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We're all going to have a last decade of life. I call it the marginal decade, just so that we can get comfortable talking about something that people don't like to think about. I'm convinced that ignoring it and not thinking about it doesn't lead to a good outcome. Instead, if you prepare for it and train for it like an athlete trains and prepares for their sport, you'll have the best version of that possible.
Marginal decades and centenarian decathlon. Did I say that correctly? Centenarian decathlon. Yep. Centenarian decathlon. Can you explain these two terms to me?
Yep. So, the marginal decade is the last decade of life. Again, it's a weird thing where most people don't know the day they've entered it, but most people also realize at some point when they're in it. I thought a lot about it. This was a big epiphany that I had in 2018 when I was sitting in the church at a funeral of the parent of a friend of mine. I realized that they had declined so much during the last decade of their life that even though they were alive, they weren't enjoying life. The things that they loved to do, in the case of this individual, play golf and tend to the garden, they couldn't do. They just physically couldn't do it. They had injuries. They had aches and pains. When they couldn't do those things that gave them pleasure, they retreated from life. I don't think there's a person listening to us who can't appreciate that, because they've witnessed it. They've seen it in a parent, a grandparent, a loved one. There was just something about that moment, which is often the case. It's usually years and years of thinking about something, and it crystallizes in an instant. In that moment, I realized: the way to avoid this is to train specifically for that decade. And the best model for how to do that is to look at athletes, because every athlete trains with specificity.
Think of all the different types of athletes you would know. If you think about a sprinter, a basketball player, or a football player, they are so different, and very little of their training looks like the other guy's. The reason for that is they're doing something very specific. The sprinter has a goal, which is to move 100 meters as fast as possible. That's it, and that requires a certain set of skills. The footballer has a totally different goal. Yes, he has to be able to run fast for short distances, but just being able to run fast would not produce superior results. The basketball player would be different, and the skier would have a totally different set of skills. So I asked, who's the most well-rounded athlete out there? It's the decathlete, because that athlete has to do 10 different things really well. They don't have to be the best in the world at those 10. In fact, they never are. But overall, they're considered the best athlete because of the diversity and breadth of what they can do. So I said that is our model.
So what is the centenarian decathlon? I say to you, Stephen, one day you are going to be in your marginal decade. What do you want to be able to do physically and athletically in that last decade? The answer is so clear to me, because it's associated with all the things that make me happy. It would be being able to explore the world still, with my romantic partner.
Tell me what that looks like.
Okay. I went to Bali, and my girlfriend and I wanted to go white water rafting. To get down to the white water rafts in Bali, we had to walk down and then up again, about 100 meters of stairs. As I went down those stairs, I had one of those moments that it sounds like you had at the funeral. I realized that my dad could not walk down these stairs. He couldn't walk down them, and he couldn't walk up them. I'm going to point out that it's for a different reason, and I want to come back to your story. Walking down is not about endurance. Walking down is about eccentric strength in the quads, to be able to decelerate the body as it's moving down. That's very important. Coming up is about concentric strength in the quads and glutes, and endurance.
Okay. All right. But continue. That's a really good point, because they're two different training systems. The reason that was so important was the great time I had in the white water raft with my girlfriend, going down that lake through the barley. I thought, if I'm not careful, and I don't think about this, I won't be able to have these experiences when I'm 60.
What was involved in being in the raft?
A lot of strength was required to row, to keep us away from the rocks, to push us off when we got stuck, and to fall in the water and get back in the boat. Think about the scapular stability that's required. Think about the upper body strength you need to lift yourself back into a boat if you fall. The list goes on and on. It took a long time. We were out there for two hours going through this lake.
The other thing I think about is Christmas, and my nieces. My brother is a year older than me and has three kids under the age of six. These kids just sprint off in every direction. They'll say to my dad, "Come and play in the garden," and my dad wouldn't be able to play with them the way they would want to, running around and being chased. So my dad just watches them from the kitchen. These emotional things come to mind first because those are the things that stay with us. I'll give you one more. As a man, the other thing that comes to mind is being able to protect my family. I don't necessarily mean wrestling an intruder, but lifting things. If something falls, being able to pick it up and move it. Those are the things that come to mind first and foremost: protection, memories, and activities that create relationships and connection.
That's exactly the exercise we do. We take people through it and ask for the 10 most important things they want to be able to do. If you start with "I want to be able to go back to Bali and go down those hundred stairs, get in the raft, go down the river, and come back up the stairs," that gets broken down into very specific movement patterns. Playing football with the kids out back gets broken down into very specific movement patterns. They're very different. That one comes down much more to foot reactivity, lateral movement, and things like that. Being able to pick something up off the floor is yet another set of movement patterns. It turns out there are approximately 27 physical requirements necessary to do the sum total of most things people want to do.
Part of the reason I think people don't care enough is that they see aging as inevitable. They look at their parents and grandparents and think, they're immobile, they can't function properly, that's my destiny, it's genetic. I don't agree with that, although I have tremendous empathy for people who feel that way. When you see something as ubiquitous as the decline of untold numbers of people as they age, it would be very easy and tempting to say that it is the inevitability of our species. Death is inevitable, despite what some biohackers may tell you. Decline is inevitable, but the rate of decline is very much up to us. The preservation of strength, stamina, and movement capacity is largely up to us.
In fact, there is actual data that demonstrates this quite clearly. I was just reading a paper yesterday in the journal Cell that looked at the role of exercise in aging individuals in preserving mitochondrial function. The study randomized one group to a significant amount of exercise, and the other group was business as usual, largely sedentary. Using fairly elaborate techniques, they biopsied the muscle and looked at the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, in these individuals. In the people who were exercising, there was very little decline in mitochondrial function compared to the people who were not exercising. Just because your mitochondria continue to function well doesn't mean all aspects of aging are offset, but it's a very important one to demonstrate. This is also true of strength and endurance. There's a big difference in the rate of decline of muscle mass, muscle strength, and cardiopulmonary fitness between people who exercise and people who don't.
So it's a long-winded way of saying that as an individual you have so much more under your control than you realize, but you have to begin compounding the gains.
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