© Peter Lang
But for Emery Lang of Miami, who will celebrate his 93rd birthday in May, the secret to a long and healthy life is, quite simply, rowing.
"This is the best exercise for anybody because your whole body is in motion... your legs and arms and shoulders," Lang told the Huffington Post. "If you do this exercise every day, your shoulders will be very powerful and straight up. You won't be bent over when you are in your 90s."
A champion, with many amateur rowing titles under his belt, one would think Lang's been rowing all his life. But, incredibly, he didn't take up rowing until age 65.
"I had never done rowing on the water in my life. I am originally from Hungary and I had done a lot of other sports but not rowing," Lang said. "But then I visited Florence, Italy and I saw people rowing on the Arno [river]. It was the most beautiful sport I'd ever seen."
Comment: Jogging for long periods of time is simply bad for your health. It stresses your adrenals into fight-or-flight mode, and besides burning you out, it also creates lots of joint problems. People who run marathons typically have CPK (creatine phosphokinase) blood levels that are high, a marker of muscle damage that is used to detect heart attacks. Excess aerobics cause over-training and muscle-wasting, which later leads to reduction in fat burning. Many aerobic workouts are long and their overall effect on your body is inflammatory. Quite a few people who have had a heart attack were jogging supposedly 'for better health'.
Rowing provides resistance training which in turn builds lean mass, minimizes and even reverses mitochondrial dysfunction - our powerhouse energy factories. By exercising our muscles, we have the potential to not only reverse aging and brain-related diseases such as dementia which are characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction, but as it happens, mitochondrial dysfunction is the final step in ALL diseases. For more information, see:
Resistance Training: Why You Should Lift and Lower Heavy Things