Outlive: Dr. Attia's Ultimate 'Immortality' Secrets Revealed!
By Shane Dowd, CES, CMP
We all want to live longer. But what good is living longer if you’re too frail and weak to enjoy it?
In "Medicine 3.0," the focus is on improving not just our lifespan… but our healthspan.
NY Times best-selling author and longevity expert Peter Attia tells us how – EXERCISE!
“Exercise is by far the most potent longevity ‘drug.” He says. “It is the single most potent tool we have in the health-span-enhancing toolkit, including nutrition, sleep, and meds.”
But how, precisely, should we exercise? What are the specific routines we should do?
In today's video + blog, we explain all that and more. Keep reading.
Strength Training Secrets: Your Path to Lifelong Vitality
Science has shown the power of strength training on our health, body, and muscles. For example, check out these amazing studies courtesy of The Sports Physio on IG.
As you can see, exercise radically changes the amount of muscle and fat you have in your body. In simple terms, more muscle and less fat = less risk of disease.
None of us "get out of this alive." The process of time affects us all, BUT if you want to live long, stay strong!
Unlocking the Fountain of Youth: Attia's Strength Training Guide
So how do we do this?
What can "Medicine 3.0" and Dr. Attia teach us about the secrets to living long and staying strong?
Peter Attia’s Workout Routine
To become, as Attia puts it, a “kick-ass 100-year-old,” you have to choose ten things you want to be able to do for the rest of your life and then train for them.
This is his now famous “Centenarian Decathlon.” Attia says that the items on his list are personal, and yours should be, too. Think about what you want to be able to do and what you don’t care so much about.
Attia’s personal list includes 15 items such as:
- Hike 1.5 miles on a hilly trail
- Pick up a young child off the floor
- Lift a twenty-pound suitcase into the overhead compartment of a plane
- Balance on one leg for 30 seconds
- Have sex (BROLL: Flash “Awkward Gif or Meme on screen)
- Climb four flights of stairs in three minutes
- Open a jar
- Do thirty consecutive jump-rope skips
- …and more!
Build Your Own Centenarian Decathlon
If you want to improve your health span, you need to work on fixing injuries, becoming flexible, building strength, and pumping your heart and lungs.
For example:
- I want to be strong, so I lift weights (mostly free weights).
- I want to be agile, so I play sports.
- I want to be flexible and mobile, so I massage and stretch my body.
- And I want to have a healthy heart and lungs, so I walk, run, hike, and sprint.
There are four key pillars to being a badass 100-year-old:
Stability, strength, aerobic efficiency, and anaerobic performance.
Unlocking the Secrets: Attia's Fitness Pillars
I think about it this way: I need to train my muscles, my heart/lungs, and my mobility and stability.
If I do this, I'll be strong, flexible, mobile, and heart-healthy.
To cover all four fitness pillars, Attia recommends the following each week:
- Stability: one hour, split into 5 to 10-minute blocks done before your other workouts
- Strength: three 45 to 60-minute full-body workouts targeting all major muscle groups
- Aerobic Efficiency: four 45 to 60-minute zone 2 cardio workouts (think long, slow, steady-state cardio)
- Anaerobic Performance: one 30-minute VO2 max workout (think high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
Train Like Attia
Copying and pasting someone else's workout schedule is a good place to start, but ultimately, it isn’t enough.
As I tell some of my 1-on-1 clients who are training to be “The Ultimate Lifelong Athletes”:
“In the beginning, it’s OK to follow someone else's recipe, but ultimately, you want to become your own Master Chef."
Becoming Your Own Master Chef
With that in mind, here are some “recipes” or guidelines from Dr. Attia on how to build your longevity, resilience, and healthspan.
FIRST PILLAR: Build Stability First:
Attia argues strength is important, but stability training should come first.
Why?
Stability is the secret sauce that allows you to create the most force in the safest manner possible.
The Secret of Stability
By slowing down to focus on stability, you’ll learn how to control your body.
That control means once you add load to your strength workouts, you’ll be able to move better and lift heavier, faster (if that’s your goal).
You’ll also reduce the risk of injury to your joints, especially your vulnerable spine.
Mastering Stability and Mobility
Obviously, along with stability, you need mobility. If you don't have enough range of motion, your body compensates and gets hurt.
Fortunately, at GotROM we help you fix injuries and get flexible. So, if you're in pain now, we've got a program for that.
Peter Attia's 2nd Pillar: Strength Training
After the age of 30, sarcopenia (muscle loss) starts to rear its ugly head.
Without regular strength training, you lose as much as three to eight percent of your muscle mass per decade (1).
Less muscle = your metabolism is slower, and you can't do daily tasks so easily.
This is one of the main reasons our Grandmas and Grandpas often fall and break bones.
And, the scary thing is that death rates after a fall and fracture can be downright alarming.
For example, scientific studies show that one in three adults aged 50 and over dies within 12 months of suffering a hip fracture.
The reason? They stopped training their balance and strength!
Strength Training: Your Retirement Savings
I think of strength training as a form of retirement savings. The larger my “stache of cash” (strength and balance), the better I’ll be in the long haul.
Hence, the reason I’m gonna be working on “these gains” for the rest of my life:
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To build his own “stache of cash” in the form of strength, Attia focuses on 4 major areas of strength training:
- Grip Strength: This included weighted carries, dead hangs, or pull-ups.
- Eccentric Control: Emphasizing the ability to both lift and lower weight with control. Eccentric strength is the ability to put on the brakes when walking downhill or down the stairs, for example. To build eccentric control, things like rucking (walking or hiking with a weighted pack on your back), squatting, lunging, jumping, skipping, and running can all help.
- Pushing and Pulling Motions: This includes picking up your suitcase and putting it in the overhead bin on a plane, lifting a child, or pulling yourself up onto an elevated surface. In the gym, this could look like pushups, pullups, and rows.
- Hip-Hinging Movements: like deadlifts, squats, hip thrusts, and their single-leg variations. If you're new to these moves, begin with single-leg exercises like lunges and step-ups. Use lighter weights and get one-on-one assistance to learn the harder moves.
Peter Attia's 3rd Pillar: Push Your Anaerobic Limits
After strength training, Attia says that anaerobic capacity is vital.
Being able to sprint and recover quickly, aka "Peak cardiorespiratory fitness," or VO2 max, is the strongest indicator of longevity.
In a nutshell, if you increase your VO2 max, you become functionally younger.
Pretty cool, eh?
Aging in Reverse with VO2 Max
In a very real sense, you can start "aging in reverse" by improving your VO2 max!
Similarly to muscle loss after 30, after age 25, your VO2 max drops by 10 percent per decade.
And, the news gets even worse after 50. According to science, after the age of 50, you can start to lose as much as 15 percent per decade (2).
To combat this decline, Dr. Attia recommends one or two thirty-minute VO2 max sessions per week.
There are many ways to train your anaerobic capacity.
For example, running, swimming, frisbee, weightlifting circuits, cycling and more are all good options:
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Attia tends to favor VO2 max workout involving four-minute intervals at the maximum pace you can maintain, followed by four minutes of complete recovery. Rinse and repeat four to six times.
If you've never done Peak Cardiorespiratory Fitness training...get ready to sweat!
Peter Attia's 4th Pillar: Build Your Aerobic Efficiency
According to Attia, zone 2 training is just as important as speed work.
“Zone 2 training builds a foundation for anything else you do in life,” he says.
It also plays a crucial role in preventing chronic disease by improving the health, efficiency, and flexibility of your mitochondria—which all decline with age.
Aerobic efficiency or Zone 2 cardio is what I call low-intensity, steady-state cardio (LISS).
Aka, “going for a jog!”
Zone 2 training is any cardio performed at a low intensity for an extended period of time. Cycling, swimming, running, rowing, or rucking all qualify—so long as it’s an activity you enjoy and can do for longer stretches - do it!
Elevate Your Fitness: Attia's Guide to Zone 2 Training
Attia suggests a total of three hours per week—or four 45-minute sessions—is the minimum dose, but more is better.
One simple way to improve both aerobic and anaerobic capacity is by playing your favorite sport and engaging in a wide variety of fun activities:
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This diversity of movement helps your cardio AND your balance, rhythm, coordination, reaction abilities, and more)
I’ve played every sport under the sun, from baseball, basketball, soccer, and more. But my current favorite is Ultimate Frisbee.
It’s an amazing combination of aerobic and anaerobic cardio, AND it’s hella fun.
Another perk of this sport is that there is no contact, so it’s less likely that someone will take out your knee or tackle you inadvertently.
That means you can play longer, stay stronger, and maybe even play until you are 100.
Age Is Just a Number: Embracing Lifelong Fitness Goals
So that's it! Dr. Attia's Lifelong Exercise secrets to a healthier, longer life.
Here is how my wife and I embrace our lifelong fitness goals with our community:
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Here's what you should do now:
Write down your list of the 10 things you want to be able to do at 100 and get training!
For me, my ultimate goal is to win Olympic Gold…in the senior Olympics.
Will I see you out on the competition field?
I hope so!
If you want to live long, stay strong, and overcome chronic pains and injuries, we are here to help.
GotROM.com has programs to help you fix any pain and be a strong, healthy, badass 100-year-old.
Get Help Along The Journey to 100
Check out our "DIY" program here. If you want 1-on-1 personalized help to fix ANY chronic pain 2-3x faster, check out GotROM.com/vip to see if you qualify for our 1-on-1 “VIP Mentorship.”
In the VIP program, we help not only people with hip pain but also people who want to be the Ultimate Lifelong Athletes.
To help our 1:1 students accomplish that, we use specialty customized dashboards to track various metrics of stability, mobility, speed, strength, stamina, and more.
Whether you choose DIY or 1:1, choose something! Now is the time to fix injuries, get flexible and build YOUR body.
We hope this video and article have been insightful. As always, please remember, you are just 1 step away from building, or rebuilding, your perfect body!
About The Author
Shane Dowd, CES, CMP, is the owner/founder of GotROM.com. He is also a sports performance & mobility coach specializing in injury prevention and flexibility for athletes.
