I often discuss with my clients what levels of fitness you actually need for real life. Modern living has become so convenient that you can get by with totally inadequate fitness levels. However, it’s when you’re on holiday that your fitness gets exposed. To enjoy Rome at a basic level, you need to walk 15-20,000 steps a day. To embrace the Wall of China or Machu Picchu, you need to handle some steep climbs. Going off-road in Asia? You’ll need to ascend hills to see the main tourist sites, which requires a level of fitness.
This weekend, I saw so many people falling below these thresholds as they struggled to move around. I’m sure they still had a good time, but it seems a total waste when you could transform your fitness with hardly any effort, just by doing a little targeted exercise each week.
For me, the basic fitness requirements for life are as follows:
-Squat to 90° – This means you can get into and out of a chair without support.
-Perform a lunge – The ability to do this has been shown to be directly related to quality of life in later years, as it requires strength, flexibility, and balance.
-Pick an object off the floor (with a straight back) – Using a hinge motion, you should be flexible and strong enough to safely lift an object off the floor.
-Get up and down off the floor – You should be able to lie down, and get back up using minimal support because you have good strength and coordination.
-Walk up a hill without getting out of breath – This shows you have enough aerobic fitness to cover the base needs of life.
-Stand on 1 leg for 30 seconds – I wrote about how most people lose their one-legged balance after the age of 65. This doesn’t need to happen, and you can easily train your balance.
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In addition to this, I would probably add a couple more essentials for anyone looking to really thrive:
-Lightly jog for ten minutes (pain-free) – This shows you have a nice level of base aerobic fitness and are in good enough condition to handle the forces involved in jogging.
-Perform a 360° lunge – This means you have enough strength, balance, and coordination to move in all movement directions.
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If you have younger children, are a grandparent who looks after them, or have a dog, then you also need to be able to:
-Sprint (or fast jog) 100m – It’s common you will need to jog after a tearaway child or rush to help them if they’ve fallen off their scooter. The same goes for dogs; they often get into trouble, and the quicker you can get there, the better.
Finally, for general quality of life, I would also include:
-Be free from pain – You don’t want half of your body to be in pain or your joints to hurt every time you perform any of the movements listed above. If you’re in pain, you won’t feel as good as you should with your physical abilities. So resolving these should be part of your base fitness strategy.
What Does This Mean For You?
When people think of fitness, most immediately picture aerobic exercise and working up a sweat. However, if you look at the basic life requirements above, it’s almost all about strength, coordination, and flexibility. For aerobic fitness, you can achieve it just by walking (which many people don’t even consider as exercise) or very short periods of jogging (working your way up to ten minutes).
The basic requirements don’t need much more than this; you can achieve them quite easily, and it will transform how you feel. I gave you a daily routine video a while back, which covers all the elements except aerobic fitness.
Hopefully, these fitness requirements are all super easy for you to do and within your capabilities. If so, you have the option to maximize your fitness in each area so you can feel sensational. Alongside this, look at the people in your life, how many are meeting the basic needs above? If they aren’t quite there, can you help them in some way.
Photo – Me by the Colosseum, on top of the Vatican after climbing the 550 steps and a Strava of a run I did one morning.
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