First, Be a Good Animal.
First, Be a Good Animal: The science and philosophy of aging well for adults 50+.
Strength, longevity, and the joy of moving like a good animal, from a 74-year-old trainer still in training.
This is a collection of articles written by Marty Trussell, NASM-CPT, Part science, part memoir, part philosophy, this is a blog for anyone who wants not just to slow the decline, but to keep building.
It all begins with a series called The Numbers Don’t Lie. Five of them, to be precise. Five instruments. Five readings on the panel of the life support system you have been running, without checking the gauges, for most of your adult life.
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My Smart Scale Told Me the Truth — And I Wasn’t Ready for It
And here’s the part that stung: I’m a trainer. I had been working out consistently. I thought I was doing the work. But my body was telling me something different — that despite years of experience and good intentions, I had drifted into training that was no longer creating the stimulus my muscles needed to stay strong and metabolically active.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
VO2 Max: The One Number That Predicts How Long You’ll Live — And Most People Have Never Heard of It
Your doctor checks your cholesterol. Your blood pressure. Your blood glucose. Occasionally, your resting heart rate.
Almost certainly not your VO2 max.
And yet, study after study has ranked cardiorespiratory fitness — measured by VO2 max — as the single strongest predictor of all-cause mortality. See the Companion Video.
Your Grip Strength Predicts Your Heart Attack Risk. Here’s How to Test It Today.
How hard you can squeeze your hand predicts your risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, fall injury, surgical outcomes, hospital readmission, and all-cause mortality.
HRV: Your Fitness Tracker Might Already Know This — But Do You Know What It Means?
Here’s something that may surprise you: if you wear a Garmin, an Apple Watch, a Whoop band, or an Oura Ring to bed at night, there is a very good chance your device has been quietly measuring this metric for months — possibly years — without you paying much attention to it.
It’s called Heart Rate Variability. HRV.
The Metric Most Men Ignore — Until a Fracture Forces the Conversation
According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, osteoporotic fractures in men over 50 are more common than heart attack, stroke, and prostate cancer combined.
Read that again.
More common than prostate cancer. And yet men are almost never screened for bone density the way they are screened for prostate cancer.
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