Peter Attia’s Centenarian Decathlon

I’ve been intrigued by Peter Attia’s concept of the Centenarian decathlon, an idea that aims to optimise your physical and mental experience in the last decade of your life, the so called marginal decade. The plan is to work backwards from a series of desired activities and train for them throughout the preceding decades.

Attia gives examples of things he might like to be able to do at the age of 80 or even 100:

  • wanting to lift his grandkids
  • to be able to put hand luggage in an overhead locker
  • to be able to get off the floor using only 1 hand
  • dead hang for 30 secs

He has a long list - it is supposed to be a decathlon after all, but really the list should be entirely personal to your passions and interests. The principle is that we will all inevitably decline but you can stem the pace of that decline and it follows the principle that if you want to be able do something at 100 you better be acing that activity at age 50.

If you dream of your golden years climbing hills and dales with your newly acquired dogs, you ought to be able to run up a few flights of stairs in your middle age without threatening a cardiac arrest. Which is not to say, that if you are in that latter bracket already, that it is too late. He makes the point that starting at any age will result in improvements but just start NOW.

Muscle loss (sarcopenia) is thought to decline between 3 and 5% per year after the age of 30 and most adult males lose 30% of their muscle mass over their lifetimes. Again, you can swim against the tide with this, but it requires you to actively train for muscle hypertrophy.

Relative muscle group strength and age

Figure source

There are plenty of examples of strong athletes over the age of 60 on Instagram who are forging their own line on this graph. The decline reported in the study will be being set by the majority of individuals who allow age to do what it will. Do not be one of them!

You can read more in Peter Attia’s excellent book on longevity Outlive and also his podcast.

In thinking about my octagenarian decathlon, I might target the following:

Task at 80 Target mid 50’s Current Ability (53)
Get off the floor using either leg with just one hand assistance 10 x 16kg Turkish getups. Get off the floor with a 50kg sandbag I’m barely at my target for 80 never mind 53. I can just about get up from a kneeling lunge without using my hand. That is at least an improvement on last year so it’s moving in the right direction.
Walk the plank. Stand on one leg. Or basically still have balance One-legged, eyes closed balance for > 30secs (either side) Currently at 27 secs - R leg only
Hill walking with my dogs Run for 30 mins continuously Managed a 10k obstacle run this year but slow and not continuous
Swim for an hour +   I’m in a good place here, having just recently completed a 3 hour half marathon river swim but it will need maintaining.
Cycle for an hour +    
Play doubles badminton, requiring balance, shoulder health and aerobic fitness   Mace swinging 1/2 marathon 850 reps @8kg in 30 mins
Pick up heavy stuff eg. lawnmower, move furniture Deadlift 100kg for reps. Leg extension 90kg My strength has taken a hit, my estimated deadlift 1RM is probably about 85kg and my leg extension 52kg (both novice level!!)
Open jars Keep my grip strength in the strong category >35 kg. Dead hang for 30 secs - I would say 1 minute if I weren’t so heavy My grip strength is still classed as strong but my ability to deadhang is at 22 secs
Get out of the bath Bodyweight dips for reps Heavily band-assisted dips only

Huberman Lab and Andy Galpin on Assessing & Improving All Aspects of Your Fitness

The Huberman Lab podcast has an excellent guest series with Andy Galpin, who I believe is a professor of Kinesiology. The first in the series covers the fundamental areas of all round fitness and the ways in which we can assess and monitor these at home.

I thought it sounded like an excellent annual fitness roundup to assess your progress in the training for your centenarian decathlon.

The official show notes aren’t available so I suggest you listen in to confirm the details but here is an extract from podclips:

The episode covered a basic fitness assessment and proposed a list of targets to shoot for:

  • You should be able to broad jump your height
  • 2-handed vertical jump > 24 inches
  • A grip strength of 40-60kg when using a hang grip dynamometer. > 35kg for women
  • Dead hang time >30 seconds (but really should be >60)
  • Under age 40, leg extension your body weight weight for 1 rep (using both legs)
  • Hold the bottom of a goblet squat with a dumbbell equal to half your body weight for >45 seconds
  • Plank: > 60 seconds
  • Side plank: > 45 seconds
  • ALL males should be able to do > 25 consecutive push ups
  • After maxing out your heart rate, recovery should be 0.5 beats per second (=30 BPM). So, if you hit a max heart rate of 200. 1 minute later, you should be at 170 after stopping.
  • VO2 max: > 35 mL/kg/minute for men, > 30 for women

Worthwhile clips:

Most of the targets as written here are male targets, when specified for women they were about 70% lower.