The Secret to Longevity: Add Movement

Hey Opt Health family, it's great to be here!

I'm Ebenezer Samuel. I’m a certified strength and conditioning specialist, fitness director at a men's health magazine, and have dedicated my life to studying how to achieve physical longevity. I've joined Opt Health to provide my best fitness advice and help you level-up your health.

You’re on the road to optimizing your hormones with Opt Health’s in-depth labs and physician consultation. The next step in your transformation: Use all that energy to build muscle, the ultimate organ of longevity. As you age, your body naturally loses muscle mass, especially after age 40. By fighting that, you turn back the clock, setting yourself up to control your long-term health for years and decades to come.

Your 3 Move Workout

You don't need some ultra-in-depth workout program that’ll take you hours on end in the gym. That’s not Opt Health’s style, and it’s not my style, either. I’ve worked with a variety of clientele, training everyone from NFL receivers and defensive linemen to soccer moms and high- powered CEOs. And the common thread among all these people (even the athletes) is this: Nobody wants to live in the gym.

The latest fitness science consistently shows that less quality work is better than overdoing it. Your best plan, then, is to master the basic exercises and progress those basics, adding weight and reps over months and years of training.

Start with this three-move workout, which you can do three days a week. Aim to rest at least one day between each session. Start light, working with 10-pound dumbbells during a warmup set. Then, move to more challenging weights for your three work sets.

MOVE 1: ROMANIAN DEADLIFT

You do this every day, whenever you bend down to pick something up off the ground. But often, this process is done incorrectly, leading to back pain. By learning to do the deadlift, you bulletproof your back and strengthen your glutes too. The key to doing this RDL: Push your butt back behind your shins while you arch your back. Start with 3 sets of 8 reps, resting about 90 seconds between each set.

MOVE 2: BENT-OVER ROW

Back strength is fundamental to protecting your shoulders and spine. You get to build both here. Focus on each rep on pulling your elbows toward your hips instead of pulling straight up, and hold for 1 second when the dumbbells get near your torso. Do 3 sets of 8 reps.

MOVE 3: REVERSE LUNGE

In life, very often you find yourself in what’s called an “offset” stance, with one foot in front of the other. The reverse lunge helps train that, as well as improved knee and ankle health, while layering muscle onto quads and glutes. You’ll also build a reservoir of cardio strength, and we know that aerobic strength can help add years to your life. Do 10 reps on each side, and do 3 sets.