Things Learned From…
Peter Attia — Optimizing 3 Hours of Exercise Per Week for Brain Health
Why do we fixate on this 3 hour a week number?
Because I think the data are pretty clear that going from 100% inactivity to just 3 really well thought out hours a week is almost a 50% reduction in mortality. […]
Meaning, at any point in time your risk of dying is half what it once was for the subsequent year.
But again, you have to structure that time well.
[A research study he likes] found that the most important types of exercise were aerobic exercise, resistance exercise, and some sort of mind body exercise or multicomponent exercise.
Based on that, this is effectively what we tell our patients.
If you’re only going to do 3 hours a week, we would say do the following:
— do 1 hour of strength training a week,
— do 1 hour of Zone 2 [training, in terms of heart rate] a week [i.e. relatively low intensity aerobic that’s mildly uncomfortable but you can still talk with someone while exercising],
— and do 1 hour of something that combines high intensity training with coordinated movements. Shadow boxing, dance class, [basketball, tennis, soccer, racquetball, etc.] something where there’s some sort of coordination of movement.
He also notes that doing more than 3 hours of exercise per week is even better for your long-term health, but if 3 hours is all you can spend on exercise in a week then you can derive major benefits for yourself if training in the way he describes above.
Thanks for reading! Hope you have a fantastic day.
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