I’ve really started to get into the concept of fitness and longevity. I’ve had a lot of family members pass away rather young so it’s something that is important to me and hits close to home. I want to make sure I’m training in a way that can facilitate and maximize health span the best I can. I’ve read a lot of your longevity and Eternal Warrior articles, which have incredible information in them. I really like your concepts of increasing health span through maintaining power, explosiveness, strength, muscle mass, etc. So at some point in the future I’m going to try to implement these templates.
My question, however, is what are your top 5-10 fitness standards/metrics for longevity training? I’ve read a few things like the ability to dead hang for 1-2 mins and goblet squat 50% of your body weight 25 times unbroken, which seem pretty cool. But I’m really hoping to get your take on some measurements and metrics that you think would best for longevity purposes. I feel like having some metrics to measure yourself against can really be motivating and a good test of where you’re at.
I don’t know a thing about what specific weightlifting feats help with longevity. I’m not sure anyone does.
But it is a topic that much interests me. You might start by reading the books The Longevity Solution (Jason Fung), Outlive (Peter Attia) and Lifespan (David Sinclair) which are mostly about evidence and which minimize outrageous claims and trying to sell you things. As always, use what you can and question unreasonable claims.
The important things are to minimize muscle loss. Healthy mitochondria likely keep you going and loss of mobility and balance are huge problems for the elderly. Emphasize strength and hypertrophy and keep lifting twice a week for perpetuity. Be smart and avoid injury. Realize that you need to manage the good and bad effects of “being big” and protein intake, which are double-edged swords. Get regular medical care, don’t become diabetic, realize steroids can make your heart muscle grow as well and enlarged hearts are less effective and cause problems. Do enough cardio to give you decent function. Consider something for flexibility and endurance. Keep your mind sharp by challenging it in new ways (puzzles, dancing, keep lifelong learning new things like foreign languages or novel skills, etc).
A very interesting 2022 study of 750,000 US veterans (free link below to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology), aged thirty to ninety-five and followed over 10.2 years, shows the importance of cardiorespiratory fitness and VO2 max. It included about 110,000 people in their 70s, 27,000 people in their 80s, 143.000 African-Americans, 35,000 Hispanics, 16,000 Aboriginals and 45,000 women so is a pretty complete cross-section compared to most studies. The long study period is important for longevity research, but most studies are far shorter duration than 10.2 years.
The study compares those with a VO2 max in the top 2% for their age and sex, and compares these “extremely fit” people to five other groups. The least fit people (0-20%) had a relative risk of dying 4.09 times bigger than the elite. Low fitness (20-40%) had a relative risk of 2.88; moderately fit (40-60%) of 2.19; fit (60-80%) of 1.66; and highly fit (80-97%) still had a 1.39 risk of dying compared with the top 2%.
This compares to relative mortality risks of chronic kidney disease (1.49), smoking (1.40), diabetes (1.34), all cancers (1.33), cardiovascular disease (1.28) and high blood pressure (1.14). So exercise is huge, but the effect of being extremely fit (top 2%) rather than quite fit (the rest of the top 20%) is surprisingly large.
Physical strength has also been associated with longevity. (Some studies focused on grip strength). So it makes sense to favour strength over hypertrophy and do enough cardio stuff to greatly improve your VO2 max, if longevity is your main goal. You would also understand the three known nutrient sensing systems and what affects them: insulin, mTOR and AMPK, and be mindful of your diet; drinking your coffee and green tea and including lots of different polyphenols from fruits and vegetables, or something like Superfood.
(Of course most Americans do not meet even the most basic guidelines for both aerobic (150 mins/week) and muscle-strengthening; so being in the top 20% and top 2% is easier than it sounds especially as you age.)
● In 2020, 28.3% of men and 20.4% of women met the guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities
● The percentage of men who met both physical activity guidelines decreased with age, from 41.3% of those aged 18–34, to 29.4% of those aged 35–49, to 21.6% of those aged 50–64, and 15.3% of those aged 65 and over.
This is an interesting topic - family history of diabetes, heart disease and arthritis so been thinking more about this as I’ll be 40 soon
I’m no expert but my hunch is focusing on exercises that maintain or build muscle with minimal impact or chance of injury as we become more injury prone as we age and little nagging injuries would proved harder to bounce back from
Kettlebell movements seem like a good way to build power without the impact of plyometrics etc
I used to powerlift but switched to trap bar deadlifts seem way easier on the lower back
Balance is important single leg variations would seem like a good bet, as are body weight movements in general.
Core work and lower back are very important - lower back issues are very common in an aging population
Brisk walking rather than running or jogging is less stressful on the joints
Scale back volume - may need to hang up the protein shakes on the 8 hour arm workout at some point
I have made a few changes to my workout over the years, but in general think aging lifters should maintain intensity and stay strong. There are lots of articles on the “over thirty (etc.)” lifter, but TC Luoma’s philosophy is better.
Don’t do exercises that hurt your joints for days after doing them. Do maximal singles less often, but don’t back off on the 75-95% stuff. Do challenging stuff you enjoy, but use a brief but appropriate warmup. It takes me longer to recover than it once did, of course.
Lower back pain is common but is far less in those with good core strength. I don’t jog much but find moderate sprinting helpful. Walking with a dog is best of all. I still do some plyometrics, but not the high density CrossFit style stuff. Jump squats with a trap bar, just a few box jumps and tossing the Smith bar work well for me.
A study came out of Berkeley a year or two ago. I forget details, but of the elderly, those with the strongest grip, were expected to outlive their peers. Since grip strength does not exist in a vacuum I would think in men, and women who are aged, their over all strength might be represented somewhat in their grip strength. Previously, and this goes back a bit, leg strength and the ability to walk amongst the elderly is an indicator in mortality. I apologize for not having a citation for this. I have started reading Outlive. I am not sure I am a fan of Dr. Attia, but having typed that, he is a ton smarter than me.
Have been listening to a stack of huberman lab podcasts on this and similar.
How much time have you got to work thru the extensive data etc out there!?
Big focus on VO2 max factor discussed here (farmers carries, dead hangs, wall sits etc too):
It terms of where we are lacking (shortcomings to bring up & work on), Andy Galpin works through some great info he uses for his clients - quick google search confirmed this list:
Even more topics - and there’s stacks more from other content creators out there too.
Getting up from the floor, loosing points for using your hand or knees etc. can’t remember what it’s called but it’s basically related to getting old and falling being a major issue and is a good indicator
