Training for life, not ego

How do you know the effort you put into your training is actually having a payoff beyond the aesthetic?

Not just the reflection or the weight you lifted, but something that genuinely matters: the ability to keep living life on your own terms, and do what you love for longer. Maintaining the ability to do, as long as the will.

It’s a question most people never ask it but probably should. At Cobalt we use a simple model to answer.

• How fit you are (VO2 max) largely determines how long you live.
• How strong and mobile you are determines how much you get to enjoy those years.
• How much muscle you carry determines how long those good years last.
• Your obesity status impacts strongly how your health functions throughout them.

Take two extremes. A distance runner who is extremely fit, but likely short on strength, mobility and muscle. That leads to a long life and good health, but the enjoyment of those years is likely impacted by complaining joints and a reduced ability to do the things they enjoy as they age. The opposite: a bodybuilder who spends a lifetime increasing his muscle mass but neglects his cardiovascular work. He may well enjoy strong, capable years, but against a shorter life expectancy and the odd health complication along the way.

While the above are polarised examples, they give an idea how the four statements work in the real world. The point is not to max a single number. It is to hold all four, so you get long years, good years, and enough of them. Here is how to move each one.

VO2 max

Improving your fitness is one of the easiest things to do, and one of the most rewarding, especially at the start. The early progress comes quickly and often without too much exertion, which is why aerobic classes and running are so popular with anyone setting out to get fit: you feel the gains quickly, with less effort than you expected.

The drop-off however is just as quick. Leave it unattended and your fitness falls by roughly 10 per cent per decade after the age of 30, and around 15 per cent per decade after 50. Which tells you two things: build it while you are young, and protect it as you age.

For the best results, use both steady-state and interval work.

Steady state means choosing a pace for any cardiovascular activity that you can hold at a low intensity for up to 40 minutes. Over that time your heart rate should climb gradually to a maximum of around 85 per cent, by the end you will be hot, sweaty and out of breath but likely still able to hold a slight conversation.

For intervals, work four minutes on, four minutes off, again with any activity you like. This time pick a pace you would struggle to hold beyond those four minutes, hard enough that conversation is off the table, with your heart rate approaching 95 per cent of its maximum towards the end. In the rest periods, keep moving, but at a very low intensity.

Strength and mobility

Strength is usually the thing that lets us down as we age. Slowly but surely we let go of the things we love to do because we feel our bodies are no longer capable. The stronger and more mobile you are, the longer you get to keep doing them. In order to prevent that slow decline, strength training is non-negotiable: twice a week, every week, until the day you die.

When you start, almost anything will bring an improvement. Begin with the postural side of strength, so you can hold yourself upright for longer, before you worry about pushing, lifting and building real strength. By focussing on real effort into moving a variety of muscles through their full range while you train, you will build your mobility and flexibility in the same sessions rather than treating them as separate chores.

If you are unsure where to start, work with an experienced coach.

Muscle mass

Building muscle is metabolically costly. It requires calories, and effort, and since one of our greatest evolutionary strengths as a species is conserving energy, the body does not do it freely. It has to be pushed. That means loading your body in a way that convinces it that, in order to cope, it has no choice but to add a little muscle to your frame.

Obviously those less experienced at strength training make the best progress early, and with the least effort. In order to keep moving forward though, it’s important to continually increase the challenge.

The best window for this is your twenties and thirties, when the hormones that drive the process are at their peak. After that we enter a slow decline, losing 3 to 8 per cent of our muscle per decade, and as much as 1 to 2 per cent a year beyond 50. Most people reading this are in that second group, so what can you do?

In the plainest terms: you have to repeatedly lift weights and carry loads that genuinely challenge you. Not in a way that threatens the joints or risks injury, but in a way that makes the muscle work, forcing you to produce more than you are used to in order to finish the effort. Do it at least twice a week, and closer to three if you can.

To support the muscle you build, it has to be fed.

• Eat enough protein, somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0 grams per kilo of bodyweight.
• Stay properly hydrated, with more than two litres of water a day.
• Supplement with vitamin D and creatine, both of which support muscle function and repair.

The benefits do not stop at the muscle itself. The same training improves the tensile strength of your ligaments and tendons, and raises your bone density, as the body reinforces its framework to handle the greater forces you are now putting through it.

Obesity

Obesity leads to poor health in almost every category. The longer you live with it, the more illness you can expect, and the greater the strain on your musculoskeletal system, which means more pain and more injuries. That in turn reduces your capacity to move, which hastens the decline further. It compounds in the wrong direction.

I am sorry if that reads as blunt, but it is the reality.

Obesity should not be confused with being overweight. Overweight has actually never been shown to really negatively impact health in the same way as try obesity does. It is as you slip into the obese range that the genuine damage starts to show. If you find yourself heading that way, it may be time to move the dial slowly back, with the small, repeatable changes that can quietly change your life.

Conclusion

Think of your health and fitness like a pension. The earlier you start paying in, the longer you leave it to grow, and the more you commit to the fund, the more there is to draw on when you need it. The difference is that this is the pension that decides whether you can actually get up and spend the other one.

Holding all four at once, in the right proportion, is the whole of what we do at Cobalt. If you would like it built for you rather than left to guesswork, click here.