Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.
—JIM ROHN
• The body is meant to move, and failure to move is among the strongest reasons behind all the chronic health problems of the twenty-first century.
• Movement is not only exercise for the body: it is, quite literally, exercise for the brain. Movement makes the brain bigger, stronger, and faster.
• Movement protects the brain from the harmful effects of stress, and vigorous movement provides a good stress that can make you more resilient.
• It is never too late in life to reap the benefits of movement. But don’t put it off any longer: start now!
In fact, movement can act like a wonder drug for the brain. It protects brain cells from the harmful effects of oxidation; reduces inflammation throughout the body; helps normalize blood sugar; effectively treats depression; improves the ability to learn;1 and promotes the survival of new brain cells.2 It even helps normalize levels of the stress hormone cortisol and boosts the growth factors that can help you grow a bigger, healthier, better-connected brain.3 Movement is a wonder drug!
In this chapter, we hope to discuss exercise and movement in fresh ways and to present you with new information to inspire you to add more of the miracle of movement to your life.
A few years ago, Dr. Emmons spoke to a group of Elderhostel learners. As the name suggests, this was a group of seniors. All were past retirement age, and most were over the age of seventy-five. They remained intellectually vital and were very interested in the topic of the day, which was resilience and depression. During a back-and-forth discussion about why resilience seems to be breaking down these days, Dr. Emmons suggested one possible reason: “Life is harder now than it used to be.”
Yes, he really did tell an entire group of his elders that they’d had it easier in their day than we do now! You can imagine how that went over. Though Dr. Emmons’s hair was already graying, most of the group’s comments began with something like “Well, Sonny . . .” or “Young man . . .” But it was the content rather than the tone of their discussion that really left an impression.
Though they all lived in the Twin Cities at the time of this encounter, most of the elders had been raised on farms. They recalled often working six to ten hours a day, doing hard physical labor, even as children. They rightly pointed out that living on a farm in the first half of the twentieth century was anything but easy.
There are a couple of lessons to take from this story. One is not to question the hardiness of your seniors or to think that we have it harder now than our ancestors did. We don’t. Another lesson is that we humans are meant to move, and it is only in the last couple of generations that the majority of us have become sedentary.
Just seventy to a hundred years ago, most Americans made their living through some kind of active labor, much of it agricultural. While that could be a hard life, it meant that they spent a great deal of time outdoors, got plenty of sun and fresh air, were more attuned to the seasons—and they moved their bodies for several hours per day. They may not have laced up their running shoes or lifted weights at the gym, but they moved throughout the day, just as human beings have done since the beginning of time.
By comparison, this is the minimum amount of weekly physical activity recommended for adults by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
• At least 21/2 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week
• OR 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity per week
• PLUS muscle-strengthening activity on at least 2 days per week4
Notice that this is a weekly minimum—two and a half hours per week versus six to ten hours per day of movement! Even so, the most recent government surveys tell us that only one in five adults meets even these minimum standards.5 We’re not suggesting that you go out and exercise for six hours a day. But we are suggesting that we think about physical activity differently. We have evolved to move. So let’s think of movement in a broader way than “exercise,” and let’s find more ways to build it into our lives.
Our ancestors didn’t have to think about this: they couldn’t have avoided movement if they’d wanted to. But we can avoid it, and many of us do—much to the detriment of our brains. For example, recent research looked at the effects of movement on rats’ brains. Half the rats got running wheels in their cages and half didn’t. (There is a big difference between rats and humans: if you provide rats with a treadmill, they will actually use it! They ran nearly three miles per day.) After three months, the researchers injected a special dye to show any changes in a small but important part of the brain that controls the autonomic nervous system (the ANS). The ANS manages a lot of activities that we don’t think about, like breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. It is also heavily involved in the fight-or-flight stress response. If the ANS remains overactive, the stress response remains on, and that is harmful to both the brain and the heart.
They found a dramatic difference between the running and the sedentary rats. Those that ran preserved the shape and function of this crucial brain area, and their stress system remained quiet. But the brains of the sedentary group showed deterioration and they became more sensitive to the effects of stress, resulting in problems with high blood pressure and heart disease.6
This is the first time in human history that we have to think about movement and add it to our lives intentionally. Doing so keeps our bodies working and feeling better in nearly every way. And the benefits to the brain are nothing short of amazing!
There is mounting evidence that physical activity protects the brain. Now brain scans are showing that it can actually make your brain grow larger!
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh followed six hundred people for three years, starting at age seventy. The subjects kept detailed logs of their activities, and after three years they underwent brain scans. It was found that their brains did shrink a bit over time, but those who were sedentary lost the most brain volume, while those who remained physically active had the least amount of brain shrinkage.7 Being active helped preserve brain size.
Another study showed that walking could increase the size of the brain’s memory center. Scientists scanned the brains of 120 older adults over the course of a year. None of them were exercising regularly at the start of the study. Half the group then started an exercise program by walking for forty-five minutes a day, three days per week. The other half did not. At the end of a year, the walking group had 2 percent greater volume of the hippocampus, while the nonexercise group actually lost 1.5 percent of their brain tissue. The walking group also had better memory compared to the nonexercisers.8 A bigger brain and better memory simply from walking three times per week—who would not want that?
We work with many people who struggle with depression, anxiety, and other mood problems. It would be hard to find another physical treatment that works better or more quickly than exercise, even for rather severe depression.
A recent study looked at the impact of walking for thirty to forty-five minutes per day for five days per week. It wasn’t anything strenuous—just walking at a comfortable pace. In fact, the participants got credit if they walked just 50 percent of the recommended time. The researchers wondered if this movement would help people with treatment-resistant depression, defined as lack of improvement after nine months on two or more different antidepressants. Remarkably, the walking group got better in all measures of depression, and most of them improved significantly. Compare that to the control group who did not add exercise: not a single one of them improved.9
Another study found that even one moderate workout can raise the mood in someone with major depression. Participants experienced a greater sense of well-being after a single thirty-minute session of walking on a treadmill—just one session.10
There are few things you can do for yourself that boost your mood as reliably as movement. Maybe that’s because of chemical changes in the brain, like boosting endorphins, serotonin, or dopamine. Or maybe it’s because it just feels better to be doing something that is so good for you. Either way, try it and see for yourself the power of movement to lift your mood.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other memory-related illnesses have become more common as the size of our population over age 65 continues to increase, and this problem is projected to get much worse. There are over 5 million Americans living with AD, and more than 40 million worldwide. The risk increases as we age: one in nine people over sixty-five have the condition, but AD afflicts nearly one third of people over eighty-five.11 Given these numbers, and the serious consequences both to individuals and to society, the push is on to find ways to prevent it. There are medications being developed that hold promise for both prevention and treatment, but we should not ignore the power of lifestyle to protect our brains.
Researchers from UCLA conducted a Gallup poll of over 18,500 adults to assess health-related behaviors like smoking, diet, and exercise and to see if they correlated with memory problems throughout life. Surprisingly, they found that a lot of young people (ages eighteen to thirty-nine) expressed concerns about their memory. The researchers concluded that those memory issues were due to the effects of stress and multitasking rather than actual brain disease. They also found that seniors (ages sixty to ninety-nine) were the group most likely to practice healthy behaviors, and those behaviors seem to pay off. The more they chose healthy activities, including exercise, the less they expressed concerns about memory. And the impact was huge—they were up to 111 times less likely to be worried about memory than those who did not choose the healthy behaviors.12
Another study, the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, looked at the fitness level of 1,400 men and women between ages nineteen and ninety-four. They used a sophisticated measure of cardiovascular fitness called the VO2 max. That is the amount of oxygen your lungs use in one minute of strenuous exercise: the more oxygen you use, the greater your fitness level. They took this measure on all 1,400 people and then followed them for seven years, measuring their scores on tests of memory and concentration. Sure enough, they found that being more physically fit predicted better future performance in thinking and memory.13
Alzheimer’s disease correlates with a particular gene, known as APOE 4. This gene is involved with the deposition of amyloid, a protein that is destructive to the brain’s cortex in people with AD. Researchers followed 201 cognitively normal adults ages forty-five to eighty-eight and found that in those who carried the APOE 4 gene, exercise helped keep this harmful protein out of their sensitive brain areas.14 There are several other biomarkers for AD that are also improved by moderate exercise.15
While none of this proves that movement protects against Alzheimer’s or memory loss, it does support the idea that movement is good for your brain. In fact, comparing all lifestyle approaches, exercise seems to have the most going for it when it comes to protecting our brains from memory problems as we age. Now if we could all just get moving!
Movement helps to keep a brain youthful in two very important ways:
• It tones down the stress response, thereby enhancing the survival of existing neurons.
• It provides brain fertilizer to improve the growth of new neurons.
Stress has been seen as the villain in much of what ails us these days, and it can indeed be quite harmful. But let’s not forget that stress itself is not a bad thing. Chronic stress is harmful and may even put us at greater risk for many of the brain diseases associated with aging, as we will see in the next chapter. But if it is mild and short-term, stress can actually be good for us. In fact, we need to be stressed once in a while, and vigorous movement gives us a healthy form of stress that works to our advantage.
If you are chronically stressed out, then movement can help to diminish the harmful impact of the stress hormones. After all, the fight-or-flight response is preparing us for activity, vigorous activity, for moving as if our life depended upon it. When we are stressed and we do move vigorously, we are fulfilling our biological imperative, using up some of our stored energy and burning off the physical effects of adrenaline and cortisol. We are doing exactly what our bodies are calling us to do.
Even if you are not a chronically stressed person, your brain views exercise as a mildly stressful event—in a good way. When you choose to move, you can reap the benefits of the stress response without the potential harm that it poses. One of those benefits is that the brain makes more of the chemicals that support brain cell growth, including a protective protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
Think of BDNF as fertilizer for your brain. If you were a gardener and you placed an especially valuable new plant in the soil, you’d consider adding root starter to the soil mix. That helps the roots grow faster, farther, and more densely, giving your precious new plant a better chance to literally take root and thrive. Similarly, when you plant a new neuron in the soil of the brain, BDNF acts like root starter, influencing where new nerve roots go, pruning older, unnecessary nerve branches, and creating denser, richer neuronal networks. It even helps nerve cells connect with one another, ensuring their survival and enhancing their role in the function of the all-important neural circuits.16
Many brain diseases, including depression and anxiety,17 Alzheimer’s,18 and Parkinson’s disease,19 have been linked to low levels of BDNF. The protein protects the brain from the harmful effects of cortisol, so when BDNF is deficient, neurons are less likely to survive the onslaught of stress. Coupled with a diminished ability to create new brain cells, this loss of neurons may explain how stress shrinks the hippocampus—something we want to avoid at all costs in order to preserve memory as we age.20
Movement is one of the most potent ways to elevate levels of BDNF and create greater production of new cells, as demonstrated by the research on mice that were allowed to run on a treadmill. The running mice had twice as many new neurons as those that remained sedentary, and they had more branching roots that were better prepared to connect with other neurons.21 Moreover, the benefits of exercise on BDNF began within just a few days and lasted for several weeks and movement was just as effective for older mice as it was for the young.22,23
It is good to become stressed once in a while, especially if you do so voluntarily through occasional vigorous exercise. But if you don’t like to exercise, or you can’t exercise vigorously, take heart. As we’ll describe below, moving your body even modestly can protect you from stress, anxiety, depression, and age-related decline. Movement can give you a more youthful brain. So whether you move fast or slow, with vigor or ease, you will still reap the benefits—so long as you move.
It makes sense that if you remain active, you are likely to experience less physical and mental decline. But what if you’ve been, shall we say, reticent about exercise throughout your life? And now later in life you think, It’s too late. I’ve rolled the dice and now there’s not much I can do. If you have been something of a couch potato your whole life, can you still get the protective benefits of exercise?
It appears that you can. A 2009 study in the British Medical Journal found that men who had been sedentary until they turned fifty, but who then increased their activity level, showed the same improvement in lifespan as those who had been active throughout their lives.24 Please understand that we are not suggesting that you wait until you turn fifty (or later) to become active! But it is truly never too late to start. So if you are not active now, start immediately.
If you’re thinking, I’ll be more active after I retire, think again. On the surface, it seems as if you could move more often after retiring because of the extra time you free up by not working forty hours or more each week. But a recent study in England puts that notion into question. The researchers followed 3,334 people for several years and asked about things like physical activity and TV viewing. The participants, ranging in age from forty-five to seventy-nine, were all working when they entered the study, but one quarter of them had retired by the end of the study. Researchers found that activity levels actually declined—significantly—after retirement. 25
If you are already a regular exerciser, don’t ever stop. And if you are not yet moving, then start right now—no matter how long it’s been, and no matter your age. So long as you start slowly and do it safely, it is always good to move! Here’s how.
Remember, it is movement that we want to encourage, not merely exercise. Let’s compare physical activity to a musical composition in three parts. As in a symphony, each of the three movements is self-contained. They can be performed separately and still be lovely and valuable. But when performed in sequence, they build on one another, revealing the symphony’s full beauty and power.
Likewise, you can choose to do any one of the following forms of movement, and it will do good things for your brain. And if you really want to ensure a youthful brain, do all of them. You don’t have to do them perfectly, and of course you can choose other activities, ones that appeal to you more than the ones we suggest. So long as you move, and do it as often and as consistently as you can, you will be building a better brain. Your future self will thank you.
The term andante literally means “at a walking pace.” This first and most essential aspect of movement can be summarized in two words: just move. In this section, we want to encourage intentional movement: movement that is purposeful, frequent, repetitive, and integrated into your daily life. We will focus on two very simple, very accessible types of movement: standing and walking.
Everyone, regardless of age or current level of activity, can benefit by these and all of the recommendations that follow. But of course if you have been sedentary, you must begin adding activity safely and slowly.
Be sure to be guided by your physician regarding how to start and how quickly to increase your activity levels, especially if you have any of the following:
• a known heart condition
• chest discomfort with or without physical exertion
• loss of balance due to dizziness
• loss of consciousness
• joint problems
• medication for high blood pressure or heart problems
• any other reason to avoid physical activity
(Source: Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire or PAR-Q, developed by the British Columbia Ministry of Health)
We can safely say that few of us are moving several hours per day, as our ancestors did. And according to government statistics, only one in five of us is exercising the recommended two and a half hours per week. What are we doing the rest of the time? Mostly sitting.
Dr. Joan Vernikos was previously the director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division, and part of her job was to keep astronauts healthy. She’s written a book based on her experience called Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, where she makes the point that sitting for prolonged periods is quite unhealthy, even if you are fit and otherwise exercise regularly.
It was observed years ago that astronauts (who are generally in great shape) appeared to age prematurely while in space for prolonged periods of time. Like a patient confined to bed rest, they lost muscle mass very quickly. The problem, it seems, had to do with lack of movement against gravity.
We need to constantly interact with gravity and engage our large postural muscles to maintain healthy functional movement, muscle tone, and flexibility. The simplest way to do that is to stand up from a sitting position. That’s really all there is to it—just stand up! You don’t need to keep standing. You just need to stand up frequently.
The key is not how many times you stand up, but rather how often you stand up over the whole course of your day. It is far more beneficial, Dr. Vernikos says, to stand once every few minutes throughout the day than it is to stand up many times in quick succession. Doing thirty squats in a row may seem more worthwhile because it feels like exercise, but you get far more benefit by standing up thirty times spread out over the course of the day. In this case, recurrent movement clearly trumps concentrated bursts of exercise.
• If you sit for long periods during your workday, try to shift your position often. It may help to sit on an exercise ball or to use a simple upright chair without armrests or a stool without a back.
• Stand up several times per hour (every fifteen to twenty minutes) throughout the day. Set a timer if you need to.
• Do a couple of slow squats if you like before sitting down again. Or get up and reach for a book off the shelf or a cup from the counter. Or pick something up off the floor.
• Organize your office so that you have to get up for things like the phone, printer, or files. At home, put away your TV remote so that you have to get up to change the channel (or just put away your TV).
The best way for most of us to add more movement in our lives is to walk. It doesn’t have to be a fitness walk, though that is good too. Any kind of walking will do—getting a drink at the water cooler, running an errand, taking a leisurely stroll in the park. It is inexpensive, takes little skill or training, is safe, and is almost always available. Walking strengthens all the major muscle groups, improves bone density, and as we showed earlier, can grow a bigger brain, boost mood, and preserve memory. If you’re not inclined to go to the gym for exercise, then walking is the activity for you.
• Walk tall and upright rather than leaning forward. Keep your buttocks tucked in so that you slightly flatten the arch in your back. Lengthen your body, with your head held high and your chin up. Aim your gaze about twenty feet in front of you rather than down toward your feet.
• Relax your shoulders and neck by rolling each shoulder forward, up, and back, then letting both shoulders drop down, gently pinching the shoulder blades together.
• Bend your elbows and allow your arms to swing freely, keeping them close to your body. You will naturally fall into a rhythm, bringing the opposite arm and leg forward together.
• Take short strides, striking the heel first, and then pushing off with your toes. Use your buttock muscles to propel you forward with each step.
Incorporate more walking into your day:
• Go down the hall to speak with a coworker instead of using the phone or email.
• Take the stairs rather than an elevator.
• Give up that close parking spot.
• Take a ten-minute stroll after meals.
If you are motivated by goals or data, get a pedometer. Aim for two thousand steps per day at first, then gradually work up to ten thousand. And remember that you don’t have to do it all at once. It’s the amount over the course of the day that counts.
Find a walking buddy. Getting support from others and enjoying what you are doing are both big contributors to success. Walking and talking with a friend or a beloved pet will help ensure that you stay with it.
We recently heard of a teen whose therapist insisted that he add exercise to help treat his depression. He hated the thought of exercise, so he came up with his own creative solution: “I’ll put on my headphones, play loud music, and dance like crazy.” That works!
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have a fancy term for it: “Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis” (NEAT). NEAT is any movement that is not done for the sake of fitness. Thermogenesis has to do with metabolism: it means that you burn calories with movement of any kind, even things like pacing the floor, tapping your toes, or chewing gum.26
Here are some additional ideas for healthy nonexercise movements. We’ve added the metabolic equivalent (MET) figures just for your interest. MET is a way of measuring the energy expended by various activities. Sitting and watching TV is rated at a MET level of 1.0. We’ll use that as the number to beat.
• strolling (2–3 METs)
• cooking (2–3 METs)
• fishing (3–4 METs)
• leisure biking (3–6 METs)
• lawn mowing/yard work (4–6 METs)
• gardening (4–6 METs)
• dancing (5–7 METs)
• hiking (6–8 METs)
• sexual activity (1.3–2.8 METs)
(Source: Compendium of Physical Activities27)
You get the picture. Any movement above and beyond sitting and watching TV burns calories, raises your metabolism, and does good things for your brain. Move any way you like. Just move.
Adagio literally means “at ease” and describes music performed at a slow and stately pace. We call this “mindful movement,” which to us means slow, flowing, graceful movement done with purposeful awareness. Whether you consider yourself to be graceful or not makes no difference. It is the quality of being present that matters.
Any movement that you do, you can do with greater awareness and presence. You can incorporate mindfulness into any of the above activities or into the more vigorous movements that follow. Still, there are tried-and-true types of movement, tested over the centuries, that build mindfulness into the very practice itself. We will focus on two of these: yoga and tai chi.
Yoga offers so many benefits that we believe a complete movement program could consist of just two things: walking and yoga. Yoga is peaceful and calming yet can be vigorous at times. It involves gentle stretching but also resistance (strength) training. It is especially good for the core muscles that are so important for maintaining posture, and it is great for people with back pain. And yoga can be done, with slight modifications, at any age.
Jean Fraser, owner of Soma Ventures, is a dancer turned yoga teacher. She created the yoga component for our Pathways to Resilience programs. We find these sequences to be especially helpful because they are designed to balance what we call the three mind states. These are the common but unpleasant mental states that we all fall into from time to time: anxious mind, agitated mind, and sluggish mind.
Yoga and breath practices help us to cultivate particular feeling states and qualities of mind. When anxiety is present, we can cultivate stability and calm. When we’re feeling agitated, we can disperse that agitation through movement and breath. When we’re feeling such low energy that the thought of accomplishing the simplest task is overwhelming, we can employ these simple movements to lure ourselves toward vitality and alertness. These practices engage the body to help the mind. Choose any one of these to add some movement when you stand up throughout the day. Or do them all in sequence to change the state of your mind. If you would like to purchase a video to guide your practice, refer to the Resources section at the back of the book.
Tai chi (or its meditative partner qigong) is another great option for mindful movement. It is slow, gentle, and flowing—and can raise and sustain energy without being overly stimulating. It is a perfect addition to movement as we age, in part because it incorporates balance and memory. Learning the new postures and sequences, much like learning a new dance, helps stimulate the production of new neural pathways. And because it is so calming to move and breathe in this way, it can help tone down the stress response, further protecting our brains.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to describe how to do this elegant practice. We would encourage you to find a good teacher or a video to guide you. Our colleague, Marie Overfors at Evergreen Fitness in Minneapolis, has developed a teaching video that is easy to learn and perform at any age. The gentle, flowing movements of this particular type of tai chi are especially good for keeping our bodies (and our minds) supple, strong, and flexible as we age. Please refer to the Resources section for information on how to order this video.
Allegro movements are fast, quick, and bright. This is active movement, usually referred to as “exercise.” It can be as vigorous and intense as you’d like it to be, so long as you approach it safely, with the caveats listed above (see the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire). If you have any questions about your own readiness, or if you have been physically inactive for some time, this would be the time to consult with your doctor.
Aerobic exercise gets most of the attention in this arena, but we’re going to emphasize two other types of active movement that we think offer the most benefit for brain health: interval training and progressive resistance.
Let’s revisit the fight-or-flight response and the good stress that can come from movement. The kind of movement that is called for when survival is really at stake involves brief, intense bursts of activity, followed by periods of recovery. We are wired for this. As children, we did active bursts all the time, because it was incorporated into play. But adults tend to avoid this type of movement, in part because it can be uncomfortably hard. Why would we want to work so hard if we don’t have to?
One reason is that high-intensity interval training may be the most efficient, most effective, most beneficial to the brain of all forms of movement. Interval training does the following:
• promotes weight loss, especially for that hard-to-lose abdominal weight.28
• raises your metabolic rate for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, burning calories long after you’ve stopped exercising.29
• improves levels of hormones including cortisol, testosterone, and human growth hormone.30
• protects against adult-onset diabetes.31
• boosts energy, focus, and performance.
• helps slow the aging process.
All these benefits contrast favorably to low-intensity aerobic exercise, which most of us have thought is the way to go if we want to get healthier and lose weight. In fact, new research suggests that slow endurance exercise may actually promote the storage of fat by raising cortisol levels.32 We’re not suggesting that you drop your long, slow movement routines, because we believe they have many other advantages. But you ought to consider adding occasional brief, intense bursts of movement to your weekly routine.
Below is an interval training plan that you can adapt to whatever activity you prefer. Choose an activity you like that can be done intensely in brief spurts (twenty to thirty seconds is enough). Good options include walking or running, biking, rowing, using a treadmill or elliptical trainer, swimming, calisthenics, or dancing. Get creative.
Before you start, remember to run your plan by your doctor, especially if you have not been active in some time. Then start slowly. You can build the intensity as you become more fit. When you’re first starting out, just make the bursts a little faster and harder than your usual pace. Do the program once or twice a week. You will get all the good effects you need from just two sessions of ten to fifteen minutes per week.
Begin with 2–3 minutes of warm-up, doing your chosen movement at a comfortable pace.
Then go faster and harder for 20–30 seconds. If you’re just starting out, simply pick up the pace a bit. As you progress, you can gradually push yourself harder until you go as fast as you possibly can, but just for 20–30 seconds. That’s all you need.
Slow down to a recovery pace, similar to your warm-up pace. Give yourself 1–2 minutes for recovery.
Repeat with another 20–30 second burst of activity, followed by 1–2 minutes of recovery. Do this for 3–4 cycles at first, gradually working up to 6–8 burst/recovery cycles.
This entire workout takes only ten to fifteen minutes, but the effects will last for days. Do this once or twice per week and you will boost your metabolism, sharpen your mind, and slow the aging process.
Want to create stronger bones, protect your joints, improve your sleep, tone your body, improve your mood, prevent falls, and promote growth of new brain cells? Then add one or two sessions of progressive resistance movement per week.
Progressive resistance simply means that you get stronger by adding more resistance over time. You can do this in several ways: yoga, resistance bands, weight machines, free weights, or using the weight of your own body. Even some gardening chores count as resistance training if they involve things like lifting, digging, or hauling.
Our colleague Dave Wieber is a gifted physical therapist who knows a lot about how to keep the body strong and resilient as we move from youth to middle age and beyond. He has helped thousands of people recover their movement after injury—even helping to keep Dr. Emmons active for the past twenty years! His work as both a physical therapist and a trainer have taught him to value functional movement and core strength over the beach-body physique that we may have wanted when we were younger.
Dave has designed a total body resistance workout that includes all the major muscle groups. It is progressive, with three levels of difficulty, and it requires no expensive equipment because it uses your own body weight to provide the resistance. Best of all, there is almost no risk of injury; in fact, his program is designed to prevent injury as we age. If you want a great workout that you can do in your own home, you may want to purchase his video, Fit after 40. (See Resources in the appendix.)
Before starting your program, refer to the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire above. If you are new to resistance training, we recommend that you consult with a trainer, who can help you choose the best exercises and show you proper technique to avoid injury.
Start slowly, with a low amount of resistance and increase the resistance gradually.
Include all the major muscle groups: legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms. Use enough resistance that it is hard to do more than 8–12 repetitions without assistance. One set for each exercise is enough.
• If you want greater intensity or to build your strength more quickly, make the movements slower. Count to ten as you move the weights away from you, and again as you bring them back down. Use as much weight as you can lift for only 3–6 repetitions.
• If you do a total body resistance workout using your own body weight, as in the Fit after 40 program, you can do it up to three times per week.
• If you use free weights or weight machines with 8–12 reps, then twice a week is sufficient.
• If you do the slow movement with maximal weights (3–6 reps), limit it to once per week.
Now let’s put it all together and show you how to craft your own lifelong movement plan. But first, a few words of advice:
Movement should be fun. It ought to be something you want to do. The best way to ensure that you will move is to keep it fresh, to do many different things that you enjoy. Keep it light and playful. Move with others whenever you can. Most important, just move.
A Helpful Practice
The Best-Laid Plans: An “Ideal” Movement Plan
The following offers a perfect way to move your body—not too little, not too much—and incorporates all the forms of movement (and rest) that your body craves.
• Stand up every 15–20 minutes throughout the day. Never sit for extended periods without moving against gravity.
• Incorporate a variety of nonexercise movements throughout each day.
• Walk for 30–45 minutes several days during the week. Or bike, ski, row, or whatever movement you prefer, at a light to moderate pace.
Twice a Week
• Do 10–15 minutes of high-intensity interval training.
• On alternate days, do some form of medium weight-bearing/-resistance work (such as yoga, gardening, a total body resistance workout, or light weight lifting).
• Add a mind-body movement like yoga or qigong. Go to a class or use a home video to guide you.
Once a Week
• Do a slow resistance circuit (weight training) using maximal weights with minimal repetitions (3–6).
• Take a day of rest.
Not able to live up to the ideal? No worries, the plan that follows will still get you what you want—a more youthful, vibrant brain.
• Stand up as often as you can. Try to remember not to sit for too long without moving.
• Walk (or do another light aerobic activity) more days than not. Pick up the pace a few times, for just a minute or so, then slow it down again.
• Do some sort of weight-bearing activity at least once a week.
• Try to get 20 minutes of focused activity most days of the week. Just 20 minutes early in the day will give you most of the benefit from movement, and the effects will last the whole day.
We offer here a way to combine nearly all of what we have recommended into one simple activity—mindful walking with nasal breathing. You can set aside twenty minutes for this, or just make it part of your regular daily activities. Try not to see it as “exercise” or even as a means of getting from one place to another. Just walk for the pleasure of walking.
• If possible, go outdoors, preferably in a natural setting.
• Try to notice as much as you can about your experience: the movement of your body, your breathing, and all of your senses.
• Vary your pace, noticing how different it feels to stroll leisurely or to quicken to a more vigorous pace.
• Try breathing deeply in and out through your nose. Keep doing this as you vary your pace, and see if you can keep the breath long and slow, through the nose, even as you move more quickly.
• Remember, you have nowhere to go, and nothing to do but to be fully where you are. You are simply enjoying movement for its own sake.