Exercise for longevity: How muscle mass improves your lifespan
Exercise for longevity: How muscle mass improves your lifespan
An interview with exercise physiologist and exercise for longevity expert, Jonathan Freeman. There's so much helpful health advice packed into this one episode.
This week on the second episode of Prime Time with Bec Wilson, we learn all about how exercise, muscle mass and protein intake can help us age better. And more importantly, what types of exercise and how often.
I chat with Jonathan Freeman, a widely respected exercise physiologist and founder of Australia’s largest active over 50’s gym group, Club Active. He's a Professional Fellow with Southern Cross University and presents guest lectures in Functional Anatomy at numerous universities throughout Australia... AND he's worked with the likes of Chris Hemsworth and Kelly Slater, so he knows what he's talking about.
I learned so much about exercise, protein and muscle mass from this conversation and I’ve already adopted some of his lessons into my everyday behaviours.
Listen now:
LISTEN HERE - LATEST EDITION (S1E2) - OMNY
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Here’s some highlights:
According to Jonathan, only 1 in 10 Australians over the age of 50 do enough exercise to keep their hearts healthy and improve longevity. And he says physical inactivity is the biggest killer…
The three most important things you can do for your body as you age: Build your muscle mass, improve your V02 max and work on your joint longevity
He explains the way we can look at our body’s functional age, rather than our chronological age.
How people 50s-65s are looking to slow down the onset of ageing, and pointing out that our generation didn’t grow up with the gym, nor with the information and education on health and exercise that younger generations did, so we approach it differently.
The impact that our local community can have on our longevity, and considering how we can be supported to change the way we age.
Muscle mass and the muscle index score - how we measure it and how we improve it.
People over 50 who don’t currently go to a gym, need to understand structured exercise programs and their role in growing our muscle and strength - which contributes to longevity.
Cardiovascular health and your VO2 max - how we improve it, and how the various zones of cardiovascular exercise work, and where we get optimal results.
How to look after your joint mobility - and where we should focus to maintain joint function and joint longevity as we get older.
The critical role protein plays in our bodies and how much protein we should think about consuming to maintain our muscle mass
What we can learn from the Blue Zones abot incidental exercise and community
There so much information to absorb in this edition of Prime Time that I couldn’t possibly detail it all here. So have a listen, and subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts.
★★★★★ And dont forget to rate, review and share it - it helps people to find us.
If are enjoying Prime Time with Bec Wilson, or have feedback, ideas or thoughts on things you’d like us to cover, drop me an email at bec@primetimers.net.
Together let’s make our prime time count.
Many thanks! Bec Wilson
Author, columnist, retirement educator, and keynote speaker
About me
I’m the author of bestselling book, How to Have an Epic Retirement and the host of the Prime Time Podcast. I write a weekly modern retirement newsletter with more than 22,000 subscribers at epicretirement.net and a weekly syndicated column for the Money Section of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times and WA Today.
A modern ageing expert, I built my experience as the Founder and CEO of Starts at 60 and Travel at 60 for ten years, with more than a million readers, before stepping away in 2022.
And I’m now developing high quality online education to help people navigate pre-retirement and working with companies large and small to deliver it to you, the Prime Timers - who need to know how the systems and science supports you to live a longer, healthier, better quality life in your second half.