What the....! You mean that's all I have to exercise to be healthy? I don't believe you.
It’s 4:45 a.m. and I put my feet on the ground. I make my way to the bathroom and turn the shower on cold. No heat at all just cold. I set my Apple Watch timer for two minutes. So begins another day. I dry off, put on my workout clothes and head to the garage.
The first thing to do is get on the Peloton for about 45 minutes. This will usually burn about 450-500 calories. I then get in a 2000 meter row. This only burns about 100 calories but it works me nonetheless. After this I will do some sort of floor routine such as the Shaun T Insanity Max 30 or a Peloton cardio routine. I will finally finish with what I call the “Vitruvian Circuit.” This is an every minute on the minute “EMOM” I developed. It is as follows:
5 pull ups
10 push ups
10 kettle bell swings
You do this for 10 minutes starting each new round at the top of every minute
It isn’t unusual for me to burn close to 1000 calories doing this routine. This is all before the sun even comes up. Sounds pretty amazing right. I thought so. Heck, I’m 45 years old. Crushing a workout like that has to be good for me. Oh, and did I mention I did some variation of this 7 days a week?
Well, it turns out I was most likely doing more harm than good. My wife would try to tell me this as any concerned wife would. She’s usually right by the way. Damn it. However, I didn’t listen. My body didn’t tell me much. It seemed to be pretty optimized for the routine. However, what I didn’t count on is what I was doing to my vascular system.
Here’s the deal, and it’s where I hope some of you overachieving Type A weekend warriors will really listen up. I was never training for an Iron Man or a Triathlon. I wasn’t even training for a charity fun run. I was just working out for longevity and good health.
Here’s what I have since learned. In 2015 The New York Times published a study that found the greatest benefit regarding exercise came to those who exercised moderately. So what was this moderate routine? I’m going to explain it in detail here. You might want to highlight this or fire up your Evernote to save this piece of the article. Are you ready?
Ok. Here it is. Walking. Yup. That’s right. Walking for as little as 450 minutes per week a little more than an hour per day can yield huge health benefits.
Here’s what’s really amazing. People who followed routines like mine in addition to the 450 minutes of walking saw little to know overall benefits. When I learned this it was somewhat of a kick in the gut. I’m not going to lie. I took pride in my workouts. I considered them an incredible achievement. Now I had to re-think everything.
It turns out the secret sauce is a combination of the two. Here’s what you need to know.
You need to walk. Count those steps. I have been amazed at how much sedentary time I get throughout the day. Further even though I did those gnarly workouts every morning sitting for so long throughout the rest of the day cancelled out much of the benefit
You need to get your heart rate up high, really high BUT not for very long. According to researcher Klaus Gebel if you can get 150 minutes of exercise per week of which 20 -30 minutes is vigorous you will give yourself a great boost in longevity
Finally you need to build strength. I’ve asked several leading physicians what I can do to increase chances of a long healthy life, and they all tell me resistance work to build muscle. Never have I had one tell me to increase cardio. One such physician is Dr. Michael Eades the NYT best selling author or “Protein Power.” You can hear my full interview with him HERE.
That’s it. That’s all you have to do. I have adjusted my routine considerably. It’s still extensive, but I have cut way back on the cardio, added more strength work, and the results have been fantastic.
The moral of the story is this. Sometimes in our effort to “improve always in ALL ways” we are overdosing on the medicine, which can be worse than the illness.
JW out….