Don’t pump up the volume (and, for the love of all that is good and decent, don’t pump up the jam, either—both are awful 1980s songs). Instead, if you want to maximize the benefits of the time you spend working out: Pump up the intensity.

Two recent studies each make this point rather clearly. So as you head into your weekend routines, consider the quick takeaways.

Actionable takeaways from this post:

💡 Intensity beats volume: adding short bursts of vigorous effort to your weekly routine cut the risk of eight major chronic diseases by 29% to 61%, even when total exercise time stayed the same. read the study

☛ If you can run, do it in short bursts a couple times a week. Even for 20 seconds

☛ Do 10 squats holding a weighted ball or dumbbell, during the commercials

☛ Take the stairs…as fast as you’re able (and if possible, two at a time)

☛ When all else fails: jumping jacks for the daily heart-raising win!

💡 Walking is America’s favorite workout, but only about a quarter of walkers hit federal activity guidelines — pair your walks with weightlifting or a conditioning routine to actually meet the mark. read the study

☛ keep walking, but start and end walks by spending 2 minutes lifting something heavy

☛ if you walk often, consider carrying light weights or wearing a weighted vest

☛ a bag of garden soil or fitness sandbag are excellent ways to add weight to daily movement

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Training harder, even briefly, beats logging more easy/moderate minutes

A new study of nearly 100,000 adults wearing wrist accelerometers (so, no self-reporting problems that confound other studies) found that how hard you exercise matters more than how much.

People whose workouts included more than 4% vigorous activity had a 29% to 61% lower risk of contracting eight major chronic diseases—heart attacks, stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, fatty liver, lung disease, kidney disease and dementia. They also were found to have a lower risk of death from any cause. The benefit held regardless of total exercise volume.

For some conditions, like autoimmune diseases and dementia, intensity mattered far more than volume. For others, like diabetes and kidney disease, both counted roughly equally.

In case you missed it:

Walking is good, but it isn’t nearly enough to maintain muscle

New research on nearly 400,000 American adults, drawn from a big annual CDC health survey, reveals that people who list walking as one of their top two exercise activities were among the least likely to hit the federal exercise guidelines (150 minutes of aerobic activity a week, plus two weekly strength training sessions), and about 23% of walkers met neither target. By contrast, people who ran, lifted weights, did conditioning work or danced cleared the combined guidelines at rates of 45% or higher. The authors call it discouraging that America's favorite exercise is also one of its least effective at the recommended dose, and they suggest pairing walking with something more demanding—like strength training—rather than treating it as a complete fitness program on its own.

I’ll leave you with this sobering chart from the above study, which tells several interrelated stories about the current state of American physical health:

The fractions of Americans who engage in physical activities

Enjoy the weekend and, by all means, keep going.

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Physical strength is so important in the second half of life (and it’s never too late to start building it). But strength alone won’t keep you quick, agile and fully physically capable of handling unexpected challenges. You also need to develop power.

Strength and power are different abilities. And here’s a sobering statistic: Once you hit 50, muscle power declines roughly twice as fast as muscle strength.1 Power is something I’ve put more personal emphasis on lately. Below, I recommend several exercises that anyone in good health can do to build strong and powerful muscles. (At bottom, I’ve also included several power exercises for people with spinal issues).

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What is “power” and why is it important?

Strength is your ability to move a heavy thing. Power is how fast you can move it. And here’s a twist that many mature athletes may not realize: Heavy strength training alone doesn’t produce meaningful power gains in older adults. You can squat twice your body weight (though I don’t recommend bar squats) but your vertical jump and chair-stand speed will barely move. The reasons are mechanical and neurological: heavy lifting trains the nervous system to produce force gradually. Power requires the nervous system to fire fast—to recruit type II fibers quickly and synchronously. Slow, heavy lifting does not.

That accelerated decline in muscle power after age 50 is, in large part, a fast-twitch fiber story, and that’s why gyms are full of strong people who haven’t trained for power. Power is what gives your muscles quickness, and quickness is what gives out first in daily life. Power, not raw strength, allows you to:

• get out of a low chair or off the ground

• catch yourself when your foot hits the curb

• climb stairs two at a time (without spilling a brimming glass of water)

• throw fast, jump high, punch/kick with force (or deflect punches and kicks)

• accelerate and decelerate

• snap a towel, pan-toss an omelette or lift luggage into an overhead bin

• catch a falling object (or return a wicked tennis or pickleball drop shot2)

Muscles don’t have to be big to be powerful. They just need to be trained to contract faster and generate force more quickly. Here’s how anyone—women and men, younger or older—can start building more fast-twitch muscle power.

15 power + strength workouts you can start doing now*

Power is moving a weight quickly. So to create more powerful muscle for longevity, the solution is pretty simple: move weight faster. You can adapt your existing workouts to do that, of course, using a “slow/down, fast/up” rhythm to any movement.

Here are 15 specific exercises (with a couple video clips) that you can do at home or the gym that are excellent for building functional power into your strength training. (Scroll to the bottom for power exercises for people experiencing spinal issues.)

• 9 of the 15 movements below have 🅗 after them, denoting exercises you can do at home with no equipment or almost no equipment

• The mace bell exercise shown the photo above is not among the 15 power exercises below, but it is a great workout. If there’s interest, I’ll create a post on it.

• I marked my favorite movements with 🤘

I’m creating a downloadable PDF for paying subscribers that includes a printable weekly planner you can put on your fridge. Look for an email from me on this early next week.

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1. Run a 1-minute experiment not reflexively looking at your phone. The next time you’re bored—or think you’re bored, because you may be only conditioned to feel bored when you’re actually full of interesting ideas and thoughts—instead of pulling out your phone, leave it in your pocket or bag for 60 seconds. Give yourself one short minute to have thoughts, let memories flood in, remember something you wanted to try or someone you want to get back to. When the minute’s up, reach for your phone, if you still want you. Try this experiment every day when you feel the urge to stare at your phone screen. Watch what happens after about 2 weeks of this daily experiment.

2. Brutally overhaul your phone’s notifications so that you:

   1. don’t hear, see or feel a buzz or ding every time you get a text or email (but can still get your calendar reminders, which are obviously important to allow through.

   2. activate the function that blocks everyone except the people you designate (ie, parents or children or school/doctor’s office) from reaching you when you’ve activated your “notifications silenced” setting.

      1. experiment with activating this setting during work or evening hours, when you really don’t want to be jumping at the phone whenever it flirps.

3. End your relationship with your phone (temporarily) every night before bed. Just for the hour before you turn the lights out. The phone should be dead to you in the run-up to bedtime.

4. Run a 1-hour experiment—are you ready for this?—leaving home without your phone. I know. It’s almost inconceivable. But it’s possible. And it’s strangely incredibly liberating. It’s like turning invisible to the world for a short time. Try it and see what happens. The Baby Steps version of this experiment is to leave work desk or office without your phone when you visit the bathroom, break room or a colleague’s desk. Graduate to spending lunch or errands without the phone.

5. Consider going back to paper when possible. It may cost a few dollars, but what about reading a paper newspaper or magazine, for instance, instead of just consuming them through a screen? Put a paper book (or, if you must, a digital book reader) on your bed pillow, to read for a few minutes in bed before sleep. Try it and see what happens.

How have you strategically tuned out of the noise around you? We’d love to hear your thoughts, experiments, wins, misses and everything in between.

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Several states restrict or prohibit doctors from promoting products they have undisclosed financial interests in. But in the above 2025 podcast, Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Anurag Singh, who is introduced only as an “immunology scientist,” promote Mitopure, a branded Urolithin A supplement, without disclosing that Singh is the chief medical officer of the company selling Mitopure online, or that Hyman earns commissions for marketing it on his own website.

In February, I wrote an article, “Is your longevity doctor scamming you?” that reveals how Dr. Mark Hyman regularly urges his newsletter readers to buy longevity supplements that he has an undisclosed financial interest in promoting. Which raises a bigger question.

Can doctors legally pitch supplements for money?

This article examines the legality of licensed medical professionals promoting longevity supplements in which they have an undisclosed financial interest. In response to my questions, the medical boards of California and Ohio said they would open investigations into Hyman’s marketing practices. Massachusetts may do the same but declined to answer my direct question about whether it would. In Texas, a spokesman for the state medical board said it only investigates complaints formally submitted through its online form or the mail.

lon·​gev·​i·​ty chis·​el·​er, n. someone who intentionally promotes unproven anti-aging products, claims or research for personal or professional gain.

Each state’s response is reported in detail below. But first, a brief backgrounder on state laws governing doctors, legally and ethically.

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In case you missed it:

How states regulate doctors

Every U.S. state regulates doctors and sets rules governing their conduct and business practices. State medical boards enforce punishments when licensed professionals disobey the rules. If a board determines that a doctor violated state laws or regulations, it may issue enforcement actions or recommend criminal charges.

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Dr. Hyman’s misstatements about unproven supplements

EDITOR’S NOTE: I reached out to Dr. Hyman and his website’s support staff by email last week, indicating I was planning to write about his email claims about fatty15 and Mitopure, and asking whether he believed his marketing of supplements violated laws in states where he is licensed to practice medicine. He did not respond.

fatty15: a clinically unproven supplement Hyman presents as proven

My previous article, from February, described how one of Hyman’s email newsletters had urged his readers to buy a supplement, fatty15, that he described as backed by rigorous research. He didn’t disclose that the majority of the research he cited was done by the company selling the supplement, that the research showed no evidence that fatty15 worked in humans, and that Hyman was paid by the company to promote the supplement.

Mitopure: a mitochonrial supplement Hyman earns money from on the sly

Two months later, on April 21, Hyman sent out an email pushing another supplement, Mitopure, that he also appears to have an undisclosed financial interest in promoting. Hyman markets the supplement through his website, drhyman.com, and the company that sells Mitopure online features Hyman on his own partner program web page (www.timeline.com/partners/mark-news). That email also misrepresents the scientific support for Mitopure and its benefits for people:

• every study of Mitopure on its branded webpage was funded by Amazentis, the company that sells it, and was authored by its employees, board members or scientific advisors.1

• the two muscle trials behind the strength claims both failed the main test the studies were designed to answer. In fact, the placebo worked just as well. Hyman’s email presents Mitopure’s evidence as settled science when the research reports describe themselves as only proof-of-concept studies needing confirmation.2

In a podcast3 last year, Hyman interviewed the chief medical officer of the company that sells Mitopure online, naming the product 10 times without disclosing Singh’s relationship to it or Hyman’s role as a Mitopure marketing affiliate that earns commissions from sales of the supplement through his website, drhyman.com.

Four state medical boards respond to my questions

I asked the state medical boards in California, Texas, Massachusetts and Ohio if Hyman’s promotions of supplements are violations of their laws or professional codes of conduct.

Each state medical board responded to my questions with varying levels of specificity and transparency. Two states—California and Ohio—indicated outright that they regarded my inquiry as an official complaint that they would investigate. Texas and Massachusetts didn’t explicitly say they took my questions as a formal complaint, but the language of their replies indicated that they likely did.

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Here’s how each state replied to questions about Hyman’s actions in regard to their laws.

California

California law prohibits physicians from receiving any compensation as an inducement for referring patients, clients or customers to any person or entity, under Business and Professions Code §650(a). A 2001 California Attorney General Opinion concluded that a clinician's profit-sharing arrangement to promote a third party's nutritional products to patients violates that statute. B&P §17500 separately prohibits false or misleading statements in connection with the sale of goods.

California’s response to my questions: In response to my questions, the Medical Board of California opened an inquiry into Hyman’s practices. “Your message has been forwarded to the Central Complaint Unit for review,” a spokeswoman for the board wrote in an email reply. (The Board accepts complaints via any medium, including email, mail, telephone, website form, or in person.)

California’s Department of Justice, similarly, indicated that it regarded my list of specific questions about Hyman’s promotion of fatty15 as a complaint to be investigated.

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Ohio

Ohio law uniquely allows its medical board to discipline physicians for violating the AMA’s own ethics code, incorporated into state law under ORC §4731.22(B)(18). AMA Opinion 9.6.4 expressly defines “selling” health-related products to include “endorsing a product that the patient may order or purchase elsewhere that results in remuneration for the physician” — and requires full disclosure of the financial arrangement with the manufacturer. Ohio also separately bars false or misleading advertising under ORC §4731.22(B)(5), which the statute defines to include any statement that misleads “because of a failure to disclose material facts” or that creates “false or unjustified expectations of favorable results.”

Ohio’s response to my questions: In response to my questions, the Medical Board of Ohio also indicated that it had opened an inquiry into Hyman’s practices. “If the board is made aware of allegations, it has a legal responsibility to follow its formal investigatory process,” a board spokeswoman said in an email.

Anyone can file a complaint to Ohio’s medical board. There is no statute of limitations.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts law includes the most specific rules in the country governing physicians selling outside products. The state’s Board of Registration in Medicine (BORIM) Policy 05-01 "Sale of Goods from Physicians' Offices," prohibits physicians from selling products "in a manner that has the potential to exploit patients, including but not limited to exclusive distributorships or personal branding." The policy also bars physicians from using "their office or their professional relationship with patients to promote any business venture." The policy explicitly cites and quotes AMA Code of Ethics Section 8.063—now renumbered Opinion 9.6.4—the same AMA opinion Ohio incorporates into its disciplinary statute. A separate anti-kickback statute, M.G.L. c. 175H, makes it unlawful to receive compensation as an inducement for recommending goods, although its applicability to consumer-paid supplements is limited because the statute is tied to goods reimbursable by health insurers.

Massachusetts’s response to my questions: It appears as if Massachusetts may have also have opened its own inquiry into Hyman, to determine if it should pursue a full investigation. After one spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Public Health dismissed my specific questions about Hyman’s promotion of fatty15 as “hypotheticals,” a second spokeswoman said in a follow-up email that the state board “cannot make a determination based on a complaint alone”—which indicates that the agency regarded my questions as a complaint that would receive “a preliminary screening” to determine whether it will pursue an investigation.

If the board does uncover what it considers a violation, deciding if Hyman deserves punishment would likely take months of bureaucracy.4

Texas

Texas law regulates physician advertising under 22 TAC §164.3, which deems an advertisement false or misleading if it fails to disclose that it is a paid-for presentation, or contains a testimonial without required disclaimers as to the credentials of the person giving it.

Texas’s response to my questions: The Texas Medical Board told me that “the board does consider newsletters, websites, flyers, etc. to constitute advertising.” That means Hyman's emails and website are subject to Texas's prohibition on undisclosed paid-for presentations. The board’s spokesman, Spencer Miller-Payne, said the board does not regard my specific questions about Dr. Hyman, or media reporting generally, as a complaint it would investigate. Complaints must be submitted formally online or by mail.

“If a complaint was received regarding a licensee’s advertising in violation of board rules,” Miller-Payne wrote, “we would follow our standard process, which may include informal resolution, dismissal, or formal disciplinary action.”

Anyone can file a complaint to the Texas Medical Board.

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Five recently published studies, summarized below with links and takeaways, harmonize around a few important themes for aging with strength:

• Move your body daily & lift some moderately heavy stuff a couple times a week

• Build regular meals around plants, nuts & seeds, fiber and olive oil, with lean, unprocessed protein

• Protect your sleep & be skeptical of supplements — most of the benefit other people claim from them depends on gut bacteria you may not have

The five studies below suggest strength and healthy meal plans are the two levers that keep you, your brain and the rest of your body as young as possible. Both are free, both are boring, and both—with a smidge of discipline—allow you to build muscle, slow brain aging, improve gut microbiomes and lower the inflammation that data suggest drives nearly every age-related disease.

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In case you missed it:

DISCLOSURE: I used a paid, upper-tier AI model to distill these five research papers into the concise summaries. Links to each paper are provided.

Lifting weights makes your brain look younger

Link

A two-year randomized trial published in GeroScience in February 2026 found that older adults who lifted weights had brains that looked measurably younger on MRI scans. Researchers in Copenhagen and Chile split 309 adults aged 62 to 70 into three groups: heavy lifters training three times a week, moderate lifters training once a week with home workouts, and a control group that did nothing strenuous. Both lifting groups came out two years “younger” on brain scans, the study found. The control group didn’t budge.

Takeaways:

• The benefit held a full year after training stopped

• Moderate lifters got results as good as the heavy lifters; you don’t need to train heavy

• Consistency matters more than intensity; two sessions a week is enough

Different parts of your brain age on different genetic timers

Link

USC researchers published the first study mapping how genes drive aging in specific regions of the brain, rather than the brain as a whole. The paper, out in GeroScience in December, used MRI scans from 41,708 people in the UK Biobank. They trained a computer to estimate how old each tiny piece of brain tissue looked, then checked which genes tracked with faster or slower aging in each region. They found 1,212 genetic variants that matter. Some genes accelerate aging in the areas that break down first in Alzheimer’s. Others protect the areas that go first in frontotemporal dementia.

Takeaways:

• Your brain doesn’t age as one organ but in pieces, on different genetic schedules

• Those schedules are partly set before you’re born

• In the future, a cheek swab might tell you which parts of your brain are most vulnerable, years before symptoms show up

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Eating less is still the best way to live longer, but it’s tough

Link

A major review in Nature Aging in March confirmed what researchers have known for nearly a century: eating less extends life; nothing else comes close. The review, written by longevity scientists from Oslo, Johns Hopkins, Wisconsin, the National Institute on Aging and University College London, synthesized decades of animal research. Humans are harder. A two-year trial called CALERIE asked people to cut calories by 25%. They only managed 19.5% for six months, then dropped to 9.1%.

Takeaways:

• Eating less extends life in animals, but it’s not feasible or fun for humans

• Humans saw better cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and slower biological aging

• Restricting calories isn’t healthy: mice on deep calorie cuts die faster from infections like the flu, and their wounds heal slower

• The study authors also flag Ozempic and similar drugs as a new way to get the benefits of eating less without the hunger

Your gut bacteria shape how you age

Link

A review in Nature Reviews Endocrinology earlier this year made a simple case: the bacteria in your gut help determine how you age, but they’re so different from person to person that generic advice rarely works.

Italian researchers pulled together the evidence showing that aging in Western populations shifts gut bacteria toward an unhealthy mix—less diversity, fewer good bugs, more inflammation-causing ones. This fuels the slow-burn inflammation that drives frailty.

The most interesting data come from people who live past 100: their gut bacteria get rearranged in a very particular way, with more of the anti-inflammatory strains.

Takeaways:

• Probiotics help a little, but not much

• The Mediterranean diet helps more, especially if you’re coming from a fast-food baseline

• Whether you benefit from polyphenols in berries, nuts, or pomegranates depends on whether your gut carries the bacteria that activate them—most older people don’t

• Movement and sleep feed the good gut bacteria

• Don’t trust supplement claims—what works for your friend may not for you

Stronger older women live longer, even if they don’t exercise

Link

Researchers at the University at Buffalo and six other institutions tracked 5,472 women aged 63 to 99 for more than eight years. Each woman did two simple tests at the start: squeezing a grip meter, and standing up from a chair five times. They also wore activity trackers for a week. Nearly 2,000 women died during follow-up. The weakest had three times the death rate of the strongest, according to the study, published in JAMA Network Open in February.

After the researchers controlled for everything they could, including age, weight, smoking, chronic illness, inflammation, how much the women actually moved and even how fast they could walk…

Takeaways:

• …Strong women still had a 33% lower risk of dying (these were all women past menopause)

• The effect held in women who barely exercised at all, and in women who used walkers

Was this post helpful, a colossal waste of time or something in between? Let me know what you’d like to see covered more, or less, in a comment.

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The U.S. is the only country where a majority of people view other folks as moral failures. Yes, you read that right.

A majority of Americans believe that the morality and ethics of other people are “bad” instead of good, according to a Pew Research survey published last month.1

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Second-worst place in this 25-nation canvass of moral judgement belongs to Turkey (aka the Republic of Türkiye), where 49% of survey respondents said other residents are moral and ethical failures. Behind Turkey were—in declining order of rates at which people view their compatriots as amoral turds—Brazil, Greece, France, Italy, South Africa, Hungary, Argentina and Nigeria.

Canada, adorably, had the lowest percentage of people (7%) who think poorly of others (a rate seven times lower than Americans.) Canada! So cute! 🤗

If I sound a little cynical, I apologize. As a Gen Xer, part of me can’t help it, and the other part of me isn’t really sorry.

The power—amid pessimism—of tumbling into kindness

If this survey—the first of its kind by Pew—isn’t depressing enough, consider that it was conducted more than a year ago, before the wheels started to feel like they were, if not falling off this big American bus of ours, then at least starting to shudder.

Whatever your level of cynicism toward other folks around the country nowadays, I raise this survey on AGING with STRENGTH to make a simple point, and perhaps issue a simple, uncynical plea, about the importance of growing older with kindness.

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The silver lining

It won’t be easy. But here’s a very slight but notable silver lining in the Pew survey: Older Americans (age 40 and up) were less likely than younger Americans to judge others as morally bad. Not by that much—50% vs 57%—but relatively speaking, it’s a good sign that age may, indeed, preserve our abilities to presume positive intent among others.

People over 40 have lived through enough—enough political cycles, enough national crises, enough personal betrayals and reconciliations—to know that moral judgment of entire populations is a blunt instrument. The 57% of younger Americans calling their fellow citizens morally contemptible are a generation that has grown up on digital screens. People who've been around longer came of age looking at other people, listening to other people and, just maybe, have had more actual humans in their lives who complicate making any sweeping moral verdict.

Coming of age in analog > coming of age digital

If you’re a Boomer, your get-on-with-it-already reputation is legendary, so no surprise there. But if you’re Gen X, you came of age in a culture that prided itself on irony and detachment, yet here you are, marginally more willing than the generations after you to give your neighbors the benefit of the doubt. Whatever that says about what people learn as they age—about the limits of judgment, the complexity of other people's lives, the cost of sustained contempt—it's worth sitting with.

Sitting with it is one way to let the kindness rise higher in your gut, in your mind, and push down the quick judgments we’re all growing uncomfortably comfortable making about folks who reside outside our respective bubbles, be they cultural, political, socio-economic, geographical, professional, creative or—speaking for myself here—athletic.

Tumbling is hard at this age. Kindness may be harder

Kindness doesn’t always seem like a coveted, admired or possible virtue these days. I’m not great at displaying it, in traffic, at the end of a hard week, in the face of the anonymous dumpster fire that is social media these days. I’m convinced by its difficulty that it’s an essential element of aging, because we’re all becoming creatures of greater habits, to one extent or another.

Let’s make being good to one another, and ourselves, one of those enduring habits.

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My self-criticism started two weeks ago and continued into this week.

“Dude, it’s been at least a week since you had a proper workout. You haven’t surfed in, what, two months? You still haven’t finished the major article that you promised yourself you were going to publish. Three days last week you failed to leave the house. Your heart rate hasn’t exceeded 95 beats per minute since March. You’ve fallen off your nighttime stretching routines. You’re flossing less. And here you are, eating a bag of Fritos at 11pm, watching NHL highlights on YouTube. 👏🏼“

I feel schlubby and contagious

I couldn’t make sense of why I wasn’t even attempting to be more physically, mentally, emotionally, nutritionally and productively excellent. I felt schlubby—my expression for unambitious and unappealing. This descent into achieving only a fraction of what my ambition expected of me wasn’t exactly a banner ad for aging with strength.

What it was, I came to understand, was necessary. We all need time off from our relentless self-improvement schedules. It can be messy. Our bodies may slow down before our brains figure out what the hell is going on. Whereupon we may fill the void with self-criticism and self-loathing.

I’ve written about the importance of self-forgiveness and how your body is not you—meaning it’s worthy of your compassion and respect. But this was a different feeling, a different need. It was a need to pause, to press the brake and get off the optimization train to wander around the rocks and dirt beyond the station, looking at my palms, rubbing the calluses and wondering what, exactly, I’m doing out in this Fritoed wilderness. Far, far away from my self-optimization routines.

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Though painful at times, after two weeks wandering through the Fields of Schlub, I figured it out: my body just needs a break; my brain, similarly, needs downtime away from the work of self-improvement. I think they actually end up working in my favor, setting myself up for a bigger leap forward, after a temporary step backward. To quote Nirvana from 19911:

I’m worse at what I do best
And for this gift I feel blessed

Sometimes, we need to loosen our grip on the daily or weekly need to be slightly more excellent than we were last week. Consider this a gentle reminder to give yourself permission to wander through your own Fields of Schlub when your body or brain or heart decides to strategically pause your optimization routines.

Just avoid the Fritos.

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I have fond memories of my heavy squat sessions. They were often on Friday nights, when the gym was empty but for the true believers. The core of my routine was 8 sets of 10 reps of 225 pounds. The endorphins, the sweaty heart-rate spike and the iron-denominated gains in strength were addicting; the return to existential baseline real.

“The king of all exercises”

Weighted back squats are one of the most demanding compound movements there is, because they recruit multiple muscle groups and joints simultaneously. NFL players, powerlifters and generations of coaches and dedicated gym rats the world over swear by them. They’ve long been considered one of the most complete lower-body exercises. They’re good at making your butt and legs look great. And they show the world—quite literally—how much of it you can shoulder.

And you should probably quit doing them.

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For most people over 50 (and, very arguably, anyone) bar squats are not the best way to achieve well-balanced, injury-free lower-body strength for the long haul. Back squats tend to exploit pre-existing structural problems in your hips, glutes and core and create the potential for insidious, slow-developing back, pelvic and knee injuries that, in midlife, become harder to heal.

Also, squats aren’t even the best way to make your butt look great.

To build lower-body strength, balance and stability, several other workouts beat squats, and I’ll get into those below. But first, the case against bar squats—and some context:

I know people love their bar squats. After 40-odd years, however, I reluctantly stopped doing them, once it became painfully clear how they were setting up my body for pain and injury. I know I’m not alone and, conversely, also that my experience isn’t universal and that lots of people love squats. Which is why I’m hoping you’ll….

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The case against weighted back squats

My argument is simple: Though legendary, bar squats—especially at or above body weight—are an outdated way to build lower-body strength. Depending on how hard and heavy you go, I’ve come to think of them as the workout equivalent of petting the bison in Yellowstone National Park: kinda not worth the risk.

Bar squats create lumbar spine compression

When you descend into a loaded barbell squat, you put your lumbar spine under significant compression. One study, albeit from 41 years ago, demonstrated that at loads between 80% and 160% of body weight, the compressive force on the lumbar spine can reach 6 to 10 times body weight.1

Heavy bar squats combined with deep knee flexion, in particular, carry increased risks as discs L4-L5 (the primary load-bearing segments of the lower spine) and L5-S1 (the lowest movable segment) are being compressed and sheared simultaneously while in a mechanically disadvantaged position.2

Back squats exacerbate your accumulated asymmetries

Back squats tend to magnify the asymmetrical muscle development that almost all of us have to some degree—a slight lean to one side, one hip dropping slightly lower than the other, a tilted sacroiliac joint, one foot turned out more than the other. Over time, these asymmetries tend to concentrate stress on one SI joint more than the other, which is a common source of the chronic, hard-to-diagnose low back and hip pain that long-term heavy squatters—me included—often develop in their 40s and 50s.

Beware the asymmetric, tilted SI joint. When SI joints are continually stressed by asymmetrical loading under heavy compression, the surrounding ligaments and joint surfaces can become chronically irritated in a way that is genuinely difficult to treat and often misdiagnosed as a lumbar or hip problem.

This is where the insidious negative impact of bar squats can become a problem, because SI joint dysfunction tends to accumulate quietly and become a nagging problem—the low-grade but persistent pain that seems to live in the middle of your lower back that you can’t stretch or massage away. (Once again, I’m speaking from personal experience.)

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Okay, but what about people who haven’t been damaged by four decades of heavy squats?

Other reasons to ditch loaded back squats

At 50 or older, mobility deficits tend to become baked in from decades of sitting, asymmetrical muscle imbalances and accumulated tightness. All these factors, I believe, argue against starting a new habit of squatting with a heavy bar on the back of your neck.

Hormonal changes that reduce the protective buffer. Particularly in women post-menopause, high-compressive loading of knees and hips under a barbell becomes a different proposition after 50 when hormonal support for ligaments, tendons and cartilage diminishes.

The human tendency to ego load. Who among us isn’t susceptible to throwing more weight on the bar in an attempt to impress everyone else in the gym, none of whom actually notice?

Joint pathology accumulates silently. Plenty of people in their 50s have cartilage degradation, meniscus degeneration or disc issues that don’t produce symptoms during most movements but can flare up under barbell squat mechanics.3 That footnote refers to a 2024 paper in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology that identifies excessive arching of the spine and knee valgus (inward movement under load) as the two most common problems in older adults who do bar squats, creating the potential for injury, on top of all the other factors mentioned above.

In that regard, I’m pretty much Exhibit A for my argument to ditch bar squats. I can squat heavy, and my form may look fine at first glance. But as you watch the above video, notice how much my left knee wanders with each rep, relative to the red vertical line (my right knee also does but not as much). That’s knee valgus, likely a function of weak hip stabilizer muscles, including medial glutes.

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I hadn’t noticed that movement until I recorded myself, and for anyone who continues back squats, I recommend they do the same, from the front, side and rear, to understand exactly how their bodies may be compensating to manage the weight.

Further below, I offer a video of me doing a different weighted leg exercise that works the same muscles but without the lateral knee movement.

Don’t take just my word for it

As it turns out, some heavy hitters in the professional strength and conditioning world have come out in favor of ditching bilateral back squats. Here’s Mike Boyle, a renowned former strength & conditioning coach for the NHL’s Boston Bruins, the U.S. Women’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team and the Boston Red Sox, speaking in September on Peter Attia’s podcast (before Attia’s troubles) about why he moved away from training athletes on bilateral back squats:

Boyle argues against bilateral training in favor of unilateral strength work, which I was heartened to hear because it validated one of my favorite lower-body strength routines—it’s No. 3 in my list below.

6 better alternatives to squats for lower-body strength

If back squats work for you, and you love them and you’re convinced your form is excellent and you don’t want to give up the exercise, don’t. Just don’t go heavy.

But if you’re willing to consider better strength workouts for your legs and core, here are my top 6 strength workouts with explanations why I think each is superior to back squats.

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Are you happy? I don’t know anyone who says they are, except for few venture capitalists. The rest of us are moving too fast, talking too fast, listening too fast, eating too fast, and just trying to keep up too fast. This is neither a healthy nor good way to age with strength. Something about the way we’re living now has to change.

1966: The 59th Street…

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The BLUF (bottom line up front): Research into the biology of long-living older adults reveals unique differences in so-called super agers and centenarians vs other people, and suggests what we can do to help us live longer, too.

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The billion-dollar longevity industry has become the Las Vegas of clinical science: a faux oasis that cares about only one thing—taking your money. To do that, Vegas built casinos; longevity marketers just lie.

Longevity lit…

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Because Substack is increasingly l…

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Happy Friday, everyone. I’ll keep this short, because there’s more to come from AGING with STRENGTH this weekend, on counterintuitive strength training routines that build muscle and increase neuromuscular fitness after 50.

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This article was updated on Feb. 10 to include Diamandis’s attempt to visit Epstein’s New Mexico ranch in 2008 and his 2014 interactions with Epstein at a TED conference, according to documents that…

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Author’s request: If you like this podcast, please “like” this podcast! It really helps.

Even knowledgeable listeners will learn something new here, because Annie is one of the best communicators of clinical women’s- and brain-health information there is.

As Dr. Fenn says near the beginning, “There are no stupid questions about menopause.” My response: “Just wait, Annie.” (See her verdict is at the end).

“Menopause for men” podcast timestamps

01:27—Defining menopause and perimenopause in clinical terms. “It is a retrospective diagnosis,” Dr. Fenn says. “There’s also a lot of misunderstanding in the medical community.”

04:15—Typical age ranges for perimenopause and the clues that it’s arriving.

05:24—Estrogen, progesterone & the hypothalamus. “They rise and then they fall, and then they rise and then they fall….“

07:00—The rise of the menopause/perimenopause conversation (and the subsequent industry) during the past few years. “On social media, there are many ‘menopause experts’ talking about it.” Baby Boomers started it; Millennials wanted to talk more about it; celebrities took it to the next level.

08:25—The biggest male misconceptions about menopause. “You can’t just say, ‘Go to the doctor, get on hormones’ and you’ll be fine.”

08:58—How the Women’s Health Initiative study of 2003 “scared off a generation of doctors.”

10:05—The dearth of experienced menopause doctors. “There is a huge gap.” The “counterintuitive” choice for women.

11:20—Male misconception #2 about menopause/perimenopause. “There’s a lot more things going on than what’s happening to a woman’s emotions.” The problem of poor sleep quality.

12:30—“Zoom out a little bit” to understand a woman’s menopause experience: She’s taking care of work, kids, home, husband, etc., and then….”the bio-energetic crisis” hits.

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13:38—The “injured athlete” corollary to menopause: how a guy might, might be able to relate to the changes and challenges menopause may bring.

14:41—The specific hormonal changes that occur during menopause. Estrogen, the master regulator, has receptors throughout a woman’s body—including hundreds in the brain. “Whatchamacallit Syndrome.” Brain fog, fatigue: “This can be very distressing.” Exercise becomes more difficult, through lack of sleep & food choices.

17:10—Making the right food choices in menopause & perimenopause. “Women are constantly pushing against this pre-diabetic state.” Eating for stable blood sugar. The great harm of UPFs. “Muscle is mandatory” — and its “a glucose sink.”

19:07—Being a good partner to women in menopause. “The last thing in the world a menopausal woman wants to hear is, ‘Oh, is it your hormones again?’” Being proactive and enabling (with some specific examples). Volunteering to take the kids out for a few hours or taking care of the damn groceries (or both).

21:34—Foods to avoid during menopause.

23:19—Alcohol’s role and caveats during menopause and perimenopause.

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24:55—Two books for men (or anyone) interested in learning more about menopause and perimenopause. The amygdala & The I Do Not Care Club. “Women don’t care about stuff that they used to.”

(Also: check out Annie’s articles about menopause and perimenopause.)

27:16—Sex and intimacy during menopause and perimenopause. “Most of the time, it’s not about she’s mad at you (although she might be).” Lack of estrogen in vaginal tissues = “an easy fix.” Work on sex communication beforehand, if possible.

29:20—Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). Estrogen & progesterone; “testosterone could be included in the mix.” The new way to refer to this therapy: MHT. Tablets, creams, etc. Reducing colon-cancer risk and maybe risk of dementia. “Not every woman wants to be medicalized. But every woman deserves a discussion about the pros and cons.”

34:42—Resources for further reading. ”Your questions were not stupid at all!”

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If you can figure out why you want to work your body for those 20 minutes a day, you’re much more likely to end up doing it.

Last January, I published an audio & text essay, Physical strength and flexibility in 2025. The thesis was that our bodies are meant to move and that, for healthy aging, some form of strength training—which need not be intense or include more than your own bodyweight—is non-negotiable.

(See two video examples below.)

My goal, I wrote, was to “get both stronger and faster, and leaner and more flexible.” (Oh, is that all?) I also said I wasn’t after bigger muscles but greater neuromuscular efficiency. Looking back, my 2025 goals bring to mind a childhood admonition from my grandpa, when I failed to eat what I’d put on my dinner plate: “Your eyes were bigger than your stomach.”

In 2026, I’m organizing around a simple mantra:

Move your body. Every day. With purpose.

The simplicity of this 11-syllable mantra is intentional.

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A year ago, I wrote about jumping rope, bar squats and box jumps as means to achieve my personal physical strength and flexibility goals. The jumping rope habit stuck, thankfully, but bar squats—one of my oldest and most reliable weighted exercises—no longer work for me, I realized after one too many “uh-oh” setbacks. (If you’re interested in a fuller explanation of my break up with heavy bar-squat routines, here’s my case for quitting them.)

On the other hand, moving with purpose for just 20 minutes a day is a goal that each of us can interpret and tailor to our 2026 physical strength and flexibility goals.

What does “with purpose” mean?

Moving with purpose simply means intentionally putting your body into motion and your muscles into positions of healthy stress. For some people, gardening or a brisk walk is sufficient for their goals and bodies. For others, moving with purpose means resistance training, practicing yoga or pilates, a short swim or bodyweight movements in the living room after lunch.

1-minute rings movements: My No. 1 recommendation for neuromuscular strength & fitness after 50. Gyms and weights are good. Rings are x10 the ROI, in less time.

In other words, purpose means doing more than only the minimum movement required to continue your existence and fulfill your daily obligations and needs. It means doing more than moving your body from bed→bathroom→kitchen→car →desk→car→kitchen→couch→fridge→couch→ bathroom→bed each day.

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Another way to think about moving with purpose is that it’s a want, not a need. And that suggests how much of physical strength and flexibility is really about desire. If you can figure out why you want to work your body for those 20 minutes a day, you’re much more likely to end up doing it.

Why 20 minutes?

For physical strength and fitness, small wins lead to bigger wins. We can’t all realistically get to the gym, pedal 10 miles or grind out a run three times a week. But we can all burn more calories being active in our own homes, 30 seconds or 2 minutes or 5 minutes at a time.

My argument is that 10 minutes a day (while a great place to start a fitness journey) is not enough to build into the latter stages of fitness, and that 30 minutes can feel unrealistic to many people, 20 minutes a day of purposeful physical movement is enough to build significant gains in functional strength, flexibility, balance, proprioception and neuromuscular fitness that you can feel and that gives your body and brain invaluable, habit-forming rewards for long-term strength into old age.

If Chris Hemsworth can do it, so can you….and you can do it in fewer than 5 minutes, at home, in street clothes, with no equipment. Start slow and build up.

If you’re like me and want to be able to walk briskly when you’re 80, think about moving your body with purpose now, for 20 minutes a day.

An eminently achievable goal for 2026

Twenty minutes represents roughly 2% of a 16-hour waking day. Can you carve out 2% of each day to build physical strength and flexibility in 2026? I think you can.

In a subsequent post—if there is sufficient interest from all of you—I’ll stake out specific movements and exercises for building muscle (lean or large), cardiovascular endurance (VO2 max), greater balance and core strength (highly correlated to greater longevity) for 2026. All of which are the result of some hard lessons I’ve learned after 47 years of physical training, 7 orthopedic surgeries…and some unexpected breakthroughs from last year.

Until then…keep going.

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Near the end of hot yoga last week, the instructor asked everyone in the room to consider kissing their knees. I did not consider it. Not because I’m incapable of or above putting my lips on my own sweaty knees, but because kissing them is goofy.

My only previous encounter with hot yoga had been back in the days when people still called the internet the…

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Here’s a New Year’s resolution suggestion you won’t find anywhere else:

Take a few minutes to learn about acetylcholine—a brain chemical linked to reduced risk of dementia that older people can boost by playing specific kinds of speed-based brain games, according to new research.

Why is acetylc…

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There’s a saying in pro hockey: One shift at a time. It means focusing not on the ultimate goal—winning the game—but on winning only your next 45-second shift on the ice. Stacking small wins consistently is a proven strategy for achieving big goals.

The problem is that the Longevity Industrial Complex tries to convince you otherwise.

On Substack and a growing number of online media sites that have traded their credibility for say-nothing clickbait, wellness “experts” shill longevity through this one thing you should buy: a popular supplement, an expensive membership or a silly workout regimen featuring an AI image of a fake ripped 60-year-old.

As is often the case, though, the simplest solutions tend to be the most effective.

After more than a year of reporting on healthy longevity, I’ve collected a lot of thoughtful, actionable longevity advice from scientists, researchers, doctors, athletes, coaches, nutritionists and actual, ass-kicking older folks. Instead of spending your money on supplements and apps, they talk about a way of creating what I call practical longevity—one shift at a time.

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In its simplest form1, practical longevity boils down to three simple commitments.

Ignore most of what the Longevity Industrial Complex says

Commitment 1 — Stop trying to live to 100

A lot of “healthy aging” marketing tries to convince you longevity is measured in years—the more, the better—and can be acquired by credit card. Health & wellness chiselers2 tend to portray longevity as a competition you can win, if you just invest in their bullshit product, at their bullshit price, despite zero clinical evidence that it works in humans.

(Not all longevity supplements are scams, of course. Many show promise or straight-up work, and I’ve written and interviewed reputable scientists about several of them.)

Instead of focusing on reaching a certain age, cultivate the mindset of winning your current age one shift at a time. That’s the better way to “stack wins” (ie, healthy years) and end up a strong and sharp 88, 94, 103 or whatever number your Wheel in the Sky has in store for you.

You already have the facility, the means and, probably, the time to live healthy for as long as your body can — if you apply the discipline to build just two basic habits.

Warning: The two ideas I’m about to share are exceedingly simple in concept, and executing them as daily or weekly habits is exceedingly difficult if you don’t know why you want to. Before you start your practical longevity journey, take time to understand what’s motivating you. (Hint: “Looking better in the mirror” probably isn’t enough…unless it is.)

Dig past the surface rewards to ask yourself why healthy aging matters to you, really. Caveats aside, let’s get into these critical two commitments:

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