Performance and Longevity
Live a good life. Live a long life. Live a good and long life.
Sounds like something we could all, and perhaps should all, aspire to achieve. However, the reality of life as a physical being is often not so simple. It takes some finessing and some work to thread the perfect needle of a good and long life. While it may appear intuitive that “good” and “long” go hand-in-hand, they are not always partners. Let’s explore a little deeper by taking one at a time.
The Good Life
For our purposes here, good refers to performance. Many people may hear performance and immediately have visions of a professional athlete. But non-sport specific performance, that is, general human performance, applies to all of us. Who among us doesn’t want to be strong and look like a Greek god or goddess? Being strong allows you to be independent and excel in anything from weekend warrior recreation to accomplishing nagging yard work more efficiently. And whether you’re trying to attract a mate or keep one looking at you the same way they did when you first met, nobody has ever had the problem of looking too good. However, as wonderful as this sounds, it does come with tradeoffs. In fact, everything comes with tradeoffs. There is such a thing as being too big and strong, as having too little body fat, IF, a big if, your goal is also to live as long as possible.
The Long Life
Longevity, the long lived life. As with performance, who doesn’t want to live as long as possible? It’s so obvious we almost take it for granted. No one is explicitly aiming for a shorter-than-possible lifespan. Life is grand and wonderful, why wouldn’t we want to do everything in our power to stick around a little longer. See your kids grow up, watch your grandkids grow up, hell maybe even watch your great-grandkids come into this world. More time to experience the world and all its treasures and pleasures.
But, if our sole aim to accomplish this feat of longevity at all costs, we may be setting ourselves up for a long but less than good life. The steps needed to achieve excellent longevity often contradict the actions needed for performance, for the good life. For example eating the necessary amount of food to be as strong as possible actually lends itself to a shortening of lifespan. Caloric restriction is one of the best predictors of longevity in human beings. Similarly, carrying all the muscle comes at a cost as well. It can be hard on connective tissues and joints, as can the training required to achieve peak strength. So, it may seem smart to just forgo the performance and aim for longevity. But what use is living to see your great-grandkids if you don’t have the strength and energy to interact with them? What use is living to see the world and its treasures if you can’t even get off the couch? Not an ideal scenario in my humble opinion. Fear not, there is a solution.
Introducing “Health-span”
A new term in the fitness, health, and medical industries is what’s known as “health-span”. What is health-span? In the most simplistic terms, health-span is the marriage of performance and longevity. It’s the threading of the needle I mentioned at the beginning of this article. And it looks slightly different for each individual, as we all have our own unique goals and desires. Some of us tend to favor performance, we like being as capable as possible right now, and a few extra years aren’t worth the tradeoff of not being at our best in this moment. For others, we bend towards longevity and the idea of being around, as it outweighs the need to eke out every last drop of possible performance in our body. No right or wrong answers here, but in my experience most of us desire something of a combination of the two extremes. A balance of performance and longevity that leaves us living a good and long life. We are willing to make the tradeoffs - give up some strength now for a few extra years, while also giving up a few more extra years for strength now - to find a nice middle ground. We want to live long, but we don’t want the quality of life to fall off. This is an entirely realistic goal that anyone can achieve with the right planning and regimen.
In fact, this is what the Rallis Regimen is all about at its core. We have consciously crafted The Regimen to thread this health-span needle that leads to living a rich, fulfilling life. All the free Guidebooks and Training Regimens in our member section are designed with this in mind, knowing there is no optimized ideal, only tradeoffs.
Let me know where you fall on the performance-longevity spectrum below in the comments.
