Key Takeaways
Long-term fitness takes adaptability and consistency through life’s changes.
Resilience and a flexible mindset help you stay consistent during times of disruption.
Adapt the workout, but keep the foundations: strength training and cardiovascular fitness.
Rachel Vaziralli, the Director of Fitness at Orangetheory Fitness, designs fitness programs for a living.
Even the best-designed fitness plan can't always withstand the interruptions of life, though. For Vaziralli, it was spinal fusion surgery. For you, those interruptions might be an injury, menopause, aging parents, new babies, a new diagnosis, or a demanding job that blows you off course…
When that routine is gone, it can feel like lost progress or wasted time. But after more than 20 years in fitness, Vaziralli has learned that long-term consistency isn’t about avoiding interruptions so much as it is about adapting your routine as life changes.
Have you ever felt like you had to "start over" with your fitness?
Exercise is the medicine that adapts
Decades of literature suggest that exercise is medicine. But despite what some might claim, there’s no perfect amount. Your body, schedule, and priorities can change over time, so training ought to be adaptable and change with it.
In practice, that might mean:
Scaling back and modifying movements during injury and recovery
Trading longer workouts for shorter, higher-intensity sessions when time is tight
Switching modalities when progress stalls (for example, adding bike sprints if walking alone isn’t improving VO2 max)
Data backs that those who can adapt their habits are more likely to stick with them.
The principle applies to fitness goals. It’s a flexibility that’s been linked to better mental well-being, lower stress, and greater resilience, all traits tied to healthy aging.
What does that look like in practice?
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What does adaptability actually take?
To age well is to be adaptable, but make no mistake: it takes practice, openness, and bravery, a type that psychologists call "existential courage”.
Vaziralli breaks down how anyone can become more adaptable.
Momentum shift up
The mental is not separate from the physical for building a routine that withstands the decades. Vaziralli is inspired by the adaptive mindset “Momentum Shift Up,” a principle developed by Ellen Latham, creator and co-founder of Orangetheory, which helped birth it.
It’s an idea that reframes resilience and shifts the conversation to “What can I do?”
For Vaziralli, that meant using a walker post-surgery. "I'm going to walk with this walker, because if I don't, what am I doing? I'm just sitting, accomplishing nothing, feeling worse."
That mindset alone could create a measurable gain in healthy years.
Resilience is considered a major factor in living to 100. A positive outlook—one expression of resilience—is linked to roughly a 15% longer lifespan and is consistently seen in “superagers.”
"Just like people get up and do their daily meditation,” building resilience and ‘mental grit’ takes practice, she says.
Coming out the other side can create a sense of motivation that helps you outlast periods of change.
Train for your current season
After spinal fusion surgery, Vaziralli's "program" was re-learning to walk independently. Eventually she progressed to swimming, and now she is back to jogging one year later.
This skill isn’t limited to injury or age. In healthier seasons, being flexible can increase your capacity to lift heavier, become more mobile, or increase muscle mass, to name a few.
Say your goal was to increase strength training to build muscle. After a few weeks, you might start adding more weight, reps, or increasing the range of motion.
These are common ways to make it harder, and while they can support progress, a key element is introducing a new stimulus.
“You need to make some sort of change" to achieve more, she says.
Using biceps curls as an example:
Heavy creates redundancy: You can continue to lift heavier, but the body will adapt to that specific movement pattern over time. This can stunt gains.
Vary the stimulus instead: Try cable biceps curls, reciprocating curls, or other movements that challenge the neuromuscular system (connection between the muscles, nerves, and brain) to support new progress.
Yet the foundations of exercising for longevity don’t change.
Adapt the plan—not the principles
Cardiovascular fitness and strength training are the universal exercise duo for maximizing healthspan—healthy years—though variation and flexibility still matter.
Cardio
Vaziralli says people should aim to include four distinct training types within cardio. Each can support cardiovascular fitness and metabolic flexibility differently.
High-intensity intervals
Low-intensity intervals
High-intensity steady state
Low-intensity steady state
You don’t need all four every day (and in some life seasons you won’t be able to do all of them), so aim to rotate through what you can do and when you can do it.
Strength
Strength training follows a similar logic, with research suggesting a ‘sweet spot’ of 90–120 minutes per week, associated with the strongest longevity outcomes.
The point of knowing the framework is that you can learn how to modify it.
This can help you be more consistent even when facing a life stressor.
Consistency above all
Consistency is the best exercise for longevity, yet not enough people make exercise “non-negotiable,” Vaziralli says.
A helpful reframe is to see exercise as medicine, or the gas that fills up your car. If building movement can become a necessary and regular part of your schedule, it can feel more achievable.
Change your environment, change your health
Our tendency to compare progress with others can also get in the way of staying consistent.
‘Before and after’ transformations, while inspiring at times, are a double-edged sword that can make “mundane exercise programs seem pointless.”
Exercising in a new environment can help you overcome inaction. Group fitness is particularly helpful for boosting connection, morale, and consistency.
"It’s kept me in this industry for over 25 years," Vaziralli says.
Adapt for consistency. Consistency for longevity
Programming a routine that supports healthy aging is about returning to movement time and again, even when life demands that you do some things differently.
Movement is medicine, and the dose changes.
It takes courage. Yet, if the whole point of longevity is “living your life to the fullest,” as Vaziralli believes, the only thing you need to do is just keep moving.
Take action
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Your next read? Want to be more resilient? Here’s how.
What does a typical week of workouts look like for you?
Rachel Vaziralli: “It has changed greatly over this past year. I had spinal fusion a year ago, so it has been a very slow and progressive training protocol to get back to where I am today.”
Most days: Swimming for low-impact cardio
2–3x/week: Resistance training
2–3x/week: Orangetheory classes
Until next time!
Erin
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The information provided about wellness and health is for general informational and educational purposes only. We are not licensed medical professionals, and the content here should not be considered medical advice. Talk to a doctor before trying any of these suggestions.
