Kettlebells for longevity

April 13th.









" We are made to persist. That is how we find out who we really are."


Tobias Wolff

WO du Jour:
warmup: foam roller, bands, joint mobility, Jump rope for 2 min. 100 admats.

TGU: 5 sets on each side.
Windmill 2 set each side.
KB "Griptastic" 12kg for 16 min. without setting the KB down.
for speed:
BB deadlifts: 225# 8 sets of three reps
BB standing press: 8sets of three reps
total session: 1:12:00

later in the day: bike sprints for 35 min. mostly on flat road.
longevity in regards to maintaining fitness regiment, takes a few considerations as one ages.

First you must have goals to focus on in short and long term, even if you are just maintaining a moderate level of fitness. By having a focused goal of some degree, you can keep to a continuous program instead of haphazard, or freelance workouts. I write them down, review them often, and alter them if they are working or not. A simple goal would be to do a long cycle with 2-24kg Kettlebells for 50 reps. The goal is a measurable performance, just like running a 5K in 20 min. Just don't put the goals too far away from reality.

The most important consideration when training after many years, is consistency. You would think you would just get into a grind and never stop, but more often the training has lost some of its shine. There is a tendency to slack off or go into an comfortable level of complacency. After some time, you start to have more and more time off, or breaks in training,therefore unless you are consistent regardless of age you will unlikely achieved "all you can". Maintain the effort rain or shine, day in day out, year round. Even a short session keeps your mind and body in the game.

Train to prevent injury all the time. As you age you don't recoup or heal as fast, so you have to keep in you plan some level of body maintenance, such as joint mobility, flexibility, body weight control, rest. If you don't maintain joint health especially, any thing you do will be have limitations.

Tai Chi and yoga can add balance to any ones training. They are not as physical, but they have a unique body mind connection. when you do hardcore strength training your body can become rigid and joints tight. By adding tai chi,yoga or qi gong you concentrate on the much needed joint health and mobility without the body trauma.

Adding more verity to your training will keep interest high and provide a much needed balance that mostly was not used when training for sports or specialized events in the past. There are so many ways to add cardio, strength, endurance components to your fitness training. Crossfit and kettlebells are to good examples of activities that would take a several life times to become stale.
Lastly as we age we need to concentrate on maintaining muscle balance to body fat ratio. To accomplish this, all exercise should have a strength component and intensity levels to generate growth hormone. So as you train, you should spend more time on shorter more intense training sessions and less on longer low energy session of greater than one hour in duration.