on studies are mainly ones of measurement (as people don't usually know how to accurately measure their caloric intake, which is why self-reporting studies are basically worthless) and commitment to lifestyles in which they don't chronically overeat relative to their activity level.
Imagine we gave the startup advice "make lots of money, spend very little money". It is advice that every successful company since the beginning of time has followed. And every failed company has failed to do so. However this advice is exactly as valuable as the advice "eat less calories, burn more".
It's no different than the fact that you must spend less than you make to avoid going into debt, and that you must save a certain percentage of your income to save up enough for retirement so that you can continue your standard of living once you retire. And yet we find huge portions of the US population in debt with little to no savings. This doesn't mean the advice is bad or invaluable.
This doesn't mean they're mentally incapable of saving up. That's a behavioral issue, too. And behaviors can be modified. There's research about how to successfully do that, too. Entire industries revolve around modifying behaviors to extract profit from people.
That the studies that you are personally aware of show that people have trouble maintaining a healthy weight suggests, not that it's impossible, but that the subjects don't know how to form and maintain habits.
That people can't implement advice doesn't mean it isn't valuable. At most, it just means they need more advice or counsel. But not different, mutually exclusive, advice.
I know 5 experienced weight lifters and most of them struggle to do 1 pull-up (yes, ONE). None of them run, so doing a 5k under 20 is definitely out of the question (also a factor of age and height).
Also those goals are definitely not for the majority of people, because they require a MAJOR lifestyle change (3x30min/week won't cut it here). It's achievable, but like he said, not easy.
Plenty of strength athletes can move tremendous weights but don't know how to program pullups effectively. Even fewer spend any time on cardio.
Agreed on 3x30minutes being unlikely to be sufficient, but I wanted to give more of a starting off point. For example, Couch to 5k followed by Bridge to 10k is likely enough volume to get you a large part of the way there. Then increasing your weekly mileage to at least 30 miles per week and you'll be right on your way to sub-20.
Also 30 pull ups is not an easily achievable number...my friend who is was a gymnast for like 15 years can barely do 25-30...
Don't give people unrealistic goals, they will just feel much worse and stop trying when they realize that they could not achieve those "easy target"...
Same with your friend who can do 30 . . . .
You probably only have to increase the number of slow miles you run per week to get to sub-20. That's the usual advice in r/running.
For 30+ pullups, I never said it was easy. A program I like is the Strongfirst Fighter Pullup program. Another is the Armstrong program.
Most people don't train for those goals explicitly and they aren't aware of the programming and other lifestyle choices that will take them there. There's a difference between easy and achievable.
I don't think that's a recipe for everyone: I got a lot buffer than I was (had to buy new pants / shirts because of the increase in my chest and thigh girth), I am definitely healthier than I ever was: no more back pain, no more grunting like an old man when getting out of my chair, haven't had to use any antibiotics in 3 years (I used to get a lot of ENT infections).
Now, I could have achieve the healthy part by just doing some cardio/bodyweight exercises (e.g.: pushups/pullups). Powerlifting is, by far, out of all the regimen I researched, the most bang for your buck. However, not everyone wants/needs to build muscle/get buffed more than necessary, and deadlifting 2x your body-weight is certainly unnecessary (but extremely gratifying!).
unless you have a) excellent genes for joints and all connective tissue (tendons, legaments etc) and b) super-duper perfect flawless form that you can maintain at any situation and any point of exhaustion, you will screw up your body. it might take 10 years or 20 to see it, but reaching 60-70 you will be more crippled than most sendentary people.
there are many good advices in this discussion here, but these are not one of those.
Here's a good site for reasonable strength standards per body weight and gender (though I feel the time estimates in the key are overly cautious): https://symmetricstrength.com/standards#/200/lb/male/-
Most people follow the wrong routine. I went from no prior weight lifting experience to a 180kg deadlift at 75kg body weight at 180cm height in just over six months training three times a week. No one considered this unusual. The difference is that I was training together with experienced powerlifters.
I stopped competing in powerlifting nine years ago and now lift casually to keep in shape and as physical therapy for injuries sustained from other activities. There is no way I could get from the 100kg I lift now back up to 200+ using this approach, and most people I see in the gym don't even try as hard as that. 180kg is definitely possible training twice a week if you train right.
> unless you have a) excellent genes for joints and all connective tissue (tendons, legaments etc) and b) super-duper perfect flawless form that you can maintain at any situation and any point of exhaustion, you will screw up your body. it might take 10 years or 20 to see it, but reaching 60-70 you will be more crippled than most sendentary people.
What makes you say this? Anecdotally I have known a few 60- and 70- year old powerlifters who still put up 140kg+ deadlifts and they seemed fine. The older retired Olympic weightlifters I have met seemed fine as well.