Everybody needs a goal in life, otherwise you will just end up living aimlessly with no purpose. When I was student, my goal was to graduate from college with high marks. When I was working, my goal was to get a car followed by my own residence. And now that I am considered a “dual” citizen — that is, I am now a senior citizen — I now have a different goal in life. I’m done in trying to achieve financial independence and dabbling in all the pleasures and hedonistic adventures that life can offer. Now my objective is to make sure that my remaining years are healthy years and I can live an enjoyable life as long as possible.
When I tell this objective to friends and colleagues, they quickly respond saying that they don’t want to live a long life. They don’t want to end up a creaking, senile, bed-ridden figure. I have no intention of living that way. I want to be healthy, lucid, mobile, ambulant up to my dying days. I want to continue traveling, working, playing, and frolicking around. I should still be able to hoist a 20kg bag into an overhead bin, walk unaided, climb up several flight of stairs, and have fantastic sex while pleasuring my partner.
So in terms of keeping fit, I have to shift towards a more holistic approach. I used to focus primarily on running, and in the past few years I trained specifically for the marathon. Now I need to do more. I realized that though I could finish a grueling 42k run, doing pushups became more challenging. My speed also deteriorated. My capability to maintain a fast pace for an hour was difficult. I realized that if I were to live long, I had to work on other aspects of fitness.
In neuroscientist Andy Huberman’s podcast, he talks about nine fitness adaptations:
- movement
- speed
- power
- strength
- muscle size (i.e., hypertrophy)
- muscular endurance (i.e., capability to perform movements without tiring)
- anaerobic capacity (how efficiently I can maintain an all-out, balls-to-the-wall effort)
- aerobic capacity (how efficiently I utilize oxygen and burn carbs for sustained effort)
- steady state (how efficiently I burn fat for long sustained effort)
In other words, a fit person should be able to perform — if not excel — in all nine adaptations.
But I need to prioritize.
I still want to run. I still have aspirations to run a marathon. So definitely muscular endurance, aerobic capacity, and steady state will be top of the list. Travel is also a priority thus strength will have to be on the list so I can carry luggage and other stuff. I also can’t neglect speed and anaerobic capacity, else I lose my breath and can’t perform in bed.
Hypertrophy is not a priority. While I want to look good, it is not my intention to bulk up. Besides, if I work on strength then I should gain some muscle.
So here’s my schedule:
- Sunday – Long steady state. Maybe a 60-minute easy run or indoor bike at the gym
- Monday – Strength workout (maybe upper body in case my lower body is tired from Sunday’s long run) plus a few minutes of all-out speed work
- Tuesday – Muscular endurance. 3 sets of 15-20 reps per body part. If I have time, I can probably add 10 minutes of hard effort in an indoor bike or elliptical machine to boost VO2 Max.
- Wednesday – 30-45 minutes of easy run. Add some mobility exercises
- Thursday – Rest
- Friday – Strength workout (same as Monday but focus on legs) plus a few minutes of speed work
- Saturday – 30-45 minutes of easy run. Add some mobility exercises
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