Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine is a flagship internal medicine textbook used worldwide to train physicians and guide evidence-based clinical thinking. In its preventive and chronic disease frameworks, it treats physical activity like a dose-dependent therapy: regular movement reduces cardiometabolic disease, musculoskeletal decline, depression, and all-cause mortality. It emphasizes that sedentary behavior is independently harmful, and that aerobic activity plus resistance training provides the most reliable long-term benefit when it is sustainable and consistent.

Coach Wade’s method rejects shortcuts and gimmicks. It uses a fixed set of foundational movements (“Big Six”) and makes you earn progression through standards: clean reps, controlled tempo, and patience. The goal is not flashy effort—it’s ownership of strength. That creates resilience rather than fragility and supports lifelong training without requiring equipment or maximal loading.

In perioperative and inpatient medicine, clinicians often use functional capacity in METs (metabolic equivalents) as a proxy for physiologic reserve. A common threshold is 4 METs—the ability to do tasks like brisk walking or climbing stairs. Patients below that threshold tend to have higher complication risk with acute illness and surgery. Daily walking preserves aerobic reserve, and progressive strength training improves efficiency and tolerance to exertion—together supporting safer reserve when life gets stressful.

Simple synthesis: Train the Big Six with standards. Add daily walking or other steady movement. Break up long sitting. Progress only when you can repeat the target cleanly at your official tempo. The result is strength that holds, and reserve that shows up when you need it most.

Green scheduled Blue logged Pink aerobic Yellow rest