Why Most “Over 40” Workouts FAIL (And What Actually Works)
If you wanted to understand longevity and how to be forever fit, to not just live longer, but live longer with a higher quality of life; this is the video for you. In this video, I explain how strength important strength is for longevity as you get older. What I cover in this video I call the unbrea
When it comes to longevity, do you want to just live longer, or would you rather live longer, better? Well, when we talk about strength, there’s a difference between just being strong and having the right type of strength to carry you through the rest of your life in a much more high quality way. Today, we’re going to start breaking down something we call the unbreakable laws of longevity and focusing mostly on strength. Now, this right here represents a lifetime dream of mine, a milestone. I had a chance to work with the exact team that I grew up rooting for, the New York Mets.
But I’ve got another milestone here coming up and this is the big 5. And this is me enjoying my carrot cake. Yes, once a year I have my carrot cake. You can be damn sure I’m going to be doing it again. Now, when we talk about getting stronger, you have to understand that you want to get as absolutely strong as possible.
Right, Jesse? Absolutely. Now, I’m talking about absolutely strong. Do you know what that means? That means being as strong as absolutely possible.
Well, that means that there’s two different types of strength. There’s relative strength and there’s absolute strength. Absolute strength is your ability to simply move things in a in a better way than other people. You can move heavier objects more effectively than other people. You’re pretty absolutely strong.
Yeah, I would like to think so. Relative strength brings into play a lot of things like this, like a 100 humans versus one gorilla. I’m taking the gorilla in that situation for me. Um, I’m not saying who I think is going to win, but I’m going to tell you who I would rather win because I think humans pretty much suck a lot. And you’re an animal lover.
Now, but when we talk about my world of sports, these are the kind of things that the relative strength arguments start to come into play. In other words, is Jon Jones the best pound-for-pound fighter or is someone like Max Holloway at just 145 lbs? There’s a 100 pound difference between these two. However, in the world of nature, we have someone that’s much stronger. This is the dung beetle.
Smelly. Yeah. They can pull 1,141 times their body weight. That’s pretty strong. Okay.
Now, I got a question for you and for you. Okay. You’re trapped under a car. Okay. Would you rather the dung beetle come and save you?
Okay. Or Thorby? Thorby. Absolutely. Just make a choice here, guys.
Now again, really, really, really relatively strong for their body weight. But again, the only thing that’s going to save me or you in this situation is someone that’s absolutely strong. Now, these represent the most basic of absolute strength numbers. I want you to look at these and say, “Damn, I can’t do that. I can’t do that.
I can’t do that. ” And the good thing is you wouldn’t be alone. There’d be a lot of people who have the same inability to reach these numbers. But there’s something really fascinating. Stick with me here for a second.
We’re talking about a 100 lb chin-up, a 200lb overhead press, a 300lb bench press, a 400 lb squat, and a 500 lb deadlift. Oh, squat and deadlift. My specialties, right? And you have both the squat and the deadlift. But what these represent are just a set of absolute strength standards that guess what?
Even someone the size of Max Holloway has been able to achieve. There are Olympians out there who can do these things at those low body weights of 160 lbs. Yeah. So, it’s not that they’re impossible. I would never show you something here that’s impossible.
Are they probable for most of you? No. But again, let’s talk about it. If you wanted to instead talk about more of the relative terms of strength, this is what we’re talking about here. Have you ever heard of the different ranges for an exercise?
Right? So, for a bench press, they’ll say if you could bench 1. 25 to 1. 75 times your body weight, you’re doing good. Yeah.
Okay. If you could squat 2 to 2 and 1/2 times your body weight, you’re doing good. How much you weighing? 165. So, 165 * 2 is 330 lbs, right?
Yep. 330 on the low end to another half of that on the high end. All right. Dead. Yeah.
Deadlift. 2. 55 to three times your body weight. You actually surpassed that, too. Yeah, I did.
Up to 560, right? 560. But look what happens. Whether we’re talking about relative or absolute strength standards, there’s still an urging of progression, right? If you’re not at those 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 numbers, can you push yourself further up towards them?
Or if you are at the bottom end of this range, can you push yourself up towards the high end of this range? There’s nothing saying like in your case that you can’t exceed the top end of the range, but it’s still always urging progression. This is Jesse right here. What is that? Five 560.
- What is this here? 430. 430. So really good numbers at 165 lb body weight.
We talk about people being incredibly strong. Now, stay tuned because again, how did somebody like Jesse who isn’t the biggest man in the face of the earth, let’s face it, get to be as strong as he did? Because he knew how to train strength with an eye towards longevity. Even if he was only in his late 20s and early 30s when he did it, cuz I want to share the same thing with you guys. Now, I have a push-up question for you.
If you do a push-up and you weigh 160 lbs, you’re actually lifting 120 lbs of body weight. So that means you’re lifting 75% of your body because your feet are in contact with the ground when you do that push-up. If you started out being able to do only six push-ups and then you could do 12 and then you could do 15 and then you could do 20, are you getting stronger? Yeah. The answer is yes, you are getting stronger.
But are you building strength? I wouldn’t say so. See, there’s a difference. You might be getting stronger at an exercise or you might even be getting a little better at the exercise, but are you building strength? Your goal, no matter how old you are, is that you need to be able to build and maintain strength because every decade that you live, you’re going to lose strength.
You actually lose more strength and you lose muscle size. But once you start hitting your 40s and 50s and 60s, you’re losing about 5 to eight or 9% of your strength every decade. That’s a lot. Yeah, it sucks cuz I can actually tell you that it’s happening with me and it also happens with muscles as well. You lose some of your muscle mass.
So, your goal is to be as strong as possible, and the only way to do that is to continue to lift heavier weights. Because if I told you 120 lb push-up, and we equated to a bench press, 120 lb, 120 lb bench press, is that that impressive? Not really. But if you told me, well, I could do it 12 times. Okay, I could do it 20 times.
Okay, I could do it 40 times. Like, it’s fine, but it’s not that impressive because the again the strength load, the amount you’re actually lifting is not impressive. So whether you lift more and more reps doesn’t really represent absolute strength. Would you say that’s muscle endurance more? It becomes more muscle endurance.
Yeah. Yeah. So I’d rather see you learn how to get stronger. One to eight. This is where the tension is strong enough to apply that stimulus to keep you gaining strength even as your body wants to lose strength.
Okay? You got to be in this range. But for longevity, watch what happens. As you train in this range, there’s always going to be something we call the zone of risk and then the safety net. So, when we’re talking about one to eight, when Jesse was just starting out in his 20s, this safety net was pretty wide and this zon