brisk walking - far and away the single best exercise. ... Five-month-long program of brisk, interval-style walking (three minutes of fast walking, followed by three minutes of slower walking, repeated 10 times) resulted in increase by about 20% of physical fitness — maximal aerobic power and thigh muscle strength of older citizens. ... The walkers’ “symptoms of lifestyle-related diseases (hypertension, hyperglycemia and obesity) decreased by about 20%.
the squat - “activates the body’s biggest muscles, those in the buttocks, back and legs.” It’s simple. “Just fold your arms across your chest, bend your knees and lower your trunk until your thighs are about parallel with the floor. Do that 25 times. It’s a very potent exercise.” Use a barbell once the body-weight squats grow easy. The squat, and weight training in general, are particularly good at combating sarcopenia, or the inevitable and debilitating loss of muscle mass that accompanies advancing age. “Each of us is experiencing sarcopenia right this minute,” he said. “We just don’t realize it.” Endurance exercise, unlike resistance training, does little to slow the condition.
High-intensity interval training (H.I.T.) - essentially an all-interval exercise involving grunting through a series of short, strenuous intervals on specialized stationary bicycles, known as Wingate ergometers. In experiments, riders completed 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the volunteers repeated the interval several times, for a total of two to three minutes of extremely intense exercise. After two weeks, the H.I.T. riders had increased their aerobic capacity as much as riders who had pedaled leisurely for more than 10 hours. H.I.T. reduces blood-sugar levels and diabetes risk, and anticipated to aid in weight control. A modified version is you sprint for 60 seconds at a pace that feels unpleasant but sustainable, followed by 60 seconds of pedaling easily, then another 60-second sprint and recovery, 10 times in all.
