Peter Attia

So we make them hang from a bar and we just time how long they can hang.

So that's a really good metric of your grip strength because it's also normalized to your weight.

So we want to see that people can hang for at least two minutes on a bar.

And so the question is, why is that so highly correlated with longevity?

And it's what you said.

It's strength.

And the reason for it is it's really hard to be strong anywhere in the upper body if your grip is weak.

Like if you think about being able to push, especially being able to pull, like all of the real metrics of upper body strength require a strong grip.

And if you have a strong grip, you have a strong hand, you have a strong forearm, you have a strong scapula that is connected to your rib cage.

Like it goes up the whole chain.

And that's another reason why we like the dead hang as a way to test it.

Because the dead hang is testing everything.

It's testing your actual grip.

It's testing your scapular stabilization, the stability of your shoulder.

It's basically testing that entire chain.

And then I also think there's a practical side of this, right?

It's very underappreciated what frailty does to an aging individual.

and what sarcopenia, loss of muscle mass, does to an aging person, and what it is about falling that is so devastating to an older person.

And the stronger your grip, the easier you're able to navigate a lot of those things, right?

It seems ridiculous, yeah.