No gym membership required!

Repeat after us: Exercise is good for you. That almost goes without saying by now, right? Aside from helping you lose weight, research has also shown that a daily workout can improve your mood, boost your memory, and add years to your life. (Don’t miss all of the health benefits of exercise.) But in order to truly reap the rewards of your workout, two simple exercises are essential.

Put down the fancy exercise balls and tech-savvy treadmills. To achieve peak physical fitness at any age, Dr. Michael Joyner, a physician and Mayo Clinic researcher, recommends performing burpees and jumping rope. And speaking of adding years to your life, this is the absolute best anti-aging workout, according to science.

But why these two exercises, in particular? First of all, once you reach the exact age when it gets harder to lose weight, endurance exercise just isn’t going to cut it anymore. That’s why you need to build your muscle strength, as well. While lifting weights and adding intervals to your daily cardio can certainly do the trick, these two workouts can improve both your endurance and strength at the same time.

Plus, not only can you do both no matter the weather, but you also don’t need to splurge on a pricey gym membership to stay fit. Sounds like a win-win to us!

Granted, these are pretty intense workouts. So if you’re interested in trying them out, don’t forget to build in short periods of rest. Alternating between hard days and easy days can prevent you from overexerting your bones and muscles, trainers say. “Make your hard days hard and your easy days easy,” Joyner told Business Insider. “Control your pace or it will control you.”

There you have it! Now that you’re clued in on how to stay fit for life, try these 10 exercises that burn more calories than running.

[Source: Business Insider]

Written by Brooke Nelson, this story originally appeared on rd.com