The Ideal Exercise Ratio

In the previous blog post, we explored what I beleive to be a healthy lifestyle. The benefits of this go way beyond feeling fitter and healthier. You’ll be a better version of yourself in all aspects of life. You’ll be a badass.

At the core of this lifestyle is maintaining your physical fitness. My personal preference is to mix weight training at the gym (3-5 times per week) with other activities like running, cycling and walking. “But how much cardio should I do?” I hear you ask “I thought cardio was more important”. Well I did too for quite a long time.

And then I came across a guy called Peter Attia.

He is a longevity physician, someone who specialises in studying the science of living healthier and for longer.

How can we adapt our lifestyle to these ends?

Long-Term Thinking

Attia suggests shifting from reactive to proactive care - focussing on early intervention and prevention rather than treatments after disease appears. He advocates thinking of 10 key movements you’d like to perform at age 100 (e.g. climbing the stairs, walking to the shops), and training throughout life to reach these goals.

Such a long-term approach fits nicely with the Seven Habits (of Highly Successful People) Habits #1 and 2 (Be Proactive and Begin with the End in Mind).

The Four Pillars of Training

Attia suggests there are four key facets of physical training:

• Strength training (three 60 minute sessions per week). For maintaining and building muscle mass as we age.

• Stability training (one hour per week, broken up into 5-10 minute blocks). Forms the foundation of the exercise framework, including planks, lunges, body weight squats and burpees.

• Aerobic (Zone 2) cardio (three 60 minute sessions per week). Includes cycling or running at a moderate pace, or swimming.

• Anaerobic (Zone 5) cardio (one 30 minute session per week). Examples include sprinting, fast swimming, jumping jacks, or High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

So there you have it, the ideal exercise ratio according to the world’s leading expert.

There is a lot of time commitment required here, and many people will say they are too busy to work out this much. However, by bringing this to the attention of more people, I’m hopeful you will prioritise working out more often in your weekly schedule. The majority of the population exercises nowhere near as much as Attia suggests - so even exercising one or two time per weeks will have strong benefits over not exercising at all.

In particular, I think a lot of people have no idea how important strength training is in maintaining core stability and balance as we age. It’s just as important as cardio.

Work out when you can, and make your fitness a priority - try and fit your schedule around workouts, rather than the other way around. I’m far from perfect - I struggle to find a balance between cardio and strength training, lacking significantly in Zone 5 and stability training. And that’s even after going to the gym and cycling/running multiple times a week.

Right, with that in mind, I’m off to the gym…