If you are a man over 40, here is my letter to you. See if it makes sense. It’s the five facts that all men over 40 face.
Dear Man over 40 who wants to be fitter:
How would you like to be younger than your age, every year, for the rest of your life?
Read below and learn the five facts and your simple choice.
If you’re a man over 40, you may have let your health and fitness go a bit. You can’t ignore it anymore and you know it. Or, you may be in pretty good shape now and looking to take it up a notch or two.
Either way, you want to be more fit than you are right now. And you remember how it feels to be fit.
Imagine, for example, if you could predict – with pretty much 100% accuracy – something as important as your ongoing fitness level and feeling of well-being as you move into middle age and beyond? And if you struggle to maintain a decent fitness level, wouldn’t it be nice to end that struggle once and for all?
Sound impossible?
You can make a simple choice that will empower you to make exactly such a prediction and end the ongoing fitness churn we will all experience.
Here are five simple facts for you to consider:
Fact 1 – Most fitness programs are too hard, take too much time, and are just not doable for busy men over 40.
Through no fault of your own, fitness programs are just not doable by men over 40. If you look at why most men aren’t fit, it’s because of two factors:
The energy and level of commitment demanded by the fitness program is too high. You may have tried and stopped these kinds of programs because they’re not sustainable.
or, more likely ….
The fitness program takes too much time and therefore loses out to family and work priorities in middle-aged life. You’re just way too busy and facing the “No Time For Exercise” conspiracy.
The answer for men over 40 lies in a fitness program that addresses both of these problems. It can’t be too hard, or time consuming, and it has to fit easily into busy lives.
Fact 2 – The consequences of men doing less and less exercise as they hit 40 and beyond are predictable.
Doing nothing has more serious consequences after 40. It all stems from putting fitness on the back burner. Your health and fitness levels quietly decline. Meanwhile life’s demands increase because work and family life get busier. This creates a “Performance Gap” where life’s demands exceed your physical capacity. You may feel a bit more stressed, tired, or even catch a few more colds. You pack on a few pounds around the waist. You slow down at your favourite sports. Your joints and muscles are sore and maybe you get a little short of breath. And you experience these weird nagging little sports injuries. This is your body complaining that it’s not trained. It’s completely predictable.
But, it gets worse. If in the short term your capacity for life is diminished around 40, in the long term physical inactivity can kill you. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) physical inactivity is the #4 ranked mortality risk worldwide, killing 3.2 million adults a year. And, here’s the kicker, 60% of the world’s adult population is considered physically inactive.
This is not something that might happen when men can’t, for whatever reason, address physical fitness. It is something that will happen. It’s natural to conclude it’s aging. It’s not. It’s a quiet decline caused by inactivity and no habitual exercise. Clearly doing nothing is not an option if men want to maintain a decent level of fitness as they age.
Fact 3 – Inactivity and sitting at work or at home for hours a day alters the posture of men over 40 as the body naturally adapts to day-to-day conditioning.
Inactivity and sitting is a terrible combination for your posture. Your body is hunched over, the head goes forward, the shoulders are hunched, the chest is short, the back is rounded, and the stomach is out. The whole thing is held together by your ligaments. Your muscles are on holiday. Your upper back and stomach become weak over time.
Your body is a master of adapting. Over time, it adapts to poor posture, then eventually the body can become overcome by muscular imbalances. Then, you have to go for treatment from your doctor, physiotherapist, massage therapist, or chiropractor. You are looking for pain relief. But, the root cause doesn’t go away. That’s why when you stop doing your physiotherapy exercises, the pain can recur. It makes perfect sense that it would recur.
Improving posture enables the body to move naturally. Sitting is a fact of life and therefore, a strategy to restore posture is critical. The body adapts and responds positively to specific daily exercises to strengthen and lengthen muscles.
Fact 4 – You don’t have to invest a ton of time or money to impact your fitness level.
If you are currently working out at the local fitness club or gym and you love it, then keep doing it. However, many of us can’t commit to time-consuming or expensive fitness programs. And how many people do you know who have purchased home gyms that are now towel racks? The challenge is to find an exercise routine that works longterm.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reduced the recommended activity time from 300 minutes a week to 150 minutes a week. That’s about 20 minutes of activity a day. Many studies suggest the biggest health impact is moving from zero activity to some activity. All activity, including walking, counts and exercise time adds up automatically meaning several short sessions are equivalent to one long session. You can also save exercise time with intensity. For example, Martin Gibala of McMaster University found that 2-3 minutes of 30-second intense cardio bursts equaled 90 to 120 minutes of long slow cardio. Izumi Tabata of Japan designed a groundbreaking 4 minute program for worldclass speed skaters with 8 high intensity exercises of 30 seconds each (including 10 seconds rest). Finally, the Mayo Clinic recommends that a balanced exercise program include flexibility, strength, cardiovascular, and balance elements for older adults.
There is no argument that more exercise isn’t a good thing. However, busy men with limited time, can improve their health and fitness outlook with a small dose of daily exercise. Common sense and research suggest that shorter exercise programs are more likely to be done by more people more often. And shorter exercise can fit alongside and support everything else you’re doing.
Fact 5 – Men over 40 who are physically fit and maintain their fitness level year after year know that fitness has to be a daily habit.
If you think about the men you know who are fit, how do they achieve it? Is it their metabolism? Is it their genes? Are they any more capable than you are?
They achieve nothing that you cannot achieve.
These men are giving themselves a daily dose of habitual exercise. It’s just like brushing your teeth or taking a shower – it’s something they do every day. Really fit men don’t focus on the symptoms of declining fitness. They don’t worry too much about bulging waistlines, or shortness of breath, or weakening muscles, because those are symptoms. They focus instead on the causes or drivers of fitness, which are habitual fitness activities and a balanced approach to eating.
A fitness program for men over 40 needs to apply this insight from fit older men: make exercise a daily habit that is automatic. Good habits only develop when they are achievable – meaning they’re easy and fit in our lives.
The Simple Choice.
So, here’s the simple choice: You can start a long, slow, but inevitable decline in health and fitness and eventually wonder how you got there. We all know time flies and life gets shorter.
Or, right now, you can do something for yourself that will reverse the decline. It will help you enjoy life more every day and put you in a much better position 1,2,5,10 or 20 years down the road with your fitness and health well-being.
Something that is:
Designed for busy men and deliberately built around the fact that fitness only succeeds long-term when it’s a habit.
- For Men over 40 because it is built specifically for your fitness needs.
- Simple because it is easy for you to do, easy for you to follow.
- Convenient because you can do these exercises anywhere, anytime, at your convenience without special equipment.
- Balanced and Complete because your strength, flexibility, cardio and balance elements are all conditioned for daily life.
- For Life because you create a gentle doable exercise habit that makes you feel great and increases your capacity to enjoy life.
In just 10 minutes of exercise a day.
Here is what it will do for you.
It will help you make the next 40 years count. You’ll feel younger than your age every year for the rest of your life. You’ll have the benefit of your older, experienced head combined with a younger, invigorated body that you haven’t felt in years. It will feel good. Remember?
It will gently but inevitably – with 100% predictability — get you back in shape. The impact of 10 minutes of daily exercise is supported by research and cemented by common sense. You can do this. It will give you a daily energy surge.
It will give you “all sport” capability, and insulate you from nagging hamstring, groin, hip, shoulder, back, and other sports-related injuries. Every workout has flexibility, strength, and cardio elements. It supports everything you do now. It will be the bridge to other sports as you get fitter. And it will rebalance your posture.
It will become the missing habit that you need to achieve fitness because it will fit into your busy life. It is not an extreme “feel the burn” program that demands unreasonable changes in your life. If you’re looking for that kind of thing, this isn’t it.
And it will do all of this anywhere and anytime. At home. When you travel. At work. All you need is a mat, some comfortable shorts and a t-shirt, and your bare feet. There’s no expensive equipment. No travel to or line ups at the gym. It’s private, quiet, and relaxing.
And unlike the gym, an expensive piece of equipment, or programs that require expensive fees, the program will do all of this for reasonable cost – less that you spend on a game of golf or a night out with your friends at a pub.
All for $47.
It’s designed to be doable – you can exercise for 10 minutes. And it’s designed to be affordable – you can invest less than $50 on yourself for a lifetime of fitness.
So – with that kind of choice, what are you going to do?
To your fitness. For your life.
Colin McAlpin
Creator
Fitness in 10 for Men