Just a few short days ago, I became a father. God has blessed me with a healthy baby. My son spends much of his busy day eating and sleeping, although we do manage to get an hour or two of playtime.

I sent a box of sweets to all our family friends and neighbours. They called me back to thank and congratulate me and the family and it was also a chance to catch up with everyone.

One of our neighbours gave me some bittersweet news. He told me his mother had a heart attack. Luckily she survived. His father is already someone who walks with a cane.

Very decent people who’ve lived in the area their entire lives. I went to pay a visit and offer my best wishes for their health.

As I spoke to them, they started telling me about all the things they used to do together when they were younger.

• Riding bikes
• Walking by the beach
• Playing in the playground with their kids
• Traveling (mostly in India and a few foreign vacations)
• Road trips, dance classes, raising children, and so much more – they have been married for decades now.

There was a lingering sadness in the room because although they were reminiscing about the happy memories of their past, the implication was that most of those things could never be done again.

I mean the guy walks with a cane and the lady just survived a heart attack and got a pacemaker installed. From here on, life is going to be very slow (as it had somewhat already been for the last few years).

There will be very little adventure or riding bikes or traveling, or dance classes, or whatever else for the rest of their lives. Now they were restricted to a tight diet and the area around their home, and they had to be under someone else’s care till they died.

The thing to note is that the couple is not that old. I did not ask their age but they didn’t look that old. 60-65 maybe.

It reminded me of why we train.

Why do you train?

If I asked a bunch of men “why do you train?”, I would get a bunch of different answers:

• To get stronger
• To get bigger
• To attract more women
• To lose weight
• To sleep better
• etc.

And those are all fine reasons to train.

But none of them are the main reason you should train. At least they shouldn’t be the main reason in the long run.

The main reason to train is to retain YOUTHFULNESS as long as possible.

This is the main reason to train in the long run. If your program is not keeping you youthful, your program sucks. Period.

It should be noted that your training program does not just mean lifting weights in the gym (strength training). It also includes all the other aspects of health like cardio, sports, etc. that develop things strength training doesn’t.

What is Youthfulness?

Youthfulness is your ability to live independently and do the things you want to do without any limitations being imposed on you because of your age and health status.

It is easy to explain with the help of counterexamples:

• My friend can’t go trekking with us because he lacks the stamina to keep up with the group. He is not youthful because he lacks stamina.
• A grandmother who cannot lift her 5 year old grandson over her head to play with him. She is not youthful because she lacks strength.
• An overweight colleague of mine is sleepy all the time. He needs a nap after lunch and can overall be described as a low energy person. He is not youthful because he lacks energy and vigor.
• A 38 year old uncle of my wife died of a heart attack. He was extremely obese. He was not youthful because he was fat. His bodyfat killed him 40-50 years sooner than his natural lifespan.
• A friend from the gym who is quite strong and lean (4 pack abs all year round and deadlifts 200kg) played squash with us for a few days. He didn’t even play much but twisted his ankle and fell over. He is not youthful because he lacks coordination and explosiveness (his joints cannot handle random explosive movements).
• A man who needs Viagra to fuck a girl properly. Without the pill he goes soft too fast. He’s not youthful because his hormones are in the gutter.
• A 60 year old person who can’t travel or do many other normal things because his back hurts. Or the 30 year old corporate employee complaining about joint pain. They are not youthful because they lack strength and mobility.

Basically all of these guys are prevented from doing things they should easily be able to do because of physical limitations that creep up over time as you grow older.

How to measure youthfulness?

Here are the 6 main factors and they are roughly interrelated:

1) Strength

This is your ability to lift things without getting injured. This determines your quality of life. Being able to walk without a stick. Being able to bend without needing support. Not having your back hurt when you take a bucket of water from one place to another. Being able to lift your toddler over your head.

You need at least basic strength to live and you should strive to be quite strong. But don’t get so obsessed with strength that you sacrifice the other aspects of youthfulness to get it (like the strong fat powerlifters who can’t climb a bunch of stairs without panting like a horse).

2) Muscle mass

This is how much muscle you have and is correlated to strength (more muscle mass generally means more strength). It adds to your physical beauty and ability and to your personality. Women have been selected over millions of years of evolution to get their panties wet for muscular men for a reason.

Progressive overload and a high protein diet are the name of the game. As a bonus, muscle mass improves your odds of survival if you ever get a life threatening disease.

3) Low body fat

You can think of excess body fat as high interest debt. No matter how you acquired it, your highest priority needs to be paying it off. If you are fat, you should either cut or do a recomp. Do not bulk.

Excess body fat is extremely detrimental not just to your appearance but also to your internal organs, your hormone system, and your knees. You can do everything else right but lose your youthfulness to painful damaged knees.

Or die decades before your time to a heart attack like my wife’s uncle did (he died at 38 leaving his two young children and his dependent wife all to themselves).

4) Stamina

It is not enough to just be strong. If you are a strong guy but have little to no stamina, you are still going to be severely restricted in what you can do in life. After a certain point, working on your stamina and heart health will add much more to your quality of life than adding more strength will.

What improves when you take your squat from 140kg to 180kg? Very little. On the other hand, taking your 5km time from 45 minutes to 25 minutes means you can now do so many new things in life. Like trekking and so many other adventure activities.

5) Hormone levels

If you don’t wake up with an erection, there is something wrong with your hormones. (The exception is if you had a lot of sex the night before.) Likewise, not being able to grow a beard, being overweight, etc. are all signs of poor hormonal balance.

Bad hormones will impact your sex life, your ability to focus, your energy levels, and other subtle things.

If you need to watch some porn to get hard enough to have sex with your girl, you are doing something wrong. If you can’t give a girl orgasms without taking a pill to keep you hard, you are doing something wrong.

6) Coordination and explosiveness (and speed)

A lot of people think that going to the gym and walking is enough. It is NOT. As my friend Mark Baker (Guru Anaerobic) says, you need both a strong engine and a strong chassis. Just one is not enough.

Most people over 35 haven’t done a full speed sprint in years. If they run, their knees and feet hurt for days. In fact, most of them will pull or tear something if they try to run at full speed. They haven’t done it for so long that their joints have lost the mobility and robustness to absorb impact.

Fun fact: Many schools don’t do parents races because so many parents haven’t run in over a decade and many of them will tumble, fall, and break their leg or hip. I’m not even joking. Go on YouTube and watch some videos of parent’s races – you will see at least one person fall in every video. These guys are the opposite of youthfulness.

How to train to retain youthfulness over the long run

Outside of fixing strong pain points in the short run (like doing a big fat loss phase if overweight), training in the long run is about improving and retaining all the aspects of youthfulness.

Some things work on some aspects of youthfulness while the others on the other aspects.

For example, cardio helps with stamina but does nothing for your strength and muscle mass. On the other hand, properly done strength training is great for your muscle mass and strength but does nothing for your stamina and your ability to withstand impacts.

Everyone who reads this website already knows the importance of strength training and hits the gym regularly (my readers are smarter and more ambitious than the general population – the very fact that you are taking time to read this article instead of watching a brain dead TikTok video is proof of this).

However, most people neglect their cardio.

Cardio is more important than people tend to think. It makes your heart stronger, gets blood rushing in your arteries which triggers the release of nitric oxide that keeps your arteries open and elastic.

This significantly reduces your risk of heart attacks and strokes because pliable arteries are much less likely to get choked up.

Hormones and fat loss largely come down to eating the right diet.

Coordination, explosiveness, and speed need to be trained separately. You have to retain the ability to withstand quick impacts on your joints.

Racket sports like squash and badminton are best because they involve very quick turns and jumps and lunges to play while focusing your eyes on something else (ball, shuttle cock, whatever).

With racket sports, you are essentially moving quickly and switching directions in unpredictable ways and maintaining your balance while keeping your eyes on a fast moving object.

This maintains your “physical intelligence” as you age. You are less likely to become a fragile older person who can’t even sprint or jump without risk.

Your joints learn to become resilient to unpredictable random impacts from moving side to side, front and back, lunging, jumping, and many other natural movements that aren’t trained by lifting weights.

Your training program needs to be structured to improve on ALL aspects of youthfulness.

How to structure your program to maximize and retain youthfulness

On the exercise side:

• Hypertrophy/strength training 2-4 times a week to train strength and build/retain muscle mass. You can find my free training programs here. If you’re cutting, modify the programs as detailed here.
• Explosive sports 2-3 times a week to train cardio, explosivity, aim, hand eye coordination, speed, etc. (things not trained in the gym)
• Cardio on machines if you don’t want to or cannot play sports for whatever reason. E.g. when traveling, I might just do the elliptical in the hotel gym. I do incline walking in the gym instead of sports when I’m preparing for a high altitude trek.
• Sprinting 1x a week (can skip if you play sports that involve sprints)
• Yoga 1x a week to maintain flexibility (you WILL lose flexibility to strength training if you don’t specifically work to improve it)
• 8000-12000 steps per day (active lifestyle).

On the diet side:

• Get the right amount of calories for your goals (see calories for hypertrophy and calories for obese and overweight people)
• Get enough protein (our recommendations here)
• Avoid altered foods (things that contain partially hydrogenated trans fats, refined oils, etc.)
• Supplement the nutrients missing in your diet (e.g. fish oil, vegans need B-12, etc.)
• Avoid putting damaging substances in your body (like alcohol, cigarette smoke, etc.)

On the recovery side:

• Respect your recovery abilities. Take at least 1 full day off per week to let your CNS recover.
• Take 1 full week off from all training every 3 months. Relax, rest, go on an easy vacation (not hiking), or whatever. Let your joints and everything else recover.
• Keep things sustainable. If you find yourself overreaching and fatigue accumulating over time (your motivation to train goes down in the gutter), add more days off and reduce volume from the program (e.g. train 3 days instead of 4, or do 2 days of sports instead of 3, or less.).
• Get plenty of sleep.
• Buy an air purifier if you live in a polluted city.
• Get a massage 1-2x a month if you can afford it. And by that I mean a real massage, not an expensive handjob.
• Avoid chronic stress. Learn how to not sweat the small things. Learn to control your thoughts. Being stressed all the time is a bad habit that kills you silently. And unlike other bad habits, it’s not even pleasurable to indulge in.

Other longevity tips:

• Avoid very low rep training.
• Warm up properly before training. Cold muscle is more likely to get injured.
• Drink electrolytes before workouts to ensure hydration. Dry muscle is more likely to get injured.
• Deworm yourself every few months. Ask your doctor. I take an albendazole. Do it especially if you’re someone like me who spends a lot of time trekking in forests and mountains and drinking natural water from streams.

If you can afford it, buy Live Intentionally: 90 Day Self-Improvement Program

Given that this is an article on the blog, there is only so much depth I can go into. My program covers everything here in great detail and much more (fitness is only 1 section of the full program).

It is designed to completely overhaul your life in 90 days. Everything from:

• Your sleep quality
• Your diet (what to eat, how to build your own diet plans, etc.)
• Your training (including all the aspects above – sports, training programs, everything).
• You even get Guru Anaerobic’s Guide to Regaining Sprint Speed as a free bonus (this is something he sells independently for $21)
• Flexibility is also covered in detail – you get Mobility Made Simple by AJA Cortes as a free bonus (this is something he sells independently for $25)
• You get your mental health back as the program will force you to get rid of all sorts of addictions in this 90 day period (no more being a porn and alcohol addict)
• You will understand your past and yourself through the introspection work, meditate regularly, and more. No more drifting through life like a visionless zombie.
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The program is designed to overhaul your life in 90 days.

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There are hundreds and hundreds of 5 star reviews.

If you can afford it, BUY A COPY. I’m telling you, this is the most important purchase you will ever make in your entire life. It will OVERHAUL your entire existence.

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Fixing your health is even more important than making money from the internet. Or from any other consumer goods you can purchase. BY FAR. Because money is only useful if you actually have the health to enjoy it.

– Harsh Strongman

P.S. Live Intentionally is priced to be affordable to everyone – it won’t burn a hole in your wallet. If you don’t have a copy, you’re paying for it anyway.

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