The minimum effective training for the four pillars of longevity | Peter Attia

This clip is from episode #261 of The Drive - Training for The Centenarian Decathlon: zone 2, VO2 max, stability, and strength

In this special episode filmed live in front of readers of Outlive, Peter answers questions revolving around his concept of the centenarian decathlon.

In this clip, we discuss:

- The minimum effective training for longevity
- Peter’s recommendations for beginners
- Why frequency of training matters
- How to progressively overload your training over time
- Implementing disproportionate training methods

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About:

The Peter Attia Drive is a deep-dive podcast focusing on maximizing longevity, and all that goes into that from physical to cognitive to emotional health. With over 60 million episodes downloaded, it features topics including exercise, nutritional biochemistry, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, mental health, and much more.

Peter Attia is the founder of Early Medical, a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening their lifespan and simultaneously improving their healthspan.

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[micromicro]

This is another Gem of Youtube.
Appreciate the work to You guys!

[LukeAMcDowell]

I think the best way to get started when you have been doing nothing, is to find something you love doing, that just happens to be exercise. I hate spending an hour working out, but I love spending 3 hours SUP surfing, and I’m burning far more calories per hour. If someone can find an exercise that is actually enjoyable, they are far more likely to stick with it.

[cf]

I started to work out every other day February 1st. I have set my I-phone Health app on 750 Kcal of burnt energy and 30 minute workout, and stand 12 hours (not the full hour, but just getting up and not sitting). If not at the gym…I walk or bike. With the same targets every single day. I have lost 18 pounds by now. Not really spectacular…but the progress is there. It is 1/3 of my fitness schedule…the other 2/3 is aimed at eating heathier. For me that is a lot harder to do. All in all….I get at least 3, 5 hours of exercise…but it is way more because I easily reach my targets. Only had to skip 3 days due to travel. I feel great, I am fit and getting fitter. Still a long way to go another 22 pounds to go at least.

[yasim]

Hi Peter, thank you for this podcast and especially for sharing your directions in treating healthy runner. Can you provide more details on how to fit muscle growing routines into active sport routines for athletes like runners and tennis players who are in competitive sport activities 6-8 hours a week already . But could you please consider limitations such as retirement age, plant-based diet ( program for arterial plaque and calcification score reduction )?

[vvv]

4-6 hours of weight training, 3-4 hours of > 70-85% cardio exertion, another 30-60 minutes at 85-95% for VO2 max and another 1- 3 hours of stability/flexibility (for most of us it will be stretching, yoga or Pilates rather than or in addition to DMS) over SEVEN days....

The truth is that many, if not most people will not be able to recover from this schedule. Rest is necessary to recuperation, adaptation and growth in strength, muscle mass and performance proficiency. The cited studies may hence not show the effect of overall volume and intensity and their accumulative deleterious effects on the body in Peter's hodge-podge formation b/c the zone 2 cardio experiments cited did not measure for those also weight training and doing VO2 max work at the same time, the resistance sessions did not include cardio while the VO2 max groups neither weight training nor longer zone 2 workouts. In other words, the subjects in these separate studies probably RESTED on the days they were not doing cardio or weights training and this certainly must have affected the results.Throwing the results of these studies all in as self-contained parts into a broader program as if each component would not synergistically interact with any of the other modalities of exercise to then effect overall health monikers may not only thaw the actual outcomes of programming them in all together but result in overall exhaustion, burnout or physical depletion altogether.

Hence, until studies are done with THIS program, it might be advisable to expect many people to fail. People should therefore plan to prepare alternative schedules with fewer and/or shorter weight training days and cardio sessions with more off-days devoted exclusively to stretching/balance days and other work less intense than weight training and even "just" zone 2 cardio, as the latter will perhaps feel harder to do in Peter's program because of the lack of sufficient off-days for weight-training AND cardio, respectively.

As such, it might be prudent to think that more, if not most, people will do best with just two or three vigorous workouts for each exercise component (strength, cardio, flexibility) spread out over the week with only the most exceptional, the fittest, the longest or best trained or the young realistically expected to be capable of sustaining a total frequency rate of four (and certainly for more) days a week EFFECTIVELY. Otherwise, we may end up having people stagnating rather than progressing, regressing, getting hurt (no matter how much stability work they do) or even giving up and blaming themselves for what in fact is just too much for them or indeed, for anyone not young, not very fit already, not with a lot of time and resources to devote to their health (i.e., a monitored trainee at Peter's clinic), those not genetically blessed nor on performance drugs. Rest, as we know from other studies, matters a lot to the body, too, overtraining is a real thing and too much exercise can sometimes be as bad as too little as numerous examples of professional athletes destroying their careers from overuse injuries can attest.

Whether this much exercise programmed together seven days a week will prove necessary to achieve most of these longevity goals would be up to Peter to test for outcomes (he won't as this is a business, after all), but chances are that doing less of a good thing may not only still be good (equal results or not, say a difference between a VO2 max of 10 vs 13% gain as a Norwegian study showed comparing a group doing 4 hard mins 3x a week vs another group doing the longer 4x4 routine once a week) but may yield better results for those with less frequency or volume (maybe even intensity, though I doubt it as it's the latter component that science seems to point to as the most crucial element in health improvement in addition to consistency) simply because more recovery time is programmed in, too.

Until then (if ever), people will have to try it on their own and let their own experience measure what is possible for them to sustain, improve health monikers on and feel works for them. In the meanwhile, expect a lot of "unplanned" days or sessions off on this program and/or many people giving up on it or modifying it on their own because undoable for them, something along the lines of a separate day to each modality repeated twice a week (Mon weights, Tues cardio, Wed stability, repeat and then on Sunday, the seventh day, to do nothing at all); all of them combined as shorter sessions perhaps in am/pm splits into one day two or three times (Mon and Thurs or M/W/F) a week yielding four-five total rest (or extra stretching/mobility/ stability work on one or two of those days) days or ; a schedule of weight-training (Mon) followed by a cardio/ stretching day the next day (Tues) and a day of complete rest the day (Wed) after that repeated twice a week with Sundays to recover as well.

This, I think, is not only more achievable, but will turn out to be what people actually do in practice regardless of what's on paper because the body will only bend so far and so long to ideal or best-case scenario expectations (remember, many people will try this program ALREADY unhealthy, unfit, with a history of injuries, older, heavier or with no background or taste for exercise, extreme or not) of functioning more like a linear machine than an organic biological/chemical entity of rhythmic cycles of ebb and flow, sleep and wakefulness, input and output, stop and go and energy-use and energy-preservation, the means our bodies naturally use to adapt, improve and HEAL enough to grow in strength and power, stamina and fitness and even elasticity and structural robustness to insult from too little or too much external stimulus, force and demand over AND WITH given time.

Our minds, spirit and will to keep training hard and regularly over a lifetime where at least some decline will be inevitable no matter what we do or do not could appreciate it, also.

[charlesoneill]

Hey Peter, love the book. Love to hear more about the chapter publisher convinced you cut regarding risk(like driving).

[scottharrison]

Quality counts had good benefits doing 5min Tabata day different exercise everyday 10min day of push or pull a superset 5min dynamic stretches a day depends how fit you are recovery trained my whole MMA to multsport 12hrs races

[nickelplatefitness]

What is your opinion on constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity aka CrossFit 1 hour a day 3 to 5 times a week.
Intensity is the single independent variable the efficiently results in positive physical adaptation - fitness

[cas]

3 hours a week sounds like nothing but actually it's been pretty hard for me to do those past months. I have a newborn so maybe that plays into it but also I just really feel like I need two days of rest after kettlebells, running plus sprinting or soccer all of which I try to fit in each week. I hope I'll eventually habituate to it such that I can do every other day.

[MNP]

As a runner, I can totally relate. It's really hard for us to give up our distance and we hate strength training!

[HN-erkm]

Please write the link the stability training. Thanks

[gazdkw]

Im sure many people just cannot commit that many hours. I get up most mornings at stupid o'clock (5am) to fit in 1 hour before i need to be back for a shower to then wake the kids up at 6.30/7 to get them ready for school at 8.30, then to work and home for 4 to pick kids up. Got to stay at home with the kids until kids mum is home at 6, then dinner, then its 7pm and got to get lunches for us all sorted, uniforms sorted and rhen its about time for bed. Every day. I managed to find 1 hour of cardio and maybe some press ups/sit ups/pull ups etc.

[hunterholistichealth]

I love Peter & appreciate he’s far more knowledgeable than I am but I fear this misses the mark for what ‘minimum effective dose’ really means (except maybe in the strict, scientifically validated sense). In my experience, I’ve seen myself & others benefit from FAR less than that

[JocelynVenes-zmmf]

Hi Doc! Are your suggestions applicable to menopausal women as well?

[suneethamay]

Yes l believe go for a walk
and a little bit of streaching
5 -10 minutes a day are more than enough for me
Over doing Exercises are harmful for joints in long term therefore so far so
good my body and bones

[jotaylor]

Absolutely, its about how much you really, really want healthy longer living . This podcast is not really aimed at low activity people.

[rakiraki]

How to exersice if you chronically stressed? I have have anxiety since 10’years ago prior to that I have workout regularly in the gym for 15 years . My chronic stress have weakened my whole body, is weight lifting good if you are chronically stressed and depresssed ?

[nec]

Dear Dr Attia, I am a 73 year old woman and I really admire your message, but please could you dumb down the language. For someone like me who is accomplished in life and well educated; I am still more or less an idiot when it comes to getting myself off the couch to extend my own life. I weigh 177 lbs and am 5’5” tall. I’d say that people like me are the majority.
The three hours a week might be possible, but could you explain it for the layman please.

[katherineprice]

What problems do you see with runners?

[andrewstankus]

I really love what you are doing here, such a wealth of information. But I think it's a mistake to give a minimum effective dose like that. Regardless of the data you are basing that on, I can't believe that someone would get no benefit going from zero to one or two hours. This discourages some people from even trying.