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The article below is an excerpt from my newsletter: Well Enough with Harry Bullmore. To get my latest thoughts on fitness and wellbeing pop your email address into the box above to get the newsletter direct to your inbox.
If it was easy, everybody would do it. This statement certainly applies to exercise – but it’s not as complicated as certain salespeople might have you believe.
There’s a bad habit at the moment of people inventing or exaggerating a fitness problem, claiming they are one of the select few with the solution, then trying to sell it to you. But if you understand the foundational principles behind exercise, you can sidestep this snake oil.
The body adapts to become better at the things you consistently ask it to do. This is why progressing from zero exercise to some exercise (in any form) delivers such significant health benefits. And any small step up in your exercise routine will likely lead to further fitness gains.
If you run regularly, your heart and lung health will soar. If you lift weights regularly, a stronger body awaits. If you squat, twist and bend regularly, mobility ceases to be a concern.
When you say jump, the body tends to ask, “How high?”, provided you are making a reasonable request. You wouldn’t try to squat 200kg on your first day in the gym, for example, but you could do a goblet squat in your living room with a 5kg weight – completing two sets of eight repetitions in week one, two sets of nine in week two, and so on.
If you can apply this principle to a few fundamental aspects of fitness – aerobic fitness, strength and mobility – then your quality of life will skyrocket and you’ll be fitter than the vast majority of people. To demonstrate this, a story.
I recently travelled to RAF High Wycombe to take the force’s fitness test. There were three parts, each testing a different facet of fitness: aerobic capacity, upper-body strength and lower-body strength.
My main takeaway was that if your heart, lungs and muscles work well, you are fit enough for military service – a higher bar than most people need for everyday life. And these are straightforward goals that should be attainable for most.
Read more: There’s a new golden rule for strength training – expert coaches reveal everything you need to know
I’ve asked a lot of experts what the minimum effective dose for achieving this is. Most agree on two full-body strength training workouts per week, some form of exercise that gets you out of breath twice per week (this could be anything from walking uphill to running to an exercise class), and establishing a decent baseline of daily movement. Accumulating at least 7,000 steps per day is a good ballpark figure to aim for.
Strength training does not necessarily mean spending an hour in the gym, either. The American College of Sports Medicine recently revised its stance on strength training for the first time in 17 years.
“The best resistance training programme is the one you’ll actually stick with,” says Professor Stuart Phillips, a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine and co-author of the organisation’s new position stand.
“Training all major muscle groups at least twice a week matters far more than chasing the idea of a ‘perfect’ or complex training plan. Whether it’s barbells, bands or bodyweight – consistency and effort drive results.”
The equipment doesn’t matter too much, nor does the location. If you can do something that challenges your muscles on a regular basis, you will benefit.
Picking exercises that move your body through a wide range of motion – such as squats, lunges, rows, presses and deadlift variations – and performing two or three hard sets of 10–15 repetitions per exercise will work wonders (scroll further in this newsletter for a sample workout).
If you can structure this practice to gradually increase in difficulty, in line with your rising fitness levels, then you can maintain strength, muscle and mobility for years to come.
The final piece of the puzzle is mobility. It might surprise you to learn that the best-known way to improve mobility, according to leading human performance scientist Dr Andy Galpin, is strength training.
“[It can lead to] muscle growth and more range of motion, especially at the end range,” he tells me. “The more the stretch, the greater the results, and the more likely you are to see improvements in connective tissue and joint health, greater strength and better mobility.”
For this reason, Dr Galpin’s advice is to “select exercises that take you through the largest range of motion that is safe for you”.
If you can comfortably perform a squat with good form, do this to strengthen your legs. If you cannot, consider reducing the range of motion by squatting to a box or using a leg press. All of these exercises recruit the same or similar muscles and offer plenty of benefits – you just need to find the variation that works for you.
And that takes us to the main takeaway of this week’s newsletter. In summary, exercise is a nuanced topic, but the basics are more straightforward than many would have you believe. If you can find a way to consistently give your heart, lungs and muscles a little love and care, you will be in the minority in this busy world we live in – and the health benefits will be significant.
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