“The five exercises cover all the main areas we want to focus on as we age: flexibility, strength, and cardiovascular fitness,” she says. She says that the 5BX plan is a great way to maintain an all-round level of fitness, especially for older people. She is also Exceptional’s fitness writer. The plan, which is available in paperback from Amazon ( £11.99), is a form of functional fitness, combining both cardio and strength training to give a full-body workout.īecky Fuller is a personal trainer who works with clients in their 70s. They are:Īs you move through the six stages, modifications and progressions are introduced to up the intensity and work you harder. There are six levels of difficulty to move through, but the five core activities are always the same. This particular fitness regime appears to be a family affair, with Princes William and Harry also believed to follow the training programme.Īs the name suggests, the workout consists of five separate moves, to be completed in under 11 minutes. It was developed for the Royal Canadian Air Force by Dr. It is a military fitness plan, which is unsurprising, given that Charles spent five years serving in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. It is believed that he completes the 11-minute routine twice a day. The core of Charles’s fitness regime is the 5BX workout, which stands for “five basic exercises”. When it comes to keeping fit, nowadays his routine features two key activities: daily walks and a workout know as 5BX. His commitment to staying physically active and maintaining a healthy diet is rooted in discipline, a value his father, the late Duke of Edinburgh, instilled in him from an early age.Ĭharles’s son, Prince William, recently confirmed this, telling a BBC documentary: “ He has amazing personal discipline.

(Although another study confirmed it’s never too late to get started: significant health benefits can be achieved by those who became physically active relatively late in life.)Ĭharles is also a keen gardener, a physical activity that can count as cardio exercise in itself (as our gardening workout illustrates). Studies have shown that being physically active in middle-age is beneficial to successful ageing. He was a regular polo player until hanging up his mallet at the age of 57, having played for some 40 years. Charles has been active throughout his adult life, something that stands him in good stead for a healthy old age.

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