I WANT TO STAY YOUNG AND PHYSICALLY HEALTHY FOREVER. WHAT SHOULD I DO?

This is not an easy question to answer as many personal factors play a role, although there is a universal answer that applies to everyone: whatever you do, it must be done regularly and following a structured plan, otherwise it is very difficult to notice significant changes in your health and your body.

Currently, the WHO recommendations for maintaining a healthy lifestyle in adults take into account two major areas of work, both of which are essential:

1. CARDIOVASCULAR ACTIVITY:

Maintain regularly a minimum amount of 150-300 minutes per week of moderate aerobic activity, or 75-150 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity; or a combination of both.

Our recommendations are:

• Choose the activities you enjoy the most: paddle, tennis, football, running, walking, hiking, mountain climbing, cycling, etc. The key in this aspect is that you enjoy what you do, so it won’t represent a big effort to do them. Try to combine more than one, and if you can do it with someone else, you will achieve more regularity.
• Take into account your lifestyle. If you have a very sedentary job, apart from following our recommendations, you need to stay active during your workday: climbing stairs, walking at least 45' a day, doing small simple exercises every two hours at your workplace, etc.

2. MUSCULAR SYSTEM ACTIVITY:

maintain regularly a minimum of two strength training sessions per week of the major muscle groups. You can achieve this doing 30 minutes per session, or 60 minutes per week.

Our recommendations in this area are:

• From the age of 30 onwards, don't neglect your muscle work as it is from that time that our muscle mass starts to decrease by 1% every year, causing injuries, joint and muscle pain, a decrease in our metabolism and fat gain.
• For health we recommend a plan that includes 2 sessions a week, about 30 minutes per session is enough. You can alternate this on the days when you don't do cardio. If you do both, start with muscle training.
• Strength exercises can be done with gym machines or with exercises using your own weight at home, but you must alternate them with elastic bands or weights to combine different resistances. If you want to do it right, we recommend that you let yourself be guided by professionals who can also provide you a training plan. Muscle work is complex because many muscles are involved in training and there are so many different forms of work and intensity.
• Intensity: do 8-12 repetitions alternating all muscle groups with resting sessions of 48 hours.

An easy way to measure your weekly healthy activity is:

• Take 10,000 steps a day.
  You can measure this with apps on your mobile phone.
• Move 2,000kg a week for women or 3,000kg a week for men with muscle strength exercises.

You can measure it with the SUIFF system.

It is also advisable to do joint mobility and flexibility exercises, which can be incorporated into cardio or strength sessions.

Our most important recommendation is that you choose the cardiovascular activities that you like. And for the muscle work (which is more specific but very important), we recommend you to work with professionals and systems with training plans designed for you. At SUIFF we work with different plans according to your specific needs, such as:

• Weight loss plan
• Toning plan
• Health plan
• Plan to improve in my favourite sport

Go to www.suiff.com and start working with our method. Many people are already training with us with very good results!

In the next posts we will talk about our specific plans and our method with monitored elastic band exercises and exercises with your own body weight. Follow the plans designed for you and you will see the difference.