Originally Posted by
YVK
My considerations in this regard are biased by what I do. I am a doc who sees a lot of older, old, and frankly very old folks with at least heart diseases, and often times more than heart disease. Within this group, I have a quite large cohort of people who are in their mid or late 80s or early 90s and who simply kick ass. These are the people who are/were in such a good shape that when their heart attacks happened, valves failed and electricity stopped running we went a full court press (try that in socialized medicine) and they not only survived, they regained a complete and normal function. In other words, these are the people who never lost their physical dignity to age and disease, who remain able bodied and enjoy their life literally until they drop dead. When I see a patient like that, I always ask what they did for themselves lifestyle and fitness wise that kept them so strong for decades.
Most never smoked; those who did quit early in life. Almost no one followed any specific diet but none of them is overweight; most are normal weight or just slightly above. Nobody worked nights, sucks for me. Every single one maintained a high aerobic capacity, either because of physical work or aerobic exercises. This became a way of life for them, nearly daily aerobic efforts. This implies that almost all of them managed to preserve their joints. Not a single one was a weightlifter but almost every man did some strength training or work to maintain a healthy muscle mass.
What I do for myself is an emulation of these remarkable folks. I try to go gym 7 days a week. "Try" is a key word. Sometimes it is 7, and sometimes it is none, but I'd imagine the average is 5. I try to alternate lifting and cardio, shooting for 120-150 minutes of aerobic exercise weekly. After all, my own professional society recommends 150 a week. I try to preferentially do non-impact cardio (swimming) over impact (running) for joint health. When I do cardio, I don't care about distance or speed, I care about uninterrupted time spent in my target heart rate range.
When I lift, the last thing I am interested is muscle mass gain. I want muscle mass preservation, muscle strength, joint safety and range of motion.
I agree on creatine. I do use a bunch of protein but that's pretty much muscle mass preservation at my age. I try hard to cut crappy food out of my diet. I don't claim much science behind my approach, it is just an observational data.