September 16, 2025 • 54 mins
What does Olympic-level athleticism have to do with how we age? A lot more than you might think. In this episode, Dr. Jeff Armstrong and Corbin Bruton explore the insights of legendary exercise physiologist Per-Olof Åstrand—especially his famous line: “Choose your parents wisely.” While Åstrand emphasized the genetic foundations of athletic potential, he also pointed to something far more encouraging: the powerful role of training, commitment, environment, and mindset. Together, Jeff and Corbin unpack how these principles apply far beyond the Olympic track and into our everyday lives—where the goal isn’t gold, but a longer, stronger, more purposeful life. Whether or not you chose your parents wisely, this conversation will leave you equipped to train smarter, adapt well, and age intentionally.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Anyone interested in winning an Olympic gold medal must select
his or her parents very carefully.
Most of us didn't choose our parents for their Olympic
potential. But what if the habits of elite
athletes could still teach us something about how we age?
Welcome to the Aging Well podcast, where we explore the
science stories and strategies behind living a longer,
(00:22):
healthier and more purposeful life.
I'm your host, Doctor Jeff Armstrong, an exercise
physiologist with a passion for making science simple and life
better as we age with my Co hostCorbin Bruton.
In this episode, Corbin and I reflect on the insights of
legendary physiologist Per Olaf Astrand, and how even a quote as
cheeky as Choose Your Parents Wisely can open up a rich
(00:44):
conversation about genetics, training, resilience, and the
power of choice in the aging process.
Let's explore what it means to train for a lifetime of aging
well. The Aging Well podcast
encourages informed decision making, and always consult your
physician and scientific literature when making decisions
about your health. Doctor Amster, what was the
(01:07):
quote you always shared in Physiology of Exercise?
You mean the per Olaf Astran quote?
Yeah, that one. Choosing your parents wisely.
Yeah, that one, actually. I've always misquoted it in
class. I've always thought it was
choose your parents wisely. But the actual quote is Anyone
interested in winning an Olympicgold medal must elect his or her
(01:31):
parents very carefully. I don't know how an individual
is going to do that, really. It's like it's, you know, you
can't really choose your parents, so.
Well, that's not the the point of it.
And how do you know, how do you know that you don't choose your
parents? This is something I, you know, I
picked up for my dad many, many years ago.
You know, he was a management consultant, did a lot of work
(01:53):
with purpose, and he postulated that, you know, what if we, you
know, in before our conception, you know, we're up there with
our God. And it's like, OK, I want you to
select who's gonna parent you and how it's going to lead to
your purpose. And, you know, so we don't know,
(02:14):
maybe we do choose. Maybe you're, you know, before
your conception, you're like, yes, I am going to choose, you
know, this Kay Armstrong and Bill Armstrong to be my parents
and they're going to put me in the right circumstances to
fulfill a certain purpose. How do we know?
We don't know it. It's not a matter of whether we
(02:36):
really can or we can't. It's.
What are the implications for the parental situations in which
we are born I. I don't think we can, but I
mean, I, I, I think our parents choose each other and then their
genes, once they've chosen each other and have gone through that
(02:58):
process of creating us, their gene kind of chooses who we are
in the long run. I feel like that's just 4th
grade biology, you know? OK, well that negates our whole
first S in the spies model. You know that you know, if we do
think that there is purpose and you know divine and again this
(03:20):
going on a whole different tangent.
I don't want to dismiss people who maybe aren't inclined in
that direction, but just kind ofhypothetically, you know, if we
we have a divine purpose, then there has to be some point to
who we pick. But all of that aside, what
Astrans really trying to say is that, you know, we are a product
(03:44):
of not only our genetics, but everything else that goes into
the parents that we have been born to.
You know, and there's a lot moreto it.
And it's not just a, you know, genetics aside, I mean, we you
can say, OK, well, you have siblings.
Your siblings are born of the same parents, but we all end up
(04:06):
quite different. So what's all that mean?
Are you saying genetics they don't really matter or they do
matter? Well, I'm saying that genetics
play a much smaller role in who we become than we want to
believe. A lot of times people are going
to blame, you know, I just got bad genetics.
(04:26):
Well, there's a lot more to the genetics than just, you know,
the X&Y chromosomes, it's in theDNA.
It's, you know, about, you know,I think it's roughly, you know,
and again, it's, it's generally postulated.
It's not something that is as quantifiable.
But if you kind of go into much of the, you know, the science,
(04:47):
the exercise science, tech textbooks, I'm going to say
that, you know, your performance, your athleticism,
your health, those types of things, about 20 to 30% of that
is genetics. The rest is behavioral.
And so, so much of who we are are the behaviors that we
choose. And I would argue that, you
(05:09):
know, our parents choose from the moment of conception and
maybe even beyond. We we've we've talked about
epigenetics. Yeah, I, I've, I've said in
classes lately more that it's maybe not as much a matter of
choose your parents wisely, but choose your grandparents wisely.
Because we know that if our grandparents are going through
certain stressful circumstances during the period of time when
(05:33):
they're going through puberty and the eggs and the sperm are
forming in their body, that can lead a lasting impression that
can carry over through generations.
And so I think what Astron really is meaning is it's not
necessarily just Olympians, but any of us, our performance is
going to be largely dependent upon our parents, grandparents
(05:56):
and the circumstances to into which we are born.
Man, there's a lot to, there's alot to take in there.
So but aren't most people limited to their genetics like
they're they're limited by inactivity and and poor habits?
Poor habits and activity is not genetics.
(06:18):
So, you know, let's kind of whatwhat did genetics give us?
Well, if we look at what is passed on from our parents, our
grandparents genetically, you know, of course you get, you
know, your appearance, your eye color, hair color, whether or
not you are going to go bald, which I was always told it was
(06:38):
supposed to come from the mother's side.
But if you're an Armstrong, it'scoming from the Armstrong side.
I don't care you're going bald. When we look at what's affecting
our genetics, we got to look at,again, it's, it's your, your
appearance, but from a performance standpoint, you
know, what is your kind of baseline VO2 Max And for
listeners and might not be awareof what VO2 Max is, that's the
(06:59):
measure of our ability to consume and, and utilize oxygen
for physical performance. And so there's a baseline of
that that is largely dependent upon our body size, the size of
our heart, size of our lungs, you know, how much hemoglobin
our body is carrying, how we're able to utilize oxygen, you
(07:20):
know, even our mitochondrial DNA, all those types of things.
And then you have fiber types, you know, whether you're fast
twitch, slow twitch, fiber types, your body portions, you
know, whether you're a melodic build or you know, whether you
have long torso, short torso, big bone, small bone, you know,
(07:41):
the list goes on. So all these factors that affect
performance come from our genetics and we can think of
that more as the hardware of thesystem, you know, so we get our
hardware from our parents and our grandparents.
So it's you're either born a, you know, Apple computer, you
know, MacBook Pro, or you're born some cheap knock off.
(08:04):
That is kind of where we are. You know, how much RAM power do
you have in your, you know, how much processing power do you
have innately in your human computer?
And that's the basis at which wecan build off of training wise.
Training builds on to that so much more.
So we can improve our VO2 Max. If we have a low initial VO2
(08:28):
Max, we have a greater capacity to be able to elevate that.
Generally, if you're born with akind of an innate high VO2 Max,
there's not going to be a lot ofimprovement within that.
Most of us are in that moderate range.
So we have a fair amount to which we can improve that.
You know we can alter our fiber type to a certain degree based
on training, but we're going to be kind of limited with that.
(08:51):
And so we have a certain baseline endurance strength
recovery capacity. And then within our genetics we
also have a certain degree to which we are going to be
responders and non responders totraining.
So that's our genetic piece, butthere's more to your computer
operation. If we're going to use that
analogy, you know how what software do you put into that?
(09:14):
And David Epstein in his book The Sports Gene uses an analogy
I really like where he talks about it's both a hardware and a
software issue. And so we have the hardware, but
what kind of programming are we going to put into that?
That's the training, that's the experience that we're having.
It's the amount of effort and work that we're putting into
(09:37):
that. And so some of that can be
genetic. There is certain level of
evidence that, you know, athletes have a higher pain
threshold and that's why they'reable to perform to a greater
extent. But some of that can be
programmed into us as well. We can learn to push our bodies
a little bit harder, to train harder.
And so we're not just simply limited by the genes that we
(10:01):
get. We have to consider, well, what
else is contributing to that? You know, I use as an example in
class, Michael Phelps, who if you look at Michael Phelps, and
it's been a while, I think sincehe's competed, so some of our
younger listeners might not entirely know who he is, But if
you don't know who Michael Phelps are, you don't know
Olympic swimming. Michael Phelps physiologically
(10:24):
was born to be the level of elite swimmer that he was born.
He chose his parents wisely, andhe had, you know, just the
perfect proportions. Long torso, shorter legs, really
long arms, big hands, big feet. Purportedly, I think he is
supposed to have webbed toes. I don't know if that's really
(10:45):
true, but his body type is perfect for swimming.
But what if he chose parents that never gave him access to a
pool? He never learned to swim.
Maybe his parents were really into basketball, and so he was
pushed into basketball. And he was a mediocre basketball
player at best. Maybe played third string on the
high school team, never did anything else.
(11:07):
And here's an Olympian in waiting that never got the
opportunity because he wasn't born into the right
circumstances. You know, when you look at being
born in, you know, maybe you have the right genetics to be an
elite long distance runner, but you're born at sea level instead
of altitude. That's going to make a
difference in your capacity to perform.
(11:27):
And so that's where I think there's a bit more and probably
a lot more beyond just simply the genetics that leads into
this question of, you know, choosing our parents wisely to
be able to perform. And we're also not necessarily
talking about, you know, Olympians as well.
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(11:49):
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(12:11):
Thank you. And now back to the podcast.
Well, you mentioned epigenetics and if we're going off this, I
mean, it's it kind of seems that, you know, we use the term
aging wells starts at conception, but it almost seems
like it starts before conceptionat this point.
Like if there's stress on the parents and they are adapting to
(12:35):
that, or if they're constantly going to the gym or, or running
or whatever, then that gene kindof passes down on to us because
their bodies have adapted to those physical needs and they
can almost pass that on to us. But then as far as The Olympian
status goes, it's not just the genetic piece that's pushing on.
(12:58):
It's almost like like the door of opportunities that are
happening as well. You know, if you're using the
metaphor of Michael Phelps possibly being a basketball
player because the door of opportunity to get him into a
pool to experience this passion and love for swimming, that if
that never opened up for him, then he would have never became
(13:20):
an Olympian. Is that kind of which what
you're saying as far as picking your parents, is that is that
what you're meaning by? That's exactly what I've been
saying. And so, yeah, we talked about
aging well beginning before conception.
And so if you want to kind of build off of that parenting
model to yes, you have the genes, but from the moment you
(13:45):
are conceived. And again, I wouldn't even go
backtrack before the conception because again, we have the
epigenetics coming from to potentially the grandparents,
maybe stuff that's happening to the parents as they are going
through puberty and producing the sperm and the egg that are
going to ultimately have the potential to make children for
(14:05):
them. You have the circumstances under
which that conception occurs. Then you have all the activities
that might happen during the pregnancy.
What kind of nutrition did the mother get?
What kind of stress was she under?
Where were you born in your yourbirth order?
You know, if you have siblings, we know that first born, middle
(14:27):
born youngest, they're always going to have some slightly
different advantages, disadvantages based on birth
position that's going to affect their personality and their
beyond the outcomes in their life.
You know, so maybe you have an older sibling.
You know, I think of the sport of wrestling, how many really
(14:48):
prominent wrestling families there are out there that just,
you know, three or four brothersand now sisters involved in
those families that get involvedin the sport because an older
sibling, you know, got involved in the sport or, you know, you
have a parent that was involved in the sport.
The oldest sibling gets involved, the oldest sibling has
(15:08):
success. The youngest siblings are
falling along going to their competitions and so they get
actively involved in that particular sport.
I, I'm amazed at the number of twins involved in the sport of
wrestling. You know, I think of Troy and
Terry Steiner, Troy's good friend of mine used to coach
here at Oregon State and we connected when I had the
(15:31):
Athletic Republic facility. He and his brother are two very
prominent, well known wrestlers in the United States.
They both wrestled for Iowa and for the US national team.
And you know, there's I could list countless other pairs of
brothers that, you know, have wrestled at the most elite
levels and you you think there'san advantage in that sport.
(15:54):
You have a twin, you have an innate competitor within your
own family that you know, you wrestling around the house is
going to build your skill, buildyour desire to participate in
that sport. So you know, there's a lot more
that goes into this whole idea of our performance.
(16:14):
And again, we want to make sure that we're focusing as well, not
just on elite athletes, but on successful agers as well.
Well, I guess that kind of brings up the question, how much
of aging well is, is actually trainable if it comes down from
our our parents and our grandparents?
I would say more than 80%, you know, probably almost all of it
(16:37):
because trying to remember the guest I had on recently, they
interviewed who happened to havea twin, kind of wish I could
remember exactly which. It's drawing a blank.
I'm drawing a blank right now. But you know, they mentioned
that, you know, their, their twin didn't follow the same
pattern, different eating habits.
I think the twin might even havesmoked.
(16:57):
And so definitely not aging as well in, you know, if you have
two twins who go down a different pathway, you know,
maybe one starts smoking or you know, one they and they've done
the studies vegetarian versus more meat based diet it and
seeing differences in how those twins are measuring on a number
(17:21):
of different biomarkers. And so the choices that we make
are going to have an impact on how we age.
And so from a very early age, ifyou know we can have the best
genetics possible, you know, youhave parents who come from a
line of, you know, all your grandparents were octogenarians.
Your parents are fit, they eat healthy.
(17:43):
And you rebel against that and say, well, no, I'm just going to
eat McDonald's the rest of my life.
I'm not going to exercise. I don't care about my body fat.
And I'm going to stay up late. I'm going to drink.
You're not going to age well. And those genetics might protect
you some, but ultimately it's going to be those life choices.
I mean, just take cigarette smoking alone.
(18:04):
You know, if you smoke, you are going to shorten your life.
And yes, you might find those rare people who they are
octogenarians and they smoked a pack of cigarettes their entire
life. That is a rare individual.
And I would make the argument that how much longer would they
have lived if they did not smoke?
Well, not only that, but if we're going off the epigenetics
(18:27):
concept, it's it's not only affecting their bodies, it's
affecting their future children and their future grandchildren
just by smoking that pack a day.Because we know the negative
effects that smoking has on our bodies.
And if that gets passed on, who knows what side effects that
can, that can, that can occur with the next generation of the
(18:51):
very first smoker in the family.That's that's a crazy concept,
But if anything, it should be motivating individuals to just
not smoke even more. That should be just another
reason not to do it. So that's way to go Doctor
Armstrong coming in, coming in hot.
So it's almost it's almost as ifevery decision that an
(19:15):
individual makes, whether it's not smoking, whether it's eating
healthy, whether it's it's, you know, working out, it's whatever
external stress that we're putting on the body that's
adapting that can possibly get passed on to the next
generation. And if we go off the concept of
Olympic athletes, what elite athletes do intentionally, older
(19:40):
adults, they can actually utilize that and adapt it
practically. Yeah, To a certain extent.
And I think I've mentioned numerous times on the podcast
that I'm not a big fan of one ofthe trends in the fitness
industry where we are pushing people to train like an athlete.
You know, we have a lot of thesegyms that are, you know, high
intensity. CrossFit style training or even
(20:05):
just, you know, plyometrics thatare done at the athletic level
as opposed to a more practical level.
Now with that being said, you know, when we're building
strength, strength is the same whether you're an athlete, non
athlete, you know, we're just trying to be able to push more
weight more effectively. You know, speed is the same.
(20:26):
We're not necessarily training for speed on the track, but you
know, we want to be able to movewith some level of
intentionality, some level of efficiency.
You know, we want to have a goodendurance capacity so we can
adapt these training principles.And that's why when we talked
about, you know, the principles of adaptation and exercise
(20:49):
science, they're the same whether you are an athlete or
non athlete, You know, you have the principle of overload,
principle of progressive overload, you have specificity.
So you know, specificity, if youwant to build strength, you got
to train for strength. If you want to build endurance,
you got to train for endurance. And I think those get muddied a
lot when we talk about kind of practical fitness for people, A
(21:14):
lot of people use the phrase, you know, strength training and
they're doing, you know, 15 to 20 repetitions.
You are not training for strength when you are doing 15
to 20 repetitions. And so, you know, plyometrics,
you know, being being able to transfer a landing mechanics of
an eccentric contraction into a more forceful concentric
(21:35):
contraction can have practical implications for the aging adult
as well. And so when we're talking about
training, we can unlock our potential, whether we have that
genetic potential to be an eliteOlympic athlete or whether, you
know, we have very poor genetics, we can still unlock a
(21:57):
certain level of potential and by training appropriately as we
age. And so we want to make sure that
at any age, whether we've trained in the past or not, we
are training most effectively toget the most out of the genetics
that we have been given. Training with a purpose,
basically. Right.
(22:18):
I mean, training should always be structured, should always be
an intention, be intentional. All right, so let's discuss
resistance training, movement quality, and aerobic
conditioning as unlocking the potential at any age.
So what do you want to discuss? I mean resistance training
again, it's you've got to lift heavier than you were used used
(22:40):
to lifting in order to get stronger.
They, the more resistance, relative resistance that we are
lifting and I think it's important to understand that
we're not talking about heavy lifting being, you know, a £500
squat, it may only be 100 LB squat for you.
If that's what you can only liftfor one or two repetitions,
(23:00):
that's strength. That's where your strength is
and you can get stronger. Now, the more absolute strength
we have, the harder it's going to be to maintain as we age, the
more stressful it might be on our body, which is another
reason why I don't like to say train like an Olympic athlete,
(23:21):
because we don't need to be lifting an excessive amount of
weight. We're not training for
competition because the more we're training toward an
absolute strength, the more likely we are to get hurt.
But the more we're training toward an A functional strength,
you know, strength that's going to allow us to perform better as
we age, the more strength that we can maintain, the more muscle
(23:44):
mass that we can, you know, retain as we age.
And in muscle endurance is different.
That's the ability to sustain effort or to sustain repeated
contractions over time. And so that's where we're doing
higher repetitions and repeatingthings are holding an isometric
contraction for a longer period of time is going to have benefit
(24:05):
in there. And then when we look at aerobic
fitness as well, again, we're not looking at running
marathons. That's a different capacity.
And it was Kenneth Cooper that said, if you're doing you're
running for more than 30 minutes, you're doing it for
more than your health. So people that are training for
marathons, ultra marathons are not necessarily doing that for
(24:25):
their health. They're doing it for competitive
purposes. We can get improvements in our
VO2 Max by simply training intensely for as little as 15
minutes. And we can get those
improvements and get the health benefits of the exercise in more
exercise snacking where we're doing small bits of exercise
(24:47):
over the course of a higher frequency.
And so when we're looking at training for these things for
older adults, it's really just amatter of, OK, how much function
do we want to maintain or have as we get older and what do we
have to do minimally to be able to attain and retain that level
(25:07):
of performance? So I guess Doctor Aramson, could
you can you give some specific examples of how an older adult
benefits from this structure intentionally like with an
intentional training, like what specifically can they do
exercise wise? I mean, they can do whatever
they can do. I mean, we've had, we've talked
(25:30):
in the past, we, we love those videos and clips and articles
that talk about 5 exercises you should not be doing to as you
get older, as, as you hit a certain age.
And all of that is BS when you really consider that we can do
as much as we can do. And you know, if we go back in
terms of resistance training, you know, if we look at the
(25:52):
basic 5, having a capacity to beable to do a squatting motion
with as much weight as you can physically handle, the more you
weight you can handle, the more you're going to be able to do.
You know, it's, it's more than just simply standing and
sitting. You can lift things off the
ground. You can lift up your
(26:12):
grandchildren, you can carry more.
You know, there's a lot more that you can do the more that
you can squat and then you have kind of building off of that.
The deadlift or the hip hinge, you know, that's very much
lifting off the ground. Both of those movements are
required in order for us to be able to pick up anything.
(26:33):
And the heavier thing that we can pick up, the more functional
we're going to be. If we can't pick up anything or
we can't stand effectively, thenthat's going to impact all of
any activities that we can possibly do.
And then we get into kind of upper body strength with the
horizontal push, vertical push and pulling movements, those
(26:53):
rounding out the five. The more that we can push, pull,
again, the more activities that we're able to do.
So to come up with examples is almost impossible because it's
like, well, what do you want to do?
Aging Well, I mean, if you want to hike, going on, being able to
go on a hike, the stronger your legs are in the deadlift and the
squat, the easier it's going to be to push your body up a hill
(27:15):
or to climb a set of stairs or pedal a bike, do any of those
types of things. The pushing and pulling.
I mean, there are people in their 80s, nineties, even
hundreds and are still rock climbing and doing things like
that. That's holding motions, being
able to push yourself, get up off the ground if you fall.
(27:36):
First of all, I think if you have better strength, remember
the, if we look at Carmine's law, that balance equals
strength plus posture. And so having proper strength,
being able to stand directly in the best possible posture is
going to help us to stay within our base of support.
But if we have strength is that balance is disrupted, we're
(28:00):
going to be able to write our body positioning faster and more
effectively to prevent the fall.And so we are going, the
stronger we are, the more overall fitness that we have,
the less likely we are to fall. If we do happen to fall, our
body is going to be able to sustain that fall more likely
(28:20):
with, you know, less risk of a break, less risk of injury.
And we can get up, we can push ourselves up off of the ground,
we can get off the ground if we do happen to fall.
Do you need more examples? I mean, I think there's a no
brainer that. Well, there's obviously, I mean,
the reason why I ask is because there's obviously there's going
to be some listener where they're listening and they're
(28:42):
like, yeah, that's great resistance training, but what
does that look like? So by you providing those
examples, at least someone hearing this can say, OK, now I
have a game plan and now I can go in the gym and now I can
train with a purpose and and start my first steps of aging
(29:03):
well that way with a purpose. Because All in all, it seems
that aging well takes training, not just movement.
Well, yeah, I mean movement is the baseline, you know, if you
are moving as much as possible and then you're going to be able
to sustain health more effectively the more we push.
(29:23):
And then training doesn't have to be in the gym per say.
It doesn't have to be on the treadmill, it doesn't have to be
on the bike. It can just simply be moving
with a higher level of effort involved.
You know, if we look at the the people in the blue zones, most
of those octogenarians are not going to the gym, They're not
taking their supplements and their protein powders and all
(29:46):
that kind of stuff. They're just living lifestyles
that are of a higher quality, higher quantity of movement that
is permitting them to sustain muscle mass, sustain the
capacity to be able to move. And so how much we want to be
able to move as we age is going to require that we sustain that
(30:08):
level, probably actually a little bit more movement in
order to be able to do that. So if I want to be able to hike
up a steep incline, I need to have the strength necessary to
do that. Now walking that same hill every
day can allow me to maintain that level of effort.
Maybe carrying things up that hill is going to give me a
(30:30):
capacity to be able to, without those packages or whatever I'm
carrying, be able to stay in that effort more effectively.
And so we have to, you know, youhave the principle of overload.
You have the principal progression.
Now progression gets a little bit challenging when we're
talking about aging. Well, I mean, you're not going
(30:50):
to progress forever. You know what you your
progression in your 20s is generally that's when you start
training is going to be getting to plateau in your 30s forties
to get in your 50s and 60s. If you've been training hard and
training regularly, training with intention, you're probably
not going to see significant improvements in your later
(31:11):
years. But if we can maintain that
level, then we're going to have a much, much higher level of
function in our advanced years. Even if we decrease that a
little bit, we still have a higher function relative to
other people. But if you start late in life,
you can progress for a good period of time.
You may not see as much progression, but you're going to
see improvement. And so training isn't
(31:33):
necessarily athletic training, It's just simply pushing the
body system to a level greater than that to which it is
accustomed. And so it involves movement, but
it's not just simply moving because we, and we've talked
about this in the past where when we've pushed just like
cardiovascular exercise in the aging population and no strength
(31:58):
training, that ability to perform that cardiovascular
effort is going to decline over time because we're not able to
maintain the strength necessary to maintain that level of
performance. If we see sarcopenia occur, we
see atrophy in the muscle occur because we're not actively
overloading or at least hitting a level of maintenance volume in
(32:20):
the muscle. We're gonna see a loss of muscle
function over time. We see a loss in muscle
function. We can't move as well.
We don't move as well. We begin to see that, you know,
the principle of reversibility Kick in that use, use it or lose
it. And so if I'm not able to run as
fast as I did 20 years ago, I'm not going to be able to maintain
(32:42):
the same level of cardiovascularfunction as I did 20 years ago,
simply because I'm not able to do that level of work anymore.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah, it seems like it's better to be consistent instead of
increasing intensity all the time because as, as you said, as
we, as we age, we're not going to be able to maintain that
(33:05):
intensity. And as you've also mentioned,
it's don't necessarily keep the intensity of an athlete and
train like an athlete. It's better to just be
consistent across the board as that, that that's what I'm
that's my take home message of what you're saying.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,if you say you're an athlete and
(33:26):
these just to look at is going to be like a strength athlete.
You know, some of your strong men competitors, many of your
most elite bodybuilders even look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Arnold still trains well into his.
What do you see in 70s now? Probably pushing 80.
Yeah. Still in really, really great
shape. He's not lifting near what he
was back in his prime, but he's still pushing hard, still
(33:49):
lifting hard, and still able to maintain a pretty significant
level of strength relative to others.
And so it's what level of performance do you want to
maintain? You have to be pushing yourself
to that level to maintain that. Otherwise we fall below our
maintenance volumes and we startto see the principle
reversibility kick in. It makes absolutely no sense for
(34:11):
him to train like he did back inthe 70s and the 80s when he was
competing and making his movies,you know, in his prime.
I mean, just coming into Barbarian Days and all that,
because he's not competing the stress level on the body in
order to maintain that level of performance is just
unsustainable. And so he would be doing more
(34:33):
harm to his body continuing to train like that.
So we make the adjustments to beable to get the best possible
performance out of the body thatwe can as we age and going back
to kind of genetics, genetics and may give us a little bit
more sustainability. Some of us, it's a little bit
harder in our 60s to to get significant things out of our
(34:54):
training. But you know, we can still be
strong, we can still be fit, no matter what our age is, no
matter what our genetics are, ifwe continue to put the effort
into it. And so you, you also mentioned
Blue Zones earlier and I kind ofwant to circle back around to
epigenetics and not just not just Blue Zones per SE, but
(35:16):
other geographical locations. Do you think those environmental
adaptations are going to play a role in how someone ages?
You know, like, like we know that high levels of altitude
with the lower levels of oxygen can actually produce more
mitochondria, right? So do you think people that live
(35:37):
in in higher levels of heat or higher levels of cold or higher
levels of altitude, do you thinkthat's going to play a role in
their bodies adapting? Well, of course, because the
environment always these impactsare Physiology.
I don't know if it's going to necessarily impact this
epigenetically. I just don't know if there's any
(35:59):
evidence of that. There might be a little bit, but
we do know that, for example, ifyou take a Kenyan runner who
born and raised at altitude circumstantially kind of put in
a situation in Kenya to promote running.
Because we know that, you know, the average annual income in
(36:21):
Kenya is very small. And it's a motivation for
somebody to, you know, come to the United States, get a college
scholarship beyond attracting, get an education and continue to
run competitively where the purses and some of these big
marathons is almost a lifetime of income back in Kenya.
And they they stay in the UnitedStates.
(36:41):
They had children. Those children rarely become the
same level of athlete that the parent was because they don't
have the motivation financially to to run.
They don't have the opportunities.
I mean, going to school in the US, you're going to more than
likely have a bus pick you up almost right in front of your
house instead of having to walk to a bus stop anymore.
(37:03):
They may, you know, get involvedin cross country and do some of
those things, but they're not born into that advantage of
being at altitude unless maybe they happen to take themselves,
you know, to an area that is higher level of altitude.
And so heat, altitude, all thosetypes of things give us a level
of that adaptation that's going to enable us to perform more
(37:25):
effectively. And so older adults need to
adapt to their environment if they're not used to that
environment. So you're born and raised in,
you know, Phoenix, AZ where it'salways hot, you're going to have
a much higher level of adapt, adapting this to that heat.
(37:46):
So you're not going to be, as you're going to be more heat
tolerant. If you're an altitude, you're
going to be more altitude tolerant because you're going to
just naturally have a higher redblood cell count.
Even if you leave altitude and move to sea level, you're going
to maintain that higher level ofred blood cell concentration
than other individuals who are maybe spent a short period of
(38:07):
time at altitude and then move down to sea level.
So hydration needs are a little bit different.
Our recoverability in those environments are going to be
different, our thermoregulation are different.
But the more we train in those environments, the more our body
adapts, the better we're going to be able to perform in those.
So whether you are an elite athlete or whether you're an
(38:29):
average Joe or Jane, you are going to be able to adapt to the
circumstances in which you put yourself and train yourself.
But you have to be purposeful interms of seeking those
adaptations. You know, if you move to
Phoenix, AZ where it's hot to retire, but you spend 90% of
your time in an air conditioned car or house and you're very
(38:51):
rarely outside, you're not exercising out in the heat.
You're not doing yard work in the heat, You're not going to
see adaptations to that heat. Same thing if you go to
altitude. You're going to see some
adaptation, but the adaptation is going to be greater the more
you're stressing your body in that environment.
So would you suggest that an individual simulates those those
(39:14):
external adaptations by maybe adding a part of their training
with a purpose routine like a sauna or a cold plunge?
I mean, it's not necessarily. Their cold plunge have nothing
to do with training adaptation, but yeah, I mean, you can
benefit from those. There are physiological benefits
from that. Those aren't necessarily going
(39:34):
to stimulate training adaptations, and I would not
recommend particularly for an aging adult doing those things.
First of all, without any consultation with their
physician, but, you know, forcing yourself into excessive
amounts of heat, probably not the wisest thing or, you know,
intentionally really exercising an extreme cold without allowing
(39:56):
your body to adapt to those things.
And is it necessary to train under those conditions if you're
never going to be in those conditions, if you're not
competing, putting undue stress on the body is not going to
benefit us as we age. As much as it puts us a greater
risk of having adverse events happen during exercise and so I
(40:20):
would be cautious about any of that.
Just understand that when you are in environments that are
more extreme, you need to acclimatize to those.
You need to be considered of howconditioned is my body for this
environmental circumstance. Whether you're training or
(40:40):
training in a specific environment, it seems to me that
an individual needs to become a student of their own body,
right? And not just not just consumer
health advice like hopping into a bucket of ice or going into a
sauna after workout. It's, it's almost they they have
to kind of figure out what worksbest for them.
(41:02):
Is that safe to say? Yeah, I mean, you have to be
smarter than the social influencers out there that are
telling you to do all this stufffor your health that don't
understand that we are all different.
There's that principle of individuality.
What works for David Goggins is not going to work for 99% of of
the population. And so be smart about what
(41:25):
you're attempting to do. Know your body's condition.
Know how adapted you are to the environment and the activity
that you're doing. For God's sakes, consult your
physician before you undergo anyof these extreme levels of
training or activity. Again, even the elite athletes
(41:45):
need to the students of their body and not just consumers of
health advice or you know, following blindly what their
coaches are having them do. I mean how many athletes die
every year because they have a dumb ass coach that pushes them
too hard and doesn't understand the principle of individuality
or the basic principles of adaptation and think it's all
(42:10):
about mind over matter? Bullshit, but well.
I mean, that's a, that's actually a really good point and
it brings up a good question. What, what about mindset?
You know, cuz Astrid also pointed out confidence,
motivation and discipline that plays a role as well.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, these are all
(42:32):
psychological qualities that matter certainly for athletes.
And you know, if you're going tobe a Olympic medalist, you have
to have the right mindset. And a lot of that comes from our
parents. We can learn from our parents
work ethic. We can learn and maybe it's from
(42:53):
coaches and things like that, but we also learn how to train.
We learn how to motivate. We our confidence levels are
made or broken by the people around us.
You know, we can have potentially great athletes that
get a crappy coach that doesn't seem to know how to motivate
them and causes them to not likea sport anymore that they are
(43:16):
very, very good at. That person's not going to
continue to perform. And so that carries over even to
the aging population. If, if we had a PE teacher in
high school, elementary school, whatever that turned us off from
exercise, we're not going to carry on into our advanced
years. If we have gotten out of shape
(43:37):
and we don't have the confidencethat we can get back into shape,
that's going to limit us from being able to return to a higher
level performance. I worked a number of years ago
with a group of women at EasternMichigan University.
It was kind of a pilot study looking at a program to improve
(43:59):
fitness. We recruited primarily over fat
women, unconditioned and pretty intensive and interesting
program. But some of the stuff that I
encountered in working with thatprogram is I had one woman in
particular who was very unfit, very much overweight, and she
(44:22):
struggled with a lot of physicalactivity.
And I just saw barriers come down right and left with her as
we worked with her. One was she and her husband both
had bikes. They wanted to be able to use
them, but to be able to ride their bikes, they had to make it
up this large hill in order to, you know, be able to exercise on
(44:43):
them. And they they couldn't bike up
the hill. And so I'm like, well, why don't
you just can you put them on your car and take them somewhere
where you can bike? And she's like, I can do that.
It's like, absolutely. And barrier came down and we
were showing them how to use some of the equipment in the
health and Wellness Center thereon campus.
And she didn't know how to get on a bike.
You know, she sees everybody just kind of as they get on a
(45:05):
bike, they just kind of swing their leg up and get on the
saddle of the bike and start pedaling.
But to her, that was awkward. It was not ladylike and it
wasn't something she felt she can do.
And like, well, can't you just kind of step up on center of the
bike there, push your body up and then just sit on the seat?
I can do that. Of course you can.
So a lot of this is just simply having the mindset that you can
(45:28):
do these things and getting awayfrom the attitude that you can't
do things. It kind of goes back to that old
saying whether you think you canor you think you can't, you're
right. But also a psychological
quality. You mentioned how some people,
they just, they just don't like working out.
Do you think, for example, running 90% of people don't like
(45:50):
running? You mentioned running.
They're like no. And do you think a lot of that
has to do with maybe when they were younger, either a PE
teacher or a coach used running as a form of punishment.
And now psychologically we we see that as a negative thing
versus like, man, we should wantto work out.
(46:13):
We should want to go to the gym.We should want to train with the
purpose and be comfortable with being uncomfortable because it
makes us better. And if we could get over that
psychological hump and just realize like, hey, this may suck
in the moment, but it's going topay off in the long run.
I just feel like that is a huge.I just feel like if people
(46:38):
people can embrace that, it's going to be night and day for
their journey as they age well. So a question in there.
Yeah. Do you think it's people not
wanting to work out or not wanting to train?
They're associating it with a negative aspect and they're
they're having a hard time getting over that, that
(47:01):
psychological hump, that mountain.
Reasons why people exercise or don't exercise, or as broad as
the number of people that we're talking about, it's some people
are disillusioned with exercise,some have fear from the start,
get go that they just can't do things.
Maybe they've been told they couldn't do things, maybe
(47:24):
they've been forced to do thingsand that causes them to be
negative towards exercise. I think the key is, you know,
finding, you know, we always talk about find your why to
exercise and I don't think it's that hard for people to find why
they should exercise. The biggest challenge comes in
finding your why not and gettingpast that why not and turning
(47:47):
that into a reason to be exercising or motivation be
exercising. If I'm not exercising because I
can't get my bike up the hill, well, how can I get it up the
hill? You know, if I'm not exercising
because I had a PE teacher that I didn't like in high school,
how do I get over that and exercise in a way that's going
(48:07):
to be pleasurable to me and not bring up negative memories of
the past? Well, I know one thing that
really motivates me is when I have a workout buddy or an
accountability person or if I'm training in a group.
So I don't think that community or social support, I think that
really, really helps. I know it breaks down my mental
(48:28):
barrier and just having someone that comes to the gym that knows
proper form, proper technique can also push me out of my
comfort zone and someone that I trust that's going to be able to
spot me if I'm lifting heavier or I'm about to hit a personal
record and whatever. Just someone that that knows
(48:50):
what I'm doing. We have the same mindset, but
also won't allow me to fail if I'm like, I don't want to do it.
They're like, yes, you can. Come on.
I know that having, having that sense of community based workout
really encourages me. What what about you?
I know you're more of an individual person.
So what would you what would yourecommend for someone that's
(49:13):
trying to start this fitness journey?
Would you recommend more of a individual style or would you
recommend more of a community style?
And which one has more perks? What would you?
What would you suggest? I would suggest do what works
for you. I mean, there's no one better
than the other. I prefer to lift at home just
(49:36):
because I hate going to gyms where I have to either wait on
equipment or, you know, deal with my psychological
responsiveness to people who arenot doing techniques correctly
or wasting time in the gym kind of getting in my way.
I just like to get in, get my exercise done.
(49:56):
But not everybody's the same. And so you can't tell everybody
that this is what you need to do.
There's not an absolute when it comes to exercising.
No matter what the influencers might tell you, there are no
absolute ones when it comes to exercise.
The only absolute is that you need to be doing it.
You got to figure out how to do it.
Also breaking down that that psychological wall, I do think
(50:20):
for someone that is going to be starting their journey and
they're thinking like, oh, I don't want to go to the gym.
I don't want to look dumb. It's like, I mean, people really
are, aren't paying attention to you And, and my personal
experience of all the gyms that I have gone to and worked out at
and trained at that gym culture is really encouraging.
(50:41):
I, I, I love it because I feel like people are there for their
own goals, but people are reallysupportive and will give you a
fist bump once you're hitting, once they see you hitting your
goals to, to keep, keep you encouraged.
And so that barrier of like, oh,I don't want to go because I
don't, I don't want to embarrassmyself.
I would recommend just getting over that.
(51:04):
And people are there to hit their own goals and they, you
could run into a lifelong workout buddy just so now I'm a
huge, I'm a huge advocate for the social support aspect of, of
physical training. I think it's really cool.
We're not all have the same experience, so you know you got
(51:27):
to do what works for you. Right.
OK, so Doctor Einstein, what's the take away from today's
discussion? Well, I think, you know, the
main take away is that our genetics are a basic foundation.
They're not the blueprint to oursuccess.
They give us a starting point. You know, everyone can benefit
from good structured training. We need to focus on the
(51:48):
principles of adaptivity, adaptivity, adaptability, if I
can spit that out, and looking at things like progressive
overload, the principle of specificity, the principle of
reversibility, and then really underscoring that principle of
individuality. And then trying to focus on
(52:08):
having the right mindset, not worrying necessarily about all
of the metrics that come along with exercise.
Just keep it simple. Move daily, do some strength, do
some endurance type of work. Make sure that you are adapting
appropriately to the climate that you are working on, the
intensity level, the duration level of exercise that you're
(52:29):
doing. Always build up slowly.
Keep in mind the many social rhythms that come with exercise
and how do we interact with others when it comes to
exercise? What works for us, what doesn't
work and anything is just committo growing physically and
mentally. And so consider what else it
means for you to choose your parents wisely.
(52:49):
What circumstances have you gotten from your parents?
Have they been motivating you toexercise?
Are they the demotivators? Have they taught you proper
nutrition? Or do you need to relearn your
nutrition information? Do you know how to exercise?
Have you been given a good example from your parents?
(53:10):
What examples have you got? So just realize that it goes
beyond the genetics that you getfrom your parents.
Be grateful. You know, if you don't have
great genetics, be grateful for the motivation that they've
given you, the sense of determination that you get from
your parents, all the other psychological, all the spies
(53:33):
principles that come from your parents beyond just the physical
genetics. So remember that our
environment, our geography, the experiences that we've had over
life and the opportunities or lack of opportunities we have,
those are all going to to benefit us.
And so you may or may not have chosen your parents wisely, but
(53:53):
you alone can choose how you live, how you train, and how you
age. Thank you for listening.
Hope you benefited from today's podcast.
And until next time, keep aging well.
Anyone interested in winning an Olympic gold medal must select
his or her parents very carefully.
Most of us didn't choose our parents for their Olympic
potential. But what if the habits of elite
athletes could still teach us something about how we age?
Welcome to the Aging Well podcast, where we explore the
science stories and strategies behind living a longer,
(00:22):
healthier and more purposeful life.
I'm your host, Doctor Jeff Armstrong, an exercise
physiologist with a passion for making science simple and life
better as we age with my Co hostCorbin Bruton.
In this episode, Corbin and I reflect on the insights of
legendary physiologist Per Olaf Astrand, and how even a quote as
cheeky as Choose Your Parents Wisely can open up a rich
(00:44):
conversation about genetics, training, resilience, and the
power of choice in the aging process.
Let's explore what it means to train for a lifetime of aging
well. The Aging Well podcast
encourages informed decision making, and always consult your
physician and scientific literature when making decisions
about your health. Doctor Amster, what was the
(01:07):
quote you always shared in Physiology of Exercise?
You mean the per Olaf Astran quote?
Yeah, that one. Choosing your parents wisely.
Yeah, that one, actually. I've always misquoted it in
class. I've always thought it was
choose your parents wisely. But the actual quote is Anyone
interested in winning an Olympicgold medal must elect his or her
(01:31):
parents very carefully. I don't know how an individual
is going to do that, really. It's like it's, you know, you
can't really choose your parents, so.
Well, that's not the the point of it.
And how do you know, how do you know that you don't choose your
parents? This is something I, you know, I
picked up for my dad many, many years ago.
You know, he was a management consultant, did a lot of work
(01:53):
with purpose, and he postulated that, you know, what if we, you
know, in before our conception, you know, we're up there with
our God. And it's like, OK, I want you to
select who's gonna parent you and how it's going to lead to
your purpose. And, you know, so we don't know,
(02:14):
maybe we do choose. Maybe you're, you know, before
your conception, you're like, yes, I am going to choose, you
know, this Kay Armstrong and Bill Armstrong to be my parents
and they're going to put me in the right circumstances to
fulfill a certain purpose. How do we know?
We don't know it. It's not a matter of whether we
(02:36):
really can or we can't. It's.
What are the implications for the parental situations in which
we are born I. I don't think we can, but I
mean, I, I, I think our parents choose each other and then their
genes, once they've chosen each other and have gone through that
(02:58):
process of creating us, their gene kind of chooses who we are
in the long run. I feel like that's just 4th
grade biology, you know? OK, well that negates our whole
first S in the spies model. You know that you know, if we do
think that there is purpose and you know divine and again this
(03:20):
going on a whole different tangent.
I don't want to dismiss people who maybe aren't inclined in
that direction, but just kind ofhypothetically, you know, if we
we have a divine purpose, then there has to be some point to
who we pick. But all of that aside, what
Astrans really trying to say is that, you know, we are a product
(03:44):
of not only our genetics, but everything else that goes into
the parents that we have been born to.
You know, and there's a lot moreto it.
And it's not just a, you know, genetics aside, I mean, we you
can say, OK, well, you have siblings.
Your siblings are born of the same parents, but we all end up
(04:06):
quite different. So what's all that mean?
Are you saying genetics they don't really matter or they do
matter? Well, I'm saying that genetics
play a much smaller role in who we become than we want to
believe. A lot of times people are going
to blame, you know, I just got bad genetics.
(04:26):
Well, there's a lot more to the genetics than just, you know,
the X&Y chromosomes, it's in theDNA.
It's, you know, about, you know,I think it's roughly, you know,
and again, it's, it's generally postulated.
It's not something that is as quantifiable.
But if you kind of go into much of the, you know, the science,
(04:47):
the exercise science, tech textbooks, I'm going to say
that, you know, your performance, your athleticism,
your health, those types of things, about 20 to 30% of that
is genetics. The rest is behavioral.
And so, so much of who we are are the behaviors that we
choose. And I would argue that, you
(05:09):
know, our parents choose from the moment of conception and
maybe even beyond. We we've we've talked about
epigenetics. Yeah, I, I've, I've said in
classes lately more that it's maybe not as much a matter of
choose your parents wisely, but choose your grandparents wisely.
Because we know that if our grandparents are going through
certain stressful circumstances during the period of time when
(05:33):
they're going through puberty and the eggs and the sperm are
forming in their body, that can lead a lasting impression that
can carry over through generations.
And so I think what Astron really is meaning is it's not
necessarily just Olympians, but any of us, our performance is
going to be largely dependent upon our parents, grandparents
(05:56):
and the circumstances to into which we are born.
Man, there's a lot to, there's alot to take in there.
So but aren't most people limited to their genetics like
they're they're limited by inactivity and and poor habits?
Poor habits and activity is not genetics.
(06:18):
So, you know, let's kind of whatwhat did genetics give us?
Well, if we look at what is passed on from our parents, our
grandparents genetically, you know, of course you get, you
know, your appearance, your eye color, hair color, whether or
not you are going to go bald, which I was always told it was
(06:38):
supposed to come from the mother's side.
But if you're an Armstrong, it'scoming from the Armstrong side.
I don't care you're going bald. When we look at what's affecting
our genetics, we got to look at,again, it's, it's your, your
appearance, but from a performance standpoint, you
know, what is your kind of baseline VO2 Max And for
listeners and might not be awareof what VO2 Max is, that's the
(06:59):
measure of our ability to consume and, and utilize oxygen
for physical performance. And so there's a baseline of
that that is largely dependent upon our body size, the size of
our heart, size of our lungs, you know, how much hemoglobin
our body is carrying, how we're able to utilize oxygen, you
(07:20):
know, even our mitochondrial DNA, all those types of things.
And then you have fiber types, you know, whether you're fast
twitch, slow twitch, fiber types, your body portions, you
know, whether you're a melodic build or you know, whether you
have long torso, short torso, big bone, small bone, you know,
(07:41):
the list goes on. So all these factors that affect
performance come from our genetics and we can think of
that more as the hardware of thesystem, you know, so we get our
hardware from our parents and our grandparents.
So it's you're either born a, you know, Apple computer, you
know, MacBook Pro, or you're born some cheap knock off.
(08:04):
That is kind of where we are. You know, how much RAM power do
you have in your, you know, how much processing power do you
have innately in your human computer?
And that's the basis at which wecan build off of training wise.
Training builds on to that so much more.
So we can improve our VO2 Max. If we have a low initial VO2
(08:28):
Max, we have a greater capacity to be able to elevate that.
Generally, if you're born with akind of an innate high VO2 Max,
there's not going to be a lot ofimprovement within that.
Most of us are in that moderate range.
So we have a fair amount to which we can improve that.
You know we can alter our fiber type to a certain degree based
on training, but we're going to be kind of limited with that.
(08:51):
And so we have a certain baseline endurance strength
recovery capacity. And then within our genetics we
also have a certain degree to which we are going to be
responders and non responders totraining.
So that's our genetic piece, butthere's more to your computer
operation. If we're going to use that
analogy, you know how what software do you put into that?
(09:14):
And David Epstein in his book The Sports Gene uses an analogy
I really like where he talks about it's both a hardware and a
software issue. And so we have the hardware, but
what kind of programming are we going to put into that?
That's the training, that's the experience that we're having.
It's the amount of effort and work that we're putting into
(09:37):
that. And so some of that can be
genetic. There is certain level of
evidence that, you know, athletes have a higher pain
threshold and that's why they'reable to perform to a greater
extent. But some of that can be
programmed into us as well. We can learn to push our bodies
a little bit harder, to train harder.
And so we're not just simply limited by the genes that we
(10:01):
get. We have to consider, well, what
else is contributing to that? You know, I use as an example in
class, Michael Phelps, who if you look at Michael Phelps, and
it's been a while, I think sincehe's competed, so some of our
younger listeners might not entirely know who he is, But if
you don't know who Michael Phelps are, you don't know
Olympic swimming. Michael Phelps physiologically
(10:24):
was born to be the level of elite swimmer that he was born.
He chose his parents wisely, andhe had, you know, just the
perfect proportions. Long torso, shorter legs, really
long arms, big hands, big feet. Purportedly, I think he is
supposed to have webbed toes. I don't know if that's really
(10:45):
true, but his body type is perfect for swimming.
But what if he chose parents that never gave him access to a
pool? He never learned to swim.
Maybe his parents were really into basketball, and so he was
pushed into basketball. And he was a mediocre basketball
player at best. Maybe played third string on the
high school team, never did anything else.
(11:07):
And here's an Olympian in waiting that never got the
opportunity because he wasn't born into the right
circumstances. You know, when you look at being
born in, you know, maybe you have the right genetics to be an
elite long distance runner, but you're born at sea level instead
of altitude. That's going to make a
difference in your capacity to perform.
(11:27):
And so that's where I think there's a bit more and probably
a lot more beyond just simply the genetics that leads into
this question of, you know, choosing our parents wisely to
be able to perform. And we're also not necessarily
talking about, you know, Olympians as well.
If you're enjoying the Aging Well podcast, be sure to like,
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(11:49):
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(12:11):
Thank you. And now back to the podcast.
Well, you mentioned epigenetics and if we're going off this, I
mean, it's it kind of seems that, you know, we use the term
aging wells starts at conception, but it almost seems
like it starts before conceptionat this point.
Like if there's stress on the parents and they are adapting to
(12:35):
that, or if they're constantly going to the gym or, or running
or whatever, then that gene kindof passes down on to us because
their bodies have adapted to those physical needs and they
can almost pass that on to us. But then as far as The Olympian
status goes, it's not just the genetic piece that's pushing on.
(12:58):
It's almost like like the door of opportunities that are
happening as well. You know, if you're using the
metaphor of Michael Phelps possibly being a basketball
player because the door of opportunity to get him into a
pool to experience this passion and love for swimming, that if
that never opened up for him, then he would have never became
(13:20):
an Olympian. Is that kind of which what
you're saying as far as picking your parents, is that is that
what you're meaning by? That's exactly what I've been
saying. And so, yeah, we talked about
aging well beginning before conception.
And so if you want to kind of build off of that parenting
model to yes, you have the genes, but from the moment you
(13:45):
are conceived. And again, I wouldn't even go
backtrack before the conception because again, we have the
epigenetics coming from to potentially the grandparents,
maybe stuff that's happening to the parents as they are going
through puberty and producing the sperm and the egg that are
going to ultimately have the potential to make children for
(14:05):
them. You have the circumstances under
which that conception occurs. Then you have all the activities
that might happen during the pregnancy.
What kind of nutrition did the mother get?
What kind of stress was she under?
Where were you born in your yourbirth order?
You know, if you have siblings, we know that first born, middle
(14:27):
born youngest, they're always going to have some slightly
different advantages, disadvantages based on birth
position that's going to affect their personality and their
beyond the outcomes in their life.
You know, so maybe you have an older sibling.
You know, I think of the sport of wrestling, how many really
(14:48):
prominent wrestling families there are out there that just,
you know, three or four brothersand now sisters involved in
those families that get involvedin the sport because an older
sibling, you know, got involved in the sport or, you know, you
have a parent that was involved in the sport.
The oldest sibling gets involved, the oldest sibling has
(15:08):
success. The youngest siblings are
falling along going to their competitions and so they get
actively involved in that particular sport.
I, I'm amazed at the number of twins involved in the sport of
wrestling. You know, I think of Troy and
Terry Steiner, Troy's good friend of mine used to coach
here at Oregon State and we connected when I had the
(15:31):
Athletic Republic facility. He and his brother are two very
prominent, well known wrestlers in the United States.
They both wrestled for Iowa and for the US national team.
And you know, there's I could list countless other pairs of
brothers that, you know, have wrestled at the most elite
levels and you you think there'san advantage in that sport.
(15:54):
You have a twin, you have an innate competitor within your
own family that you know, you wrestling around the house is
going to build your skill, buildyour desire to participate in
that sport. So you know, there's a lot more
that goes into this whole idea of our performance.
(16:14):
And again, we want to make sure that we're focusing as well, not
just on elite athletes, but on successful agers as well.
Well, I guess that kind of brings up the question, how much
of aging well is, is actually trainable if it comes down from
our our parents and our grandparents?
I would say more than 80%, you know, probably almost all of it
(16:37):
because trying to remember the guest I had on recently, they
interviewed who happened to havea twin, kind of wish I could
remember exactly which. It's drawing a blank.
I'm drawing a blank right now. But you know, they mentioned
that, you know, their, their twin didn't follow the same
pattern, different eating habits.
I think the twin might even havesmoked.
(16:57):
And so definitely not aging as well in, you know, if you have
two twins who go down a different pathway, you know,
maybe one starts smoking or you know, one they and they've done
the studies vegetarian versus more meat based diet it and
seeing differences in how those twins are measuring on a number
(17:21):
of different biomarkers. And so the choices that we make
are going to have an impact on how we age.
And so from a very early age, ifyou know we can have the best
genetics possible, you know, youhave parents who come from a
line of, you know, all your grandparents were octogenarians.
Your parents are fit, they eat healthy.
(17:43):
And you rebel against that and say, well, no, I'm just going to
eat McDonald's the rest of my life.
I'm not going to exercise. I don't care about my body fat.
And I'm going to stay up late. I'm going to drink.
You're not going to age well. And those genetics might protect
you some, but ultimately it's going to be those life choices.
I mean, just take cigarette smoking alone.
(18:04):
You know, if you smoke, you are going to shorten your life.
And yes, you might find those rare people who they are
octogenarians and they smoked a pack of cigarettes their entire
life. That is a rare individual.
And I would make the argument that how much longer would they
have lived if they did not smoke?
Well, not only that, but if we're going off the epigenetics
(18:27):
concept, it's it's not only affecting their bodies, it's
affecting their future children and their future grandchildren
just by smoking that pack a day.Because we know the negative
effects that smoking has on our bodies.
And if that gets passed on, who knows what side effects that
can, that can, that can occur with the next generation of the
(18:51):
very first smoker in the family.That's that's a crazy concept,
But if anything, it should be motivating individuals to just
not smoke even more. That should be just another
reason not to do it. So that's way to go Doctor
Armstrong coming in, coming in hot.
So it's almost it's almost as ifevery decision that an
(19:15):
individual makes, whether it's not smoking, whether it's eating
healthy, whether it's it's, you know, working out, it's whatever
external stress that we're putting on the body that's
adapting that can possibly get passed on to the next
generation. And if we go off the concept of
Olympic athletes, what elite athletes do intentionally, older
(19:40):
adults, they can actually utilize that and adapt it
practically. Yeah, To a certain extent.
And I think I've mentioned numerous times on the podcast
that I'm not a big fan of one ofthe trends in the fitness
industry where we are pushing people to train like an athlete.
You know, we have a lot of thesegyms that are, you know, high
intensity. CrossFit style training or even
(20:05):
just, you know, plyometrics thatare done at the athletic level
as opposed to a more practical level.
Now with that being said, you know, when we're building
strength, strength is the same whether you're an athlete, non
athlete, you know, we're just trying to be able to push more
weight more effectively. You know, speed is the same.
(20:26):
We're not necessarily training for speed on the track, but you
know, we want to be able to movewith some level of
intentionality, some level of efficiency.
You know, we want to have a goodendurance capacity so we can
adapt these training principles.And that's why when we talked
about, you know, the principles of adaptation and exercise
(20:49):
science, they're the same whether you are an athlete or
non athlete, You know, you have the principle of overload,
principle of progressive overload, you have specificity.
So you know, specificity, if youwant to build strength, you got
to train for strength. If you want to build endurance,
you got to train for endurance. And I think those get muddied a
lot when we talk about kind of practical fitness for people, A
(21:14):
lot of people use the phrase, you know, strength training and
they're doing, you know, 15 to 20 repetitions.
You are not training for strength when you are doing 15
to 20 repetitions. And so, you know, plyometrics,
you know, being being able to transfer a landing mechanics of
an eccentric contraction into a more forceful concentric
(21:35):
contraction can have practical implications for the aging adult
as well. And so when we're talking about
training, we can unlock our potential, whether we have that
genetic potential to be an eliteOlympic athlete or whether, you
know, we have very poor genetics, we can still unlock a
(21:57):
certain level of potential and by training appropriately as we
age. And so we want to make sure that
at any age, whether we've trained in the past or not, we
are training most effectively toget the most out of the genetics
that we have been given. Training with a purpose,
basically. Right.
(22:18):
I mean, training should always be structured, should always be
an intention, be intentional. All right, so let's discuss
resistance training, movement quality, and aerobic
conditioning as unlocking the potential at any age.
So what do you want to discuss? I mean resistance training
again, it's you've got to lift heavier than you were used used
(22:40):
to lifting in order to get stronger.
They, the more resistance, relative resistance that we are
lifting and I think it's important to understand that
we're not talking about heavy lifting being, you know, a £500
squat, it may only be 100 LB squat for you.
If that's what you can only liftfor one or two repetitions,
(23:00):
that's strength. That's where your strength is
and you can get stronger. Now, the more absolute strength
we have, the harder it's going to be to maintain as we age, the
more stressful it might be on our body, which is another
reason why I don't like to say train like an Olympic athlete,
(23:21):
because we don't need to be lifting an excessive amount of
weight. We're not training for
competition because the more we're training toward an
absolute strength, the more likely we are to get hurt.
But the more we're training toward an A functional strength,
you know, strength that's going to allow us to perform better as
we age, the more strength that we can maintain, the more muscle
(23:44):
mass that we can, you know, retain as we age.
And in muscle endurance is different.
That's the ability to sustain effort or to sustain repeated
contractions over time. And so that's where we're doing
higher repetitions and repeatingthings are holding an isometric
contraction for a longer period of time is going to have benefit
(24:05):
in there. And then when we look at aerobic
fitness as well, again, we're not looking at running
marathons. That's a different capacity.
And it was Kenneth Cooper that said, if you're doing you're
running for more than 30 minutes, you're doing it for
more than your health. So people that are training for
marathons, ultra marathons are not necessarily doing that for
(24:25):
their health. They're doing it for competitive
purposes. We can get improvements in our
VO2 Max by simply training intensely for as little as 15
minutes. And we can get those
improvements and get the health benefits of the exercise in more
exercise snacking where we're doing small bits of exercise
(24:47):
over the course of a higher frequency.
And so when we're looking at training for these things for
older adults, it's really just amatter of, OK, how much function
do we want to maintain or have as we get older and what do we
have to do minimally to be able to attain and retain that level
(25:07):
of performance? So I guess Doctor Aramson, could
you can you give some specific examples of how an older adult
benefits from this structure intentionally like with an
intentional training, like what specifically can they do
exercise wise? I mean, they can do whatever
they can do. I mean, we've had, we've talked
(25:30):
in the past, we, we love those videos and clips and articles
that talk about 5 exercises you should not be doing to as you
get older, as, as you hit a certain age.
And all of that is BS when you really consider that we can do
as much as we can do. And you know, if we go back in
terms of resistance training, you know, if we look at the
(25:52):
basic 5, having a capacity to beable to do a squatting motion
with as much weight as you can physically handle, the more you
weight you can handle, the more you're going to be able to do.
You know, it's, it's more than just simply standing and
sitting. You can lift things off the
ground. You can lift up your
(26:12):
grandchildren, you can carry more.
You know, there's a lot more that you can do the more that
you can squat and then you have kind of building off of that.
The deadlift or the hip hinge, you know, that's very much
lifting off the ground. Both of those movements are
required in order for us to be able to pick up anything.
(26:33):
And the heavier thing that we can pick up, the more functional
we're going to be. If we can't pick up anything or
we can't stand effectively, thenthat's going to impact all of
any activities that we can possibly do.
And then we get into kind of upper body strength with the
horizontal push, vertical push and pulling movements, those
(26:53):
rounding out the five. The more that we can push, pull,
again, the more activities that we're able to do.
So to come up with examples is almost impossible because it's
like, well, what do you want to do?
Aging Well, I mean, if you want to hike, going on, being able to
go on a hike, the stronger your legs are in the deadlift and the
squat, the easier it's going to be to push your body up a hill
(27:15):
or to climb a set of stairs or pedal a bike, do any of those
types of things. The pushing and pulling.
I mean, there are people in their 80s, nineties, even
hundreds and are still rock climbing and doing things like
that. That's holding motions, being
able to push yourself, get up off the ground if you fall.
(27:36):
First of all, I think if you have better strength, remember
the, if we look at Carmine's law, that balance equals
strength plus posture. And so having proper strength,
being able to stand directly in the best possible posture is
going to help us to stay within our base of support.
But if we have strength is that balance is disrupted, we're
(28:00):
going to be able to write our body positioning faster and more
effectively to prevent the fall.And so we are going, the
stronger we are, the more overall fitness that we have,
the less likely we are to fall. If we do happen to fall, our
body is going to be able to sustain that fall more likely
(28:20):
with, you know, less risk of a break, less risk of injury.
And we can get up, we can push ourselves up off of the ground,
we can get off the ground if we do happen to fall.
Do you need more examples? I mean, I think there's a no
brainer that. Well, there's obviously, I mean,
the reason why I ask is because there's obviously there's going
to be some listener where they're listening and they're
(28:42):
like, yeah, that's great resistance training, but what
does that look like? So by you providing those
examples, at least someone hearing this can say, OK, now I
have a game plan and now I can go in the gym and now I can
train with a purpose and and start my first steps of aging
(29:03):
well that way with a purpose. Because All in all, it seems
that aging well takes training, not just movement.
Well, yeah, I mean movement is the baseline, you know, if you
are moving as much as possible and then you're going to be able
to sustain health more effectively the more we push.
(29:23):
And then training doesn't have to be in the gym per say.
It doesn't have to be on the treadmill, it doesn't have to be
on the bike. It can just simply be moving
with a higher level of effort involved.
You know, if we look at the the people in the blue zones, most
of those octogenarians are not going to the gym, They're not
taking their supplements and their protein powders and all
(29:46):
that kind of stuff. They're just living lifestyles
that are of a higher quality, higher quantity of movement that
is permitting them to sustain muscle mass, sustain the
capacity to be able to move. And so how much we want to be
able to move as we age is going to require that we sustain that
(30:08):
level, probably actually a little bit more movement in
order to be able to do that. So if I want to be able to hike
up a steep incline, I need to have the strength necessary to
do that. Now walking that same hill every
day can allow me to maintain that level of effort.
Maybe carrying things up that hill is going to give me a
(30:30):
capacity to be able to, without those packages or whatever I'm
carrying, be able to stay in that effort more effectively.
And so we have to, you know, youhave the principle of overload.
You have the principal progression.
Now progression gets a little bit challenging when we're
talking about aging. Well, I mean, you're not going
(30:50):
to progress forever. You know what you your
progression in your 20s is generally that's when you start
training is going to be getting to plateau in your 30s forties
to get in your 50s and 60s. If you've been training hard and
training regularly, training with intention, you're probably
not going to see significant improvements in your later
(31:11):
years. But if we can maintain that
level, then we're going to have a much, much higher level of
function in our advanced years. Even if we decrease that a
little bit, we still have a higher function relative to
other people. But if you start late in life,
you can progress for a good period of time.
You may not see as much progression, but you're going to
see improvement. And so training isn't
(31:33):
necessarily athletic training, It's just simply pushing the
body system to a level greater than that to which it is
accustomed. And so it involves movement, but
it's not just simply moving because we, and we've talked
about this in the past where when we've pushed just like
cardiovascular exercise in the aging population and no strength
(31:58):
training, that ability to perform that cardiovascular
effort is going to decline over time because we're not able to
maintain the strength necessary to maintain that level of
performance. If we see sarcopenia occur, we
see atrophy in the muscle occur because we're not actively
overloading or at least hitting a level of maintenance volume in
(32:20):
the muscle. We're gonna see a loss of muscle
function over time. We see a loss in muscle
function. We can't move as well.
We don't move as well. We begin to see that, you know,
the principle of reversibility Kick in that use, use it or lose
it. And so if I'm not able to run as
fast as I did 20 years ago, I'm not going to be able to maintain
(32:42):
the same level of cardiovascularfunction as I did 20 years ago,
simply because I'm not able to do that level of work anymore.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah, it seems like it's better to be consistent instead of
increasing intensity all the time because as, as you said, as
we, as we age, we're not going to be able to maintain that
(33:05):
intensity. And as you've also mentioned,
it's don't necessarily keep the intensity of an athlete and
train like an athlete. It's better to just be
consistent across the board as that, that that's what I'm
that's my take home message of what you're saying.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,if you say you're an athlete and
(33:26):
these just to look at is going to be like a strength athlete.
You know, some of your strong men competitors, many of your
most elite bodybuilders even look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Arnold still trains well into his.
What do you see in 70s now? Probably pushing 80.
Yeah. Still in really, really great
shape. He's not lifting near what he
was back in his prime, but he's still pushing hard, still
(33:49):
lifting hard, and still able to maintain a pretty significant
level of strength relative to others.
And so it's what level of performance do you want to
maintain? You have to be pushing yourself
to that level to maintain that. Otherwise we fall below our
maintenance volumes and we startto see the principle
reversibility kick in. It makes absolutely no sense for
(34:11):
him to train like he did back inthe 70s and the 80s when he was
competing and making his movies,you know, in his prime.
I mean, just coming into Barbarian Days and all that,
because he's not competing the stress level on the body in
order to maintain that level of performance is just
unsustainable. And so he would be doing more
(34:33):
harm to his body continuing to train like that.
So we make the adjustments to beable to get the best possible
performance out of the body thatwe can as we age and going back
to kind of genetics, genetics and may give us a little bit
more sustainability. Some of us, it's a little bit
harder in our 60s to to get significant things out of our
(34:54):
training. But you know, we can still be
strong, we can still be fit, no matter what our age is, no
matter what our genetics are, ifwe continue to put the effort
into it. And so you, you also mentioned
Blue Zones earlier and I kind ofwant to circle back around to
epigenetics and not just not just Blue Zones per SE, but
(35:16):
other geographical locations. Do you think those environmental
adaptations are going to play a role in how someone ages?
You know, like, like we know that high levels of altitude
with the lower levels of oxygen can actually produce more
mitochondria, right? So do you think people that live
(35:37):
in in higher levels of heat or higher levels of cold or higher
levels of altitude, do you thinkthat's going to play a role in
their bodies adapting? Well, of course, because the
environment always these impactsare Physiology.
I don't know if it's going to necessarily impact this
epigenetically. I just don't know if there's any
(35:59):
evidence of that. There might be a little bit, but
we do know that, for example, ifyou take a Kenyan runner who
born and raised at altitude circumstantially kind of put in
a situation in Kenya to promote running.
Because we know that, you know, the average annual income in
(36:21):
Kenya is very small. And it's a motivation for
somebody to, you know, come to the United States, get a college
scholarship beyond attracting, get an education and continue to
run competitively where the purses and some of these big
marathons is almost a lifetime of income back in Kenya.
And they they stay in the UnitedStates.
(36:41):
They had children. Those children rarely become the
same level of athlete that the parent was because they don't
have the motivation financially to to run.
They don't have the opportunities.
I mean, going to school in the US, you're going to more than
likely have a bus pick you up almost right in front of your
house instead of having to walk to a bus stop anymore.
(37:03):
They may, you know, get involvedin cross country and do some of
those things, but they're not born into that advantage of
being at altitude unless maybe they happen to take themselves,
you know, to an area that is higher level of altitude.
And so heat, altitude, all thosetypes of things give us a level
of that adaptation that's going to enable us to perform more
(37:25):
effectively. And so older adults need to
adapt to their environment if they're not used to that
environment. So you're born and raised in,
you know, Phoenix, AZ where it'salways hot, you're going to have
a much higher level of adapt, adapting this to that heat.
(37:46):
So you're not going to be, as you're going to be more heat
tolerant. If you're an altitude, you're
going to be more altitude tolerant because you're going to
just naturally have a higher redblood cell count.
Even if you leave altitude and move to sea level, you're going
to maintain that higher level ofred blood cell concentration
than other individuals who are maybe spent a short period of
(38:07):
time at altitude and then move down to sea level.
So hydration needs are a little bit different.
Our recoverability in those environments are going to be
different, our thermoregulation are different.
But the more we train in those environments, the more our body
adapts, the better we're going to be able to perform in those.
So whether you are an elite athlete or whether you're an
(38:29):
average Joe or Jane, you are going to be able to adapt to the
circumstances in which you put yourself and train yourself.
But you have to be purposeful interms of seeking those
adaptations. You know, if you move to
Phoenix, AZ where it's hot to retire, but you spend 90% of
your time in an air conditioned car or house and you're very
(38:51):
rarely outside, you're not exercising out in the heat.
You're not doing yard work in the heat, You're not going to
see adaptations to that heat. Same thing if you go to
altitude. You're going to see some
adaptation, but the adaptation is going to be greater the more
you're stressing your body in that environment.
So would you suggest that an individual simulates those those
(39:14):
external adaptations by maybe adding a part of their training
with a purpose routine like a sauna or a cold plunge?
I mean, it's not necessarily. Their cold plunge have nothing
to do with training adaptation, but yeah, I mean, you can
benefit from those. There are physiological benefits
from that. Those aren't necessarily going
(39:34):
to stimulate training adaptations, and I would not
recommend particularly for an aging adult doing those things.
First of all, without any consultation with their
physician, but, you know, forcing yourself into excessive
amounts of heat, probably not the wisest thing or, you know,
intentionally really exercising an extreme cold without allowing
(39:56):
your body to adapt to those things.
And is it necessary to train under those conditions if you're
never going to be in those conditions, if you're not
competing, putting undue stress on the body is not going to
benefit us as we age. As much as it puts us a greater
risk of having adverse events happen during exercise and so I
(40:20):
would be cautious about any of that.
Just understand that when you are in environments that are
more extreme, you need to acclimatize to those.
You need to be considered of howconditioned is my body for this
environmental circumstance. Whether you're training or
(40:40):
training in a specific environment, it seems to me that
an individual needs to become a student of their own body,
right? And not just not just consumer
health advice like hopping into a bucket of ice or going into a
sauna after workout. It's, it's almost they they have
to kind of figure out what worksbest for them.
(41:02):
Is that safe to say? Yeah, I mean, you have to be
smarter than the social influencers out there that are
telling you to do all this stufffor your health that don't
understand that we are all different.
There's that principle of individuality.
What works for David Goggins is not going to work for 99% of of
the population. And so be smart about what
(41:25):
you're attempting to do. Know your body's condition.
Know how adapted you are to the environment and the activity
that you're doing. For God's sakes, consult your
physician before you undergo anyof these extreme levels of
training or activity. Again, even the elite athletes
(41:45):
need to the students of their body and not just consumers of
health advice or you know, following blindly what their
coaches are having them do. I mean how many athletes die
every year because they have a dumb ass coach that pushes them
too hard and doesn't understand the principle of individuality
or the basic principles of adaptation and think it's all
(42:10):
about mind over matter? Bullshit, but well.
I mean, that's a, that's actually a really good point and
it brings up a good question. What, what about mindset?
You know, cuz Astrid also pointed out confidence,
motivation and discipline that plays a role as well.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, these are all
(42:32):
psychological qualities that matter certainly for athletes.
And you know, if you're going tobe a Olympic medalist, you have
to have the right mindset. And a lot of that comes from our
parents. We can learn from our parents
work ethic. We can learn and maybe it's from
(42:53):
coaches and things like that, but we also learn how to train.
We learn how to motivate. We our confidence levels are
made or broken by the people around us.
You know, we can have potentially great athletes that
get a crappy coach that doesn't seem to know how to motivate
them and causes them to not likea sport anymore that they are
(43:16):
very, very good at. That person's not going to
continue to perform. And so that carries over even to
the aging population. If, if we had a PE teacher in
high school, elementary school, whatever that turned us off from
exercise, we're not going to carry on into our advanced
years. If we have gotten out of shape
(43:37):
and we don't have the confidencethat we can get back into shape,
that's going to limit us from being able to return to a higher
level performance. I worked a number of years ago
with a group of women at EasternMichigan University.
It was kind of a pilot study looking at a program to improve
(43:59):
fitness. We recruited primarily over fat
women, unconditioned and pretty intensive and interesting
program. But some of the stuff that I
encountered in working with thatprogram is I had one woman in
particular who was very unfit, very much overweight, and she
(44:22):
struggled with a lot of physicalactivity.
And I just saw barriers come down right and left with her as
we worked with her. One was she and her husband both
had bikes. They wanted to be able to use
them, but to be able to ride their bikes, they had to make it
up this large hill in order to, you know, be able to exercise on
(44:43):
them. And they they couldn't bike up
the hill. And so I'm like, well, why don't
you just can you put them on your car and take them somewhere
where you can bike? And she's like, I can do that.
It's like, absolutely. And barrier came down and we
were showing them how to use some of the equipment in the
health and Wellness Center thereon campus.
And she didn't know how to get on a bike.
You know, she sees everybody just kind of as they get on a
(45:05):
bike, they just kind of swing their leg up and get on the
saddle of the bike and start pedaling.
But to her, that was awkward. It was not ladylike and it
wasn't something she felt she can do.
And like, well, can't you just kind of step up on center of the
bike there, push your body up and then just sit on the seat?
I can do that. Of course you can.
So a lot of this is just simply having the mindset that you can
(45:28):
do these things and getting awayfrom the attitude that you can't
do things. It kind of goes back to that old
saying whether you think you canor you think you can't, you're
right. But also a psychological
quality. You mentioned how some people,
they just, they just don't like working out.
Do you think, for example, running 90% of people don't like
(45:50):
running? You mentioned running.
They're like no. And do you think a lot of that
has to do with maybe when they were younger, either a PE
teacher or a coach used running as a form of punishment.
And now psychologically we we see that as a negative thing
versus like, man, we should wantto work out.
(46:13):
We should want to go to the gym.We should want to train with the
purpose and be comfortable with being uncomfortable because it
makes us better. And if we could get over that
psychological hump and just realize like, hey, this may suck
in the moment, but it's going topay off in the long run.
I just feel like that is a huge.I just feel like if people
(46:38):
people can embrace that, it's going to be night and day for
their journey as they age well. So a question in there.
Yeah. Do you think it's people not
wanting to work out or not wanting to train?
They're associating it with a negative aspect and they're
they're having a hard time getting over that, that
(47:01):
psychological hump, that mountain.
Reasons why people exercise or don't exercise, or as broad as
the number of people that we're talking about, it's some people
are disillusioned with exercise,some have fear from the start,
get go that they just can't do things.
Maybe they've been told they couldn't do things, maybe
(47:24):
they've been forced to do thingsand that causes them to be
negative towards exercise. I think the key is, you know,
finding, you know, we always talk about find your why to
exercise and I don't think it's that hard for people to find why
they should exercise. The biggest challenge comes in
finding your why not and gettingpast that why not and turning
(47:47):
that into a reason to be exercising or motivation be
exercising. If I'm not exercising because I
can't get my bike up the hill, well, how can I get it up the
hill? You know, if I'm not exercising
because I had a PE teacher that I didn't like in high school,
how do I get over that and exercise in a way that's going
(48:07):
to be pleasurable to me and not bring up negative memories of
the past? Well, I know one thing that
really motivates me is when I have a workout buddy or an
accountability person or if I'm training in a group.
So I don't think that community or social support, I think that
really, really helps. I know it breaks down my mental
(48:28):
barrier and just having someone that comes to the gym that knows
proper form, proper technique can also push me out of my
comfort zone and someone that I trust that's going to be able to
spot me if I'm lifting heavier or I'm about to hit a personal
record and whatever. Just someone that that knows
(48:50):
what I'm doing. We have the same mindset, but
also won't allow me to fail if I'm like, I don't want to do it.
They're like, yes, you can. Come on.
I know that having, having that sense of community based workout
really encourages me. What what about you?
I know you're more of an individual person.
So what would you what would yourecommend for someone that's
(49:13):
trying to start this fitness journey?
Would you recommend more of a individual style or would you
recommend more of a community style?
And which one has more perks? What would you?
What would you suggest? I would suggest do what works
for you. I mean, there's no one better
than the other. I prefer to lift at home just
(49:36):
because I hate going to gyms where I have to either wait on
equipment or, you know, deal with my psychological
responsiveness to people who arenot doing techniques correctly
or wasting time in the gym kind of getting in my way.
I just like to get in, get my exercise done.
(49:56):
But not everybody's the same. And so you can't tell everybody
that this is what you need to do.
There's not an absolute when it comes to exercising.
No matter what the influencers might tell you, there are no
absolute ones when it comes to exercise.
The only absolute is that you need to be doing it.
You got to figure out how to do it.
Also breaking down that that psychological wall, I do think
(50:20):
for someone that is going to be starting their journey and
they're thinking like, oh, I don't want to go to the gym.
I don't want to look dumb. It's like, I mean, people really
are, aren't paying attention to you And, and my personal
experience of all the gyms that I have gone to and worked out at
and trained at that gym culture is really encouraging.
(50:41):
I, I, I love it because I feel like people are there for their
own goals, but people are reallysupportive and will give you a
fist bump once you're hitting, once they see you hitting your
goals to, to keep, keep you encouraged.
And so that barrier of like, oh,I don't want to go because I
don't, I don't want to embarrassmyself.
I would recommend just getting over that.
(51:04):
And people are there to hit their own goals and they, you
could run into a lifelong workout buddy just so now I'm a
huge, I'm a huge advocate for the social support aspect of, of
physical training. I think it's really cool.
We're not all have the same experience, so you know you got
(51:27):
to do what works for you. Right.
OK, so Doctor Einstein, what's the take away from today's
discussion? Well, I think, you know, the
main take away is that our genetics are a basic foundation.
They're not the blueprint to oursuccess.
They give us a starting point. You know, everyone can benefit
from good structured training. We need to focus on the
(51:48):
principles of adaptivity, adaptivity, adaptability, if I
can spit that out, and looking at things like progressive
overload, the principle of specificity, the principle of
reversibility, and then really underscoring that principle of
individuality. And then trying to focus on
(52:08):
having the right mindset, not worrying necessarily about all
of the metrics that come along with exercise.
Just keep it simple. Move daily, do some strength, do
some endurance type of work. Make sure that you are adapting
appropriately to the climate that you are working on, the
intensity level, the duration level of exercise that you're
(52:29):
doing. Always build up slowly.
Keep in mind the many social rhythms that come with exercise
and how do we interact with others when it comes to
exercise? What works for us, what doesn't
work and anything is just committo growing physically and
mentally. And so consider what else it
means for you to choose your parents wisely.
(52:49):
What circumstances have you gotten from your parents?
Have they been motivating you toexercise?
Are they the demotivators? Have they taught you proper
nutrition? Or do you need to relearn your
nutrition information? Do you know how to exercise?
Have you been given a good example from your parents?
(53:10):
What examples have you got? So just realize that it goes
beyond the genetics that you getfrom your parents.
Be grateful. You know, if you don't have
great genetics, be grateful for the motivation that they've
given you, the sense of determination that you get from
your parents, all the other psychological, all the spies
(53:33):
principles that come from your parents beyond just the physical
genetics. So remember that our
environment, our geography, the experiences that we've had over
life and the opportunities or lack of opportunities we have,
those are all going to to benefit us.
And so you may or may not have chosen your parents wisely, but
(53:53):
you alone can choose how you live, how you train, and how you
age. Thank you for listening.
Hope you benefited from today's podcast.
And until next time, keep aging well.
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