Your Guide to Building Lifelong Strength, Endurance, and Mobility

Your Goals:

• Primary goal: Strength
• Secondary goals: Endurance and Mobility

Muscular strength is often prized for athletics and aesthetics, but the benefits go deeper. Being strong makes you better able to handle everyday tasks: Climbing stairs, carrying groceries, and even navigating uneven sidewalks all require strength. Muscle mass keeps you in the game of life.

“There’s a direct link between longevity and muscle mass,” says Angelo Poli, ISSA elite trainer, strength coach, and neuromuscular specialist.

Without strength training, he explains, we lose a portion of our total muscle mass each decade after age 30 — a slow erosion in function that can have serious consequences by the time we hit 60 or 70.

Regular workout sessions may not only stop age-related muscle loss in its tracks but can also prevent minor falls and mishaps. Plus, they keep you functional and strong enough to stay adventurous and active your whole life.

So, what does a strength-focused fitness program look like? Your body has more than 600 muscles, but you don’t need to worry about training each one individually. A well-rounded full-body strength program incorporates the following five movement types:

1. Core exercises work the front, sides, and back of the waist. Examples include planks, side planks, and rotational movements.
2. Lower-body pulling exercises work the legs, especially the hamstrings (back of the thighs) and glutes (butt muscles), and the lower back. Think deadlifts and Swiss-ball leg curls.
3. Upper-body pulling exercises work the back, biceps (front of upper arms), and gripping muscles. These include pull-downs, rows, and pull-ups.
4. Lower-body pushing exercises work the legs, especially the quadri­ceps (front of the thighs) and the glutes. That means squats, leg presses, and lunges.
5. Upper-body pushing exercises work the chest, shoulders, and triceps (back of your upper arms). Some examples are pushups, bench presses, ­incline presses, and overhead presses.

The simplest approach to strength training is to perform one move from each category — thus hitting all your major muscles — every time you work out.

“[For] full-body workouts, three times a week is plenty for the vast majority of people,” says Poli. “Once or twice a week is better than nothing, but three is where the magic happens.”

Because muscles take about 48 hours to recover from a moderately difficult strength-training session, it’s best to perform these workouts on nonconsecutive days.

If you’re just starting out, perform one or two sets per exercise, and focus on learning excellent form for each move. As you progress, you can increase the number of sets to as many as five.

The number of reps you perform in each set matters less than how hard you work on each set. “We used to think that you had to perform at least eight reps if you wanted your muscles to grow,” says Poli. “The newest research suggests that you can perform as few as five reps and as many as 30 reps of each set; as long as those last few reps are close to maximal effort, you’ll make progress.”

“The newest research suggests that you can perform as few as five reps and as many as 30 reps of each set; as long as those last few reps are close to maximal effort, you’ll make progress.”

For this template, fit in 10 minutes of mobility work before or after each strength workout. Additionally, complete two or three sessions of cardio per week: Start with one shorter session and one longer session of lower-intensity cardio. Add a short, higher-intensity cardio finisher to the end of a strength session, as time and energy allow.