Establishing the Foundation

If you didn't see last week's letter, know this - movement and exercise will save your life.

We know SO MUCH about preventable disease and aging, it's crazy.

Guess what's sitting right at the center of it all - MOVEMENT HEALTH

Most of us sit too damn much. Let's put a plan in place to balance things out, yea?

Any good plan should be built around goals and resources.

To reiterate - our goal is to establish a FOUNDATIONAL movement practice to improve health, reduce risk of preventable disease, and delay age-related physical and cognitive decline.

For the sake of this piece, let's assume you're time strained, inexperienced, and looking for a general fitness routine to delay disease and age-related decline.

Constraints can help provide guidelines for planning - giving us some guardrails to play with.

Our constraints are as follows:

• Safety is the number one priority - can't train if you break yourself

• Repetition is second - can't train if you don't want to do it

• We get 1 hour of a dedicated movement practice per day - MAKE the time, or else

• We must target everything in the list below

• We must leverage the minimum effective dose (MED)

• We must use the bare minimum for equipment - body weight is amazing

• We must maintain simplicity wherever possible

Movement patterns - we can list pretty much everything we DO in a handful of categories.

Push

• Pushing weight away from your body

• Vertical - Overhead pressing

• Horizontal - Chest pressing

Pull

• Pulling weight toward your body

• Vertical - Pull up

• Horizontal - Row

Squat

• Going from a sit to stand position

• There is a wide variety of exercises here

Hinge

• Leaning the torso forward with a braced, neutral spine

Lunge

• Split stance, squat-like movement

Carry

• Holding a weight in one or both hands and walking

Walk

• Fundamental movement allowing us to navigate the world

Run

• Moving fast on foot, generally having only one foot on the ground at any given time

Jump

• Explosive movement launching the body from the ground.

• Can be single leg or both legs

Throw

• Propel an object through the air with a powerful movement of the hand and arm

Within these movement patterns, we have a few dimensions or characteristics of movement.

Power is the ability to move your body with explosive speed, generally for 1-3 repetitions.

• Think jumping onto a step or throwing a ball.

• Landing and catching are equally important - how we receive objects at speed (fall avoidance)

• The energy system of Power is ANAEROBIC

Strength is the ability to move heavy things, generally for 3-5 repetitions.

• This could be your body weight, a bench press, or a heavy dresser at home

• The energy system of Strength is ANAEROBIC

Endurance is your level of aerobic efficiency

• Healthy endurance capacity allows you to exercise at moderate intensity for extended periods of time

• Aerobic efficiency is also the key to recovery between bouts of resistance training

• It's a key element of health and should always be emphasized in training

Stability is your ability to RESTRICT movement

• We need to have control to lock down certain areas of the body at times

• This includes knowing how to create a "braced neutral" position in your core to protect the spine

• We want to develop stability in our naturally mobile joints (shoulder, spine, ankle, knee, hip)

Mobility is how the joint moves through its NORMAL range of motion

• As we age, unless we practice, we lose our joint mobility

• Immobile joints increase risk of wear and tear, and injury

• We need to maintain or restore mobility and build stability on top to optimize joint health to improve resilience to injury and increase exercise efficiency and performance

Coordination is our ability to execute smooth, accurate, controlled motor responses

• Picking up objects from a table, throwing a football, running down the street

• Coordination is a factor of neuromuscular control and is critical to maintaining athleticism and independence as we age

Balance is our ability to maintain our line of gravity within our base of support

• In other words, not falling over in various positions

• Absolutely essential practice to reducing risk of a dangerous fall as we age

Muscle Mass is the amount of muscle you're carrying around

• Muscle is calorically expensive, which can be a good thing if you're trying to burn body fat

• Building muscle is called hypertrophy, generally gained between 8-20 repetitions (emphasizing time-under-tension and load at maximum muscle length - more to come on that)

• A lot of muscle is not necessarily a sign of great health or helpful in delaying the aging process but you certainly need muscle to maintain power and strength.

• In other words, focusing solely on hypertrophy training is not the best use of your time in the gym.

Taking another angle on energy systems and cardiovascular health, we need to get more functional so we'll use Heart Rate Zone Training.

First, know you're Heart Rate Max - simply take 220-age.

Then explore the ranges below. Using a smart watch, fitness tracker, or even a spreadsheet can help.

• Zone 1 (recovery/easy) - 55%-65% HR max

• Zone 2 (aerobic/base) - 65% - 75% HR max

General guideline - walking pace where talking is somewhat difficult

• Zone 3 (tempo) - 80% - 85% HR max

• Zone 4 (lactate threshold) - 85% - 88% HR max

• Zone 5 (anaerobic) - 90% HR max and above

General guideline - you're working your A** off and you know it

Staying within the MED constraint, we really care about Zone 2 and Zone 5.

Here's an overview of what a week could look like:

We'll focus on a little bit on stability and mobility for 5-10 mins every day.

• Monday: 45 minutes lower body power and strength

• Tuesday: 60 minutes zone 2

• Wednesday: 45 minutes upper body power and strength

• Thursday: 60 minutes zone 2

• Friday: 45 minutes lower body power and strength

• Saturday: 45 minutes zone 2, 15 minutes zone 5

• Sunday: 45 minutes zone 2, 45 minute upper body power and strength

Next week, we'll expand on each of these, getting a bit more granular on exercise selection and other variables.

Peace,

Geoff