Do you know what one of the biggest contributors to aging faster and dying earlier are beyond diet, fitness, health, longevity and everything else? It may surprise you but one of the biggest contributors to aging faster and dying earlier is having a weak lower body.  Your legs and lower body are very important because your body needs to be able to eat, then move in order to be healthy. Your body begins to age faster and become weaker when you are more sedentary.  This is why moving and exercising is so important to your health, in order to continue to build strength and resilience your lower body strength is a huge factor.

Our bodies lose muscle mass, which are protein reserves for repairing the rest of our bodies, every single year. If we are not getting adequate amounts of bio-available protein and working our muscles in order to build new muscle, we will continuously become weaker and more frail over time.  When this happens, our body loses muscle, which means we become weaker and are more likely to fall and become injured easier.

The longer this happens, the weaker you become and the more likely you are to fall and injure yourself. Many Americans fall and injure themselves and have a hard time walking ever again. Or they fall, become weak and recover somewhat but don’t fully recover and then they injure themselves again with another fall which causes them to live in a elderly home earlier which leads to an even more sedentary lifestyle and premature death.

What’s the difference between a 109 year old man running a marathon and a 75 year old living in an elderly home? One of the biggest and most obvious differences in this scenario is physical activity. The more you move, typically the better off you are, as long as you are not overworking your body and stressing it out.  It’s good to get your heart rate up, oxygenate your body by being out of breath and to make your heart work a bit harder to keep the cardiovascular system healthy.

So one way to combat lower body weakness, especially if genetically you have skinnier legs (like myself) is to simply go on walks each day.  Walk 2, 3 or 4 miles.  I do my very best to walk at least 2 miles a day so that my leg muscles, core and lower body maintain strength and don’t weaken over time. I’m a huge advocate of walking and recommend walking daily for so many reasons beyond lower body strength such as lymphatic movement and drainage, circulation, detoxification, mental health and so much more.  This is just one of the many reasons you should walk your way to wellness on a daily basis.

Recently I discovered a way that I could take my walks to the next level to give my lower body more strength than it needs to carry me around all day.  The downside of walks, or running, or sprints is that you are only using your body weight.  This is great because you honestly only really need to be as strong as your body weight but it would be very smart to use a little more resistance, such as weights to give your lower body more strength than it needs to keep you healthy, strong and prevent falling, becoming weak and aging prematurely.  Now when I walk each day, 2+ miles I walk with a 10 pound weighted vest under my shirt or jacket.

This way I am strengthening and preparing my legs for what they need as I grow older.  At age 40 you lose 1% of your lean muscle mass each year, so if you are over 40 years old and have not been actively walking then that is something you should start doing right away.  If you started using a weighted vest you could maintain your muscle mass instead of lose it.  So whereas your neighbor may lose 10% lean muscle mass from the time between 40 and 50 years old, you could have the same muscle mass at 50 that you had at 40 by just putting on the vest and walking past their house each day.

It’s really simple to do, it just takes commitment and action.  I have begun to implement this in my own life, and i’m not 40 years old yet.  There’s no better age to get started at then the age of ‘RIGHT NOW’ because when you create healthy habits that you are committed to today, they will last with you for years.

You can get a weighted vest with 10 pre-loaded pounds by clicking here.  The great thing about this vest is that you can just wear it for walking, sprints and other lower body movement for anti-aging and strength building purposes but you can also use it to improve and increase upper body strength as well which I will be sharing with you in future videos.

Thanks for reading,

– David Benjamin

P.S. This vest is also adjustable so you can add more weight than 10 pounds to build even more lower body and core strength if you’d like.