Fitness
No gym? No problem! Here are creative ways to stay fit at home for all generations
Physical inactivity is a growing issue across various demographics, driven by sedentary lifestyles, affordability concerns and fitness accessibility challenges. This issue is particularly prominent among adolescents and older adults, who face unique barriers to maintaining an active lifestyle.
Lazy lifestyles no more! Gamified fitness secrets to get everyone moving:
In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Akshay Verma, Co-Founder of FITPASS, shared, “For adolescents, fitness often intersects with recreational activities, social interaction, and quick results. Given their tech savvy and active social media presence, digital engagement plays a crucial role. To connect with this demographic, gamified fitness experiences, community challenges and influencer-led campaigns can drive engagement.”
He suggested, “Integrating fitness apps with social media, offering rewards for achievements and organising virtual group workouts can make fitness more appealing and accessible to younger audiences. The key is to reposition the pursuit of physical activity and fitness.”
Unlock the fountain of youth! The surprising power of strength training for seniors:
The fitness expert added, “Older adults, conversely, focus on managing health concerns and engaging in safe, sustainable exercises. Their fitness routines are centred around convenient fitness activities that focus on enhancing flexibility, balance and strength.”
For this age group, Akshay Verma recommended, “Accessible options that seamlessly fit into daily routines are essential. At-home workouts, hybrid models that blend virtual and in-person sessions, and community-based fitness and wellness events can sustain engagement. Additionally, fostering supportive communities where older adults can connect with peers and share experiences can motivate them to maintain an active lifestyle.”
He concluded, “Strength training plays a crucial role in promoting health, longevity and overall quality of life, making it an important focus for all age groups. Personalised solutions can help adolescents and older adults overcome physical activity barriers, empowering them to enjoy a stronger, healthier life.”
Addressing the needs and challenges requires tailored solutions to meet the specific needs of each individual. Individuals of all ages should prioritise fitness and wellness, gradually increase their workout frequency and foster a sustainable routine.
Explore different workout options from personalised to AI-driven workout plans or virtual workout sessions and nutrition guidance. These solutions are designed to support every individual’s unique fitness journey, whether they are just starting out or looking to maintain a consistent routine.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.
We’ve long known that your weight isn’t necessarily linked to your health.
Firstly, because weight doesn’t indicate how much of you is muscle and how much is fat. Secondly, because weight doesn’t indicate what’s going on inside our body, like how much visceral fat we have (the type that sits around organs and can be problematic for health) or how well our heart, liver, gut, and other organs are working.
Yet, we’re never not being sold weight loss solutions. They pop up when we’re scrolling Instagram, are plastered all over train stations and are sometimes recommended by medical professionals.
Why, given there are so many other markers of health that are much more interesting and, importantly, useful for indicating our health? Well, that’s a big question. Instead, let’s look at a more practical question: what exactly are those better measurements for an insight into how healthy we are?
That’s exactly what a new study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at.
The Study
The study, from researchers at the University of Virginia, was a systematic review and meta-analysis of research looking at whether cardiorespiratory fitness or body mass index (BMI) had a bigger effect on cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality risk.
They were looking at this because obesity rates have increased significantly over the past four decades, with roughly two in five adults now classified as overweight or obese. With that, more people are at risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality.
Public health strategy tends to involve promoting weight loss to increase health outcomes for these people. The problem? Many regain weight within 10 years, and intentional weight loss alone has not consistently shown improvements in mortality risk.
One thing that has been proven to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and death is being fit – so much so that the authors of this study suggested it could be the fifth ‘vital sign’.
While studies have already been done comparing BMI to fitness before, a lot of them had issues with their methods. Researchers wanted to study the updated literature to find out once and for all what is the most important measurement of health.
So, they analysed 20 articles, resulting in a total of 398,716 observations.
The Results
The biggest result from this study is that overweight-fit and obese-fit people had the same risk of all-cause mortality as normal weight-fit individuals. A closer deep dive into the stats shows:
- Individuals were classified as fit if their exercise stress test score (which was either estimated or directly measured by VO2max) placed them above the 20th percentile within their age group.
- Compared with normal weight-fit individuals, there was a two-fold increased risk of all-cause mortality in unfit people who were normal weight, overweight and obese.
- Similarly, compared with normal weight-fit individuals, there was no greater
risk for cardiovascular disease in fit people who were overweight or obese. - Unfit people who were normal weight, overweight and obese had a 2-3 fold increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
What That Means For Us
Being fit is protective against cardiovascular disease and dying, regardless of your body weight and BMI.
Read that again and again.
If you need to hear it from a scientist, Siddhartha Angadi, associate professor of exercise physiology at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development and corresponding author of the study says: ‘Exercise is more than just a way to expend calories. It is excellent “medicine” to optimise overall health and can largely reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause death for people of all sizes.’
The focus should be moving more, regardless of your BMI, and without the arbitrary goal of ‘weight loss’. ‘The largest reduction in all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality risk occurs when completely sedentary individuals increase their physical activity modestly,’ says Angadi.
And if you need another reason to find movement you love and do it regularly for your health, rather than focusing on your weight, they add: ‘Repetitive cycles of losing and gaining weight – yo-yo dieting – is associated with numerous health risks comparable to those of obesity itself. Improving cardiorespiratory fitness may help avoid the adverse health effects associated with chronic yo-yo dieting.’
The Bottom Line
Set goals that improve your fitness, whether that’s Couch25K, signing up to a new gym or training for a race, rather than ones that centre weight.
More Like This
With the new year coming up, you’re probably thinking about how to live your longest, healthiest life. Of course, eating well and working out regularly help—but new research has shown exactly how much.
A recent study just broke down exactly how much longer you can expect to live if you’re active—and how much exercise you need to do.
So how can you live longer? Here’s the deal, according to the research.
Meet the experts: Ryan Glatt, CPT, senior brain health coach and director of the FitBrain Program at Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, California. Scott Kaiser, MD, a geriatrician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Alfred Tallia, MD, professor and chair in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
What did the study find?
The study, which was published recently in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, crunched data from National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES). The researchers specifically looked at Americans aged 40 and older who wore activity monitors for at least four days during the study period.
The researchers then compared the most active participants with the least active ones, along with their life expectancy. No shocker here: People who worked out the most had the longest life expectancies.
Specifically, scientists found that people over the age of 40 could live an extra 5.3 years if they were as active as the top 25 percent of the population.
In terms of exercise, the most active group logged about 160 minutes a day of walking. The least active group, meanwhile, spent about 49 minutes a day walking—meaning they’d have to add 111 minutes to their schedules if they wanted to see the benefits.
How much activity should I do to increase my life expectancy?
It’s hard to say for sure. This particular study only looked at four days of data collected from people who wore activity monitors. Still, it found that aiming for 160 minutes of activity a day was considered the best.
What type of exercise should I do to increase my life expectancy?
In general, just staying active is important for longevity, says Ryan Glatt, CPT, senior brain health coach and director of the FitBrain Program at Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, California. And, if you’re not currently very active, you’ll likely see the biggest gains from ramping up your daily movement.
“The benefits are most significant for individuals who are inactive, as even small increases in physical activity substantially reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases and premature death,” he says.
The type of exercise doesn’t matter—as long as you’re moving. “Exercise is the closest thing we have to a miracle drug,” says Scott Kaiser, MD, a geriatrician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. “Even a 10-minute burst can yield great results.”
For a bonus, Kaiser recommends making your workout a “dance routine, as studies indicate that exercises that combine physical and cognitive challenges can especially improve memory and brain health.”
How else can I increase my life expectancy?
Along with being active, Kaiser suggests doing these things to increase your longevity:
- Eat a varied diet that includes plenty of green leafy vegetables, berries, and other foods rich in phytonutrients, which are helpful for brain health.
- Practice mindfulness to try to lower your daily levels of stress.
- Try to stay socially connected to others.
- Volunteer, if you can. “It turns out that volunteering, giving back, and having a strong sense of purpose in life are secret ingredients of healthy aging and are some of the most powerful ways we can improve our brain,” Kaiser says.
- Try to find creative outlets, like playing an instrument or painting.
- Focus on getting plenty of quality sleep to help your brain recharge and reset at night.
Additionally, “we know from other studies that premature mortality is related to several health behaviors—smoking, excess alcohol intake, dietary excess (obesity), and others, and physical inactivity is among these behaviors,” says Alfred Tallia, MD, professor and chair in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. In general, people who don’t have those health behaviors tend to live longer, but longevity is personal, he says.
Still, exercising regularly can’t hurt. As a result, Tallia says the study “re-enforces the idea that more physical activity is better for folks.”
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.
Group doing box step-up exercise in CrossFit-style workout class. (Photo by BearFotos on Shutterstock)
Though CrossFit is often seen as a sport for the super fit, that shouldn’t put you off from trying it. CrossFit is designed to be accessible to everyone, with scalable workouts suited for all ages and abilities, embodying its principle that the needs of elite athletes and beginners differ only by intensity, not kind. By combining strength and aerobic exercise, CrossFit can be an effective way of improving functional fitness, muscle strength and cardiovascular health.
But if that’s not enough to convince you, our latest study suggests CrossFit’s benefits for physical health may even potentially reduce the need to use prescription drugs in people living with long-term conditions. This may offer an alternative to traditional medication-based treatment for a range of health conditions, as well as potentially easing the demand on healthcare services.
To conduct our study, we recruited 1,211 people from the UK who did CrossFit. Participants ranged in age from 19-67 – though the majority of participants were in either the 30-39 (38%) or 40-49 (26%) groups. Participants were asked about their health, what prescription drugs they took and any changes in their prescriptions since starting CrossFit.
Of the 1,211 participants, 280 said they took at least one prescription drug to manage a health condition prior to starting CrossFit. Some of the most common health conditions in question included anxiety and depression, asthma, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes and chronic pain.
We found that 54% of participants who’d been taking a prescription drug before starting CrossFit said they decreased their dosage after starting. Among this group of 151 people, 69 reported stopping their medication entirely, while the remaining 82 said they had cut their prescription dosage by more than half. These improvements happened primarily within the first six months of training.
Younger participants, specifically those aged 20 to 29, were more likely to reduce their medication. In this group, 43% reported cutting their prescription dosage by more than half, and 27% stopped needing to use a prescription drug altogether (compared to 29% and 25% respectively across all age groups).
We also found that 40% of all participants said they required fewer visits to the doctor after starting CrossFit.
For people with long-term health issues such as chronic pain, CrossFit helped many manage their symptoms. Our study found that of those participants who reported taking painkillers prior to starting CrossFit, particularly to manage arthritis or back pain, over half reduced their medication.
Some even postponed or canceled surgeries for joint or muscular issues due to the strength and fitness they had gained after starting CrossFit. Of the 71 people who reported canceling or postponing surgeries, 55% said it was because their symptoms improved, while 31% actually reported they no longer needed surgery at all.
Benefits of CrossFit
While our study can’t directly prove that CrossFit caused these changes, the effects that CrossFit has on so many aspects of health may help explain why regular exercisers saw a decrease in their prescription drug use.
First, CrossFit is of course beneficial for physical fitness. Improvements in areas such as cardiovascular fitness and metabolic health may help in managing chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
Second, because CrossFit is often done as a group in a gym setting, it fosters a sense of community, team spirit and support. This sense of community may enhance mental health and wellbeing. Exercise also releases endorphins – chemicals in the brain that boost happiness and decrease pain. These two factors may help explain why a number of the study’s participants reported using fewer antidepressants after starting CrossFit.
Third, the fact that CrossFit’s combination of strength, aerobic and functional exercises helps enhance muscle strength and endurance can alleviate pressure on joints and reducing pain. The high-intensity nature of CrossFit also promotes the release of endorphins which can alleviate discomfort and enhance physical resilience, leaving participants feeling more empowered and uplifted.
As well, CrossFit emphasises movement patterns and mobility, which can help improve flexibility and reduce stiffness. All of these factors might help explain why some of the participants who’d suffered with chronic pain prior to starting CrossFit relied less on painkillers after six months of training
Nonetheless, this study has some limitations to note. The data relies on self-reported information, which can lead to biased results as participants may not accurately remember their prescription use or be influenced by their feelings about CrossFit.
Additionally, the study didn’t track other lifestyle changes participants might have made, such as diet modifications or other forms of exercise. So more research is needed to understand the full picture. Nonetheless, our findings provide promising evidence about the benefits of CrossFit that could contribute to reducing the strain on healthcare services.
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