According to findings cited in the following article – and backed up by lots of clinical research – the following exercises and dietary practice are guaranteed age-enhancers.

http://www.maxworkouts.com/lp/3-worst-exercises-that-cause-aging-p1/?e=1

1] Steady State Cardio

Cardio is great for heart health, but hardly the answer to weight-loss and fat-loss.  As the article points out,  “doing long frequent cardio sessions will break down your muscles and increase the production of free radicals.  These free radicals damage the cells in your body and accelerate aging.”

2] Low-Fat Diets

“Science has proven that fat is not the cause of weight gain or heart disease. In fact, since the introduction of the fat-free diet, the world has gotten more fat and sick than it has ever been before.”

If you’re following a low-fat diet, you’re depriving your body of the nutrients it needs to slow aging and keep your youth.

Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are known as the “good fats” because they are good for your heart, your cholesterol, and your overall health.

3] Yoga

Yoga improves inner consciousness, mind-body connection and spiritual health or whatever. But it’s not an effective form of exercise as it “lacks the necessary components to stimulate your body to build lean muscle, burn fat and most importantly… trigger your youth-enhancing hormones to help slow aging. Yoga can improve your flexibility and calm your mind, but it will NOT stimulate your “youth” hormones, according to findings.

Personally, I like yoga pants and the practices’ emphasis on long lean limbs and tight round butts.

To many, this is plenty enough.

But if youth is what you’re after, I have some alternative recommendations that have worked extremely well for me:

1] Circuit Training Workouts using free-weights and body weight.

I know that when I start my 1 hour workout, I’m in for a ball buster. I get my head focused, take a deep breath and go in. I rarely sit down, opting instead to “walk it off” between sets, which are separated by more than 30 seconds, occasionally 45 if I’m really winded. We move from cables to free weights to body weight exercises in rapid succession to keep my heart rate up and my body charged. While this is NOT the best way to put on mass and maximum strength, it is the very best way to burn calories, shed body fat and keep my heart strong. For strength and mass, we do 2 days a week of mass and strength training, focusing 1 day on upper body and the 2nd, lower. At this age, that’s a lot, as it takes several days to recover from each of them.

2. Cardio: High Intensity Interval Training [HIIT]

On the days in between I do High Intensity Interval Training [HIIT], which involves continually switching between low and high intensity ‘intervals’ between 30 and 60 seconds in length. We usually start with rope work for 30 second intervals then super set it with box jumps. Then we’ll do treadmill sprints followed by ladder work. This goes on for an hour where the focus is on driving my heart rate to 90% of maximum, and then dropping it back down to baseline as quickly as possible. The idea is strengthen cardiovascular strength and endurance to a point where the body is capable of dropping heart rate from, say, 155 BPM to 118BPM in under a minute.

Comments

Performing the workouts above also condition the body to handle maximum loads on strength training days, when lots of rest is required between sets.

However, if your only interest is in either just building mass – or running marathons – you can forget about what I just said.