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Courtesy Ron Jenkins/Sunwest Communications
Key takeaways
- Staying physically active at every age is essential for optimal health, according to Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the “father of aerobics.”
- He emphasizes combining aerobics with strength training, especially as muscle loss increases later in life.
- Cooper prioritizes sleep, diet, supplements as needed, weight measures beyond BMI and yearly exams to support longevity.
If you believe your days of aerobics are behind you, think again. According to Dr. Kenneth Cooper, who pioneered aerobics for improving health, remaining physically active is critical for combating diseases and driving healthy aging. And he should know, because at age 95, he still works out five days a week.
“No drug can replace the effects of an active lifestyle,” says Cooper, a preventive medicine doctor and researcher who regularly sees patients at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas.
An Oklahoma native, Cooper was active as a boy and ran track in high school (he had Olympic aspirations). At the time, many experts thought too much heart-pumping movement could have adverse effects on health and specifically the heart.
Support for Staying Active
If you can use a professional trainer to learn some basics about physical activity, Cooper recommends it. He’s a fan of muscle activation technique (MAT) specialists, who can pinpoint issues with your muscles, including weakness and tightness. If you can work out only at home, there’s a lot you can do with light weights and resistance bands, he adds.
But Cooper didn’t always maintain his physical fitness, especially when attending the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine. He was out of shape in his late 20s and experienced chest pains, though nothing was wrong with his heart. “At 29 years of age, I was a mess,” Cooper recalls.
He took up running in the early 1960s while working toward a master’s degree in public health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He says it was then that he learned more about preventing diseases, not just treating them.
In the mid 1960s, he completed the aerospace medicine residency program and began developing an exercise conditioning program for the Air Force at Wilford Hall U.S. Air Force Hospital in San Antonio. There, he formulated the 12-minute and 1.5-mile fitness treadmill tests, which are used widely today among coaches and trainers. He wrote his first book, Aerobics, in 1968, which became a global movement. In 1989, Cooper and colleagues published a landmark study that used the treadmill test to show that the higher a person’s fitness level, the lower their mortality risk, especially from heart disease and cancer.
In his 20th book, Grow Healthier as You Grow Older, Cooper writes that in the military, he began dreaming of a preventive medicine clinic. Today, thousands visit the 30-acre Cooper Clinic campus in Dallas — complete with a hotel, gym and spa — to undergo extensive one-day testing. This helps people understand how to improve their mental and physical health with exercise, naturally, at the core.
Dr. Kenneth Cooper exercises about five times per week.
Courtesy Ron Jenkins/Sunwest Communications
How Cooper works out
“Fitness is a journey, not a destination,” Cooper says. Before he goes home from work at night, he spends 30 minutes pedaling on a recumbent bike while watching TV, pushing his heart rate to about 130 beats per minute using a heart rate monitor. He also does about 10 minutes of weight training three times a week. And he walks his dog about 15 to 20 minutes per day.
“I use exercise at the end of the day to burn off stress,” says Cooper, adding that it helps him sleep better.
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