Avoidance Is a Terrible Longevity Strategy

Since when did striving for longevity mean being delicate?

The predominance of fragile influencers promoting the abstinence of anything that carries risk are missing a very important feature of nature: adaptation is a consequence of pressure. Training is artificially selected pressure that we can use to prolong or heighten our experience.

I get it; certain exercises might not be the best match for your history or disposition. But this hesitation to face hardship has been running rampant in the current Huberman/Attia/Patrick echo chamber as justification for avoiding 90% of the training that would/could benefit people, precisely because it is risky.

Instead of acknowledging the problem as user error, these condensers of information limit wisdom by blaming the object, the movement, the pattern, the food—anything but themselves—so they can carry on promoting fragility as a lifestyle.

Recently, Peter Attia, along with back-squat crusader Mike Boyle and friends, compared the controversial movement to slamming your hand in a car door. I'm not the biggest fan of the back squat myself, but for reasons these folks can't seem to see. As Attia held his arms up in a "scarecrow" position to mimic the back squat, claiming, "it's unnatural," any trainer worth their salt could see the problem: Attia lacks fundamental range of motion in the shoulder—something all too common among cyclists or cubicle warriors. He then went on to celebrate the goblet squat, a movement that reinforces his unbalanced anatomy. He is externally rotated and flexion-limited—possibly kyphotic—which is why he feels "unnatural" in a back squat. With the slightest education, or a 15 min physiology lesson, we could show how limited flexion influences lumbar extension. His fear of the movement is misplaced; his demonization of it means he is missing the opportunity to build physiology that would make him more durable and give him the opportunity to "outlive" other versions of himself.

He later refers to his history of “powerlifting”, and I don’t know the actual extent of his involvement, but he claims this led to repeated injuries, if I am correct about my assessment, it is no shock he repeatedly injured his back. Not even a few moments later the entire crew seems to rally around the data that specialization of sport in kids is a bad idea. Hmm. Do these people not realize that squatting is a sport that requires specialized adaptation? To be fair this is where most get lost, they believe in generic exercises for specific deficiencies. They get specific injuries from general exercises, and can’t see the disconnect.

Here's the kicker: by avoiding the issue, he will not fix his actual limitation. By sticking to exercises that "feel good," he simply reinforces abilities he already has, further entrenching his limitations. The back squat is king in this scenario because it reveals a limitation that needs to be sorted for the purposes of longevity.

You don't need to back squat to be healthy, but a healthy person should be able to. If they can't, it reveals a dysfunction that should be addressed. What was misidentified was not a problematic exercise but defunct joints and tissues.

This is what people miss about exercise: it isn't performative, it's investigative. All training has to do to be effective is carry a sense of "I need to look into it." Now, apply whatever exercise you want and ask questions, and voila! longevity.

My guess is that his framing of “progressively overloading” and comparison with numbers associated with back squatting is the actual culprit, not the movement itself. He most likely believes that unilateral variations alleviate the problem, but he is simply missing comparison and load and justifying the temporary relief. The problem will replicate—maybe somewhere different like the hip or knee, because dysfunction compromises—and upon feeling a twinge, he will move on to the next exercise that “feels good”.

All of this points to a more serious problem: we live in a culture captivated by the possibilities of immortality—an endless life—but unable to see what makes life what it is: struggle. We don't train so that training becomes easier. Training is a thermostat for hardship. Resilience is created by exposure, not a list of exercise by your favorite influencer.

Mike Boyle will then try and sell the idea that “this doesn’t have to be hard, and it doesn’t need to be uncomfortable”. If you wonder why people aren’t compliant, it’s because you’ve lied to them about what it takes. You’ve sold them the beach and margaritas but failed to mention TSA and the red-eye flight. You have set their expectations for an easy ride, so when discomfort arises—as it has to in physical training—the player will back down and back away, being unprepared for the sensations. Or it will be easy, and nothing about them will change; which describes 99% of the people piled into gym staring at their phone between moderate sets of split squats.

Our biology is the result of adaptation to discomfort. Avoiding discomfort allows complacency to shape our physiology. And as you look around, you might see what I'm talking about: rounded bellies, craned necks, flat asses, dimpled skin, and sunken eyes carried around by two bowed legs with externally rotated feet and bound toes that haven't moved since birth. This is the aesthetic of avoidance. The mind that sits in this decrepit vessel is a byproduct of how it feels, it will advise others from a perspective that can’t fathom anything other than what feels good to it. To this person, eventually, every movement will "just not feel right." Of course it doesn't, because he/she doesn't fucking move.

Multiple generations are making "I just don't want to hurt myself" an identity. And they falsely believe that this mentality will lead to a longer life. This is the problem with goals: as soon as we create one, we make it happen at the expense of other qualities. It reflects the problem with prescribing exercises; it removes the need for individual thought about why or how you are moving and then exercise feels like slamming your hand in a car door.

If your idea of attaining longevity is by dodging discomfort, you're in for a very rude awakening. It's the equivalent of putting a piece of tape over the "check engine" light and complaining to the mechanic, "Something just doesn't feel right."

PS: to be fair to everyone involved, the podcast covered plenty of useful themes. I respect most of the people on that panel, and realize that they are just regurgitating the same “sport science” and pretending that its “advanced”. It is worth listening to and I hope my rant doesn’t come off as insulting, I just wish they actually brought in an expert on strength and movement instead of selling the idea that growing old is about backing down.