Can gym fitness extend life?

Current long-term tracking by academic circles and actual feedback from fitness groups all point to the same result - as long as gym training follows scientific rules and adapts to your own physical condition, it can indeed help you extend your life expectancy and significantly improve your quality of life in old age. However, if you don't practice correctly, it may cause health problems.

There is a 72-year-old Uncle Zhang in the gym I often go to. He has been practicing for almost 15 years. He comes here three times a week. He first does a 20-minute warm-up on the elliptical machine, and then uses fixed equipment for 40 minutes. He chooses weights that he can easily do 12 times. He never compares weight with young people. The last physical examination organized by the community showed that his bone density was higher than that of many 40-year-old middle-aged people, his blood pressure and blood lipids were all within the normal range, and he rarely caught colds. The family doctor said that his current physical condition reduced the risk of chronic diseases by more than half compared to his peers, and he was naturally more likely to live longer. Previously, the Harvard School of Public Health released research data that tracked more than 100,000 people for 20 years. People who maintained strength training 1-2 times a week plus 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobics had a 41% lower all-cause mortality rate than those who did not exercise at all. The risk of cardiovascular disease was reduced by nearly half. This conclusion is not casual.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this statement. Many people on the Internet say that gym exercises are all about dead muscles and that too much exercise will harm the body. In fact, this is not completely unreasonable. I met a young man in his early twenties two years ago. Not even half a month after he applied for the card, he followed an internet celebrity video and tried to bench press 100 kilograms. His movements were completely deformed and he still struggled to hold up. As a result, his rotator cuff was torn directly. He underwent minimally invasive surgery and it took him almost a year to recover. It was difficult to lift his arms. If you practice like this blindly for a long time, your waist will be injured today and your knees will be injured tomorrow. As you get older, you will suffer from chronic diseases and be so painful that you can't even go out. This may affect your life span. Related research published by The Lancet last year also mentioned that the benefits of exercise have marginal effects. If you spend two or three hours in the gym every day, go on an extreme diet in order to gain body fat, or exercise until your body is sore and exhausted every time, cortisol will remain high for a long time, and your immunity will also decrease. At this time, the benefits of exercise have long been offset by an overstretched body, and the health risks are even higher than those of people who exercise moderately.

In fact, this is just like maintaining a family car. If you do regular maintenance according to the instructions, and don't drive hard or overload, the car will naturally drive much longer than if you don't take care of it. If you have to drive violently every day, add low-quality oil, and never change the oil, then no matter how good the engine is, it will be scrapped in advance. This is the principle of gym fitness. The core is "moderate science" and never "it will be useful as long as you go there." Oh, by the way, there are also invisible factors that many people ignore. Many people who can insist on going to the gym for a long time will invisibly change many bad habits, such as staying up less late, drinking less high-sugar milk tea, smoking less and drinking less. After all, the calories consumed by practicing for an hour can be fully replenished with a cup of milk tea. No one wants to suffer that in vain. These supporting changes in lifestyle habits are actually the major contributors to fitness helping to extend life. Just relying on practice, eating and drinking, and staying up all night to build your body are useless, no matter how good the training is.