Is Your Workout Ageing You?

Exercising may get you fit and healthy, but don’t let it play havoc with your skin.

- Yanar Alkayat

Working out really is the best medicine. It boosts heart health, strengthens bones and reduces your risk of stroke, diabetes and cancer. It gives you a glow, makes you more productive at work and helps you forget a bad day. But did you know it’s also been shown to reverse the signs of ageing? Come January, the chances are you’ll be fired up with a post-festive exercise plan to cure all ills. But, despite your best intentions, launching into a new year workout frenzy might have the opposite effect. Training too hard or not following a balanced workout plan could mean you miss out on the youth-enhancing benefits exercise has to offer. What’s more, some ways of training may even speed up the ageing process! We asked the experts how you can make sure you look fresh and youthful all year round.

BEAUTY BLUNDER

You spend too long doing cardio

Pounding the treadmill may make you feel you’ve ticked off a workout, but without the right strategy, you could be on the road to nowhere. ‘Depending on your goals, doing steady-state cardio sessions for more than 45 minutes could be an inefficient use of time,’ says Tamir Grant, a personal trainer and osteopath (tgrantwellbeing.com). They will also eventually deplete muscle glycogen stores and increase production of free radicals, which can damage cells and accelerate ageing.

FIX IT: Swap some longer cardio sessions for high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Short, sharp bursts of intense exercise trigger production of human growth hormone (HGH), thought to help increase lean muscle mass and build definition.