AMA #55: Exercise: longevity-focused training, goal setting, improving deficiencies, managing emotional stress, and more

We have a steady increase in muscle mass and lean mass, both for men and women, that occurs from birth right up until about the age of 25. And then you have a relatively minor decline in lean mass from 25 to 75. But then what happens at 75? ... It literally falls off a cliff.

What's happening is that at 75 or thereabouts for the average person, activity declines; and as activity declines, muscle mass declines; and as muscle mass declines, activity declines further; and these things spiral out of control.

You don't have to train at a 1-rep max to increase your strength, and you don't have to actually measure at that level. In other words, you could see how much you could do something for 5 reps, and that would allow you to compute or estimate what you could do for 1 rep.

It's very difficult to train without a purpose.

What I imagine is in the last decade of my life, what do I want to be able to do, and how do I begin to train for that now? And when you take that look at the future and you say, look, these are the things I want to be able to do, you can apply metrics to those activities.

If there's anything that I hope people take away from the stuff that we've been talking about, it's that you must focus on healthspan at least as much as you focus on lifespan.