Faster Fat Loss, Peak Performance, & Fitness at Any Age - With Brad Kearns | The Model Health Show

You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson.

For more, visit themodelhealthshow .com.

Welcome to The Model Health Show.

This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson.

And I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today.

On this episode, we're going to be talking about not just how to stay fit for a lifetime, but how to maintain peak performance at any and every age.

I'm not just saying that.

Today's special guest is exhibiting that in a way that is going to blow your mind.

It definitely blew my mind.

I saw some things today, and I experienced some insights, but I saw some things that I have not seen before here at the Model Health Show Studio.

I'm absolutely inspired I can't wait to put into place some of the things that I've learned and I think that you're going to feel the same way.

Let's dive into this powerful conversation with the one and only Brad Kearns.

Brad Kearns is a New York Times best -selling author former two -time U .S. national champion and number three world -ranked professional triathlete and And he's currently an elite masters track and field sprinter and high jumper.

In 2025, after he turned 60 years old, he reached the world number one ranking in the masters 60 plus high jump and number two ranking in the 400 meters.

His current best -selling book along with his co -author Mark Sisson is titled Born to Walk and is exposing the hype and broken promises of the running boom and how walking extensively every day is a fundamental genetic expectation for human health.

Let's dive in this conversation with the incredible Brad Kearns.

The one and only Brad Kearns.

How you doing man? Oh my gosh what an honor to be here in the Model Health Show studios in my hood my my hometown San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, California.

It's so great to be back.

That's right. Born and raised here, man.

You've accomplished so much since then.

We're going to talk about it.

We're going to talk about the history.

But where you are today, you are literally shattering paradigms. You know, I was just sharing with the guys here, if they actually understand who you are, you know, being number one in the world, master's level at high jump specifically number one i think you're number two in the 400 yeah i got on the board this year i just turned 60 in february of 2025 and so like three days later there was a track meet early season track meet so i put up those numbers in the new division and what's so cool about masters track and field is every five years you shift into a new age group so when you get these

birthday milestones you're not sad you're like oh i can't wait to go kick ass on some some poor wrinkled up 60 year olds, man, I'm going to throw down.

So there's always something to shoot for.

And we'll be talking about this theme a lot, but this is so far removed from my previous life as a young professional triathlete.

That was my career back then.

I competed on the circuit for nine years and I was this extreme endurance athlete, but those days are so long gone.

And that's a young person's game too.

Hopefully we'll talk about that, that endurance crazy stuff.

And so for the rest of my life, I've been trying to find ways to maintain that passion and that competitive intensity and have really important goals that I strive for and focus on.

And of course, they're not as important when I was competing for my livelihood on television and for prize checks and magazines and attention.

And it seems so serious.

But now, like when I go practice high jump in an empty high school stadium during COVID, I was climbing over the fences and putting my own standards over the fence, setting up the bar.

When I clear that bar in the empty stadium, it feels like the Olympic finals to me because I achieved this accomplishment and there's always something to go after and look for.

And it's been a huge change from being endurance athlete to being like a sprinter and a high jumper now.

But it's really fun.

It's a blast. You know, you're setting the bar for other individuals who are looking for some aspiration on like what's possible.

You know, as we age, we've got these pretty deeply ingrained beliefs about how aging is supposed to look in our society.

and we've got plenty of examples of what it can be.

And we were talking before the show just about the importance of the environment and having examples.

And so you're really setting that bar.

And I've been so excited.

I even told my wife, just been so excited to talk to you.

And I was, you didn't even know this, but I was just spending time, I was watching your interviews and just hanging out in your world for a while.

We've been connected, but I didn't tell you that I was just like studying you and looking at your story, which is incredible.

And we'll go through all that.

But I wanna start with what are some of the biggest misconceptions perceptions that the average person has about aging.

Wow. I think, you know, when it comes to the fitness realm that we're talking about, everyone is socialized to believe that they have their day as young people.

And then they sit around and talk about back in the day, the rest of their lives, it seems. And I remember like coaching, we were talking about our kids growing up and playing the sports and your son's that high level ballplayer now and in the mix with AAU basketball and all the great opportunities they have out there for kids.

And I remember having a great time coaching my kids in Hugh's soccer and I'd get to practice and the parents would bring their beach chairs out and fold the beach chair and sit down and read the paper from five to seven PM.

And I'm like, what is this, man?

This is a community engagement here.

And so I'd go around to the sideline.

I go, you, I need you on the orange netted shirt.

I need you on the yellow.

I need you two guys on the orange.

You guys come back here.

You're going to be on defense when the kids come.

I want you to move a little bit and pass across the field.

And the parents parents are like, me?

I have to get out of my chair and play?

And it was great because pretty soon everyone looked forward to gathering and playing alongside their kids rather than sitting there and watching their kids, and in a lot of cases, barking instruction at their kids.

And, you know, that's all they did.

One time, the team didn't show up.

The other team was scheduling mishap or whatever.

So, we're at the park at 10 a .m., and the kids are like, when are we going to play?

When are we going to play?

So, I took all the parents off the sidelines, got them in their orange netted shirt and we played parents against kids and i'll tell you after that game the rest of the season there was so much less yelling from the sideline because a parent would go up have a nice shot on goal and they'd completely whiff the ball and fall on their butt and fall back and it was like soccer's tough man and they get winded after 12 seconds of running after the ball so they had a much more fresher perspective on how tough it is out there for the kids to play.

That's, I love that so much. Is that a direct answer to your question of what are the misconceptions about aging?

But I mean, yeah, absolutely.

That's, that's an entry point into it.

And I love this and I've got a similar connection because same thing with my son's AAU team.

One of the teams didn't show up.

Hey, the coach was insightful enough to grab some of the dads and to play against the boys.

And also what that creates that synergy, the connection with with the kids as well and being able to play together.

And I, I, there's a statement that I've been saying for years is that families that play together, stay together, you know, and just being able to reframe what it looks like, because again, our culture today, as many of the parents are sitting back and watching and I've, and it's not just because we are who we are, this, these are choices.

And so I'm the parent when they're, you know, there's four and they're They're missing a fifth player.

I'll jump in, you know, just to like help everybody to, you know, and they can work on different things, different skills when they're working with their parent, you know, versus one of the coolest things that you just said is how the parents stopped barking at their kids as much once they, because it's so easy to sit there and to judge.

Yeah. But then to remember what it's like to challenge yourself and to do all these things is a completely different thing.

You become much more compassionate as well.

Oh, yes. Speaking of that, another no -show story.

So now we have AAU basketball scrimmage.

Now my kid's like in 10th grade and these guys are playing at a pretty high level, as you know.

So we go to this important scrimmage with another team, another good team, who doesn't show?

The refs. So we're waiting around for the refs.

I'm like, you know what?

We got to play. The coach says, Brad, can you ref?

I'm like, I've never done it in my life.

Except for I did a little reffing in eighth grade at the Reseda Park down the street.

I said, we got to do it.

Let's do it. it. So I get the whistle and I was the worst fricking ref and the reffing is so difficult to make the decision on the spot.

And what would happen?

I'd be jogging up and down the sideline and the guys would be barking for me in the front row.

The other parents would be like, dude, that was traveling.

And I'd be like, you're right.

It was, I'm sorry. I didn't notice.

I forgot. And so there's no more talking for me at the refs ever again, because if they can do a a better job than me i can't say anything yeah yeah yeah we just see them as you know the the the white and black stripes and you know they're but they're people to job you know oh my gosh so one of the big misconceptions again is just like we're supposed to as we age we're supposed to back off on all these different things and it i think it happens incrementally for for most people and one of the things that you've been talking about is you know folks that see themselves you know in their glory days

right in high school when they were this athlete when their life revolved around being this certain personality type and then later on in life like how do you associate with exercise and getting in shape because for so many people they feel like I used to be like this I just I'm embarrassed or like how can they bridge that gap and start to get more involved with their health and fitness again yeah I think there's another Another problem that comes up when you mention this is that our cultural programming of what it means to maintain your fitness a lot of times is really misinformed and ineffective.

And, you know, Mark Sisson was here on your show talking about our book Born to Walk and what a ridiculous mistake the running boom has been in many ways.

because we're been told that if you throw on these elevated cushion shoes and shuffle down the road or the trail and make it 5 miles or 10 miles or maybe do a marathon someday would be an incredible accomplishment and hey it's great it's a nice bucket list achievement to go set a goal and push yourself and run further than you ever have before but the act of steady state cardiovascular training as your main fitness outlet is not going to help you in the categories worries of anti -aging and full body functional fitness.

And now many of the great leaders like yourself and the other fitness and health experts are saying the main way to delay aging is to maintain functional muscle mass and functional muscle strength throughout life, right?

And what's funny is it's not that difficult.

It takes very little time commitment to put your muscles under resistance load on a regular basis in your life.

You can do a 12 -minute workout.

They have all all kinds of programming and people selling stuff on the internet, get the machine, set it up in your garage, go for 12 minutes, it's going to rock your world and it's going to make a fantastic contribution to your longevity.

But generally, when we go down the street and go to the first biggest health club that we can find on Ventura Boulevard, we're going to go in there, we're going to see 17 treadmills, 37 exercise bikes, 11 TV screens mounted so the treadmillers and the exercise bikers can look at the thing.

it's like, wait, y 'all are in Los Angeles.

Go outside. It's 72 degrees and sunny.

What are you doing on a treadmill anyway?

And then the weight area and the strength training area is a lot of times populated by bros and young dudes listening to their iPods and resting on the bench while they check their text messages.

And I'm wondering how long is it appropriate for them until I ask them, could you get your butt off there so I can do my exercise and go on with my busy day?

So that is a huge neglect I think I still see in the fitness scene.

now high intensity interval training it's a big deal everyone loves it it's super popular a lot of the programming is calibrated toward that and that's fine it's a great workout to go do a hard spin class or a boot camp or whatever the programming is but again that's very easily abused and misapplied to many people because a pattern of those workouts lasting for 50 minutes or whatever it is is a little bit too difficult for most people and so what i want to see is bringing back the popularity of brief explosive all -out sprints for everyone where you're only giving a burst of energy for 10 seconds

it could be on a stationary bike as most people aren't adapted to go out to the track with me and do my workouts that I film and and put on my Instagram so you can sprint doing anything you can sprint on a rowing machine you can sprint on the elliptical but rather than going in and watching TV for 45 minutes again credit it to you, that's better than sitting on your butt.

But now, to really push and challenge the body and generate those adaptive hormones into the bloodstream, testosterone, growth hormone, the things that keep you youthful and vital and stimulate the production of lean muscle and the preservation of lean muscle, and also the reduction of excess body fat, that all comes from strength training, sprinting, and power, not from steady state endurance.

It's now not my opinion, but it's been validated by science there's the scientific realm of research called the excess endurance exercise hypothesis and also another realm called the compensation theory of exercise and what that states is when you do these slightly to significantly too strenuous workouts such as the typical five mile run for most people you stimulate an increase in appetite and a dysregulation of appetite hormones such that you're going to have a pint of Ben and Jerry's because you ran that five miles in the morning and it's not going to help you get lean and mean and strong now

go google olympic sprinter physique i just did it this morning because we're working on a slideshow uh for the for the uh the health retreat and these guys are universally incredibly ripped and toned and lean and they look like the statues because that's the nature of what the training stimulus is to the body so powerful and also we were talking a little bit about about uh when you were looking at those putting the slides together about feet of these athletes yeah and you know some stuff which i do not encourage people to go look this up unless you want to have nightmares all right lebron james

feet uh usain bolt and the dysfunction that happens by wearing these conventional shoes over time and training hard yeah you know that brings up another point back to your first question of how do we how do we keep the dream and keep things going.

We need to respect that some of the stuff we do, especially when we're young and in our heyday, is going to have negative long -term consequences that we really need to work hard to unwind.

And so if you take a hit in high school on the football field, luckily I was watching from the stands, man, because again, I was at the big public high school down the street, Taft High.

There was no way I was playing football, but those guys took some hits and those shoulders are not good 10 20 and 40 years later i'm sure you got 17 dings you can report right now where the outside of your left knee when you climb up the stair a certain way because some guy took you down on the 20 yard line that day many years ago and so it's really important when you look at this perspective of fitness rather than just shuffling down the street and getting that five miles done maybe you have a 12 minute foot mobility exercise that you could google right now and look up on on YouTube and start

mixing that into the game or getting that professional support from personal trainer like your son or a good physical therapist. That's a sports performance minded physical therapist. And they will again, rock your world and bring you back better than before.

I've been goofing around with this master's track and field got a lot of aches and pains and minor dinks.

And one of them got so bad.

My Achilles got a bone spur.

I had to have a minor surgery.

This was now three years ago, and I got out of that surgery, and I'm limping out.

I had to hop on my foot for a day.

I refused the crutches, but I go into physical therapy a week later.

I thought the guy was going to rub the magic wand on.

Does this feel good?

Does that feel better?

You want some more warm, icy thing to put on?

I go in there, still shuffling and limping and worried about what's going on, and he goes, grab the 45 -pound kettlebell, sit down, put it on your knee, And I want 12 of these straight raises Hold the top, go down And I do my 12 and I'm like Yeah, I kind of got like a burning sensation A little bit on the inside And a little bit around the outside He goes, two more sets Then come over here And I'm going to give you The pin press exercise as your next rehab So he didn't give a crap About my little aches and pains He was getting me rehab from surgery Dr. Jonathan Sandberg Shout out in Sacramento

And it was like a mind opener for me Because like if I experienced pain or tightness or burning sensation i need to back off and i need to go get my massage gun and put it in there and all that stuff he calls that spa day massage massage gun whatever it is red light all the modalities of course they help a little bit but his motto is if you're getting strong you can't go wrong and he got me to strengthen that achilles to where it's never been a problem after the eight or nine months that it took to finally come out of pain and into complete strength then I develop the same problem on the other

side so I'm working on that right now but now my mentality is okay if I got a little nick and a ache and pain here I just need to get it stronger and more functional and I see this is a great shift in the culture of sports healing and therapy because in the old days we would have rest take some ibuprofen and sit around for three months until your Your hamstring feels better.

And then it's never going to be the same.

Because when we age, we age.

And so if that hamstring gets tweaked because you pulled it one day, joining the soccer field because there wasn't enough kids to play or the basketball game, you have an acute injury, sometimes that's your beginning of your demise.

And we know from the research, Americans over age 65, the number one cause of morbidity and death is falling and adverse related health consequences.

They're not falling and dying, but they fall.

They break their hip.

They get bedridden.

They never quite come back strong.

They get bedridden again.

They get pneumonia and they die.

And it all started from that broken hip.

How did that broken hip happen?

One slight misstep, which could have been averted if you had enough anaerobic explosive muscle power preserved.

But instead, we're walking, we're doing our cardio, the elderly people are doing a great job at that, but they're missing that huge element of sprinting, strength training, and maintaining that explosive power as they age to protect against falling.

Yeah, yeah. Thankfully, there's a shift happening right now where this education is getting out there.

But one of the things I want to circle back to was, you know, for folks who are wanting to, you know, they've gotten caught up in this new culture that we have today, which is the largest sedentary population that, you know, humanity's ever seen.

our food culture the list goes on and on but you know they have their glory days or they're just you know they tried stuff on and off what I heard from you was what we tend to do which might be resistance to even doing in the first place or if we do it we might be doing something that is going to deter us later we have the mindset of rocky so we're going to just start getting out here and jogging right because again we that's what we think that's what we were programmed to believe is what we should be doing if we want to lose weight lose fat so get out there and jog get on that cardio machine

and jog. Or, you know, we were doing a certain thing and that's what we were acclimated to, like, you know, in our younger days.

So we just go out and start playing basketball again because we want to get in shape.

We end up having a ACL or Achilles or whatever the case might be, but some or minor thing happens and that takes you off the path as well.

And one thing is, number one, we've got to qualify ourselves and our bodies to be able to do certain things.

and it's never too late to qualify yourself to do a thing at some level.

And I think we, as you mentioned, a minor setback happens or something major, and then we just back completely away.

And we don't move into that and train and recover.

And most importantly, do what we can to prevent the thing in the first place.

And so what you shared is, number one, instead of going and doing what's in the middle the messy middle of let's do this medium thing this job this steady state cardio jogging let's do let's do some walking number one that is like such a a low bar for us to a low on ramp for everybody to get started and there's so much we want to talk more about that and at the other side let's do some high intensity interval training and we're We're going to get so much more bang for our buck doing, is this the bread of the sandwich basically?

We're doing the two things on the other end versus the stuff in the middle.

We'll say the bologna.

It's bologna, right?

It's all bologna. You know, the steady state cardio versus what we can do on the periphery.

So the high intensity interval training, which we could do that so many different mediums. So we can do sprinting, but we've got to qualify ourselves for that.

that. Stationery bike, much lower bar of entry, a barrier of entry.

You mentioned a row machine.

There's a salt bike.

There's battle ropes.

There's, you know, jump ropes.

There's even jump ropes where you don't have to jump.

There's just like the two ends.

They have a little bit of weight to them.

You know, there's so many different things that you can do at a higher intensity and then recover and then do a few repetitions of that.

And so this is what I'm I'm hearing for all of us, no matter where we are, if we're wanting to get started or to have something more sustainable, our superpower is getting out there and doing some walking and fitting in some resistance training and some high -intensity interval training.

Let's talk more about walking, all right, specifically, because your latest book, New York Times bestselling author, it's no big deal, but your latest book, your latest project is born to walk.

you were a world -class top we're talking about top in the world triathlete so this is so far from walking it's it's on another planet you know so how did you get from that right that background I want to talk about your your career and experience as a triathlete to being such a huge advocate but the power of walking for all of us well you know what it's actually pretty Pretty similar because it's the baseline aerobic conditioning for life and for all athletic and fitness and active lifestyle pursuits is we need to have that foundation.

And the aerobic foundation is built at low heart rates, period.

Ain't none of you can argue that.

I don't care if you like to go faster and like to get a better workout and get more endorphin rush.

The aerobic system is built at the fat -burning heart rates where you have enough oxygen to stimulate mitochondrial production and improve your fat burning capabilities so without that foundation you really can't do anything of note without getting winded and exhausted so that's the weekend warrior going and playing on the basketball team and they're good for like two minutes and 12 seconds and then they raise their hand to get subbed out good for them they're trying but if they walked more and built up that just easy foundation where the effort feels easy not strenuous that's when you kind of elevate

the platform from which you launch all other fitness endeavors, including my sprinting and jumping and things that would be very difficult to just come out of the office at five o 'clock and head over and start slamming.

It doesn't work unless you have that foundation of active lifestyle.

That's why people are getting injured so frequently when they're playing pickleball, which is not terribly strenuous, but it's the hot sport of of the of the age right now but they're walking right out of the the office onto the court taking one false step and there goes the meniscus or what have you so i think that's the first fitness objective for everybody is to raise that platform of general daily activity and by the way when you do that you negate all the health consequences that are related to sitting sitting is the new smoking that whole body of research and it doesn't take this huge commitment

or this huge lifestyle style change because a two minute walk, if we want to take a break now with our crew too, we can take a two minute walk, come back, everyone be fine.

Hey, we're back at the Model House show.

We just walked up a few flights of stairs.

In fact, I sprinted from four, seven to 11.

It was pretty fun. You know, that stuff is within reach of everyone, but we, for some reason, don't do it because we're too slam, we're too busy.

We can't get away from our screen.

We have brain research from Stanford University showing that after 20 minutes, we can't maintain peak cognitive focus anyway.

So our brains will take a break for us unless we take one and a physical break would be the best, right?

If I don't take my physical breaks, I tend over to YouTube watching high jump videos instead of working on my important presentation.

So there's no excuse not to get up and walk for a minute or two here, two to five minutes here, maybe a nice centerpiece like you get home from work and you walk for 20, 30 minutes with the dog around the block.

And these things have a major contribution to fitness.

It's just we're not respecting it or appreciating it enough and then, as you talked about in the middle ground, that running down the street, man, where you're huffing and puffing has a lot of adverse consequences including the metabolic and the appetite hormones and things like that.

So just moving more without the strain and then putting in the icing on the cake is that high -intensity stuff and even that is not going to exhaust and deplete you and wear you out because I only want you going for brief bursts.

That's when you really are powerful and explosive.

It's not about going, you know, some of the spinning classes are organized in a manner that's a little disturbing for me because it's like, all right, class, we're going to pretend we're in the Tour de France and we're going to sprint for a minute, 10 times and a minute break.

And that's an interval session.

It has wonderful fitness stimulation benefits, but not if you're not super fit to begin with and you're just getting on that bike after eight hours of sitting on your butt But sitting on your butt in another chair, now you're on the bike seat and you're asked to slam it really hard. That can easily lead to overdoing it.

So we want to have this notion of moving more in a comfortable pace and then hitting it hard once in a while.

The strength training can happen a couple days a week is fine for workouts lasting 10 to 30 minutes.

So if you're taking notes at home, look, to transform your fitness and delay the aging process with incredible accuracy, get out there and put your body under resistance load for 10 to 30 minutes a couple times a week.

The sprinting can happen even just once a week.

You go and hit that bicycle hard for 10 -second bursts with a lot of rest, do four or five or six of those, you're out of there.

the whole workout took 15 minutes and the return on investment for doing something like that where you're really cranking those pedals is vastly superior to pedaling for hours and hours workouts that last 10 times as long has have less impact on your physiology than a proper sprint session got a quick break coming up we'll be right back this episode is brought to you by the incredible team at organifi and their phenomenal superfood blends not only does their best -selling green juice blend have the most powerful green superfoods.

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And now back to the show.

so if there's anybody in this room that knows a thing or 20 about suffering it's you i would say you know a trip that i just even thinking about a triathlon man is right you know it's it's bonkers but and no disrespect to those listening who are you know they love their endurance events and you know there are a lot of highly competitive people who listen to this show but you know i think again so many of us, and I've seen it time and time again, even now they're wanting to get in shape.

So they sign up to do a marathon, you know, and that's big, that's their big thing.

And that's okay. But there are far more effective and also sustainable ways to go about it.

And so I'm setting all this up to ask you what it was like training for these triathlons, which can you also, So first of all, what is a triathlon for those that don't know?

And can you share – because a lot of the people, unless they can fully devote their life to training and being competitive, they're not going to be competitive in a triathlon.

So unless this is like you're getting sponsored – can you talk a little bit about that?

Because, again, I think it's very aspirational for the average person as well.

Let's talk about that.

Yeah, so the triathlon is this sport of swimming, bicycle riding, and running, and they're all strung together.

So the gun goes off, everyone's waiting in the ocean or the lake, and they swim the swim course, then they bicycle, and then they run.

Many people are familiar with the Ironman, which originated in Hawaii, and it's the pinnacle of the sport.

And so these Ironman distances are just crazy extreme, where you're swimming 2 .4 miles in the ocean, you're bicycling 112 miles, you're racking your bike and immediately heading out onto the lava fields of Kona to run a 26 .2 mile marathon and so you can't get any more extreme and ultra endurance than something like that I mean you can but this is kind of the centerpiece of the the achievement in in in triathlon however the sport is now in the olympics so if you're watching the olympics maybe you caught some triathlon action and the olympic distance is a more reasonable in kilometers it's 1 .5 40

and 10 so it's a mile swim a 24 mile bike ride and a six mile run and these guys are going fast and they're running completing the entire race in less than two hours so it's a fast swim you get on your bike and you crank that bike for an hour you get off the bike and you run that 10k in a half hour and boy it's a it's a it's a fast high speed high energy event and so i preferred racing at the olympic distance than the all -day stuff although i did do everyone does all the distances but the training is similar where even a two -hour race where you're swimming a mile biking 25 running six that's a lot

of endurance it's an extreme endurance event even though you're going faster than an ironman person and so basically you like you said dedicating your life to getting competent And I found this sport in college because I was a broken down, beat up distance runner.

I had great aspirations of going to UC Santa Barbara, a D1 program.

I was a great runner in high school.

I made it to the National Junior Olympics finals.

I was ranked 12th in the nation when I was 16.

A little mile runner, very competitive, tough guy, was willing to hurt and suffer and do whatever it took to win.

and then I'd go to the program and they repeatedly just broke me down and beat me up and I'd have injury or illness and it was a big disaster and it was a tough time in my life because like my identity was athlete and I was trying as hard as I could and I kept getting, you know, stuffed and sent to the sidelines.

So that was kind of a good awakening for a lot of things I've talked about throughout my career of balancing stress and rest and being sensible with the application of your competitive intensity rather than just an open throttle kind of guy.

So luckily, the sport of triathlon was there, and I was immediately able to transition from injured runner to novice swimmer, novice bicycle rider, and then the running was going to come around.

My injuries were going to heal, and I could throw down on the run course.

So that fascination led to a nine -year career on the pro circuit where I traveled all over the world and we had these great races of various distances.

And it was a tough life though, man, just like any athlete, all my energy went to training and eating and sleeping.

And because we're talking to the sleep expert here, I will assert now, I was on the circuit from age 20 to 30.

I was asleep for half of that time.

I slept for half my life during that decade.

So every single night was 10 hours.

And then I had a two hour nap reliably every afternoon.

And if I missed even part of that nap, it affected my evening swim workout.

And I everything was, you know, off.

So I just had to sleep and train and consume a lot of calories, of course, because you're out there for the whole day doing the different events.

And it was a great time.

I think it's a great thing for a young person to do.

I I dreamed of being an athlete.

I wanted to carry the ball on the football field like you, but there were bigger, tougher guys.

I wanted to play point guard on the basketball court, but we were Los Angeles City champions.

So I wasn't playing basketball either.

So I'm like, well, I want to be an athlete.

I want to compete. So I just learned to run around in circles and then pedal my bicycle in a straight line, swim in a straight line, run in a straight line.

but it's such an extreme you know binge of uh career ambition as well as physical fitness pursuit that you can't do it forever and then so i i spun out of that at age 30 now i needed to go get a job because i didn't make 57 million like a washed up baseball pitcher right and so now it's like everything started over again including now what am i going to do for fitness i'm not going to race these crazy races anymore i've been there and done that i did 130 races around the globe so now I had to recalibrate everything and you know where I you know I took it I made it my mission to dominate these

poor little kids in basketball soccer and track that I coached from my son ages 5 to around 15 when I finally stepped aside and I brought the heat every practice and I just played full bore on these guys I learned this from another dad who was older than me Dennis Curley and I saw him I went over to his house one time he had a basketball court in the back and his boys were like seven and eight good little players really intense competitive and he's just blowing them off the court and banging under the boards and going for a layup and i'm like dennis man are you are you playing too hard your kid's

about to cry over there and he goes oh no you got to show them how to play you can't hold back you got to show them to bring the heat every time otherwise how are they going to learn and i'm like right on so this old -time triathlete who was good at going in a straight line all of a sudden i notice i'm I'm getting winded playing against eight -year -old soccer kids.

I don't like this. I want to smoke them every time.

And so I learned to become a more broad -based, competent athlete.

Same for the track and field, same for the basketball.

I do my dribbling drills now.

Instead of going for a 30 -minute run and putting more miles in, now you do those 360 dribbling with both hands.

You're breathing hard. You're getting a workout.

Your quads are burning.

So that opened up the journey that's now obsessed with Masters track and field.

But there was always something that was taking me to a different perspective than this extremely small slice of pie that represents endurance competency as seen by an elite triathlete, for example.

This is such a great story.

This is so cool. So cool.

The parents didn't get it for a while.

They had to kind of adjust to Coach Brad coming in and being the leading scorer at practice.

And then finally they have open gym on Sunday nights at the high school.

So now my son's a high school player and they do these three on three where you rotate the court, the winners go this way and the losers go this way.

And it was so fun for me because now we're playing against varsity guys, JV guys, frosh soft guys.

They're all mixed together.

I'm trying to hold my own.

And then one day I'm driving home with my son.

He goes, Hey dad, you don't have to drive me to Sunday night hoops anymore.

I can go with Josh's dad.

He'll give me a ride.

I go, Oh no, I love it, man.

I love playing with you guys.

You guys, you don't have to play on on three on three anymore either so i went from mvp all through elementary school and middle school to now i wasn't really holding my own account on the court especially against the varsity and jv guys who are scoring and putting me on the wrong court so that was like another awakening where it's like all right my basketball career is gracefully over now but i do have those mvp awards against the 12 13 14 year olds until they turn 15 now they're they're six feet tall and that's it.

Yeah. And, but what I'm hearing also, this is, first of all, this is amazing.

You, you kept finding a way to attach yourself to something mentally that kept challenging you to, to, to, to train, to challenge yourself.

And even every step along the way, there was the next thing.

How did you find that?

Like, how did you know to do that mentally?

Because I think a lot of us, we get to the end of a line with something, with a career.

This happens with a lot of athletes after their playing days are over and there's this steady, sometimes shocking decline.

How did you mentally know to find that next thing?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, same to you, man.

You finished your sporting career and you played at a high level and now you applied your energy toward doing your business business pursuits and your, your, your family trying to be the best you can be in every way, I guess.

I mean, I think that's what's great about athletics.

You learn these lessons of life and success and failure in the most intense and dramatic manner imaginable.

You know, I'm out there one week kicking butt and taping the VHS so I can see myself on ESPN winning a triathlon.

And then I fly off to the next race and get smoked by everybody.

And it's incredibly Incredibly naked and exposed, almost naked because we wore the little Speedos back then.

Now they wear a full body suit.

But like we were just, you know, these skinny freaks riding around with almost no clothes on.

But to me, it helped me with kind of not attaching my self -esteem to the outcome, but instead learning that my greatest center of power as a competitive person was to be fully engaged in the process and take it very seriously and appreciate it all the way.

whether I win or lose, but use this as a personal growth experience, no matter what, and not get too high on myself just because I excelled and not get too down on myself just because I got my butt kicked.

And so if you can take that mentality into career aspirations or even as a father, when my two -year -old daughter is saying, I hate you, dad, you're the worst father ever.

And I'm smiling and about to crack up.

I'm not taking it personally like, how dare you say You don't know how much I've done for you, you know, that kind of thing.

And so that's part of it is taking this mentality with whatever you're doing.

And now, you know, we talked about bragging about my track and field exploits.

Look, these are meats for old people.

And there's not that many of them there.

But I still celebrate myself.

I'm proud. I can brag about it on the model health show.

No problem. problem.

But, you know, the perspective, you could kind of think like, all right, whatever, go have your fun.

And it's not that big a deal.

But to me, it is a huge deal.

And I think that could be some magic right there, where we have so much abundance and things to be grateful for.

Like every time I call you, you give me your seven things you're grateful for before we get down to the matters at hand.

You know, we have all this stuff to be grateful for.

Why not putting our our bodies first and foremost and our physical health because that can be taken away in a snap and that's a big one for me i'm not sure everyone has bought into that as fully as i have from being this lifelong immersion into competitive sports but it could look like something a little more mellow and quiet for the next person not having to dominate little kids but maybe just getting out of that chair and feeling like you participate so so something it could be anything it doesn't have to be a marathon. That's why I think people go like all in, or they're on the sideline again,

watching NFL Red Zone for four hours straight.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

It can be like, hey, there's those stairs in Santa Monica that take a couple minutes to get up.

Why don't you try to beat your time and report it to yourself and have a personal celebration?

All these things make life rich and meaningful.

Roger Bannister, you remember him?

He was the first person to run sub four minute mile very quotable guy he's he's passed now but he wrote great books with all these wonderful one -liners and one of them was struggle gives meaning and richness to life and he was talking about struggling to try to break the four minute mile barrier and there's so much pain and suffering involved but in that way it's an appropriate application of pain and suffering into your life where you're striving to compete and exhibit crisp precise form and complete your interval workout or whatever you're doing and then realizing that you didn't overdo it you

applied that to a sensible level of where your fitness is now and you feel better for doing it rather than feeling like you need to beat yourself up or whatever those flawed mentalities some people that are in the over exercising category are carrying along yeah thank you for that we've never talked about this before so everybody listening or watching what can you attach to attach yourself to that makes it bigger than just fitness?

And think about that.

So this might be you want to start competing with Brad at some of these track meets out there and give him a run for his money.

Or this could be I want to be able to make sure that I can dance my ass off at my daughter's wedding.

This could be being able to start playing basketball in a league of people that are in your age bracket this could be the list goes on and on being amazing at you know roller skating or maybe there's some new thing that you've always wanted to try that you can attach yourself to like this is my goal for some people again I mentioned this being signing up for a marathon right which we're not advocating against but you know what is that thing that you can attach yourself to psychologically that drives the fitness behavior along with it versus like i'm supposed to do this i need to be fit i'm supposed

to build muscle because longevity scientists say so yeah what can you everybody listening ask yourself the question what can you attach yourself to mentally what what is the intention that you're going to set for yourself that can drive that fitness behavior yeah that's great i'm thinking of a wonderful one -liner on this topic from my friend simon whitfield uh olympic gold medalist in triathlon in 2000 olympic silver in 2008 so he had a fantastic career on the pro circuit racing at the highest level he was the first gold medalist ever in triathlon because triathlon got put in the olympics in 2000

and here's this canadian guy he was kind of an underdog and he just came from behind you can still see him on youtube it was the most amazing drive for the olympic gold and changed his whole life he became a national celebrity because canada had two gold medals in that olympics usa had 37 those guys were all trying to make the rounds and get on the Wheaties box, but this was a big thing for him.

Great career. He's retired.

I'm interviewing him for YouTube.

And I say, Simon, what are you doing these days now that you're a few years retired from the pro circuit?

Tell me about your training schedule now.

And he says, you know, Brad, today I'm coached by my 80 -year -old self.

So you want to attach something?

Attach your Your 80 -year -old self right now, he's looking down, watching you right now, and he's going to be shaking his head going, what are you doing, man?

You're on the couch again for another evening where you turn down the chance to go to the gym and work out with your kid or whatever it is, because we're all going to live a long time, you know, more or less, right?

We have all the medical interventions where we can go, you know, to the senior citizen's home and see him walking around in pain and suffering and wheelchairing and walkers because their 80 year old self didn't look after them when they were 30 40 50 and 60 and they made decisions that sent them to life you know long decline of pain and suffering so marxism has this motto live long drop dead we made t -shirts that said that and that's kind of the ultimate goal for everyone i think would be to live a nice long life and then have your demise come really quickly and painlessly and you drop off the cliff.

My dad was the greatest example for this.

He made it 97 years.

He passed in 2019. He was on fire for 95 years.

He was the world's number one golfer over age 90 from age 90 to 95.

And he shot his age for those familiar with golf.

Like it's a huge accomplishment to shoot under your age and strokes because par is 72, right?

And if you shoot par, you're like a pro player.

And so there's not many old guys shooting in the 70s and there's not many guys in their 80s shooting in their 80s not to mention their 90s he shot his age like 1200 times so it was every time he went out at 84 he'd shoot 78 at 91 he'd shoot whatever his record was 16 strokes under his age so he shot a 76 at age 92 he's five over par hitting long shots and making putts and all this and then at 95 he started to get tired he only retired from being a doctor at age 95 so he kind of stopped playing golf and stopped working and then he got old and slowed down and gracefully just went from playing 18

holes of golf to now he's only playing nine and now he's making chip shots in the backyard and pretty soon it was time to go and it's like who wants to hang around longer than 97 when you're getting tired and there's you know there's no more joy and abundance but like the reason he made it so well for 95 years it's because he did all the right things and he worked on his fitness and he practiced his golf game and he had so much enjoyment for playing he basically golfed at a high level for over 80 years and that's I hope appealing to people to think about boy wouldn't that be fun to keep playing

well and not having a smaller and smaller swing like you see most golfers that are 80 they go and I got video on YouTube you can probably find my dad on YouTube Walter Kearns he is bombing drives when he's 90 years old i mean the ball is smoking out there he actually was complaining to his playing partner one time at braymark country club down the street because he had macular degeneration was one of his conditions so his eyesight was losing and he goes gosh darn this you know this eye thing i can't see my shots anymore where did that one go and the playing partner said walter the reason you can't see

your shots is because they go too damn far i see every single one of my shots because they're only 10 feet off the ground and 100 yards ahead that's That's amazing.

Amazing. Now, even with that, this sounds like, just to hear about your father, this is an environment exposure as well.

You have your dad doing this.

What do you expect you're going to do?

There's a higher probability.

And so this is why I'm so grateful truly to have you here is like to give us a model, to give us an example of what's possible because you saw that with your dad.

It's not an accident that you are doing what you're doing today.

And so, but we've got the larger culture scape that is giving us every example but that yeah you know and so my mission is to change that narrative is to like make it more accessible and common for these exceptional levels of fitness as we age because it's not again that you just have which your genes are pretty good you do have some good genes but we know that our genes do not control our destiny you know there are all these epigenetic factors because your life can be very different just with some couple different choices here there and so most of us the vast majority of people listening have that potential

to play to be competitive at some degree even if it's with themselves like your dad was being competitive with himself as well and we have this potential but we just don't realize it because of our cultural programming and so what I want want to ask you about is programming specifically, because there's a lot of longevity experts who are touting certain fitness programming to be the end all be all for people.

And you were advocating instead for us to pay attention to the behavior patterns of some of the world's top Olympic and professional athletes that might be doing something completely counter.

Let's talk about that.

Yeah, that's a good setup.

Thank you. And I'm not going to say that any of this deluge of information is a bad thing i think it's a wonderful thing we were talking were we on camera when i was talking about trying to get the lyrics to my first hip -hop songs that i learned in the 80s and you couldn't get the lyrics anywhere you heard this awesome song you didn't know what it was called it took like months of research to go and find the song and who who did it invisible man's band all night thing my favorite song anyway uh so we now have have incredible resources to learn all about anything you buy the little ab roller on the in the fitness

store and now i realize from jeff cavalier that i'm not supposed to go all the way up because it's totally easy when you put all the way up you just go like this way out there i'm like holy crap that's 12 times harder than what i was doing i'm not going to do 50 anymore i'm going to do 14 and be completely bombed out so we have all this information but i do object to some some of the uh characterizations where science is the end all and science says that vo2 max and zone 2 training are the things that are going to correlate with longevity okay okay again it's not wrong but with us in our busy

lives and trying to navigate all this information overload i'm in really in favor of simplifying things and making it doable and appealing and sustainable to people people so i've done a lot of research on this do you know what the number one best exercise for longevity is lay it on me it's the one that you enjoy the most and really want to do for the rest of your life yeah so like simon says being coached by your 80 year old self um john assaraf the brain training expert he says right now i'm training to teach my grandchildren how to ski and i go oh that's so cute yeah that's cool yeah teach your

grand you know so you want to be around for keep keep skiing for a while.

I go, how old are your grandchildren?

He goes, I don't have any yet.

Wow. Okay. So now we're coming along with a, you know, a vision and a plan that can become very specific, even if you don't have any grandchildren yet.

Wouldn't that be cool to teach your grandkid how to ski?

What does that mean right now?

That means I want to see you doing some wall sits at your busy office when you're slammed all day and you can't get out and get get down the street to the gym, go sit on the wall for, you know, at 90 degrees for 20 seconds, work up to 40 seconds, then go back to work.

It doesn't have to disrupt your life, this whole thing, but we want to slide in there.

So, that's why I like the information and the research and the touting of VO2 max as this cool longevity metric.

Same with the zone two exercise, but really, zone one is not getting enough love these days.

And that's when we're talking about walking.

you can develop fantastic aerobic conditioning base from very very comfortably paced exercise for example when you go to the gym as soon as you get out of your car and walk across the parking lot and check in you're in zone one your heart rate is more than double resting heart rate you don't need to go on the treadmill and do 45 minutes to check off that box and say that you did your cardio your cardio game is on when you go over and lift weights and rest in between twain your heart rate is going in patterns where you recover and go back into high intensity movement but the whole thing is cardio

so everything is cardio and don't get confused thinking about you need to put this much time in this zone and this much time in that zone it's like you just need to get moving mainly as your number one objective and then do things that you enjoy and appreciate and that are fun and sustainable so if you feel like your workout patterns are getting too exhausting fatiguing depleting and you're eating too many ben and jerry's pints we're going to recalibrate and slow down and get tremendous benefits from that i was hit with that halfway through my career as a professional triathlete i was training

as hard as i could i was sleeping as hard as i could and i was still getting fifth or seventh or third and guys were ahead of me on the course and so i asked the greatest triathlete of all time mark allen i go mark what's going on i'm a young healthy fit talented guy i'm pushing my body as hard as I can and how did you beat me by four minutes man what's your secret come on cough it up he goes you know I learned that I needed to take care of my body better I learned that I needed to back off on a lot of workouts and harness my health and my balance of stress and rest and my hormones and everything

so that I could go unleash the dragon when it comes time on race day so it's not about just getting to the gym 37 days in a row on the 37 day challenge or all these things that are getting filled in people's heads and And they realize, well, I could never do what is it, the 90 day challenge or what do they call it, the 70 or there's some number out there like the extreme 80 or whatever.

All that stuff's fine.

But bring this in and own it personally and make it something you can work with.

And if it's like right now, leashing up the dog and taking that dog out every day, that's the least you can do.

Because when you agree to take that animal home from the shelter, you need to give it the life it deserves.

So I don't care if you're not motivated or too busy.

I know you can get your walking done every day answering to something higher than yourself, which is the animal.

And the eyes looking at you like, what do you mean we're not going today?

What do you mean we're too busy?

I don't understand.

We have to go walk.

It's 5 o 'clock. The greatest motivator ever.

That's so interesting you said that because just today I saw a fellow neighborhood walker that I see.

This guy lives a block away from me named Stan.

and i see stan all the time but the last maybe month i haven't been seeing him and he's probably i'm gonna guess around 70 and my youngest son noted like we were outside shooting around he was like i haven't seen stan for a while have you seen stan and i was like no i haven't it's interesting and so i saw him today and he had a little health issue that popped up but now he's getting back in it so he's walking he's out working things out and he said that what's getting getting him up and going he just got a puppy guys they got a little puppy him and his wife and they got the puppy at eight weeks

old and he's just like you know so he's like had to get back it's it's one of those things that became an external um accountability for him and something he's attached himself to that is driving his movement you know just to get him back going and you just even you know that whole sharing is like going back to that whole point for everybody but again what can you attach yourself to that gentleman saying i'm training to train my grandkids at skiing and he doesn't even have grandkids yet you know what is that thing for you i just want you to keep asking yourself that question and thinking about that and i

want to ask you about this because we're talking about longevity is a big undercurrent for us how can we set some age appropriate fitness goals for ourselves can you give us some tips on doing that Yeah, I like that one because and I was telling you before we hit record, I had a 60th birthday party recently and we made a big poster with old pictures and my friends were all on the poster and the title was 60 is the new 60.

60. So that became my motto.

And what I mean by that is we have so much lip service for this concept of chronological aging.

And we think, hey, 60 is a new 30.

I feel great. I look good.

And it's like, okay, well, the more you're spouting sort of these lines without the significance and the impact behind them, I think we can kind of lose track.

Like you better respect the hell out of your chronological number.

Otherwise we're going to end up in accelerated rate of decline and demise that we see all around us because people just kind of move further and further away from the field of play and onto the sideline.

So now I can't get away with some of the stuff that I did in my past. I don't want to have any part of that stuff.

And I don't think it's healthy for me to go out there and participate in a triathlon and go as fast as I can like I did did before so now my pie slices of my fitness pie are allocated to things like morning mobility flexibility strengthening working the mini bands uh doing the yoga poses and all that stuff before i get up and do anything let alone high jump i mean high jump is a violent sport where you're basically olympic high jumper amy akoff called it a car wreck because you're running in a circle you're building up speed you're angling into the curve and then you slam your foot on the ground

just like taking a slam dunk, you have to slam the ground and explode up into the air.

So it's very jarring to the body.

So I spend several minutes every morning just doing my foot mobility exercises.

You can see me doing these on Peluva YouTube channel.

And they're great for everyone because once you get little nicks and knacks and things that are not working right with your feet or your knees or your shoulders or the problem areas, now you really are limited.

And it's going to be big trouble to get back to whatever baseline you were at before you took that blow in adult pickup league basketball.

So as we age, some of those goals may not be as sexy as the guy who could throw off the sweatsuit and jump into the pickup game.

But it's kind of fun.

And I appreciate my body way more now because it's more fragile and it's not just kind of easy pickings and unrolling my talent for all the world to appreciate by pedaling the bicycle faster than anybody on the beach bike path in Santa Monica which I might do for fun if some guy tried to catch up to me with his sneakers and then I go all right here's what 300 watts feels like and I'm gone all that kind of stuff is gone forever sensibly so and hopefully my ego is on the sideline too to where now I have like great respect and appreciation for my limitations and I'm working with some of the great um

master sprinting uh athletes and coaches which is Cynthia Montalhoun, world champion.

Sue MacDonald up in Santa Barbara has set 15 world records in the last year and a half.

You might have to get her down to the Model Health Show.

She is amazing. At 62 years old, shattering the paradigms of what adult masters athletes are doing.

And I had interviewed her on my podcast, and she said, well, I said, tell me about your training.

What's your week like?

What kind of workout?

She goes, yeah, it's really boring.

I mean, it's a boring life.

and and I guess I'll talk about it you know like it wasn't anything exciting like what I do is I dunk my face in the in the cucumber water at 4 a .m. no no no no no it's like she's up she's at it she's in her side yard doing this many sequences of that and she's building that foundation and then she goes to world championships and win gold medals and so that is has a big impact on me where if you even want to get in the game now at a certain age you got to do a lot of prep time.

It's sort of like, hey, want to give a talk at this important conference?

There's 5 ,000 people in the audience.

Sure. Sean will come on down tomorrow and do it.

No, you're going to prepare.

You're going to think about it.

You're going to rehearse.

You're going to research and then you're going to bring your A game.

And that's kind of what fitness is like the older we get.

I love that. So one of the big keys here is research. All right.

And looking at at some of the pieces that can qualify you to do the thing, right?

So if somebody is wanting to keep playing basketball or to start playing basketball, for example, or pickleball, what are some training modalities that they can implement?

And again, we live in the greatest time in human history with access of information, right?

Most of the time free.

And so researching like, what What are some of the things that, you know, can help to injury -proof your body to play that sport, right, that you probably gotta do now because you're chronologically older that, you know, again, your 12 -year -old kid doesn't have to do, right?

They could just go and play pickleball.

But maybe it's some ankle mobility stuff.

Maybe it's, you know, training with some bands and doing some band drills with dorsiflexion and doing some maybe single leg hopping or whatever the case might be.

But maybe getting a trainer, maybe just doing some research and finding out what are some things that you can do to qualify yourself to do the thing that you want to do.

Yeah. And even if you're not that serious, I mean, if you're serious, then you're going to get a trainer, a coach, you're going to sign up for online programming, whatever.

but like get a trainer once people tell the trainer like hey man i'm not sure how committed i am i'll pay you for your 80 bucks for your session give me a bunch of stuff to do you got your assignments you go back and you can kick some butt you don't need a trainer three times a week for the 12 -week package and all that although i highly highly recommend that it could be life -changing because now you're accountable to somebody the personal training industry is growing wonderfully i know your son's involved in that mix and it's like how can you do better than someone showing up set up on time to

guide you through a workout.

And what is that worth to you in your life when we're bitching and moaning about, you know, you're on the highest cell phone plan, but you can't afford a trainer?

Come on. So get things set up.

But even if you're not serious, you can go on YouTube right now.

And 10 good pickleball mobility exercises.

So the information is there.

It's just a matter of doing them and committing to them.

And we don't even have to get super detailed about out which better counter -clockwise foot rotations or clockwise because i noticed that the arches engage further when you're going counter i don't know man i'm not an expert on all that but i am moving my body every single day and my morning session that i described i figured i made up some of the stuff okay because it feels good to me especially when my left hip feels a little strange the day after high jumping so i figured out this modified pigeon yoga move that i do every morning maybe some yoga instructor would be like well that's not optimal

because your spinal angle feels good to me and it feels good so low -tech approach intuitive approach and then you can sprinkle in good information that feels sensible to you that you test it out put it to the test and it works but again I also want to put that barrier down of the time -consuming aspect of this because I mix with a lot of peers that are my age some of them are really dedicated to fitness.

Some of them are medium and some of them are needs to improve.

And so for the needs to improve listener, I say, look, can you dedicate 12 minutes a day with your 80 year old self watching to avoid that pain and suffering?

What is it going to take to motivate you?

And I think some of it is just clearing the, the noise and the confusion thinking that, oh, I need to sign up with my trainer again who kicked my butt last time and made me sore and stiff for three three days after every workout, that's not what I like to see in the training community.

I want to see someone bring you along gracefully and making sure that you're, you know, bought in the whole way and not push too hard. So we have two main problems in the fitness scene, people pushing themselves too hard, getting the wrong information, setting goals that are not aligned with longevity.

We're not going to, we're not going to discourage you from the marathon, but please understand from the bottom of my heart, this is antithetical to health, full stop.

And you can't argue that either.

It's just brutal on the body.

So it's a bucket list achievement.

And then dial that thing back to where maybe you really love running.

Get good at 5Ks. Why don't you go faster at 5K and make that be your challenge instead of like, I'm going to do another marathon and another and another.

You're destroying your health.

I'm sorry to convey that information, but that's, that's the truth.

Yeah. So one of the things we're talking about, again qualifying ourselves yeah i love that word man this could be the title of the thing you know or it could be there's lots of kinds of pigeons out here all right the pigeon pose yeah yeah yeah there's mike tyson type pigeons there's you know there's homing pigeons guys man you know and um there's it's really about listening to your own body yeah but there is one form of exercise that the vast majority of people are already qualified to do and that's walking it is the the thing that our genes expect us to do we are if all the forms of exercise

humans are super creative we've got high jumping we've got power lifting we've got uh you know uh sprints we've got basketball these things that we've come up with to challenge ourselves in different ways but we are designed to walk we're bipedal and one of the things that i'm going to do today that i always do when I leave the studio is when I get home I throw on my paloovas and I walk for at least 15 20 minutes sometimes longer but just to decompress also to get that nourishment for my feed and just that input the ground contact and I spend a lot of time just even at home just wearing my paloovas

or the paloova socks and it's been one of those things that translates over into so many other parts of my fitness yeah right so my sons my sons and my wife as well this past weekend we were doing some hill sprints nice and my youngest son he hasn't you know now that he's this great athlete now and we're all kind of we're not competing per se but we're all just doing this thing together he's like dad you're running for him it's phenomenal and of course this is years of training and sprinting but also like i just feel so good my i'm very explosive right and i feel that that even that rehabilitation with my

feet and that that intelligence really also helped with with basketball just other stuff I've seen where you know even if you know basketball's one of those sports you might sprain an ankle step on somebody's foot wrong or whatever but just the ability to bounce back and have that proprioception and the reaction time and all this stuff and so it's been very nourishing and healing and I've been doing this for over a year and this is before we even connected nice you know and so you have beluvas on right now as we speak product plug stick it in the camera lens oh is that high enough yes thank you

i can put it over my head if you guys want anyone's ever done that people that are listening he just lift his leg up super high it was impressive super high hi welcome to the model health show studio yeah okay his leg was behind his head I was not expecting that but there's a lot of kind of pigeons out here Palooza's are something's become a big part of my life and I'm wondering what what inspired you to get involved and why is this such a why do you have them on right now oh my gosh I've gotten rid of probably two dozen pairs of shoes that was a big shoe fan and had all the different shoes for different

different occasions and now I'm trying to wear these as much as possible throughout out everyday life with the important caveat, like you mentioned, when I'm high jumping, I'm wearing high jump spikes with a steel plated sole and spikes in the heel, because when we're doing these specialized sporting activities, we require those functional shoes.

Same with working on the job site, we're wearing the construction boots.

And when we're going out on the town, you might want to choose to wear high heels.

So the palovas and the general goal of getting more barefoot adapted in daily life is where we can minimize the damage and destruction caused by modern shoes the worst one being the elevation of the heel so almost every shoe has a heel where you put your you put your foot higher than your your toes off the ground high heels of course extreme example but any basketball shoe or running shoe has this elevated heel and And when you put on a pair of shoes and lift your heel off the ground, you immediately exhibit poor posture.

And this causes a chain reaction of adverse effects throughout the lower extremities all the way into the lower back and the misshapening of the spine.

So we get the modern, especially the dude posture where the shoulders are hunched forward. The cervical spine is compressed like this.

If you're listening, I'm hunching over like I'm sending text messages.

but it starts because i got pushed off of my heel bone onto my midfoot my body weight is now loading over my midfoot which is causing me to hunch over to maintain the center of gravity over the wrong spot you know why the heel bone is so dense and cross -reinforced in the body it's designed to hold the human skeleton to stack everything over the heel bone which is impossible if you're in a shoe so now these minimalist shoes zero drop shoes are so wonderful the zero drop refers to the fact that the heel and the toe are at the same level.

So there's no elevation.

There's no angle in the sole.

So that's great. And then with paloovas, we're separating the toes, which is another big feature where you can truly call it a barefoot inspired shoe because the toes are separate.

The toes are designed to operate independently, dynamically through multiple planes of motion.

And if they don't, if they're squeezed into a shoe, now again, you cause this adverse chain reaction.

one of the big ones is that the glutes don't fire during the walking or running gait it's especially a big deal when you're moving quickly if that big toe doesn't launch off the ground and support your entire body weight over one joint when you're moving through the gait pattern of the running or walking stride of the human when the big toe launches off the ground it fires through the nervous system and the glute muscle activates the glutes the largest and the most powerful muscle in the body, and most people have dysfunctional glutes from sitting all day and deactivating them.

They also have weak and shortened hamstrings and weak and tight hip flexors from the chair.

Some of us sit on the ground.

That's much better because you're still getting that ground force, but this is a way to counterbalance some of the problems that we experience in modern life from too much sitting and then not enough moving in a barefoot -inspired fashion.

So we want to get as minimal shoes as possible, go barefoot as often as possible, and then really strive to kind of whatever shoe choices you have, strive to get more and more minimalist and integrate more and more time in minimalist shoes to allow your feet to get stronger.

And it starts with just going barefoot in the home, or if it's cold, you can wear the five toe separated toe socks.

Because even socks, it's not as bad as a shoe wedging your toes in there but even a regular sock is compressing your toes together all day long and I put my foot over my head I'm not going to take my shoe off on the studio either but like you can see what a lifetime of getting squeezed into shoes especially athletes where they really have that like you mentioned with LeBron and all that you know my toes are folded in together even after years and years of wearing five toe shoes and getting that toe spacing effect it takes a long time to unwind But eventually your toes will relax and realign and reeducate

themselves to be strong and wide and gripping with every stride and keeping your balance and allowing you to produce force in an optimal manner.

And you talk to any advanced sports trainer, physical therapist, we know that almost all complex kinetic chain activity starts with the feet.

I'm watching Otani hit another homer out of the park last night, a walk -off homer.

So the baseball player standing at the plate and swinging that bat to hit a home run, focus down on the feet next time, people.

Go watch Otani last night.

The guy's sensational.

His feet are torquing with tremendous power, and the ankle is tremendously mobile to start that momentum where it's coming mainly from the hips and the core and all the things we learn about as golfers or baseball players to try to generate power.

But everything starts in the feet.

Tom Brady throwing the football.

The foot is planted or go to quarterback camp for the young high school players.

Footwork, footwork, footwork, plant the feet.

And then the rotation starts from the bottom of the feet.

And of course the shoulder and the thoracic spine and all those wonderful things that are involved.

But if you have dysfunctional feet, you're starting from a disadvantage.

Maybe those guys can tape it up and get out there on the field, but not when you're 50, 60, 70, your neighbor stand.

Now you're going to get them pushing the sled.

I understand. And when those feet are pushing the sled, you can see how the toes must dorsiflex with great power just to be able to move the weight along.

Yeah, yeah. And you guys actually have some pro athletes, like a guy in the NFL rocking the Paloovas.

Yeah, Miro Dula of the Las Vegas Raiders.

It's also cool to see some of these athletes that are more advanced with the best coaching and the best guidance.

They're doing things like heading out onto the field and warming up barefoot.

A lot of the Olympic sprinters will do their drills barefoot and then, of course, put on the spikes that crunch those feet together and get them ready for peak performance.

But it's all about the functionality.

We have a term at Paloova called pre -covery.

So we use these for pre -covery and recovery, getting your feet out of the elevated, constrictive, high -performance shoe.

I didn't know if you know this but we're coming out with a golf shoe because golf shoes are so uncomfortable they have the elevated heel which is terrible for your balance transfer in the swing so now we're going to allow golfers to wear a barefoot functionality shoe throughout the round Tiger Woods famously this is now a decade ago he had a teacher named Sean Foley who was working on the nuances of pressure positioning in the feet throughout the golf swing balance transfer transfer, application of force, they call it force production or force plate technology in golf world where they measure

you on these metal plates and see that your arch is loading up here on the backswing.

And then your big toes pushing down with this many pounds and that many pounds.

So it's high -tech golf stuff.

Tiger woods would practice hitting golf balls, barefoot, because you can feel so much more the nuance of what happens on that backswing and how that right arch engages and holds that body weight so that the upper body can coil and unleash the 330 yard drive.

So that's kind of fun stuff to see.

You know, we talk about shoe technology and all the advertising and the blatant false advertising in the shoe industry.

The technology's in the feet, man.

The technology's in the amazing sponge like joints and connective tissue that have allowed us to be human for 2 million years.

Yeah. That's where all the intelligence is.

That's right. It's already built into the feet.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the best shoes and the science is emerging now are going to be the ones that complement that and don't try to, you know, disassociate.

Which is like, again, it's kind of like high -intensity interval training for your feet if you're putting the football cleats on.

But they're doing prehab, right, with the paloovas and then rehab afterwards to get that nourishment, to relax from that intense pressure you're putting your feet under in a crammed shoe.

and also again there's sports specific lifestyle specific footwear absolutely but give your feet this nourishment and this is something again i've been doing for over a year i've seen it translate over and just i just i just feel better and if you're wondering where to get your paloovas go to paloova .com forward slash model and guess what you get 15 off 15 off so that's p e l u v a dot com four slash model 15 off i love the mesh the new mesh is the ones i rock most of the time yeah and again they've got some new innovations coming up don't be surprised if you're seeing again more and more athletes

rocking paloovas and also the pga tour coming up here in the next few years of course i think you're going to see this emerging and just even having that connective tissue with somebody like tiger right doing certain things barefoot is is pretty amazing But it just makes sense because, again, that contact with the ground, this is what we were.

We literally evolved to have this intelligence with our feet interacting with the ground and informing what our ankles should do, what our knees should do, what our spine should do, what our neck should do starts with our feet.

and paloovas are really special because this is going a step beyond just having a wide toe box which i shared this study and you saw it it was in a previous video where i talked about this phenomenon called hollix vulgus oh yeah right the bunion and this study and we'll put it up for everybody to see this was published in prosthetics and orthotics international sought to find out if if bunions can be reversed or, you know, decreased by wearing a shoe with a wide toe box, letting the big toe, let the toe get into some more splay versus doing that plus having some toe separation.

And they found that unfortunately just wearing the wide toe box, all of a sudden, it actually made the bunions worse, but it's having it in conjunction with the toe splay, with having toe separators that helped to dramatically reduce the incidence of bunions.

so it's like rehabbing and fixing these issues yeah it's it's never too late to get started on the path to healing your feet what's pathetic is like the stats of people complaining of chronic foot pain american podiatric association says 83 of americans complain of chronic foot pain so this has now become normal here's a funny thing i discovered through extended family member Remember, Medicare covers two pairs of custom rehabilitative shoes per year for everyone.

Medicare, if you're out of country, that's the insurance coverage for elderly United States of America citizens.

You get free medical coverage.

So you get two free pairs of these funky -looking old -person shoes, you know, that have the orthotic shoes, that's what they're called, and custom -made orthotics.

They'll cover a pair of orthotics and two pairs of shoes every year for your poor, atrophied, weak, dysfunctional feet that are in constant pain to go slide into these things.

And now that's kind of the point of big trouble where you need to rely on these shoes or your feet are sore and painful when you walk around barefoot.

But everyone can make little dents here.

And I'm even talking to runners out there too, where we're not asking you to switch out from your wonderful high foam, comfortable hokas or whatever your favorite running shoe is to go and run that five miles or run that marathon. but the rest of the time in daily life we want to get back to standing posture walking stride walking gait pattern that is correct and allows the foot to go through its full range of motion rather than elevating that achilles tendon off the ground by a quarter inch or whatever it is and screwing everything up and speaking of the achilles tendon did you know this is a british

computational primatologist named bill sellers his life's work studying the the human gait pattern and evolutionary biology.

The Achilles tendon is the primary evolutionary adaptation that distinguishes humans from our ape cousins.

And we screw it up by putting it into a shoe.

In other words, our Achilles is so important that if we didn't have that functionality, we would still be in the trees chewing leaves all day for 11 hours like the gorilla to fuel that tiny little brain but instead because we became bipedal with that awesome achilles tendon and the awesome big toe one of the final areas of the body to evolve the big toe came into line with the others rather than sticking out which is good for swinging in trees but not for walking so the feet make us human and enabled us to become hunter gatherers enabled us to get access to the most nutritious food to build a more

developed brain to rise to the top of the food chain we run done 80 faster than our ape cousins gorilla chimps go to the zoo and you could see a chimp running with no achilles tendon they just shuffle around the cage when they get pissed and go and take the leaf away from which is good because we want to be able to run away from those bad those guys are strong man isn't it true like a chimp can uh rip the arm off an adult human that's how strong they that's the word on the street i don't want to see it i don't want to i don't want to know it for for certain, but that's the word of the street.

I have not slipped in the cage.

Uh, but that insight to me was so profound to think like, we're, we're rejecting our humanity in a way when we put on these shoes that inhibit that functionality.

And when we have a weak, dysfunctional Achilles, boy, we're, we're diminishing our potential to do anything relating to active energetic lifestyle.

Yeah. Well, this has been absolutely rich with insights and, And if you could, this is going to be a tough question.

All right. There's already so many pieces that create this incredible puzzle that you put together for yourself and also providing an example for all of us.

But what would you say if I had to threaten to rip your arm off like a chimp?

Is the number one thing for you personally that's contributed to your longevity with your fitness?

I would say pushing hard once in a while you know sprinting this is you know the natural the natural laws of the universe one of them is use it or lose it and so most people stop sprinting after middle school soccer or after their high school career is over and this is like one of the quintessential human activities right up there with walking right but we also have of walking then we have the different gait pattern which is running so being able to run as fast as you can is such a fantastic skill to hone and try to maintain for the rest of your life and I think it's a huge void where most people

even really fit people that can run an entire 26 .2 mile marathon I should pick on my friend Dr. Stevie now he's not going to like it but he's a fantastic endurance runner.

He ran the whole entire Colorado trail, 468 miles, all the different segments.

So he's an endurance machine.

And he was running across the street because a car was coming and he pulled his hammy and he was out for like 11 weeks.

He couldn't jog because he had that quick burst that was required, but he hasn't been honing his sprint capabilities.

So I think everybody starting with low impact, but once you get some capability there, then you can kind of take it out and try Try to sprint up a staircase or a stairwell, maybe up a hill like you're saying with you and Ann, and then maybe someday taking those little short bursts onto flat ground.

Because when you become competent at sprinting on flat ground, something magic happens, which is, number one, the bone density, the genetic signaling for bone density.

You need impact load.

You need impact trauma to challenge the bones to grow more, but you don't want to get injured.

So you want to build, build, build up to running short sprints on flat ground.

And then the number two magic from running sprints on flat ground against gravity, it sends the most profound signaling for fat reduction because the penalty for carrying excess body fat while sprinting is incredibly severe.

You're not going to go fast jiggling around with a lot of body fat.

Usain Bolt, Elaine Thompson, the greatest sprinters of all time, they're universally RIP city every single one of them we've never seen a fat sprinter ever on television but if you go to the New York City Marathon fifty -three thousand people finished last year around thirty percent of them are outside of the healthy BMI index they can still make it 26 miles but the signaling for the training that they're doing is actually for fat storage rather than fat reduction why because when you train and push yourself and you get tired and deplete all your energy.

You eat more food and secondly, fat is what you need to get you through the marathon race and thirdly, there's not a huge penalty for jogging a long 10 minute mile with an extra 20 pounds of fat but if you're trying to sprint one length of the football field, if you got the ball and the guys are coming and you're trying to score a touchdown and you're a little soft from your summer of fun and partying, you're gonna get run down.

So that's the magic of sprinting and why it should be a centerpiece goal goal for everybody and oh yeah I forgot it takes less time than any other workout because you ain't out there sprinting for an hour one of my favorite sprint workouts is four by 200 meters takes 30 seconds so I'm sprinting four times 30 seconds I'm working ultra hard for two minutes I'm also doing warm -up drills which are strenuous and all that and a lot of preparation but the whole workout lasts two minutes it has transformed my physique and my physiology in recent years to to where now I'm a competent sprinter.

But I'm putting in work, putting in work, like Kobe Bryant, 4 a .m., he shoots for an hour, then he just waits, no, no, no, no. It's sprinting for these short bursts will change your life, change your fitness, change your body composition.

Boom, amazing. The one and only Brad Kearns.

I appreciate you so much. Thank you for coming to hang out with us.

Thanks, model health people.

Thank you so much, Sean.

Let's go. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today.

I hope that you got a lot of value out of this.

I absolutely enjoy this conversation.

And again, I experienced some things.

I got some insights that I've never received before.

And hopefully, this is an encouragement to you as well.

To make sure that we're attaching with intention our fitness and our longevity to something bigger than ourselves.

Just bigger than the superficial.

Just wanting, I know I should exercise.

Want to be fit. Those things are fine and dandy.

but at its core what's going to really motivate us and drive us to doing those things even when things get tough when the going gets tough the tough gets going as it said it's really about having that motivation that is bigger it's attached to something bigger than just the superficial so whether that is being fit so that you can play with your grandkids and train as that example that he gave train your grandkids in a particular sport or activity or whether this is to be able to compete and play with your friends or people younger than you or maybe this is just being proficient in the sport or the activity

that you love to do for as long as you possibly can be intentional about it why are you training why does it matter why are you doing the things that you're doing why are you putting that responsibility on yourself to be better that's truly one of the greatest nuggets that i took away from today and to see brad over 60 years old up here kicking his leg up over his head mid -interview you know and also he did the sit and rise test after sitting for two hours he got on the floor just did the sit and rise test with ease you know it's just is so remarkable and again he's demonstrating what's possible

it's not just because especially it was not because it was probable all right especially in our world today it's because of the decisions that he made and we can follow his lead we can get ourselves surrounded by examples of what vitality and longevity truly can be and be proactive in doing that and i hope that this this is a resource that you can utilize that can help that mindset and support you for a lifetime as well.

If you got a lot of value out of this, please share this out with the people that you care about, share it on social media, send this via text message to somebody that you love.

It's all about community.

It's all about empowerment, and it's all about applying what we learn.

We've got some amazing masterclasses and world -class guests coming your way very, very soon.

So make sure to stay tuned.

Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.

And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow .com.

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Transcribed by ESO.

Translated by —

[Redefining Longevity: How to Maintain Peak Performance at Any Age]-[Faster Fat Loss, Peak Performance, & Fitness at Any Age - With Brad Kearns]

📋 Summary

The Misconception of Aging and the "Sideline" Mentality

The "Sandwich" Approach to Functional Fitness

Qualifying Your Body for Performance

The Vital Role of Foot Health

Finding Your "Why": Attachment with Intention

Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript