If you are into fitness, you have a few common driving forces that are pushing you along. As you get older, your mentality starts to shift from ” I am training to look good” to “I want to be able to enjoy life with I’m older”. Even I think about these things and I’m only 26! Fitness is task specific. If you want to be good at marathons then you need to run often. If you want good fitness for weightlifting,or the ability to perform many reps at high percentages of your 1RM, then you need to condition the body for that, too. You can’t expect yourself to be “fit” if your not training in that domain.
If fitness is task specific, and what we’re after is being “fit for life,” then we need a training plan that reflects that. The problem is that when you look at all the many things you could train for the list seems almost endless and that becomes a bit crazy to get a handle on. This is why goals are important for you to have and to set up as a guideline to your training.
If you were to try to program every facet of fitness into your training you’d either end up with workouts that last three hours each or you’d end up in the asylum. So you need to weed out the unnecessary and choose the fitness qualities that have the most carryover to everything else, as well as be realistic about what will have the greatest impact on your life.
Let’s think of life for a second. Is your life HIGH paced all the time? No. There are a lot of times in life that you move slower and at a steady pace with some intervals thrown into the mix. The thing about intensity is that a little bit goes along way. The sensible approach is that you can train far more often at a moderate pace than you can if you go all out every session. If fitness and health are to be a big part of your life as you age, then you need work at them daily.
Your first goal should be adding in more moderate days before increasing your intensity. And the older you are and the less active you’ve been your whole life, I’ would suggest more time spent on range of motion than on strength or conditioning work.
I can honestly say that I don’t believe there is a ceiling on how much flexibility and mobility work you can or should do. The more you move, the better you will be longer term.I think shifting from a performance mindset to a function mindset is an important change for people to make. And it is one that will have the greatest payoff to your long-term health and fitness.