You Will Become a Senior Athlete

Who's an Athlete?

For all of my life, it's been recommended that everyone should exercise.

The amount of recommended exercise has varied from 30 minutes of steady walking three times a week, to about double that, 150 minutes a week is suggested. I visited a heart specialist this year (I'm 83,and I have some atherosclerosis problems in my heart.) and he recommended that I walk 150 minutes a week. That would NOT qualify me as a Senior Athlete. Yet I am a Senior Athlete, and that should be your objective too.

There are many times in my life when I was fit enough to be an "athlete", although I would never have used that terminology. As a young person, I played soccer, and cricket, I did some running (reluctantly) as training, and some social dancing. In my 30's I worked long hours and I stopped sports, ate poorly and put on excessive weight. Over the next 10 years I did what I thought I should do, tried to eat less and to run more. That led to daily running, for a couple of years only up to three kilometers, and it was an effort. Then quite suddenly I could run three kilometers and more without undue effort. (Using the Arthur Lydiard method of mixing walking and jogging, slowly increasing the amount of running.) In the previous two years, slowly I had been changing the capacity of my body to pump blood to my muscles, and to push air through my lungs. It's not just a case of building muscular strength and endurance. Your whole internal, capacity to turn oxygen and glucose or fat into the ability to run needs to be developed. That takes time, and if you have not been exercising, some consistent effort over many months, perhaps years is required. But you can get there.

Considering what I'm about to explain, the idea of becoming a Senior Athlete, I was doing about 250 minutes a week of jogging, walking and running a week. About 4 hours. With work pressures and family responsibilities for people in midlife, that's not a bad base to maintain if you can. If you have the time, and you can do ONE long run a week, up to ten kilometers, you are an athlete. Try not to let that go.

Thirty years ago when I was doing this, I was successful in getting some weight loss, and I tried to increase the distance I was running, and only succeeded in injuring myself. My diet was still poor. My training principles were all wrong.

This is "I give up territory" where most of the people reading this have been. There is a better way.

Jonathan Bennion (18 minutes)

Published by:

This video explains very well where we are going, and why this is important.

In your life, there may be times when what we are recommending isn't possible, but keep the objective in mind. When you are over 65, and in your 70's and 80's you are going to be a Senior Athlete. Do what you can to develop and maintain the sort of internal capacity for some strenuous exercise throughout your life.

Table of Contents
0:00 - Intro: What is the Closest Thing to a Magic Bullet for Health?
1:10 - Why Exercise Beats Diet for Longevity
1:39 - Cardiovascular System Benefits: The Ultimate Heart Upgrade (Anatomical Focus)
2:12 - Anatomy of Capillarization: Growing New Blood Vessels for Efficiency
3:26 - Skeletal Muscle Adaptation: Fatigue-Resistant Fiber Secrets
4:02 - Muscle Longevity Exposed: The TRUTH about Fast-Twitch Fibers ∓ Aging
6:50 - Metabolic Dissection: How Exercise Reverses Insulin Resistance (Hormone effect)
8:12 - Bone Anatomy: Strengthening Osteoblasts and Fighting Osteoporosis
8:41 - Crucial Difference: Why Female Anatomy is at Higher Risk for Osteoporosis
9:00 - Neuroanatomy Focus: Exercise as a Natural Anti-Depressant (Hormone effect)
10:06 - The Ultimate ROI: Reducing All-Cause Mortality by Up to 31%
11:51 - The Final Verdict: Why Exercise is King, But Diet Still Matters
14:17 - Your Optimized Workout Plan: Key Components and Protocols 14:52 - Zone 2 Cardio (Steady-State) Explained: The "Talk Test"
15:18 - High-Intensity Cardio (HIIT): The 4x4 Protocol
16:56 - Resistance Training Split (Upper/Lower) & Compound Movements (How to Build Muscle)

Being a Senior Athlete

Once you "retire" which is a term we need to remove from our thinking, when we are less involved in working to put food on the table and to pay the rent, we have more TIME to exercise. In the video above, Jonathan Bennion talks about Zone 2 Cardio, the steady state amount of effort that should be at least 80% of your exercise programme. Think in terms of at least six hours a week. We are not talking about wandering along with a little dog, pretending that's walking. Some quick walking, incorporating a hill or some jogging, but except for short times, you should be able to keep talking. Now three times a week can you do something for five or ten minutes that's more strenuous, like sprinting, or stair climbing, or playing tennis, or at the gym. Can you run for a kilometer? Now you are a Senior Athlete.

This is doable even if you start late in life.

An Example

In my life that works out like this. Mondays I walk with a group. They used to walk up hills but now-a-days they prefer flat walks. Few of them would qualify as Senior Athletes. But some still do. Often when walking with this group, some of us add in ten of fifteen minutes of strenuous hill walking. But, mostly Monday is a social walk for a couple of hours. Ten years ago this group worked a lot harder. That's maybe 30 minutes zone 2 a week.

Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, I normally go to the gym. There's a five kilometre bike ride there and back (10k about 40 minutes.) My usual routine is about 30 minutes in the weight training area, (Tuesday: Back, Thursday: Chest, Sunday: Legs.) and about 30 to 45 minutes in the cardio vascular area. (Tuesday: Ski Machine and Sled pull/push, Thursday: Backward Walking and Stair Master, Sunday: Orbital Walker and Jacobs ladder.) Call that two hours zone two a week, plus each day 5 to 10 minutes of high intensity effort.

Wednesday, every second Friday and Saturday, my wife and I go ballroom dancing. Two hours, sometimes three hours at a time. That's about 50% zone 2 activity. Call that three hours zone 2 a week.

On Friday morning we ride with a ebike cycling group. About two hours each morning. Mostly social, say 1 hour zone 2 exercise.

Total Zone 2 Exercise for the week?
Monday: 30 minutes, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday: 360 minutes, Dancing: 180 minutes, Cycle Group: 60 minutes.

That's a total of about 510 minutes a week, eight and a half hours. And really that's quite easy to achieve, because at this time of life I have the time.

My wife doesn't go to the gym, but she plays tennis and does Tai Chi, and most days she works in the garden. Her Zone 2 activity is about six and a half hours a week. She's also a Senior Athlete, based on the criteria explained above. It's very doable.'

Lee Cowan reports (9 minutes)

Published by: CBS - Sunday Morning - 8 Aug 2016

As we see during the Olympics, athletes are getting faster and stronger all the time. The same can be said for a large percentage of America's senior citizen population: Men and women showing the benefits of staying active as they age, with some breaking world records while they do it.

Dr Brad Stanfield (9 minutes)

Published by: Dr Brad Stanfield - 3 Nov 2025

UK Bio-Bank report on normal levels of exercise. Exercise has a STRONG dose response. So if you "never get time to exercise" if during your day you can accumulate several 2 or 3 minute bursts of more vigorous activity; taking the stairs, running a hundred metres, doing ten pushups, doing a few body-weight squats, you can maintain quite a lot of fitness.

Dr Brad Stanfield goes on in his next video here, to explain how the science about zone two training is being debated. The argument is that higher intensity than zone two gives much better results. There's no need to dispute that. Above, speaking about my three days at the gym I say my work includes "each day 5 to 10 minutes of high intensity effort."

The exercise that's important, is the exercise that you do. For younger people with less time, more strenuous and intense exercise might be the best return for effort option. For retired people with more time, and where the enjoyment of the game or the activity is the critical factor, more hours of zone two activity in the company of friends is no burden. Walking or cycling for two hours or more is enjoyable as well as being health giving. Learn to dance. Three hours dancing to good music, with friends who will be happy to help you learn, is both a social and a physical pleasure.