Most Replayed Moment: The 7-Day Training Blueprint To Live Longer! Peter Attia

0:00:06 and when you think about all those things you want to accomplish if we were then to sort of
0:00:12 codify them into a bunch of exercises or areas of your health that you had to now be thinking about
0:00:18 that I needed to be thinking about what are the most important things so I’m a 32 year old what
0:00:23 are the most important parts of my health that I should be thinking about if I want to achieve all
0:00:27 the things that I said to you in my final decade no one in the final decade of their life ever said
0:00:34 I wish I had less strength and I wish I wish I had less endurance so you cannot be too strong and you
0:00:41 cannot be too fit the only time that one would throttle back on the pursuit of those is a if
0:00:47 doing so is coming at the expense of something else either with respect to your health or your life
0:00:56 and two if the pursuit of that at such an extreme level produces risk of injury okay so in other
0:01:04 words could I be stronger than I am today yes uh I’ll give you an example we know that in resistance
0:01:08 training the sweet spot for pure strength is one to five reps
0:01:21 when your goal is to maximize strength you need to be pushing one two three four five reps once you
0:01:26 start thinking about hypertrophy muscle size we’re starting to think about seven eight nine ten eleven
0:01:30 twelve reps once we start thinking about muscular endurance we start thinking about north of 15
0:01:36 right those are the general patterns of resistance training so if I want to build my muscles because
0:01:40 I’m going for aesthetic goals then I need to be aiming above five reps I need to be 10 or 12
0:01:45 yeah if I’m just purely thinking about strength bigger weights but lower reps that’s exactly right
0:01:51 okay and then if I want muscular endurance we’ve got to be even higher reps okay lower weight yep okay
0:01:57 so again we could go into much more detail around that but uh just to finish the point here why do I
0:02:01 not do much training at one to five reps in fact these days I don’t do any training at one to five reps
0:02:11 why because to train at one to five reps comes at a risk okay especially for heavy compound movements
0:02:20 so like I’m you know I’m okay getting a little bit less of a strength benefit while still of course
0:02:29 getting stronger but training at a higher rep load so I’m typically so I’m targeting eight to twelve reps
0:02:36 with one to two reps in reserve is basically how I’m doing my resistance training that means
0:02:43 every set I’m doing I would expect to get to within about one rep of failure somewhere so today when I
0:02:50 lifted I don’t think I did less than seven I didn’t do more than 12 and the weight was always titrated so
0:02:55 that I was either failing almost failing or one rep away from failing somewhere in there and I was
0:03:00 adjusting the weight constantly on every exercise to get there with the exception of one exercise I did
0:03:03 push-ups was one of the things I did push-ups are kind of more in the muscle endurance obviously I’m
0:03:08 doing more reps when I was doing push-ups but pretty much everything else was in that range so again I’m
0:03:16 not fully maximizing strength anymore because the cost of it might be a little bit high in terms of injury
0:03:24 risk similarly I’m not strength training 24 seven because I need to make time to do my endurance
0:03:31 training and other types of training how often do you train resistance training I resistance train three
0:03:38 times a week and how often do you train generally and I train every day every day yeah why because you know
0:03:45 again the the intensity of my training is not that high at least three days a week so the three resistance
0:03:51 days are pretty hard because I’m really only doing each body part once a week so when I’m doing it I’m
0:03:57 really I’ll spend that 90 minutes really kind of hammering those body parts three of those days are
0:04:05 just zone two so my three three of my four cardio days are zone two days where I’m doing you know I’m
0:04:14 on a bike and I am riding at a level of intensity that actually allows me to still talk some you know not
0:04:21 talk like I am now but talking in a sort of a strained way so for me that’s about a heart rate of 140 beats per
0:04:29 minute and that’s just not that’s just not taking a huge toll on me like that those are almost like
0:04:37 recovery days for me and then one day a week I do a really really hard vo2 max day and that’s that’s a
0:04:43 really hard day that burns a lot of matches that’s tomorrow not looking forward to it already do you do
0:04:48 cardio on your resistance training days as well no no I don’t so it’s the seven day it’s four days of
0:04:55 cardio three days of uh of resistance now that’s going to change in the summer when I’m going to
0:05:03 add three days of swimming um and I will end up doing some swims on some resistance days so before
0:05:07 you do your resistance workout you don’t go on the stepper for 20 minutes or cycle for 20 minutes or
0:05:13 something I don’t is there a particular reason why it wouldn’t really serve a purpose um I so I know a lot
0:05:17 of people do that I know a lot of people will say hey I’m going to do a little bit of a warm-up on this
0:05:22 treadmill or the stepmaster before I lift but I actually have a pretty strong point of view on
0:05:27 how we should warm up to lift and I don’t think walking on the treadmill or running on the treadmill
0:05:33 or being on the stairmaster on the bike is a great prep for the lift I think it’s better to warm up for
0:05:40 a lift doing movements that prepare you to lift so for example like if it’s a leg day so Monday’s leg day
0:05:46 right so what am I going to do I’m going to start by doing a bunch of core stabilizing stuff so I’m going to
0:05:50 do a whole bunch of this dynamic neuromuscular stabilization stuff so you get into basically
0:05:56 these baby positions and you really learn to activate your core as you move around in a six
0:06:03 month position and stuff like that I then do a whole bunch of um like you know what a 90 90 is or a shin
0:06:09 box exercises um where you’re you’re kind of on the ground in a position where you’re really ice you know
0:06:15 you can start out doing it isometrically but ultimately going through uh a slow eccentric and concentric
0:06:21 for a phase of movement that’s kind of activating glutes so I go through basically a whole dns sequence
0:06:27 then I get into a dynamic movement prep so then I get into a bunch of bouncing a bunch of footwork
0:06:32 and then I start with really light weights so I’ll go to a leg extension machine and do very very light
0:06:39 leg extensions very very light leg curls come back and do more jumping and moving and lunging and go back and forth so I’ll spend
0:06:47 20 minutes doing a warm-up but the warm-up is geared for me to lift whereas if I had just sat on a bike
0:06:52 and pedaled around that doesn’t actually replicate any of the movements I’m going to do when I start
0:06:58 loading myself I’ve got particularly concerned about injury yeah now that I’m 32 because when I was 30 20
0:07:02 I could do almost anything it seemed nothing would break but I had a couple of injuries when doing like
0:07:06 shoulder presses and things like that and one of my friends had a similar injury recently which took him out for
0:07:11 three or four months where he did a shoulder press pulled something in his back or something as like a neck
0:07:16 yeah and then he couldn’t like turn his head anymore in terms of injury
0:07:23 if I wanted to get injured am I right in thinking that the thing that leads to injury is basically just walking
0:07:28 straight in and trying to lift something heavy or is there things further upstream that cause injury in the gym
0:07:32 no there’s I mean that’s one way to increase your risk of injury for sure
0:07:37 uh but but yes there are other ways that it can happen and I think about it a lot I mean one of the
0:07:45 injuries I think a lot about are calf injuries achilles injuries sort of tendon injuries this is I think
0:07:51 one of the things that becomes a real problem for people as they age you know you you often hear about
0:07:57 people my age uh tearing an achilles yeah it’s a devastating injury now again it’s not devastating and
0:08:03 you won’t recover from it but boy it’s going to take you out of commission for six months so a lot of
0:08:10 these injuries happen because the individual still has strength um but they’ve they’ve kind of lost some
0:08:16 of the pliability in the tendon because they’ve kind of lost some of the jumping that’s why I always start
0:08:22 these workouts with low level of jumping and I’ll progress to higher levels of jumping but jumping is
0:08:28 actually a very important part of training and it’s one of the things that we take for granted
0:08:34 but boy when your ability to jump is gone and jumping by the way can mean like just initiating a jump
0:08:39 but it can also mean jumping off something and stopping yourself those are really important skills
0:08:44 and so like something like jumping rope is really important right your feet are just kind of moving
0:08:51 like that they’re they’re acting as shock absorbers calves and achilles have to constantly change in length
0:08:55 and that accommodation is a really important part of resilience and I think that should that should
0:09:00 be an important part of everybody’s warm-up at a minimum if not part of their workout one thing I’d
0:09:07 love you to do is to persuade people listening that muscle mass matters for longevity because um
0:09:16 and also if you can within that that leg day matters because we all avoid leg day including me and
0:09:23 sometimes I need to be told again why it matters for me to add it well I mean I think look muscle mass
0:09:33 um is is probably the second most highly uh correlated finding uh or third most to longevity
0:09:42 after strength and cardiorespiratory fitness VO2 max so why is that um so first of all I think that
0:09:49 muscle mass is both directly a proxy for strength in general the more muscle you have the stronger you
0:09:56 are we all know exceptions to that we know wiry little people who are insanely strong and I have
0:10:02 patients like that they’re just naturally you know thin people but when we put them through the testing
0:10:09 protocols you know they’re remarkable in terms of their strength and I tend to not worry about the fact
0:10:14 that they’re slight in build when when I see that they’re strong across the board there is another
0:10:19 benefit of muscle mass which is it’s the place where you dispose of glucose so from a metabolic
0:10:25 perspective the more muscle mass you have the more glucose buffering capacity you have and why does that
0:10:33 matter as I age because you know one of the hallmarks of aging is a reduction in the capacity to
0:10:41 metabolize and buffer glucose and so as as glucose levels become less and less regulated all sorts of
0:10:47 bad things happen bad things happen to micro vessels in the body so we if you think of the most extreme
0:10:52 example of this is type 2 diabetes so once a person has type 2 diabetes what are they at risk for they’re
0:10:59 at the risk of reduced vision and ultimately blindness amputations of their digits impotence right the
0:11:05 penis has tons of tiny blood vessels in it and the more that you know glycosylated proteins accumulate
0:11:10 there the less they get blood flow and obviously damage to the small blood vessels of the brain
0:11:17 as well so all of these things are hugely problematic when glucose is dysregulated and again the most
0:11:24 important thing that you can do to regulate glucose in addition to the obvious which is eating in energy
0:11:31 balance not eating too much is making sure you have large insulin sensitive muscles which means large
0:11:36 muscles in the context of an individual who’s sleeping well and exercising and you’re going to
0:11:40 basically have a great place to put all of that glucose when you consume it and is that going to
0:11:45 stave off me getting belly fat because my glucose is going to be stored in the muscles as opposed to
0:11:50 somewhere else or again it all depends on the total energy balance but yes it’s clearly going to make a
0:11:57 difference right so one of the surest ways to um reduce your capacity to store fat is to add more
0:12:05 muscle okay um i did the grip strength test i’ve done it twice now and meaning you did one of the like
0:12:09 grip meters or you did a hanging test the uh one of the grip grip meters i actually did it at brian
0:12:15 johnson’s house and then i but i also did it with andy galpin and people tell me it’s a indicator of
0:12:21 longevity but i’ve never really understood why is it just testing my strength yeah um grip strength of
0:12:26 all the strength metrics it’s one of the most highly correlated with longevity we actually prefer to do
0:12:33 it like a 10 squared where your colleagues tested yesterday we prefer to do it on a dead hang so we make
0:12:39 them hang from a bar um and we just time how long they can hang so that that’s a really good metric of
0:12:45 your grip strength because it’s also normalized to your weight okay so uh so we we want to see that
0:12:52 people can hang for at least two minutes on a bar and so the question is why is that so highly correlated
0:12:58 with longevity and it’s what you said it’s it’s it’s strength uh and the reason for it is it’s really
0:13:05 hard to be strong anywhere in the upper body if your grip is weak like if you think about being able to
0:13:12 push especially being able to pull like all of the real metrics of upper body strength require a strong
0:13:17 grip and if you have a strong grip you have a strong hand you have a strong forearm you have a strong
0:13:22 scapula that is connected to your rib cage like it goes up the whole chain and that’s another reason why
0:13:29 we like the dead hang as a way to test it because the dead hang is testing everything it’s testing your
0:13:35 actual grip it’s testing your scapular stabilization the stability of your shoulder it’s basically testing that
0:13:39 entire chain and then i also think there’s a practical side of this right when when you know
0:13:47 it’s very underappreciated what frailty does to an aging individual and what sarcopenia loss of muscle
0:13:54 mass does to an aging person and and what it is about falling that is so devastating to an older person
0:14:00 and the stronger your grip the easier you’re able to navigate a lot of those things right it just seems
0:14:05 unthinkable that falling is something i should be thinking about 32 in the future like because
0:14:12 because my seems ridiculous it seems ridiculous yeah yeah and yet it is devastating so once you reach the
0:14:19 age of 65 which that ain’t that far i mean if you be you know 65 year olds all day long that does that’s
0:14:26 not a that’s not a very old person yeah once you reach the age of 65 your mortality from a fall that
0:14:35 results in a broken hip or femur is 15 to 30 percent just think that it’s such a staggering number so
0:14:42 you’re over 65 you fall and that fall results in the break of a femur or hip there’s a 15 to 30 percent
0:14:49 chance you’ll be dead within a year what kills me it could be something very acute like you bet you know
0:14:54 the fall that’s significant enough to do that also bangs your head it could be that you get a fat embolism
0:15:00 you get a blood clot it could be that you know during the recovery process of this you just never really get
0:15:07 better you never thrive again i think a more disturbing statistic is that of all the people who survive
0:15:14 50 percent will never again regain the level of function they had before the injury wow so they will require
0:15:19 a cane for the rest of their life or something like that um now there are lots of things that account for that
0:15:24 andy galpin who you mentioned a moment ago talks a lot about this but it’s a lot of it comes down to foot
0:15:30 explosiveness power so the reason you’re not really afraid of falling like when was the last time you were
0:15:36 walking and you your your foot caught something and you you slipped like yesterday yeah quite often
0:15:42 yeah exactly why don’t you fall when that happens because i can quickly readjust right that’s power
0:15:50 okay so you have the power in your foot to readjust when you lose your step you step off a curb not
0:15:56 realizing it it doesn’t matter you readjust okay those are a very very specific muscle fiber that is
0:16:02 responsible for that it’s called the type 2b muscle fiber that is the first fiber that atrophies when you
0:16:07 age in fact you’re already at your peak it’s all downhill from where you are now thank you so much
0:16:13 yes so i’m i’m already 20 years past you and my power is a fraction of what it was 20 years ago now
0:16:20 i fight like hell based on the exercises i do to try to make to try to keep it as high as possible
0:16:24 so the reason that these you know people who were in their 70s are falling all the time
0:16:30 is people think it’s a balance thing it’s not just a balance thing right it’s that they’re undergoing
0:16:35 the same insult you and i undergo on a daily basis but the difference is their probability
0:16:41 of being able to catch it either through the explosiveness of their foot or their lower leg
0:16:44 coupled with maybe not being able to grab onto something as quickly and adjust
0:16:50 it’s a power deficit problem so what do i have to train now at 32 to ensure that
0:16:53 specifically the example of hitting something and quickly being able to adjust
0:16:59 um i’m able to do that when i’m 70 i think jumping is a great way to do this right so so i mean i use
0:17:03 certain specialized pieces of equipment that actually have power built into it because power
0:17:09 is different from strength right so strength is really the ability to is just the ability to move
0:17:17 a force independent of the speed at which you move it power is the maximum combination of force and speed
0:17:27 okay so if you on the on the on the x-axis if you were to put force and on the y-axis if you were to put
0:17:35 power the curve is an inverted u so as the force or the weight that you’re moving goes up and you’re
0:17:39 trying to move it as fast as you can you’re getting more and more and more and more power but then at some
0:17:43 point the weight gets so heavy that even as you continue to move it it’s going slower and slower and
0:17:47 slower so your power is going down so there’s a sweet spot there so one of the things i do is
0:17:52 there’s certain specialized pieces of equipment that allow you to train in that way so i definitely rely
0:17:57 on a lot of those but even if you don’t have access to that machine jumping is a really important way to
0:18:03 generate power so if you’re just doing a vertical jump that’s a that’s power what about balance i was
0:18:09 at brian johnson’s house and as he was cooking his i don’t know breakfast or lunch whatever he was
0:18:16 balancing on a half ball you’ve seen one of those things yeah yeah i don’t think i asked him why he
0:18:21 was balancing on it but i assume it was to do with balance and there’s certain muscles in the in the leg
0:18:26 there are lots of exercises that are great for balance um anything that produces instability is
0:18:32 great because it’s uh you know for lack of a better term i’ve heard it described as problem solving for
0:18:37 your foot okay right so so if you think about being on any unstable surface even if you’re just walking
0:18:43 on an unstable surface so if you if you were to look at a person’s foot their lower leg actually as
0:18:48 they’re walking on a surface that’s constantly changing so like a gravel path or something like
0:18:53 that you’re going to see like if this were my lower leg you would see the musculature of the lower
0:19:01 leg constantly adjusting to it and so yeah i’m i really enjoy things that force that type of training
0:19:10 do you do flexibility stuff yeah so i’m actually naturally a pretty lax person so i don’t do any
0:19:17 stretching if that’s what you’re asking but all of the sort of stability and dynamic stuff i do
0:19:27 incorporates movement at end ranges so um i’ll give you an example of why i think the notion of
0:19:33 flexibility might be a little bit misunderstood if you ask a person to stand up and with their legs
0:19:39 straight touch their toes most people would say that’s a great test of flexibility in the hamstring
0:19:47 right and most people can’t do that what they don’t realize is everybody’s hamstrings are long
0:19:55 enough to allow them to do that the reason they can’t do it is their central nervous system will not
0:20:02 release them to do it does that make sense interesting the central nervous system won’t release them to do
0:20:10 that’s right it doesn’t feel safe for them to do it how do i know this because if you take a person
0:20:16 under general anesthesia you can put them into almost any position possible so if you took a person
0:20:21 under general anesthesia laid them on the operating room table you could lift their leg up to here
0:20:28 when they’re awake you couldn’t get it past here when they wake up from surgery will they have a torn
0:20:34 hamstring not at all they won’t even know their leg was moved the difference is when they’re under
0:20:40 general anesthesia their brain is not sending a signal to the leg that says don’t lift so why is the
0:20:46 why is the leg why is the brain doing that to the individual this is how i learned it on a personal
0:20:54 level so about six years ago i had tweaked my back and had just done a you know unnecessarily heavy
0:20:59 set of deadlifts and just pushed it a little too far and i was kind of nursing this this sort of you
0:21:06 know just very very tight ql i was completely jammed up and i came in to to do some training with a friend
0:21:09 of mine who’s one of the guys that actually he is really the guy that introduced me to this thing
0:21:16 called dns dynamic neuromuscular stabilization and i mean i was stiff as a board i couldn’t you know
0:21:22 get past my knees bending forward and i’d been hurting for like three days and we went through
0:21:33 a series of exercises for 40 minutes which included me laying on my back with my legs up him leaning on top of
0:21:42 me so my feet are here on his chest and doing isometric pushes while working on generating
0:21:50 intra-abdominal pressure and after an yeah maybe 40 minutes of this type of exercises i was palms
0:22:00 on the floor now how do i go from not being able to get to my knees to palms on the floor in 40 minutes
0:22:07 with three days of horrible back pain the difference is when i my back was hurting it was my body was not
0:22:15 going to let me go down right the body was saying no way you’re back i’m protecting you because you
0:22:20 were you were not stable you’re not going to go any further and what we went through with this exercise
0:22:27 and a series of exercises was basically i mean i’m oversimplifying this and sort of anthropomorphizing
0:22:33 it but letting my brain know it’s okay you’re stable you’re stable you’re stable the back is safe the back
0:22:40 is safe let him go and then ah i’m palms on the floor so i love testing this sometimes i’ll just wake
0:22:45 up in the morning and do five minutes of breathing exercises when i’m stiff as a board and just get
0:22:49 into a you know a position on the floor why the breathing breathing exercises because that’s really how
0:22:55 it’s the it’s the the breathing is how i kind of create this cylinder in my abdomen to sort of push
0:23:00 the you know push the the the floor of the cylinder down is the pelvic wall the diaphragm is the cylinder
0:23:07 the top and then the the entire you know entirety of my abdomen is the wall of the cylinder and so i kind
0:23:12 of go through these exercises every single day usually on my back actually that’s kind of like part of
0:23:19 my warm-up and and it’s just a way to kind of ground myself around creating concentric pressure in the
0:23:24 abdomen just to get some tips from you around your your strength training regime um how many exercises
0:23:29 do you do what does i’m really curious so you train three days a week doing strength and resistance stuff
0:23:37 do you do like shoulders and back and um as like a pet like you know people yeah yeah exactly so on
0:23:47 monday monday is uh is pure lower body okay and uh wednesday is arms and shoulders and friday is uh
0:23:54 chest and back okay super simple like nothing nothing no rocket science an hour uh i mean it’s
0:24:00 it’s a like an hour and a half of lifting play plus maybe 20 minutes of the warm-up stuff so on the chest
0:24:07 and back day how many chest exercises are you doing four four okay yeah and then four on back yeah okay
0:24:15 and i just i’m just super setting them and i’m gonna do maybe five sets of each so five working sets so
0:24:19 there’s a lot of warm-up in there too um and i’ll also do some other stuff like some med ball slams
0:24:26 or things like that as well it’s been this huge rise in people doing these um high rocks and sort of
0:24:32 elite endurance events and such it’s really interesting that it’s become so popular even things like running
0:24:36 clubs i know but yeah the fact that people are more people are doing marathons now than ever before
0:24:41 why do you think this is happening i don’t know i mean i think it’s a very net positive thing though
0:24:47 i mean i i i do think that there’s um more and more people that are taking up things like rucking and
0:24:53 running and and you know finding camaraderie in these things the only thing i hope is that that people are
0:24:57 doing it in a manner that’s sustainable and safe and allows them to do it indefinitely so i you know
0:25:02 i just i’m always hopeful that whatever thing that people are doing they’re not injuring themselves
0:25:08 because again rule number one is don’t get injured so so you’re you know you’re you’re you’re playing
0:25:13 uh you’re playing you want the game the name of the game is to play the game as long as possible
0:25:19 what you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode if you want to listen
0:25:24 to that full episode i’ve linked it down below check the description thank you