Dan Erwin

A Circuit Workout for This Ninety-Year-Old . . . and the Younger Tribes

Maybe this is why I'm still very much alive, healthy and running around the country. . . and Europe.

A couple years ago my coach put me through a circuit-workout for the first time. It was very enlightening to say the least. I assume the younger generation knows what I’m talking about. . . but just in case. A circuit workout involves a consecutive series of exercises with no rest periods. I think most coaches suggest short rest periods between them. But that isn’t what my coach (Ryan) taught me. I go nonstop until (I either collapse, or) I’m finished with the circuits. Just kidding. I’ve always finished my circuit. I try to do at least one a week at the local gym. It’s been over a year since my coach has put me through one, but I check in with him during our next session. (I work with him for 30-minute sessions, three times a week—MWF). Ryan keeps tabs and occasionally makes an adjustment recommendation.

And my kids and grandkids are highly supportive. I recently learned that my 62-year-old-daughter (Vice-President of research organization) also boxes—twice a week. That was a shock, because she’s also very feminine, even though she golfs and skis throughout the year. Since she lives in Massachusetts, I haven’t seen her do it. I’m certain that would be a very enlightening experience for this guy. I’m also aware that my elder grandson boxes with his coach, 30 minutes at a time, and does another 30 minutes of weights. Not certain whether it's twice or three times a week. But like his parents (my daughter and SIL), he also skis and golfs throughout the year.

The New Longevity Fitness

By the time you’re thirty-years-old or more, you’re going to need a well-educated exercise training coach. It would be really helpful in high school, but we’re a long way from that level of enlightenment. Without that expertise, your exercise is liable to be far less impactful over time. At best, you’ll just be doing some maintenance work, not the cutting-edge stuff focused on a healthy longevity.

Why do I say this? I’ve been working out with coaches for about a dozen years. Over that time period, I ‘ve worked with four different people. Three of them had to be instructed, as best I could, into personal needs. And though I’d read through plenty of books and watched others work out, I had no full sense of what an 80 or 90-year-old needed, much less the ability to focus on these needs.

And then I found a grad-school-educated exercise coach.

Some of the stuff I’ve learned about my body over the years was just plain inaccurate. Almost useless. Why? I really didn’t know what I was looking for to stay fully active. Furthermore, I didn’t understand my body enough to make an accurate decision about what’s really useful. In fact, if I’d found out what was useful, I lacked the knowledge of form as well as the diagnostic ability to know when the behavior was on target and when not. Even more seriously, I lacked the knowledge to assess a personal coach’s expertise.

How To Improve Personal Intelligence with Exercise

All kinds of advertising and web stuff out there says that this exercise will do that to your intelligence—or that AI tool will do this for your brain. Tough to identify expertise from fads when they’re being thrown at you from every angle on a regular basis. But here’s the well-researched big stuff that pulls everything together and includes brain stuff for everyone.

Research published just this year reveals the positive impact of aerobic exercising on brain smarts for middle-aged and elderly. It takes just 150 minutes per week when working out at moderate intensity levels. That’s not much of a surprise. We’ve known this was true for younger adult cohorts, but we lacked the sampling of middle-aged and older adults. The growth relationship between the physical and the mental was spelled out years ago—and no one questions that conclusion. But now we know that conclusion applies to both middle-aged and the elderly. Why did it take so long to get the research for the last two groups? It’s easy to get a sample for younger people while they’re in an education program. In contrast, getting a consistent sample from adults not in an education program is more difficult. Adults outside education systems start the research program, drop out for numerous reasons, making it difficult to develop a long term consistent sample. But this time the researchers were successful. Here’s their conclusion.

This randomized clinical trial demonstrates the efficacy (the desired result) of aerobic exercise for cognition in adults age 20–67. The effect of aerobic exercise on executive function was more pronounced as age increased, suggesting that it may mitigate age-related declines. Increased cortical thickness suggests that aerobic exercise contributes to brain health in individuals as young as age 20. (Thomas, Tanzi and Westover: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-17

What was most intriguing to me were the measurable improvements among middle and elderly adults in all three specific areas for which positive impact of aerobic exercising was already known in younger adults: fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence and total cognitive performance.