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Workouts are absolutely necessary for health and fitness! Now, hopefully you know that, and already accept the fact that while a proper, paleo sort of diet without industrial seed oils and processed foods of junk and fast food stuff, and loaded with good meats and full fat dairy is vital as well.

But what kind of workout is best for you? The bottom line is this: it changes over time! When you are a kid, meaning 20 or so and under, I suggest that calisthenics are best. Running is fine, but forget the long distances, meaning a mile of more. Sprints are great, but middle distances of varying tempo and terrain give you the best bang for your buck. Active sports are best, and playing games with your friends are ideal of all purposes.

I started weight lifting when I was was 20, and I believe this was ideal. Your body is primed and ready to put on muscle, strengthen tendons and ligaments, and grow at that age. Through your twenties and 30’s, you should build your physique to its potential. Sessions of up to an hour, for 2 to 4 hours per week is plenty. In my opinion, a home gym is ideal, in a basement or a garage. Simple barbell and dumbbell movements are ideal, and with a power rack of supports you will be perfectly safe!

The main thing to learn is that you need to work HARD. Strength training is probably, by definition, the hardest you will ever work! This is a wonderful lesson to learn, and will stand you in good stead in any endeavor you undertake for the rest of your life- in comparison, anything else seems easy, because you strive to make each test as easy as you can make it. Only in strength training do you purposely make each movement as hard as possible- for that is the point!

Following such a regimen is the best thing you can do for your total health - both physical and mental! The idea is to keep at it, over time, for the rest of your life. Proper paleo diet, good hard exercise and sleep- this will lay the foundation for a strong, healthy life! The discipline alone of such a life will carry over into anything you set yourself to accomplish.

As you age, though, certain things change. In your 50’s, the poundages you use should be kept down. Your base strength levels will tend to be far higher than average untrained fold of your age. This is great, but you do have greater chance of injury than you did in your 20’s and 30’s. Start to emphasize repetitions over heavy weights and low reps. Heavy singles are a mistake as you age; even heavy reps under 5 aren’t appropriate in your 50’s and 60’s…

I am now 73, and I enjoy training at least as much as I did in my youth! I’m still in my basement, and I do a split of lower body one day, and upper body the next training day. I prefer to use gymnastic rings over barbells, ring pushups and dips, along with ring pull-ups, accomplish the same thing without joint trauma, since the rings flex naturally throughout your movement, without overload. Also, now I use much higher reps, with constant tensions throughout the longer sets. The results are vastly better on the musculature shape.

Also, as you age, you need more rest days! What I do is, if I feel the need of a rest day, I don’t feel guilty at all. There is no longer really any pressure- just enjoy your days!

I no longer do heavy deadlifts or squats- they are unnecessary. I now do bodyweight squats with raised heels, and kettlebell swings for high reps, along with single legged squats holding the rings for balance. It’s all about the reps now!

One thing I have added in in my 40’s and 50’s, has been a morning sessio

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It seems as though the great ‘Paleo Boom’ has come and gone! All the books, all the podcasts- where have they gone?

I’ve been writing and podcasting for more than 10 years; I used to listen to Robb Wolf and The Paleo Solution, Jimmy Moore and Livin La Vida Low Carb, Mark Sisson and his Primal Podcast, and many others. Don’t hear much from Robb Wolf anymore- Jimmy Moore is locked in prison for God’s sake- and Primal goes on, and is just kind of Paleo with a different name…

Now, the cutting edge seems to be focussed on Carnivore, with Sean Baker and others. But is this carnivore pivot really all that much different than Paleo or Primal?

Not really. Those are all just words that encapsulate a certain set of ideas- that living in a more ancestral way, more in keeping with that of our forebears, is far healthier and more beneficial than the modern, pharmaceutical and processed foods-based version of the present day. In other words, simpler is better.

Carnivore could easily be another word for Paleo. It’s just another, more extreme way to practice the way our ancestors lived. It is certainly A way, and a very simple way to have a ‘restart’ with your health, that is possibly really messed up in the present day.

I mean, you could call your paleo type of diet ‘The Great Grandparents diet’, or the ‘Post nuclear apocalypse Diet’, and the results would be very similar. The idea is just to get away from the modern conventions and pronouncements of current ‘experts’ and getting back to timeless sorts of recommendations from the past. Time-tested and proven methods of health and wellness that have stood the test of time- of millennia- and not just those ideas that are being pushed by Big Medicine and the modern trinity of Pharmaceuticals, Big Food, and the Government .

You know: Moe, Larry and Curly. The EXPERTS!

I’m being a bit facetious, but in light of Fauci and the Covid disaster, along with the Low Fat food recommendations of the past 60 to 70 years, and the endless recommendations of Vegetable Seed Oils in our diets, well, the “experts” aren’t looking too expert really, are they?

And let’s not forget the Exercise recommendations- “run long distances to gain complete fitness and above all, heart health…”. More nonsense in place of simple strength training, walking, and stretching! Grounding barefoot by walking on the earth, rather than sprint-running to exhaustion in timed races on tracks with over-cushioned shoes.

I’m sure you get the idea. The Paleo Diet and Lifestyle hasn’t gone away, not at all.

Maybe the erstwhile leaders have left the field, moving on to other endeavors. But the movement is intact, as strong as it was when it was being promoted by figures such as Weston A. Price, the dentist who noticed in the 1920’s and 30’s the wonderful health of pre-industrial people who ate their ancestral diets and moved in the manner in which they had evolved over long periods of time.

All of the tenets of Paleo are intact, and correct. Eliminate most of ‘modern medicine’, including most vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs, especially for our children. Go back to ancient leaders, like Hippocrates, who said in old Greek times to “Let thy medicine be thy food, and thy food be thy medicine”. This is timeless truth!

Eat good, basic foods like meat and dairy. Fermented dairy is best, and raw dairy is better than processed! Likewise with grains- they are optional, but if made in accordance with established traditions, such as sourdough fermentation, they can

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There seem to be many views on what should be the goal of exercise! Should you aim, above all, at flexibility, or should it be cardiovascular ability? Or should you shoot for a balance of strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular (aerobic) fitness!

Well, obviously it seems to me, that a balanced approach is better- after all, all of these three components are crucial in their own ways. But together, they are the key to ultimate fitness, right? Well- kind of…

It used to be axiomatic that running, particularly long distance running, conferred the most health advantages! A strong, enduring cardiovascular system would keep you from getting a heart attack, and that is the ultimate goal…

However, it turns out that endless distance running also consumes your musculature and strength, while simultaneously rendering you more and more inflexible and lowering your immune response to many diseases, and cancer itself! It also, over long distances and years, destroys your knee and hip joints. And the cardio benefits seem to be very temporary: once you stop running (from your self-inflicted destruction), those benefits disappear.

Flexibility as a sole benefit is very slight. The ability to bend your body and limbs over a wide range of motion might seem impressive and desirable, (especially after you have destroyed most of your flexibility by long-distance running alone), by itself to become a kind of ‘yogi’ like this is more a type of parlor trick, other than the sum of being fit. It just doesn’t make you capable of much at all!

No, ironically, the number one goal of overall fitness is to build strength and muscle! This is the last component that has been considered to be important in the last few decades. But, as you age, it becomes apparent that strength training is by far the most important thing you can do.

To be self-sufficient and vital, you need strength above all. Muscle tissue is what will burn calories, even when you are not exercising, thus keeping you from becoming obese. Of course, strength is also what keeps you mobile and walking, able to lift heavy items and move things as well as yourself.

The main goal of the elderly, and those of us who will all eventually become elderly, is actually to build strength and muscle tissue. Strength training is what keeps us out of the nursing home, and in our own homes! Everything else: sports of all types - running, basketball, racket sports, gymnastics, horseshoes, basketball and other “ball” sports- they might be fun, and improve us in some subtle ways; but they do not give us true, measurable, and long-lasting benefits.

Only strength training does that, and it can be done for our entire lives! In one study, researchers compared muscle building ability in women in their 90’s to those in their 20’s, and found that the elders built muscle and strength as fast as those much younger!

This shows us how much muscle is valued and needed by the body, providing we induce the stimulus by strength training to show that the muscle is needed. Muscle that can keep us from falling, helping us to keep our balance, and also building our bone strength along with our musculatures.

Strength training is indeed crucial!

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