Martial arts are an excellent way to prevent aging.
However, as aging happens the ball starts to roll down the hill quicker. Like in martial arts, you cannot depend on one technique or method to fight, anti-aging is the same. There are specific things you can do to slow down and reverse aging. With that being said, it will require the most important aspect, consistency.
1) Breathing
How you breathe increases longevity. Your breathing rate affects your heart rate. If you take fewer breathes per minute, your heart rate will be less. If your heart is beating less then it will last longer. Learning to breathe through your nose decreases your breaths per minute, relaxes your nervous system, and prevents stress. Stress produces cellular inflammation. And inflammation ages you. It not only ages you but is a silent killer.
Breathing through your mouth is automatic, continuous, and short that is why the breathing rate increases.
Breathing through the nose produces a longer breath, with pauses, and the lungs take a breath as needed.
2) Strength Training
Strength training done properly is the magic to reverse the aging process. Regular resistance training does have somewhat of an effect. But, if you want the magic potion, then slow eccentric training is where it is at.
SET is the most effective method to reverse aging because it stimulates optimizes, and enhances neurological, musculoskeletal, and hormonal adaptions. Mainly as you get older, your nervous system slows down, you lose muscle mass, you decrease testosterone and growth hormone. However, slow eccentric training increases the speed of your nervous system, increases lean muscle, and releases testosterone and growth hormone. All of the aforementioned are significantly less produced on a much lower level with resistance training. SET is where the magic happens. If you don’t utilize slow eccentric movement, you will miss out on the anti-aging effect.
SET benefits are dramatically more significant than resistance training.
- It boosts nerve firing power and potentiation
- Breaks down muscle 10x more, causing more testosterone and growth hormone release for muscles to rebuild, more than any other training.
- Reverses the aging plasticity of muscles by restoring elasticity and flexibility.
- The increased time under tension allows tendons to become stronger that only become stronger from weight-bearing activities.
3) HIIT Training
If you want to really drink from the youth’s fountain, you will want to do HIIT and endurance training. High-intensity training (HIIT) and endurance training have been proven to prevent and reverse aging.
This works by affecting something called a telomere. Your DNA is created as chromosomes. At the tips of each chromosome is something called a telomere. The telomere sits on top of the chromosome, like a hat, to cap the ends of the chromosomes. The telomere protects the end of the chromosome from deteriorating. When the telomere begins to or deteriorates, it can no longer function and protect the chromosome. As telomeres become smaller, the aging process and disease start to happen. Telomeres deteriorate and shorten due to aging but lifestyle has a big influence, such as smoking, stress, sedentary life, obesity, pollution, etc.
There has been extensive research using HITT and endurance training to prevent aging. They found that these two training methods significantly stop the telomere from shortening and can reverse the deterioration by regenerating and adding length to the telomere. This reverses the aging process and risk of disease.
HIIT is about moving fast so little weight is required. HITT is performed in many different ways it is important to structure it how it works for you. Start with 10-15 seconds at 85-90 percent intensity for each exercise. Rest usually doubles the work time- 20-30 seconds.
4) Nutrition Maturity
You have to understand that when you start to age you cannot eat the same way as when you were 20. Eating too much sugar, salt, processed foods, drinking alcohol, and smoking, all produce excessive amounts of oxidative stress. Oxidative stress deteriorates the telomeres faster, exposing your body to disease, aging, and death faster.
5) State of Mind
“How or what you think, is what you are or become.” -Buddha. Do you sit at a desk 8 hours a day go home eat dinner and watch television? Or, do you walk, run, and do fitness? If you follow the aforementioned, breathing, physical activity, and eating well, make you feel younger, good, happy, relaxed, focused, etc.
Everyone has the power to reverse aging, but you have to be willing to put in the time and effort to be consistent.
