Dr. Peter Attia
speaker
5,258 appearances
36 recordings
6 series
first heard Jan 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Dr. Peter Attia’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I wish I could say one thing. There's probably a few things, and maybe that's not good. Maybe the most successful people in life only think about one thing. I would say one of the things I'm thinking a lot about is how to translate Outlive into a delivery system, obviously digitally, that...
basically operationalizes what is in that book in a manner that allows people to, with as little friction as possible, implement the solutions for themselves. So basically, how do you live a longer life? How do you age as gracefully as possible and maximize your health span?
I think the other thing I'm focused on that is related to that, of course, but distinct, which I know your team got to participate in a little bit this week, was kind of how to train people for their marginal decade, right? So this idea of we're all going to have a last decade of life.
I call it the marginal decade just so that we can get comfortable talking about something that people don't like to think about. And I'm convinced that ignoring it and not thinking about it doesn't lead to a good outcome. Instead, if you prepare for it and train for it like an athlete trains and prepares for their sport, you'll have the best version of that possible.
Yep.
Last decade of life. Again, it's this weird thing where most people don't know the day they've entered it, but most people also realize at some point when they're in it. I thought a lot about it. This was sort of a big epiphany that I had in 2018 when I was sitting in the church at a funeral of the parent of a friend of mine who I realized had declined so much during the last decade of their life
that even though they were alive, they weren't enjoying life. The things that they loved to do, in the case of this individual, play golf and tend to the garden, they couldn't do. They just physically couldn't do it, right? They had injuries, they had aches and pains. And when they couldn't do those things that gave them pleasure, they retreated from life.
And I don't think there's a person listening to us who can't appreciate that because they've witnessed it, right? They've seen it in a parent, a grandparent, a loved one. And I don't know, there was just something about that moment, which is often the case, right? It's usually like years and years of thinking about something and it crystallizes in an instant.
But in that moment, I realized, aha, the way to avoid this is to train specifically for that decade. And the best model for how to do that is to look at athletes because every athlete trains with specificity. So think of like all the different types of athletes you would know.
So if you think about like a sprinter or a basketball player or a football player, they are so different and very little of their training looks like the other guy. And the reason for that is they're doing something very specific, right? The sprinter has a goal, which is to move 100 meters as fast as possible. That's it. And that requires a certain set of skills.
And the footballer has a totally different goal. Yes, he has to be able to run fast for short distances, but just being able to run fast would not produce superior results. And then the basketball player would be different. And then the skier would have a totally different set of skills. So I said, well, who's the most well-rounded athlete out there? It's the decathlete.
Because that guy's got to do 10 different things really well. Now, he or she doesn't have to be the best in the world at those 10. In fact, they never are. but overall they're considered the best athlete because of the diversity and breadth of what they can do. And so I said, that is our model.
So what is the centenary in decathlon then is I say to you, Steven, one day you are gonna be in your marginal decade What do you want to be able to do physically, athletically in that last decade?
And by the way, it's a different reason. I'm going to point this out and I want to come back to your story. Walking down is not about endurance. Walking down is about eccentric strength in the quads to be able to decelerate the body as it's moving down. Very important. Coming up is about concentric strength in the quads and glutes and endurance. Okay. All right, but continue.
Think about the scapular stability that's required. Think about the upper body strength you need to lift yourself back into a boat if you fall. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
That's exactly the exercise we do, right? We take people through... give us the 10 most important things you want to be able to do. So like if you start with, I want to be able to go back to Bali and I want to be able to go down those hundred stairs, get in the raft, go down the river, come back up the stairs, that gets broken down into very specific movement patterns.
Playing football with the kids out back gets broken down into very specific movement patterns. By the way, they're very different, right? That one comes down much more to foot reactivity, lateral movement, things like that. Being able to pick something up off the floor is yet another set of movement patterns.
It turns out there are approximately 27 physical requirements that are necessary to do the sum total of most things people want to do.
Obviously, I don't agree with that, though I have tremendous empathy for people who might feel that way. When you see something as ubiquitous as the decline of untold numbers of people as they age, it would be very easy and tempting to say that that is the inevitability of our species. Death is inevitable. despite what some biohackers may tell you.
Decline is inevitable, but the rate of decline is very much up to us. And the preservation of strength, stamina, movement capacity, Those things are largely up to us. In fact, there are actual data that demonstrate quite clearly. In fact, I was just reading a paper yesterday in the journal Cell that looked at the role of exercise in aging individuals to preserve mitochondrial function.
Showing 1281–1300 of 5,258 · page 65 of 263
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