Jeff Bercovici

That makes me a useful filter. The pros have unlimited budgets and few demands on their waking hours beyond making themselves fitter. If you want to spend thousands -or tens of thousands - to sleep in an oxygen pod wearing infrared pajamas, then knock yourself out. But chances are you care only about things that work, are safe, and fit your schedule and budget. So trust the guy with a day job, a bad back, and a new baby. Here's what I learned in two years of reporting for my book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Play-New-Science-Elite-Performance/dp/054480998X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1528988342&amp;sr=8-1" id="ba67c76c-a79b-367b-a768-dd92178cb6cc"> Play On </a> .

The importance of periodizing and the risks of not doing so have been drilled into my head by the likes of soccer coach Raymond Verheijen and exercise scientist Trent Stellingwerff, Ph.D.

For an elite athlete, periodizing can mean creating a structured program of buildup and tapering that yields peak fitness at a precise time. For me, it's more about the principles: ramping up training gradually, preparing my body for specific demands, and avoiding fatigue. If you invite me to play soccer and I haven't been keeping in soccer shape, or if I'm nursing an injury I could play through, I say no. Benching yourself sucks, but it doesn't suck as much as missing an entire season because you got hurt.

Elite lifters end their workouts differently than the rest of us do. Strength coaches talk about loading and unloading--that is, the former should always be followed by the latter. I now think in those terms. "Unloading" for nonlifters can mean yoga, foam-rolling, ice tubbing, running in water, or meditating. It encompasses both recovery and range-of-motion work that prevents the sorts of movement limitations and compensations that can build up over time and lead to injuries.

I used to consider happy hour a valid cooldown routine. Now I'm a fanatic about stretching and self-massage and have a closet full of straps, bands, foam rollers, and lacrosse balls to show for it. Committing to this is tough if your schedule is packed, which could tempt you to extend your workout and skip the stretching. That's a bad tradeoff.

THERE\'S NOTHING LIKE TRYING SOMETHING NEW AND SUCKING AT IT, THEN SUCKING A LITTLE LESS EVERY DAY.

A percentage of your workouts should be high intensity, and the balance - say, 80 percent - should be performed at very low intensity. Again, I don't stick to any formal program of polarization, but I try to avoid what Stellingwerff says is the most common mistake athletes make: going too hard on easy days and then not being able to go as hard as you want the next time out.

Instead, I make my hard workouts both shorter and more intense than I used to. Elite older athletes stay competitive by being more deliberate in their training, focusing their limited time honing specific skills, and correcting their fitness weaknesses. For me, this often means taking two minutes before I start to write up a plan on a sticky note. A little intentionality goes a long way.

If you're looking for a new challenge to get in the best shape of your life after 40, check out <a href="https://order.hearstproducts.com/subscribe/hstproducts/236650" id="d72bd45b-75f3-3665-a5ca-49e2222ddcaa"> Muscle After 40 </a> , a 12-week workout program from Men's Health.

Much of the nutrition "science" peddled to athletes is bunk. If you're eating a healthy diet--lots of different fruits and vegetables, proteins, and whole grains, not too much sugar or processed stuff--you're probably fine. But if you want to avoid losing muscle as you age, it's worth making a couple of tweaks. I've increased the protein in my diet as well as the number of times I consume it during the day, following the advice of triathlete and nutrition scientist Asker Jeukendrup, Ph.D. A side benefit: Adding protein to anything you eat effectively lowers its glycemic index, says Chris Jordan, M.S., C.S.C.S., director of exercise physiology for the Johnson &amp; Johnson Human Performance Institute.

So if I want to have an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie without feeling a sugar crash, I'll put a smear of almond butter on it. I also try to consume 3 to 5 milligrams of creatine powder a day, usually in a smoothie or a glass of milk, just before or after a workout. It's had a noticeable effect on my ability to build and maintain muscle.

For athletes with a history of injury or physical limitations (that's all of us, eventually), the key to optimal fitness is separating desirable training stresses from undesirable ones. If you have access to an AlterG anti-gravity treadmill or Kaatsu bands, great. If you don't, there are still plenty of ways to embrace this concept.

Instead of adding weight to an exercise, I'll incorporate a balance element, like doing pushups with my hands on medicine balls, or add a second force vector, like having a resistance band around my knees during squats. Focusing on smaller, neglected muscle groups is not a recipe for getting huge, but it's great for developing functional strength and avoiding injury.

Challenging your body in the same ways day after day for decades is an efficient way to chew up your body. Challenging it in different ways is the perfect cure. I marvel at elite athletes and, like most regular guys, I envy what they're able to do. But they should envy us too.

There's nothing like trying something new and sucking at it, and then sucking a little less every day. Science hasn't yet made it possible for us to get younger. This quest -getting fitter, faster, and better at what we each love - is the closest thing we have to a fountain of youth.

This one's not for everyone. Nowadays I see a lot of older runners in "maximalist" shoes made by Hoka One One or Altra, with soles as thick as A Game of Thrones paperback, and not caring whether they're landing on their heels or toes.

But after wading through the conflicting research and talking to biomechanists, I'm convinced: There are benefits to forgoing a little cushioning and learning to strike the ground with your midfoot or forefoot rather than your heel. Your legs are springs--the stiffer the spring, the more efficiently the forces you put into the ground return to your body, propelling you forward.

WARNING: If you feel strongly about the need to change your footstrike, find a coach who can work with you on it. Recent research suggests that the most energy-efficient running style for most people is the one that comes naturally to them. Your problem may be more stride than strike, though, and biomechanist Jay Dicharry, M.P.T., readily concedes this.

"The vast majority of runners actually overstride," he says. By focusing on shortening your stride, you may ultimately change your footstrike pattern. This leads to less of a "pulling" and more of a "pushing" running pattern, resulting in less stress on (and potential damage to) your joints. Slower times in exchange for less pounding on my spine is a tradeoff I'm happy to make.

Ready to put these principles into practice? Try <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a26476348/men-over-40-workout-week-1/" id="c499ff30-ad51-3daf-ac70-c7042d415383"> this week-long workout </a> from the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Muscle-After-40-Build-Beyond/dp/1635652553" id="827039e9-9614-3c5d-ad72-b332ba5dc537"> Men's Health Muscle After 40 </a> program to start. Make sure to include at least one full day of rest between workouts. Youll do each exercise as straight sets, completing all the sets of one exercise before moving onto the next.

Dumbbell Incline Bench Press

Seated Cable Row

Dumbbell Incline Triceps Extension

Trap Bar Deadlift

Dumbbell Split Squat

Dumbbell Bench Press with Neutral Grip

Dumbbell One-Arm Row

Dumbbell Rear-Delt Raise

Standing Calf Raise

Rope Hammer Curl

Get your copy of <a href="https://order.hearstproducts.com/subscribe/hstproducts/236650" id="d72bd45b-75f3-3665-a5ca-49e2222ddcaa"> Muscle After 40 </a> here.

I'm not an elite athlete. I'm just a guy on the precipice of middle age who enjoys running, biking, soccer, and tennis. If I can push myself to my physical limit a couple of times a week and still have the energy to crawl around with my daughter, then I'm satisfied.

The 7 Secrets of Staying Fit After 40

Spoiler alert: Nope. Almost two decades later, the heartbreaking and costly illness first identified by Alois Alzheimer in 1906 is more prevalent than ever. Nearly six million Americans currently find themselves somewhere on the grim march of Alzheimers progression, a number thats projected to reach nearly 14 million by 2050. While Alzheimers often doesnt show up in a tangible way until your 70s or later, the brain changes associated with it begin decades earlier. The surge of money that inspired that optimism has failed to produce a drug that brings anything more than a modest, temporary improvement in symptoms once they show up-if that.

The dearth of progress has some researchers rethinking everything theyve been taught about what Alzheimers disease is and how it works. Although the ranks of these scientists are small, the idea uniting them is a big one: that Alzheimers is caused by germs. And not some exotic new germ but the same microscopic organisms that cause things like gum disease and cold sores. Most brains accumulate pathogens as they age-blood vessels become leakier, making the blood-brain barrier more porous. These scientists think some of the germs that infiltrate the brain may be the instigators of the changes that become Alzheimers.

If this so-called microbial protection hypothesis proves out-and supporting evidence has been piling up-it will point the way to a new and radical approach to stop the buildup of a protein called beta-amyloid. These proteins accumulate in the brains of Alzheimers patients, making up telltale deposits called plaques that are associated with dementia. For 30 years, scientists thought beta-amyloid was a functionless rogue protein and tried to halt its accumulation by degrading it or blocking its production. The bug-hunting new guard thinks this old hypothesis is knocking on the wrong cellular doors. Maybe beta-amyloid isnt the actual problem after all; maybe its a symptom of something else.

Could Alzheimer's Come Down to Germs?

In his Cambridge lab, Harvard Medical School professor Robert Moir, Ph.D., has helped pinpoint that something with experiments showing that beta-amyloid can act as an antimicrobial-it kills pathogens in petri dishes and in the brains of mice. Beta-amyloids presence in the brains of people with Alzheimers, then, suggests its there to fight some underlying infection. To target beta-amyloid without addressing the infection, Moir says, is like trying to put out a forest fire without blowing out the match that caused it.

Moir has managed to make headway despite limited support from the National Institutes of Health, which has favored investigations that view beta-amyloid as the exclusive cause of Alzheimers. Since his first and only NIH grant ran out in 2014, Moir, despite his pioneering work, has struggled to land a second. This lack of funding could change soon, thanks to the efforts of individuals like Leslie Norins, M.D., Ph.D., a retired publisher of medical newsletters who is offering a $1 million prize to the person(s) who can prove a role for microbes in Alzheimers.

A former infectious-diseases researcher, Norins ticks off some of the clues, scattered around the medical literature, that convinced him the microbe idea needed more research. Neurosurgeons, who routinely handle brain tissue, have been reported to die from Alzheimers at an unusually high rate. One study indicated that married people taking care of spouses with dementia suffered similar cognitive impairment more often than those taking care of spouses for other reasons. Autopsies have detected viral DNA in amyloid plaques. Various studies have associated noticeable improvements in symptoms or outcomes with antibiotics or antivirals.

To Norins, it all fit the pattern of a certain kind of germ-the kind, like tuberculosis, leprosy, or HIV, that flourishes only under very particular conditions, helping it elude detection. Competing research teams point to different suspects, with the short list including herpes simplex 1, chlamydia, and Toxoplasma gondii. Silicon Valley isnt waiting around for consensus. One start-up called Cortexyme is currently ramping up enrollment of subjects for a phase II study of a drug that targets a pathogen called Porphyromonas gingivalis. Better known for causing gum disease, P. gingivalis has been found in the brains of Alzheimers patients and causes the unique pathology of the disease in mice. In a previous study, members of the (very small) treatment group showed a trend toward improvement on several measures of cognitive function after just 28 days.

Porphyromonas gingivalis oral bacterium, illustration

A Healthy Gut Might Help Your Brain

The research lines on multiple microbes arent mutually exclusive. There may not be one Alzheimers disease. It could be there are five, says George Perry, Ph.D., who edits the Journal of Alzheimers Disease. But they may be related. Moir suspects Alzheimers begins with a dysbiosis, a disruption that occurs when the bodys normal microbiome falls out of balance, letting one bug or another run wild. In one intriguing experiment, disrupting the gut microbiomes of fruit flies designed to develop Alzheimers aggravated their neuron loss. If you want to stop Alzheimers before it occurs, it may involve treating microbial imbalances, says Moir. Gut dysbiosis could increase the permeability of the gut wall so microbes make it into the blood and eventually the brain. Figuring out how to tame the right microbes could make it possible for you to stay mentally fit as you age, undamaged by this progressive disease.

The knowledge that any one of a half-dozen common germs might cause cognitive decline isnt exactly reassuring. But the toolkits not empty of options that might reduce your risk. (Staying away from people with Alzheimers isnt one of them, by the way.) A number of studies have shown that frequent exercise can delay the progression of Alzheimers in people who have genetic variants that put them at higher risk for the disease. Maintaining high fitness helps with most aspects of aging, of course, and keeps vascular walls healthy. Poor dental hygiene has been linked to heart disease as well as dementia, so make an extra effort to keep your teeth and gums healthy.

However the microbe hypothesis turns out, youll want to keep your gut microbiome in balance, since its connected to better health overall. Eat a high-nutrient diet thats rich in fiber, says Perry. Fiber helps healthy bacteria flourish, and a diet low in junky foods helps keep vessels strong. And while its not germ-related, experts like Moir love to remind you to feed your mind. Interacting with friends is emerging as the key protective factor for a bunch of late-life diseases, he says, including Alzheimers.

In July 2000, as the World Alzheimer Congress convened in Washington, D.C., there was a moment-a dawning sense that scientists could be on the verge of stemming the epidemic, Time magazine put it-when a treatment for the disease seemed imminent. Science was pouring minds and dollars into solving this devastating problem that creates total neurological meltdown and can break apart and bankrupt families.

The New Science That Could Save You from Alzheimer’s

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Jeff Bercovici

Articles written by the author

The 7 Secrets of Staying Fit After 40

The New Science That Could Save You from Alzheimer’s