January 7, 2025
Sandwiched between music producer Rick Rubin and author Neil Strauss, I struggled against a giant Nautilus machine in the basement of eighty-five-year-old Don Wildman’s Malibu home, churning out reps in what Esquire magazine had dubbed “The Hardest Workout in the World”: a puke-inducing two-hour suffer-fest that Don performs three times per week, humbling younger fitness enthusiasts like myself.
Afterward, as I lay flat on my back recovering on the carpet of Don’s basement, I pondered which was more difficult: the workout I had just completed, the three hours of ultimate frisbee I’d played with sixty-five-year-old primal godfather Mark Sisson, the extreme single-set-to-failure ARX workout with eighty-year-old longevity icon Art De Vany, my underwater pool workout with seemingly ageless big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, my rock-tower-building workout in the desert with fifty-seven-year-old fitness icon Paul Chek, my four-hour sauna foray with the crazy sixty-seven-year-old Finnish inventor and fitness icon Vessi Jalkanen, a weekend of bleeding hands at several Russian kettlebell certifications, three days of Spartan death race competition at thirty-six degrees below zero Fahrenheit in backwoods Vermont, or a full week of Spartan SEALFit training in Encinitas, California, complete with daily forays into near hypothermia from beatdowns in the Pacific Ocean.
From adventures like these and many more, I’ve had a few major learnings, including:
- Don’t fool yourself into thinking that masochistic workouts are good for you. They’re not, and I’ve since adopted a habit of striking a balance between climbing random personal Mt. Everests and allowing my heart, joints, and endocrine system a bit more of a careful approach.
- Occasionally having something physically intimidating on your calendar is a great way to maintain fitness motivation, but it doesn’t have to be an Ironman triathlon. A pickleball tournament, a breathwork course, or a Turkish kettlebell get-up personal best also counts.
- If you want to know how to reverse or slow years of aging, it turns out that walking speed, maximum oxygen utilization, grip strength, and muscle power are all mighty powerful and useful elements to focus on. .
Yet, perhaps the biggest takeaway for staying functional forever (or at least for an impressively long time) is to lift heavy stuff.
You can consider this article as your ultimate guide to preserving youth and building lean, functional muscle in the cleanest, most efficient way possible (and discover why lifting heavy stuff is one of the most potent tactics for defying age). I will delve into fascinating studies on anti-aging and weightlifting, the best type of muscle fiber to possess, the type of exercise that beats the pants off cardio and aerobics, how to turn your cells into tiny muscle-building machines, and much, much more—revealing the best anti-aging secrets from some of the fittest old people on the face of the planet.
If you’re not familiar with the funky “functional” term, think of it this way: functional fitness is all about training your body for the real world—not just the gym. It’s the art of building strength, balance, flexibility, and endurance through movements that mimic everyday activities, like lifting, squatting, reaching, or twisting. Think of it as preparing your body for life’s challenges, whether that’s picking up groceries, climbing stairs, or playing with your kids. By focusing on exercises that engage multiple muscle groups and improve core stability, functional fitness makes you more efficient, resilient, and ready to tackle whatever life throws your way, all while reducing the risk of injury. It’s fitness with purpose—designed for the way you move and live.
A fit body is a sound physical dwelling for boundless energy. You will leave this article equipped to get the body you want quickly, safely, and without spending oodles of hours in the gym.
Lifting Heavy Stuff Can Make You Live Longer
Can strength training and powerlifting actually make you live longer?
A recent study showed that older adults who met twice-weekly strength-training guidelines had lower odds of dying. This study was the first to demonstrate such an association in a large, nationally representative sample over an extended period, particularly in an older population.
Sure, previous studies had found that older adults who were physically active had a better quality of life and a reduced risk of mortality. There’s a lot of research suggesting that regular exercise is associated with health benefits that include a reduced risk of early death, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.
However, this study on the effects of strength training on mortality in older adults was a bit of a bigger deal. Researchers analyzed data from the 1997–2001 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) as well as death certificate data through 2011. The NHIS collects data on health, disease, and disability in the United States from a nationally representative sampling of all fifty states and the District of Columbia. The 1997–2001 survey included more than thirty thousand adults aged sixty-five and older.
The researchers found that during the survey period, more than 9 percent of older adults reported at least twice-weekly strength-training sessions. They then followed the participants for fifteen years through death certificate data from the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Death Index to get a long-term view of the association between strength training and mortality.
What did they find? Older adults who engaged in strength training at least twice a week had 46 percent lower odds of death for any reason than those who did not. They also had 41 percent lower odds of dying from cardiac problems and 19 percent lower odds of dying from cancer.
More recent 2022 studies showed that consistent resistance training is associated with a 10 to 17 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.
However, these studies also indicated that doing more than 140 minutes per week of hard resistance training, especially when training more than three times a week, is associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality, particularly in the elderly.
In science, this is referred to as a J-shaped curve, meaning both too little and too much resistance training is associated with an increased risk of mortality, so the optimal amount is moderate. In addition, combining resistance training with regularly scheduled aerobic exercise and ample amounts of low-intensity physical activity throughout the day stacks up to a combined result of a 40 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality, so it’s important not to neglect cardiorespiratory fitness.
For more insights into longevity-enhancing fitness routines to keep you healthy and fit, you can check out these resources:
Do Some Sports Make You Live Longer?
When it comes to sports and mortality, the research is quite interesting.
One study led by Oxford University and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at eighty thousand people over the age of thirty to find out what effects different types of sports have on longevity. It turns out that people who play racquet sports (such as tennis or racquetball) on a regular basis can reduce their risk of dying prematurely by 47 percent. The next most beneficial exercise was swimming, which reduced the risk of dying prematurely by 28 percent, followed by cycling at 15 percent.
Activities like racquet sports (I’m even counting the ping pong table in my garage) and water sports are often associated with longevity due to their cognitive demands and the coordination required between the left and right brain hemispheres. This includes actions such as kicking, stroking, and breathing while swimming, or anticipating the ball and swinging in tennis.
Running, football, and rugby did not seem to impact longevity. But while the benefits of basic physical activity and aerobic exercise are well established, there is less research on strength training—although researchers have demonstrated the benefits of strength training for diabetes, osteoporosis, lower back pain, and obesity, and smaller studies have observed that greater muscular strength is associated with lower risk of death.
Older adults who met strength-training guidelines were, on average, slightly younger (closer to sixty-five, the minimum age for the survey) and were more likely to be married white males with higher levels of education. They were also more likely to have healthy body weights, engage in aerobic exercise, and abstain from alcohol and tobacco. But when the researchers adjusted for these demographic variables, health behaviors, and health conditions, the results remained the same.
Even after the researchers controlled for physical activity level, people who practiced strength training seemed to enjoy a greater mortality benefit than those who reported physical activity alone.
This groundbreaking study provided substantial, statistically significant evidence that strength training in older adults is beneficial for slowing the effects of aging.
You can find additional insights and my strength training recommendations listed below:
I’ve also talked about how to optimize muscle growth on podcasts including:
What Kind of Weight Training Is Best?
Lest you rush to the gym salivating to engage in the ultimate antiaging, muscle-toning routine and launch into an Arnold Schwarzenegger–esque workout, I have one reminder for you: bigger muscles aren’t always better.
Compact and explosive muscle beats out pure muscle mass for slowing aging.
The healthiest muscles are those found on a wiry physique of modest size, capable of exerting a lot of force over a short period. Sure, you can certainly get strong and muscular doing CrossFit-type workouts that require maximum deadlifts in two minutes, or ungodly amounts of snatch reps, or body-building workouts that have you doing bicep curls until you are bleeding out the eyeballs—but when it comes to maximizing longevity, those approaches are unlikely to be sustainable. Remember, you want to be able to maintain strength and muscle in an uninjured state when you are forty, sixty, and eighty years old. For this, especially if you are just getting started or want the minimum effective dose of strength training (you can discover more about this topic here), I recommend performing two specific workouts each week.
The first workout is a super-slow lifting protocol similar to that described by Doug McGuff in his book Body by Science. For twelve to twenty minutes, perform a few multijoint exercises with relatively heavy weights, doing each rep over thirty to sixty seconds. The workout should include the following:
- An upper-body push (e.g., overhead presses, push-ups, chest presses)
- An upper-body pull (e.g., bent or upright rows, lat pull-downs, pull-ups)
- A lower-body push (e.g., leg presses, squats)
- A lower-body pull (e.g., deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, lower back extensions, reverse hyperextensions)
Why is this type of workout so darn effective?
The first benefit is that performing reps very slowly has low injury-producing potential. In addition, a recent study co-authored by Dr. McGuff highlights how super-slow resistance training to muscular failure results in the same type of cardiovascular adaptations caused by a long run.
These adaptations include a better ability to buffer lactic acid, increased mitochondrial density, and even better blood pressure. If you really want to take super-slow training to the next level, you can implement blood flow restriction (BFR) bands during your workout or use an ARX machine (you can check out my podcast about this incredible exercise tool here), which utilizes adaptive resistance technology and motorized 2-horsepower resistance to dynamically adjust the resistance you receive, in real time, for precisely the right amount of force you can handle on every rep of every set. The ARX holds a highly utilized location in my home gym and is the single best resistance training strategy I’ve ever used to get strong like a bull in a very short period. The downside is that it’s spendy at just shy of $40,000, but many biohacking centers and health clubs now have a unit that you can use as a membership perk.
The second workout is some kind of a quick, high-intensity bodyweight routine that also targets the explosive, powerful muscle associated with longevity. A perfect example, designed by researchers to maintain strength and muscle in as little time as possible, was featured in the New York Times as a “Scientific 7-Minute Workout.” Each exercise below is to be performed for thirty seconds, with ten seconds of rest between exercises. Aside from the wall sits, you should perform these exercises as explosively as possible. The exercises are these: 
This style of quick bursts of explosive training is a bit similar to the philosophy utilized by Russian kettlebell masters like Pavel Tsatsouline. In his book The Quick & The Dead, Pavel presents a compelling case that the excess accumulation of lactic acid, similar to what you would experience in a traditional multi-set, higher-rep, bodybuilding-esque CrossFit WOD, metcon, or strength training routine, can muffle the brain’s commands to the muscles, inhibit energy systems related to strength and speed, and interfere with optimum contraction and relaxation.
This theory is based on the idea that within your muscles are tiny bubbles called lysosomes, which contain enzymes that dismantle and dispose of metabolic components that are damaged or no longer needed. These lysosomes operate exclusively in an acidic environment. When acidity is moderate, they do what they are supposed to do and even help muscles grow. But when the “burn” is out of control, lysosomes go on a destructive rampage, and you feel sore and stiff a day or two afterward. (To discover how to lower lactic acid burn during exercise, you can check out this podcast.)
Pavel’s solution to the inhibition of strength and power adaptations due to excess lactic acid?
Quick bursts of strength and power lasting fewer than twenty seconds, accompanied by long, luxurious rest periods.
A sample routine using this approach would be thirty minutes of ten kettlebell swings and ten push-ups, with each set performed every ninety seconds, for a total of one hundred swings and one hundred push-ups. Single-set-to-failure training, such as the super-slow routine described earlier, can also mitigate the effects of excess lactic acid because rather than hitting the muscles over and over again in a workout, you’re exhausting them only once for a brief period of time.
Ultimately, if you want the minimum effective dose of strength training to help you find the sweet spot between longevity and muscle, you can get away with as few as two strength workouts per week—one with slow, controlled heavy lifting and one with high-intensity bodyweight movements. In a perfect strength-training week, I prefer to accomplish two super-slow workouts and two more intense bodyweight or kettlebell explosive workouts (which you can get started with here or here).
Can You Really Build Muscle with Bodyweight Training?
The conventional ways to build muscle are to perform big, compound lifts, such as squats and deadlifts, or to combine the super-slow approach and the fast, explosive approach.
But those aren’t the only methods for gaining size and strength. Contrary to popular belief, you can gain muscle (hypertrophy) by performing more reps with light weights or even your own body weight.
One study on the effects of high reps and low reps on muscle growth compared sets performed with weights at 80% of one-rep maximum (1RM) to complete muscular fatigue with sets performed with weights at 30% of 1RM to complete muscular fatigue.
Turns out that the weight of the load is not important.
Instead, what matters is whether a muscle is worked to complete fatigue. This study demonstrated that high reps and light weights can stimulate just as much muscle growth as low reps and heavy weights. So you can, for example, build chest muscles by doing a few sets of high-rep push-ups to complete failure. This is a potent tactic if you are stuck in a hotel or living room or if you have no access to bars and plates and still want to build muscle.
In another study, super-slow lifting at 55 to 60% of the participant’s 1RM increased both muscle thickness and maximal strength just as much as standard-speed lifts performed at 80 to 90% of the participant’s 1RM. In yet another study, both heavy lifts of eight to ten reps and light lifts of eighteen to twenty reps activated the genes involved in muscle growth. Research has also demonstrated that twenty-five to thirty-five reps with lighter weights lead to the same gains in muscle size as eight to twelve reps with heavier weights. Even in seasoned weightlifters, twenty to twenty-five reps with a light weight leads to the same muscle growth as eight to twelve reps with a heavy weight.
More recent research shows that the “hypertrophy rep range” is way larger than most people realize, demonstrating similar per-set hypertrophy with loads ranging from 30 to about 85% of 1RM, although dipping below 20% appears to be too low to create adequate muscle tension to maximize growth. But that 20% can include—you guessed it—your own body weight.
The key is to get as close to muscular failure as possible, which appears to be more important with lower loads or body weight.
Ultimately, if you want to add muscle mass as fast as possible, you’ll get the best results in the shortest period of time by using heavy weights, since less volume is required.
But you can still build muscle with light weights and high reps—and research suggests this approach is particularly effective when training legs. This is especially useful information if you don’t know how to lift heavy weights, you’re trying to minimize your risk of injury, or you have limited access to equipment (for more information on this topic, this is a great article to check out).
Why Bigger Muscles Aren’t Better
Do you ever try to move fast? No, I mean F-A-S-T.
When was the last time you were at the gym and tried to hoist a barbell over your head as explosively as possible? When was the last time you were running on a treadmill or riding a bicycle and moved your legs so fast that your brain hurt trying to keep up?
Fact is, when it comes to optimizing the performance of your nervous system and cementing the connection between your brain and the rest of your body, it doesn’t really matter how heavy you lift or how much muscle you build.
Sure, strength training and muscle building are fantastic tools for aesthetics, symmetry, musculoskeletal development, and even slowed aging. But when it comes to optimizing your brain and nervous system, recruiting more muscle fibers faster, enhancing nerve-firing speed, and optimizing brain-body coordination, it is far more important to focus on fast, explosive movements.
I was first exposed to the extreme benefits of moving fast when I interviewed a well-known sports performance coach named Nick Curson. Nick, the creator of a training system called Speed of Sport, trains some of the best UFC and NFL competitors on the planet. Rather than giving enormous weights to the men and women he coaches, he has them move light loads and their own body weight as freakin’ fast as they possibly can. As a result, his athletes are incredibly explosive and functional and don’t walk around with relatively useless slabs of extra muscle mass.
There is also a direct link between your power-to-muscle-mass ratio and your longevity, but what does that mean?
It means bigger muscles aren’t always better. Instead, when it comes to slowed aging and longevity, your ability to quickly recruit muscle fibers seems to matter most.
I became aware of the fascinating truth about why bigger muscles aren’t necessarily better when I spoke with author Paul Jaminet on my podcast about his theory that a smaller muscle capable of exerting more force is a healthy muscle, while a gargantuan but relatively weak muscle is an unhealthy muscle.
To understand how large muscles—muscles that are big and bulky but don’t necessarily produce much explosive force—may be unhealthy, look at cardiomegaly, or enlargement of the heart. When heart tissue is incapable of exerting as much force as it should, the heart often grows larger to compensate. Those who have cardiomegaly, including exercise enthusiasts, often die an early death because the heart has to work so hard to support its own bulk.
In the same way, old-school bodybuilding techniques or other exercise styles that are designed to produce pure mass rather than force can potentially damage your health. Indeed, Paul cited a study on guinea pigs that showed that lower muscle mass and higher muscle-force capacity, which is found in powerlifters and anyone training more for power and speed than for strength and size, could actually be associated with longevity.
In other words, the healthiest muscle strength gains might come with only small muscle size gains, because larger muscles take far more energy to carry and cool and require far more antioxidants for repair, recovery, and mitochondrial activity.
It is well established in exercise science that muscle contractions lead to elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in skeletal muscle, and although these highly reactive molecules are beneficial for normal cell signaling, when in excess, they have many deleterious effects, particularly because they contribute to a net inflammatory state.
So if your goal is the ultimate combination of performance, aesthetics, and longevity, what you should pursue are functional, efficient, powerful muscles rather than unnecessary pounds of excess muscle mass.
You should also take into consideration that the more muscles you have, the more calories you must consume to maintain (or build) that muscle—which flies in the face of the proven science that moderate caloric restriction can enhance a variety of health factors, including, most notably, longevity.
Fact is, research suggests that pure muscle mass does not increase longevity. Instead, longevity is more heavily correlated with muscle quality and the ability of the muscle to support daily functional activities such as walking, sprinting, and lifting heavy stuff, all of which positively impact insulin resistance, fat-burning rates, mitochondrial density, mobility, muscle fiber type, and strength.
In addition, bigger muscles don’t necessarily mean you’re stronger. Plenty of other factors can have significant effects on strength, such as the strength of individual muscle fibers, muscle force, joint biomechanics, and body proportions.
Especially early on in training, there’s a surprisingly weak relationship between gains in muscle and gains in strength, and gains in muscle mass can explain as little as 2 percent of the variation in strength gains for new lifters. In contrast, for more experienced lifters, gains in muscle mass can explain up to 65 percent of the variability in strength gains. Ultimately, muscle mass definitely influences strength, but it’s not the single determinant of strength.
When it comes to muscles, bigger is not the same as better.
In simple terms, the greater the proportion of a muscle’s contractile tissue to its noncontractile tissue, the greater the amount of force it can produce for its size and the greater its muscle quality. In addition, higher-quality muscles developed for performance rather than size also have increased mitochondrial density and more energy-producing capacity per pound of muscle.
Perhaps this is why many professional bodybuilders die young or suffer from chronic inflammation-related diseases. The healthiest muscles are those found on a small, wiry, powerful physique with modest size but a high force-producing potential and the ability to summon significant amounts of power and speed.
Summary
Staying functional forever isn’t about bulking up to bodybuilder proportions or chasing the latest gym trends.
It’s about sculpting a body that’s lean, powerful, and bursting with vitality—one that not only looks incredible but performs like a well-oiled machine for decades to come.
By embracing a smarter approach to fitness, like super-slow resistance training and explosive, high-intensity bodyweight movements, you can unlock a level of strength and functionality that keeps you thriving and unstoppable.
Instead of fixating on sheer size, the methods you just discovered in this article hone in on muscle quality—building fibers that are sleek, dense, and packed with energy-producing mitochondria. This focus on performance, not just appearance, enhances your body’s resilience, minimizes inflammation, and fortifies your ability to tackle anything life throws your way.
The result? A physique that ages like fine wine: timeless, alluring, and endlessly capable.
If you’re looking for more insights into your health and wellness, you’ll be happy to hear that I just finished updating and editing my best-selling book, Boundless. The brand new version of Boundless covers everything you could possibly want to know about optimizing your health and longevity, including how to boost your mitochondrial function, reboot your circadian rhythm, increase your libido, manage chronic conditions, enhance your mind using new smart drugs and peptides, reverse aging, improve sleep, burn fat, maintain health routines at home and while traveling, and much more!
Ready to uncover a treasure trove of the latest science-backed strategies for improving every aspect of your mind, body, and spirit? You can click this link to pre-order your new updated copy of Boundless.
Additionally, if you have any questions, comments, or feedback, you can drop me a line in the comments below, and I’ll be sure to respond!
