Healthspan 4 Fitness: Sunday musings…2/23/2025
1) Salubrious. Healthy or health-giving. Always thought it kinda meant the opposite, actually. That middle “loo” make me think of lubricated. Gonna add this to my working vocabulary.
2) Botulism. A disease in which there is an infestation of bots (HT Joseph Epstein). Given our success in preventing the original I see no reason why we shouldn’t re-purpose this perfectly appropriate word for our modern world.
3) Pronk. A vertical leap without a running start. Associated with the African gazelle-like Blackbuck which is capable of clearing a 6 foot fence by springing straight up from all fours, making them terrifically difficult to keep them contained.
Should be re-purposed as a description of a far-fetched statement or other declarative over-reach. “Ivermectin as a cancer cure? What a pronk!”
4) Bland. Scrolling while riding shotgun (Beth does a super-majority of the driving when we are out of town) I came across something about the de-colorization of the Western World. Probably on Xter. Pretty funny that it happened while we were driving in South Florida, too. When I was a young boy visiting my grandparents in Miami I was always amazed and delighted by how colorful everything was compared with the rather drab tableau of the dying mill town where I grew up. Pastels were the thing, but here and there you’d find a grand slash of bright primary colors as well.
And the cars! The post I read had a graph of the decline in the number of colors we now see on the roads. Back in the ’60’s and 70’s it seemed as if every third car was some outlandish orange or green. And not just in Miami but everywhere, even in Southbridge. Now? White, black, and grey lead the way. Even the reds, blues, and greens are muted, as if grey or black was mixed in with the primary colors resulting in something which is less, you know, colorful.
It made for a fun little driving game over the last couple of days in Florida. We pointed out each joyously, outrageously colored vehicle. Each time we saw one we described a car from our past. Parking lots were just a big blank canvas of dull with only the very occasional spark of color. Where did this come from? Where did all of the colors go? And it seems to be price and scarcity agnostic; the Ferraris and Bentleys were just as bland as the Hondas and the Hyundais. As if adopting the colors of the herd somehow concealed the fact that you were in a Maybach.
Thank Heavens for the dune buggies, the last vestiges of color on the road.
5) Healthspan 4: Fitness. Not gonna lie, when I embarked on this Healthspan series I envisioned consecutive weeks of posts culminating in a nice, tidy progression and conclusion. Funny, stuff just kinda got away from me along the way. For those who wish to have things a bit more organized and accessible, and for both of you who miss my long-form posts, at some point after I finish I will put them all together in what I hope will be a more cohesive, coherent manner. For the moment, on to fitness.
Those of you who’ve been hanging around here and the CrossFit.com site of years past are probably slightly surprised and perhaps amused that it’s taken the poet laureate of fitness so long to address the physical aspects of prolonging lifespan in this series. Count me as both. Still, if you read parts 1-3 you will see a very clear and strong influence from some of the earliest foundational writing about what it is that made (and perhaps still might make) CrossFit a touchstone for the kind of physical attributes one might seek to enhance in order to push the inevitable ravages of age and chronic disease further into one’s future. While a super-majority of those who seek to guide us to a longer life lived better put the biggest premium on aerobic fitness/VO2 Max kinda stuff, if you read all the way through you eventually find an admission that one must also be strong, at least adequately strong, in order to continue to move through the paces of aging.
Indeed, they almost sound like CrossFit adherents: work capacity across broad time and modal domains.
In reality only two discrete fitness metrics have been adequately studied by researchers who study aging, aerobic fitness and strength, and so I will limit my advice accordingly. The first of these is rather easily addressed because the bar is actually quite low: get off the couch. Peter Attia has called exercise the most powerful anti-aging drug yet discovered. Countless studies have found that rather low levels of activity lead to significant increases in longevity and decreases in the effects of chronic disease.
If you want to be more analytical about this than simply counting your daily steps start with determining your max heart rate (HRM). Unless you have done VO2 Max testing or had a recent cardiac stress test you can do a quick and dirty calculation by subtracting your age from 220. There are five HR “Zones” or target levels, but it looks like only two of them really matter: Zone 2 (60-70% HRM) and Zone 5 (90-100% HRM). Sure, you can geek out on the subtleties of the other three, and good on ya if you’re going to exercise enough to do so, but you don’t really have to. 75-100 minutes of Zone 2 exercise each week, with 2 sessions lasting 10-15:00 in Zone 5 and you are likely to garner more than 90% of the possible healthspan benefits in the kitty. Walk, jog, bike, row swim, dance, it doesn’t matter. You’re off the couch.
But of course, if your skeleton and your muscles can’t cart cart around your crazy strong heart and bellows-like lungs your endgame is still gonna be lousy. The goal is to be able to lift your caboose off the loo when you are 92. To do so you will have to channel your inner Arnold and “pick things up and put them dowwwwn.” In some way, shape or form you need to incorporate resistance exercise along with your aerobic efforts. Want a fancy body post-50? Go for it. Judgement-free zone here on the blog. Be a body builder and lift weights (with proper form) to your heart’s delight.
Just never, ever skip leg day!
Classic calisthenics (pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, air squats), power-lifting (especially squats and deadlifts), or a well-rounded program using resistance bands (check out the program on billrussell.com for a joint-friendly, mature athlete-friendly program) are all options. The bottom line is that it makes no sense to be able to run an 8:00 mile at age 70 but be too weak to pick up a case of beer to celebrate. 3 sessions per week is probably an optimal schedule, neither so much that you risk injury nor too little that you risk becoming delicate.
No one should expect to pronk at 80, but getting your butt off the couch and doing both strength and aerobic exercise is a salubrious endeavor. While you’re at it, why not exercise in bright red or iridescent green kit. You know, like the bathing suit you wore while driving your baby blue VW Beetle to Spring Break in Ft. Lauderdale back in the day.
I’ll see you next week…
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 23rd, 2025 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.