WHY FITNESS MATTERS - Part 2

CLAIM YOUR FREE INTRO!

Muscle isnt just about looking good.

Its protective tissue.

From a health perspective, muscle is one of the biggest predictors of how well people cope as they age.

Lower muscle mass is strongly linked with:

• higher injury risk

• worse outcomes after illness or surgery

• loss of independance

• higher ‘all-cause’ mortality (anything that can kill you)

So were talking about everything from general quality of life, to actually dying early.

As muscle declines everyday tasks slowly become more stressful events for the body.

Standing up

Shopping

Walking upstairs

Catching yourself if you stumble

Or even if we think sooner:

Picking up a niggle

Travelling

Colds & coughs

Aches & pains

etc

What used to be easy to deal with starts to cost more effort, recovery and energy.

And people do the worst thing when this happens…

Less activity

Less fitness

Less movement

(Less confidence)

All of which make the situation worse.

Theres a well recognised theory that many reasons for poor health that dont go down as statistics we can see, is that when people pick up odd pains, aches, or trip and hurt a joint; the reduction in activity that follows quickly increased the rate of decline in the body.

So illness and medical conditions become worse fast, or appear when they wouldnt have before.

Statistically, we measure what it is: such as oh this person had a heart condition or something, but we fail to link that to the earlier thing that led to it, such as a simple trip, or being generally weak that the body couldnt handle daily efforts and stresses.

So strength really isnt optional.

Now im going to way over-simplify this but…

LIFT!

And it needs to be meaningful so your body is challenged and has a reason to adapt and build muscle and get stronger - without pushing too hard and causing an injury or overtraining - which could lead to less activity - the very thing were aiming to avoid..

Most long term strength gain comes from sets of about 5-10 controlled reps where the last few feel challenging but still well executed.

Thats how you teach your body to tolerate load safely.

We also want to couple this with:

• Fundamental movement patterns

• Progressive overload

• Training frequency

• Recovery protocols

At Tough Cookie, were experts at this. Getting just the right volume and intensity to challenge the body without breaking it.

Its simple but often not done very well - I speak from experience. But thankfully Ive had over a decade of coaching and trained most of my life to become an expert. And our other coaches have also become experts too.

As always team - my recommendation is to let us handle the more complicated stuff, and coach and train you to your best life.

In the next email Ill be covering aerobic fitness which plays a different but equally important role in fitness.