Let’s start off today’s message using two popular concepts. Longevity, and anti-aging. Both of these hint at our chosen topic, but neither of them quite do it justice.
Longevity simply describes the condition of living a long life. Some will suggest that by default this long life needs to be relatively healthy in order to achieve its potential. But statistics don’t fully support that line of thinking. There are a lot of people who live a long time, but they aren’t necessarily all that healthy in their last 10-30 years.
Anti-aging conjures up the notion that there are practices which can halt or even reverse the aging process. That’s sort of true. Maybe. But there’s a hell of a lot of snake oil being pushed on us in this pursuit. Sure, you can improve health and fitness at any age but the greatest degree of change at any moment in the lifespan occurs when you’re digging out of a hole of negativity. In other words, a very unfit and unhealthy individual can right the ship significantly, but someone who is already scoring at a high level in those categories is often hard-pressed to make additional change in a positive direction. Aging is, in fact, inevitable. Our goal with lifestyle interventions is to make the decline associated with aging incremental and barely detectable.
Enter the concept of youthfulness. You can’t get younger but you certainly can maintain your youthful vitality for most of your life. OK…you gotta get healthy first. Body composition, systemic function, mental well-being. These and a few others must form the foundation. Then you need to acquire baseline fitness across a number of categories. Strength, speed, power, agility, and endurance. You need to be strong enough. Fast enough. Powerful enough. Agile enough. Durable enough. For your body (and mind) to function optimally in your life (in pursuit of your goals and fulfillment of your obligations). Take all this to a high level and call it peak performance. Sounds good.
Youthful vitality is an expression of robustness and resilience unique to the Lifetime Athlete. Those who know precisely what the fountain of youth is and who use this miracle to train for LIFE. Intensity is this miracle. I’d call it a secret but it’s really not private information.
We often discuss a variety of parameters considering program design. Volume, frequency, duration, density. They all matter. But intensity takes on a very unique role in training. It’s the stimulus that preserves (prolongs) youthfulness.
If we start with a very general definition, intensity is represented by going fast, hard, or heavy. We have many ways, both objective and subjective, to classify intensity. Percentages of maximums in reps, heart rate, velocity, and others. Ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) or repetitions in reserve (RIR). Even terms like easy, moderate, and hard. And the list goes on.
It is the use of high intensity which stimulates fast-twitch muscle fiber recruitment, motor program refinement, muscle protein synthesis, and bone mineralization. This is one reason why you see kids on the playground sprinting, jumping, climbing, throwing, and exploring how much they can lift and carry. These behaviors are hard-wired into the human development process. But I will posit that they are critical skills intended to be retained in the organism through the lifespan.
Intensity, more than any other exercise parameter, suffers from the “use it or lose it” philosophy. We don’t really get weak, slow, stiff, and fragile just because we get older. For the most part, the properties of strength, speed, power, and agility fade away because they are utilized inadequately. There is not enough exposure in most aging adults (and many younger people) to affect the desired hormonal signaling and maintenance of high-level function.
There is good news and cautionary advice (no bad news) in this situation. The good news is that you can benefit from high-intensity exercise at any age. The cautionary advice is that you have to be extremely careful in the application of this stimulus. Intensity is kryptonite in the improper (excessive) dose. And this dose is extremely variable from person to person depending on genetics and conditioning status. It’s also exceptionally dynamic within the individual because tolerance to intense training fluctuates with fitness levels.
My recommendation is that everyone should consider ways to maintain a small to moderate amount (you never need massive amounts) of high intensity training in their programs. This is not to suggest that one should go about this in a silly, perhaps we should say “willy-nilly,” manner. Intensity, such as using heavy loads and fast movements should be approached thoughtfully. There are many choices in exercise and sport selection. You don’t need to do all of them. You just need to find a few high intensity applications which you like and that work well for your body. Always avoid pain (of the orthopedic variety). If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t right. And there is usually a modification or alternative.
Our challenge in aging gracefully lies in maintaining high functionality and performance capabilities. In order for this to be most effective, high intensity training is required. It doesn’t take much to get outstanding results. That lively exhilaration you feel when high intensity training is done right, and the fitness you maintain as a result…makes you feel like a kid again. Like you’ve been to the fountain of youth.