NYT: "Men need better fitness role models"
What Attia, Huberman, Bryan Johnson and other meatheads of masculinity get wrong.
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Summary: In January, I wrote about building physical strength and flexibility in 2026 using a simple, 11-syllable mindset (see the Context section below). And now I find something approaching communion with Sebastian Langdell, a Baylor University English professor, who wrote a New York Times op-ed (gift link!) this week about his circuitous journey in creating a strength training habit for himself. He writes about the almost inescapable fitness advice pushed by the big podcast names that hold themselves out as experts on the subject. There’s Tim Ferriss on fasting; Peter Attia on ketones; Bryan Johnson on transfusing his son’s plasma; Andrew Huberman on the best way to char a steak (nevermind that steak char is something akin to cancer dust). To Langdell, each seemed to be playing off clichéd masculinity tropes, which, he wrote, made him feel rather hollow.
Only after he began following fitness concepts pursued by artists—cartoonist Alison Bechdel; novelist Laura van den Berg; singer Harry Styles, who has credited writer Haruki Murakami’s book on running with freeing Styles “from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession”—did professor Langdell find an open door to the kind of non-preening strength he was looking to build in midlife. (I also invited him to join AGING with STRENGTH, to find a like-minded community of active, intelligent, grounded believers in strength in all its forms, not just physical.)
Context: We’ve all had enough of the myth of the ripped older man as an avatar of late-adulthood fitness (haven’t we?). There’s nothing wrong with building lean muscle, eating well and staying in incredibly good shape. Just look at 60-something Lenny Kravitz. But the bro-y idea that fitness after 50 requires questionable biohacks, pricey supplements or giant muscles of the cartoonish variety rendered by AI, above, is obnoxious overkill.
The bottom line: Aging like an ass-kicking artist is underrated. Which is why I instead advocate the Move like it’s 1899 mindset: “Move your body. Every day. With purpose.”