Friday Q&A: What Type of Exercise is Best After Age 50?

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I never recommend high intensity interval training for an hour because if you are really doing it right, you shouldn't be able to last more than 20 to 30 minutes. And for some people it's 10, 10 minutes.

Here's JJ, virgin triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New York Times best selling author. It's time to reignite wellness.

Hey, it's JJ and here we are with Q and A Friday. You've got questions, I've got answers. And again, if I don't have the answers, I certainly have some super smart friends around to help too. So. So I am going to answer a question day from Hallie and the question is I'm 52 years old and I've been working out since I was 11 years old. Go team. Go team Hallie. I did hiit training five days a week for one hour and was constantly sore. So recently I switched to three days a week and incorporated hot yoga vinyasa for 60 to 90 minutes. At my age, is this better for my fitness goals and longevity? How are our bones, muscles and metabolism affected by fitness this age and in our elder years? I hope this makes sense. Thank you. Okay, first of all, I will tell you, the elder years keep moving further down the pike for me. So and I want everyone to really kind of release. You know when that guy broke the 4 minute mile and everyone was like, oh my gosh, look what's possible. I will tell you, at 56, I'm leaner, fitter, stronger, healthier than I've been at any other point in my life. So this whole idea that we have to get fluffier as we get older and we can't do the things we used to do, bail on that. So we're just going to just drop that one by the wayside. There's a couple things though that looking at this, at any age, recovery is everything through five days a week of high intensity interval training. First of all, for an hour. I never recommend high intensity interval training for an hour. Because if you are really doing it right, you shouldn't be able to last more than 20 to 30 minutes. And for some people it's 10 minutes. So you want to go all out. And I used to always say 20 to 60 seconds. It actually can be as short as 10 seconds. You want to go all out and then let yourself recover for two to three times as long. Hit it again, do it again to accumulate four to eight total minutes of bursting. If you can keep going after that, my friend, you have not done it hard enough. So go hard. I love that. Go hard to go home. Go hard and then give it a break. So that would be every other day. You don't do that every single day. And you want to rotate the types of burst training that you do so that you don't just keep hitting, hitting your same, you know, the same way all the time. That's why cross training so effective and helps reduce injury. But also remember, your body adapts and you want to keep changing it up so that you continue to progress. Because burst training should actually never get easier. You should just continue get fitter and stronger. So you might be doing it on a Stairmaster, you might be doing it on a step bench, you might be doing plyometrics, Turkish get ups, burpees, sprinting, running upstairs, jumping up and down in a pool, dancing. So whatever those things are that you love sprinting on a bike, right? Mix that up but every other day and give yourself time to recover. Now super important as we age. So what's going to happen as we age, we tend to lose muscle mass and bone. We do not want that to happen. So this is where resistance style training is super important. Now I've divided the body into four separate parts. Upper body pushing, which are things like push ups and dips. Upper body pulling, things like bent over rows and pull ups. Yes, you can do those. Do them assisted and then power core. So that would be abs and low back and spine and hips and thighs, things like squats and lunges and step ups. And I hit each body part at least twice a week. I do sets of 8 to 12 reps because that's best for building muscle hypertrophy. And we want to build muscle so that we use it, don't lose it. Then I make sure that I don't do it a body part two days in a row. So a lot of times if I'm do some big leg hiit training, I'll add some leg workout in as well. Then I'll give my legs a break. The next day. What I look at in your routine is you're doing a lot of working out too, overworking out and not enough recovery. And this. And at any age, this is a problem, but it's more problematic as we age. Now, a couple other critical things. Number one, so rest and recovery are key. And pay attention. Use an aura ring or to help you with that rest and recovery piece because you'll really see what's going on. Number two, make sure your adrenal health is good. There's something called an adrenal salivary test. One of the hormones that can go up as we age is cortisol. Well, that can be problematic. And then also your overall hormones of estrogen starting to go down. You'll have more inflammation when you're working out. If testosterone is low, you won't be able to build muscle like you need to. And then finally, make sure that you are digesting that protein you're eating. Because as we age, our digestive enzymes go low. Now, I've had someone asked, because I'm doing this live on Instagram and Facebook. Hello. About what I recommend for digestive enzymes. Mine. So mine are definitely ones that I love. And it's safety net plus, we actually merged our two so that we would have everything you need to break down all your proteins and help with fat as well. So there you go. So make sure you're digesting protein as well. Okay, well, there you go. That is your answer for Q and A Friday. If you've got questions, I've got answers. So jump on over to JJ Virgin on Instagram, JJ Virgin official on Facebook. You can leave your questions there, especially when I'm doing something live. Or just leave them on itunes where you can subscribe and leave a review. When you leave a review, leave your question in there too. We'll grab it and answer it. Okie dokie. See you next time.

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