part0009

Everyone has heard the old adage, “Work smarter, not harder.” In fitness terms, this can be more appropriately revised to “Work smarter, not longer,” and nowhere is this concept more applicable than with fitness for older adults. By working smart, you can reap the benefits of exercise in as little as six minutes. Yes—six.

I’d like to share with you a true story about a 75-year-old client of mine, Evelyn, from San Francisco, CA.

Soon after returning from a trip to New York City in March 2020, Evelyn began to experience fever, fatigue, and body aches. “At first I thought I had the flu, but then I started having difficulty breathing.” Evelyn was rushed to the emergency room and subsequently spent 45 days on a ventilator with a diagnosis of COVID-19. “It was the worst experience of my life being on the verge of death, feeling so helpless, and knowing that my family was worried sick about me.”

Thankfully, Evelyn pulled through and was released. The day after her release, her family asked me to visit her at home. This once active and energetic person who loved gardening couldn’t walk 10 feet without struggling. Obviously, COVID-19 and its aftermath had taken a toll on her. She reported, “Standing up from a chair felt like I had a 500-pound gorilla on my back. Walking 20 steps from my bedroom to the kitchen felt like a marathon, even with a walker and my daughter helping me.”

I immediately started her on the six-minute, twice daily program, and she was soon walking without assistance. “I couldn’t believe it! I got rid of the walker in two weeks, started gardening again in four weeks, and felt stronger than I was 15 years ago in eight weeks.”

Evelyn is only one of the thousands of older adults who have changed their life with this program. How did we rebuild Evelyn’s function so quickly—and how can you do the same?

Six minutes doesn’t sound like enough time to make a difference, but the results of over a dozen high-quality studies have found that short bouts of higher-intensity exercise are a more potent method of improving fitness in older adults than traditional forms of exercise. 10

Many of these studies have focused on a form of exercise known as High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). The words “high intensity” may sound scary, but you have nothing to fear. HIIT is a simple concept.

You work harder than you’re used to for 30 seconds or even a couple of minutes. And then, after you catch your breath, you can do it again. During a HIIT workout, you alternate between exerting high-level and low-level effort.

Japanese researcher Dr. Izumi Tabata was among the first to recognize the special benefits of high-intensity training. While studying the workout routines of Olympic speed skaters in the mid-1990s, he was surprised to discover that those who performed four minutes of higher-intensity exercise produced better results than those who performed an hour of lower-intensity exercise.

HIIT has been intensively studied since Dr. Tabata made his discovery, and researchers have found that it can improve health and fitness for just about everyone. What’s more, higher-intensity exercise is safe and more effective than traditional exercise for people with cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, heart failure, obesity, diabetes, stroke, and cancer. 11 Higher-intensity exercise has also demonstrated its safety for people over 60 who are untrained and sedentary. 12 Additionally, HIIT improves aerobic endurance and muscle capacity rapidly and dramatically; remarkably, participants in one study more than doubled their “time until exhaustion” on an endurance test after only two weeks of HIIT. 13

While the benefits are great, you should watch out for a few potential downsides. Because it requires you to push harder than you’re used to, be sure to listen to your body and ease up on exercise if needed. HIIT can affect balance for up to 30 minutes following a workout, so caution is advised after exercise to reduce the risk of falls. Finally, sedentary individuals with underlying cardiovascular disease are at a higher risk for complications with higher-intensity physical activities, so it’s a good idea to get clearance from your doctor beforehand.

Overall, though, the research shows that higher-intensity exercise is safe for older adults and more effective than traditional exercise despite a substantially lower time commitment and volume of exercise. This is true even for sedentary, untrained older adults who are dealing with a variety of health conditions.

One thing I’d like to clarify is that high-intensity is not the same as high-impact. High-impact exercises—such as prolonged walking on hard surfaces, hiking down inclines, and running—put a lot of stress on your joints. Those activities are not high-intensity exercises like the ones you’ll learn in this book. “High-intensity” simply means that you’re exerting a higher level of effort, pushing yourself harder than you’re used to; the exercise doesn’t have to be high-impact.

By adapting the scientific research on higher-intensity exercise to make these activities safe and effective for older adults, I have enabled you to reclaim your body’s function and improve your life in just a couple of weeks. And although HIIT requires you to alternate between high- and low-intensity levels of exercise, you actually don’t have to worry about this alternation during the exercises described in this book because I’ve designed the program to make that happen automatically.

The best part is that you don’t even need to go to a gym because you can get the same benefits with this program at home, using little or no equipment. We’ll explore this more in depth in the next chapter.