Dr Peter Attia on the power of exercising. Not just for the sake of it, but to be a ‘kick-ass 100-year-old’.
What in the world is the Centenarian Decathlon? I’m not talking about an actual competition among 100-year-olds, although similar events do already exist: the National Senior Games, held every other year, brings together remarkable older athletes, some of them in their nineties and beyond. The record for the 100m dash for women aged 100 and up is about 41 seconds.
The Centenarian Decathlon is a framework I use to organise my patients’ physical aspirations for the later decades of their lives, especially their marginal decade. I know it’s a somewhat morbid topic, thinking about our own physical decline. But not thinking about it won’t make it any less inevitable.
Think of the Centenarian Decathlon as the ten most important physical tasks you will want to be able to do for the rest of your life. Some of the items on the list resemble actual athletic events, while some are closer to activities of daily living, and still others might reflect your own personal interests. I find it useful because it helps us visualise, with great precision, exactly what kind of fitness we need to build and maintain as we get older. It creates a template for our training.
The full list is much longer, with more than 50 different items, but you get the idea. Once they’ve read it. I ask them to please select which of these tasks they want to be able to perform in their ninth, or better yet tenth, decade. Which ones do they choose?
All of them, typically. They want to be able to hike a mile and a half, or carry their own groceries, or pick up a great-grandchild, or get up if they fall down. Or play 18 holes of golf, or open a jar, or fly somewhere on a plane. Of course they do.
That’s great, I say. You’ll make that kid’s day when you pick her up like that. But now let’s do the maths. Let’s say the kid weighs 10-15kg. That’s basically the same as doing a squat while holding a 15kg dumbbell in front of you (i.e. a goblet squat). Can you do that now, at age 40? Most likely. But now let’s look into the future. Over the next 30 or 40 years, your muscle strength will decline by about 8-17% per decade – accelerating as time goes on. So if you want to pick up that 15kg grandkid or greatgrandkid when you’re 80, you’re going to have to be able to lift about 20-25kg now. Without hurting yourself. Can you do that?
I press the issue. You also want to be able to hike on a hilly trail? To do that comfortably req
