The 100 Year Workout Plan

What kind of exercise plan could you do for the next 100 years?

Most plans to exercise are like a joke. There’s the setup:

1. You’re motivated to get into an exercise routine.
2. You make a plan to start.
3. You exercise a handful of times.

And the punchline:

4. You stop. A few weeks or months pass.
5. Repeat.

Even if you feel good about exercising every once in a while, you’re unfortunately just wasting your own time. You need to exercise consistently, 2-3 hours per week over your lifetime to reap the physical benefits.

If you’ve lived through this cycle, I feel for you. Nobody likes to be the butt of a joke. As a recovered addict, I know the feeling well. I’ve personally been through the cycle of trying and failing to get my shit together hundreds of times.

But whether you’re trying to get your whole life together, or just shed a few pounds, isn’t it strange that we can so easily break promises to ourselves over and over again?

The Pitfalls of Extreme Exercise

Stranger still, the joke gets more extreme each time you tell it. The more you repeat the start-stop cycle, the more likely you are to try a new and different exercise program in the hopes it’ll be the thing that fulfills you to the point that you’ll be able to commit for the long run.

And because modern technology makes it so easy to compare the frustration we feel inside with the apparent success of everybody else’s outside, the feeling gets worse every time.

That’s why there’s been an explosion of extreme exercise programs in recent years. You know the ones I’m talking about:

• Crossfit: Interval training and weightlifting featuring over-the-top industrial equipment.
• SoulCycle: Pounding music, impossibly fit militant instructors, extreme price tag.
• Barry’s Bootcamp: High-intensity training that pushes you “to your limits.”
• Spartan Races: Competitive obstacle course races including fire jumps and crawling under barbed wire.
• Peloton: Technology-enabled exercise bike with a never-ending subscription fee.
• Premium yoga classes: Extreme bending meets extreme spirituality, often with a hefty per-class fee. 

Of course, they all come with their own specialty clothing, equipment, celebrities, and cult-like community. Not to mention their own extreme risks of injury.

“But they do sound fun!” you think. And they might be just the thing to shake you out of your funk and into a brand new world of fulfillment. So you sign up for a 10-pack of high-intensity, subscription-based fitness classes, buy the straps, mats, kettlebells, and specialty pants, and cross your fingers that you’ll finally find the sense of belonging and spirituality, or maybe just the social pressure and forced obligation to “stick with it” this time.

If you’ve struggled with this, I want to challenge you to try something new.

Instead of asking yourself whether the next extreme or trendy class could be the answer, what if you asked yourself “how would I design my own exercise program if I had to commit to it for the next 100 years?”

Because if you really want to experience the benefits of exercise, that’s exactly what you’re going to have to do.

The 100-Year Workout: Long-Term Exercise for a Better, Healthier Life

A hundred years is a long time. But you might actually live that long. The oldest human whose age was well-documented lived to be over 122.

But even if your life is average length, I think you’ll agree that it’s better to be healthy and happy for the majority of it. So you’ll need to exercise, not just this month, or year. But for the long term.

If that feels right to you, consider putting yourself on a 100-year Workout Program of your own. But first we need to tackle the topic of motivation.

The Role of Selfish Motivation

One aspect of choosing and sticking with any plan is being honest about the fact that your commitment can only go as far as your motivation.

Unless you have a significant life event that causes you to pay special attention to your health or weight, it’s unlikely that the nebulous outcomes of “be healthier” or “lose weight” will be enough for you to build a lifelong exercise habit.

Instead, you should recognize that most people would find it hard to commit to anything unless it raises their enjoyment of life, self-esteem, or perceived status in the eyes of others. No one likes the thought of doing something they’re bad at, much less if other people can see them doing it.

That includes you. While you might have a set of rehearsed logical reasons for sticking to the things you do, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize that as human beings, the primary driver of our own behavior is the need for approval from ourselves and others.

Thankfully, you can flip that fact around and use it to your own advantage with this mental trick I learned from one of Paul Graham’s essays:

I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool.

– Paul Graham, Do What You Love

It’s worth spending some time thinking about this. If it’s helpful you can think about it in the third person: What kind of exercise program would you admire if you heard your friend was doing it?

Something I think is cool is consistency, and not caring what other people think. That’s how I hit on this formula for my own 100-year workout:

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My 100-Year Workout Program

Let me first say: It’s not reasonable to plan 100 years into the future. It’s too long a time frame and there are too many variables. That’s why a 100-year Workout Program needs to have simple rules that stand the test of time. Here are mine:

1. I do what I can stick with.

For me, this means keeping it simple. I chose running because:

• It requires minimal, inexpensive equipment.
• I don’t need to travel further than my front door to run.
• There’s no social obligation or pressure; I can run alone.
• I like it.

2. I exercise so I can tomorrow.

I don’t push myself too hard, because I have to keep it up for 100 years. I don’t want to wear myself out. I usually run a 5k, three to four times per week. On one or two of those days, I might stop somewhere around the halfway mark and do 30 pushups and 60 situps.

Every few weeks I’ll throw in a 10k, or even a 10-miler, but it’s rare. I’m not really trying to get faster or stronger. I’m just trying to keep going. That’s why I don’t push it to the point that I couldn’t work out tomorrow if I want to (and I often do).

3. If I didn’t exercise yesterday, I will today.

I made this deal with myself about 5 years ago and I stick to it religiously unless I absolutely cannot. It’s easy to remember whether I exercised the day before, so I can tell if I’m being honest with myself.

On days when I feel like doing something besides running, I’ll take a long bike ride. Or I’ll go surfing or skiing. Even a brisk walk can count. All that matters is if I didn’t exercise yesterday, I get out there today, whether it’s raining, or I’m sick, or it’s just “not a good time.”

4. I worry about myself. (And only myself) 

Like most people, I sometimes get into this zero-sum mentality where I need to compete with other people. I’ve done entire yoga classes like this, focusing on making sure my poses were better than everyone around me. I’ve come close to seriously hurting myself trying to impress strangers on the chairlift while skiing. I’ve run faster to beat people who didn’t even realize they were in a race with me.

But since I started the 100-year Plan, I’ve mostly been focused on getting through my own workout. After all, 100 years is too long to be worrying about what everyone else is doing.

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When I challenged myself to develop a plan I could stick to for 100 years, my whole attitude towards running changed.

I stopped needing to get faster. I stopped needing to track my runs on apps. I stopped racing strangers. I stopped injuring myself to the point where I needed to take days off to recover.

I started running lighter, easier. My mood improved. The effect has even bled over into my diet. I eat better now knowing I’m going to have to take care of my body for 100 years.

I’m still competitive. It’s just over a longer time frame. And I still enjoy a half-pint of Ben and Jerry’s here and there. But I don’t think I need to be better, faster, or stronger than the other guy. I just know I need to outlast him.

Special thanks to Kate Green and Roger Dehnel for reading drafts of this essay.

Resources

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-exercise-extend-your-life-2019031316207

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-new-exercise-guidelines-any-changes-for-you-2018121415623

https://www.thecut.com/2017/07/the-terrifying-condition-caused-by-extreme-exercise.html

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/14/yoga-can-damage-body-row

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm

https://effectiviology.com/zero-sum-bias/