❱❱ REMAIN IN THE GAME
FEATURE
REST AND RECOVER Young bodybuilders often train up to seven days a week in the misguided belief that more is always better. Few realise that this approach can actually stop progress and could put them on the sidelines for weeks or even months. Longevity in bodybuilding means taking care of your body over the long term, which requires a balance between hard training and rest and recovery. Most forget that you actually grow outside the gym, through proper nutrition and the rebuilding process that ensues. If you fail to give your body the time and fuel it needs to repair itself, you risk a breakdown down the line. So take a few days off every month to recharge, especially between big workouts or heavy training blocks. It is also wise to schedule some higher rep, lighter weight training sessions or periods where you use machines and cables to recuperate and actively recover from heavier free-weight sessions.
OPTIMISE NUTRITION A key aspect of maintaining fitness and health with the passing years is optimal nutrition. The body can handle a lot of punishment in the gym, but when coupled with poor eating habits and repeated year after year, eventually the cumulative physical damage will catch up with you. When you ' re young and your metabolism is humming, you may think you can live on junk food. However, what you put in is what you ultimately get out, and a lifetime of poor eating will result in an athlete whose relative athletic age is much shorter than their chronological age.
With a judicious diet, which should consist of predominantly whole foods that are nutrient dense, and one that supplies an adequate amount of all the macronutrient groups, the ageing process can be slowed and age-related maladies can be mitigated, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and general tissue and cognitive degeneration.
In addition, the less body fat you have, the greater your chance will be of living and lifting to an advanced age. Learning how to eat to stay lean while still building and maintaining muscle is therefore crucial – so forget the dirty bulk!
USE IT OR LOSE IT Muscles that are used won ' t atrophy, so enjoy your workouts and maintain your activity levels as you age. If you want to remain strong over many years you have to find a sustainable approach to staying active, which should be grounded in good training principles such as periodisation and progressive overload.
While the search for the eternal fountain of youth continues, scientists agree that the closest things to it are exercise and diet. When you don ' t challenge your muscles with increased resistance they will gradually atrophy, and the loss of muscle leads to a loss in mobility, which could lead to cardiovascular disease and mental degeneration.
DEXTER JACKSON ATTRIBUTES HIS LONGEVITY TO EXCEPTIONAL GENETICS, SMART EATING AND SWITCHING FROM USING HEAVY FREE WEIGHT EXERCISES TO CABLES AND MACHINES.
❱❱ REMAIN IN THE GAME
Life is always evolving and the human body imperceptibly is also altered as we progress through the different stages of human existence. Your quality of life is largely under your own control and the road to longevity has been paved by others living a healthy bodybuilding lifestyle.
Longevity essentially means accepting where you are in life and adjusting your regimen according to your body’ s abilities at any given period in time. Some lifters refuse to adjust and let go of their past“ glories” in the gym, and they are the ones who tend to pay the highest price in old age.
Dexter Jackson, who competed with a multitude of great bodybuilders since the 1990s, has taken great care of his body over the years. He attributes his longevity to exceptional genetics, smart eating and switching from using heavy free weight exercises to cables and machines. These are the tenets that bred his success through the
DEXTER JACKSON
years, allowing the champ to defy age, time and all odds in a physically and mentally demanding sport.
Although we are not all Dexter Jacksons, we make our own choices in life and we all pay the price or reap the rewards of our actions. By intelligently combining exercise and diet we can live well past accepted societal norms that lead many to believe it’ s not possible to live long and remain strong. M. E
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