You’ve probably seen powerlifters deadlifting or squatting with chains draped from their barbells.

It looks and sounds badass — but it’s not just for show.

Putting chains (as well as bands) on your barbell is called accommodating resistance, and it can be a useful tool to help you break through lifting plateaus and hit new PRs.

As you lift a barbell to which chains have been attached, the chains gradually rise off the floor, increasing the load as the barbell gets higher.

You can also get this variable resistance by using elastic bands. You attach one end of the band to the barbell and the other end to an anchor near the floor. At the bottom of the lift, the bands are slack, but as you raise the barbell, the band stretches and increases tension, making the barbell feel heavier as you get to the top of the lift.

Back in my powerlifting days, my barbell coach, Matt Reynolds, incorporated chains and banded lifts into my programming quite a bit. I really enjoyed them because they added variety to my training and helped me get past some sticking points in my lifts that had plagued me for months.

To help walk us through the benefits of accommodating resistance and how to incorporate it into your programming, I hopped on the horn with Matt to get his insights and advice.

A Brief History of Accommodating Resistance

The idea of varying resistance through a lift’s range of motion has been around since the early days of strength training. Early 20th-century strongmen would use chains in their exercises to vary the load during the lift. In the mid-20th century, Soviet powerlifting legend Vasily Alekseyev would do his lifts in waist-high water to add some accommodating resistance to his exercise.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that accommodating resistance became a popular tool among powerlifters. And the man who had the biggest impact in spreading its use was Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell.

Simmons began attaching heavy chains to barbells to accommodate the body’s changing leverage throughout the lift. He later started using elastic bands with his lifters as an alternative way to provide accommodating resistance.

Why Use Accommodating Resistance

Here’s what accommodating resistance offers:

Matches Your Strength Curve. The biggest reason you would use accommodating resistance is that it makes the lift match your strength curve: you’re stronger at the top of lifts like the squat and bench press than you are at the bottom.

As you lift a barbell outfitted with accommodating resistance, the chains gradually rise off the floor or the bands stretch, increasing the load as the barbell goes higher and higher and getting the heaviest at the top of the movement. Thus, the lift is lighter at the bottom, where you’re weakest, and heavier at the top, where you’re strongest. “By increasing the resistance as you move into the stronger parts of your lift, you recruit more muscle fibers, which helps with strength and hypertrophy,” Matt told me.

Increases Power and Bar Speed. “Accommodating resistance forces compensatory acceleration,” Matt says. “You’re kind of in a race to the top. The bar gets heavier as you lift it, so it teaches you to push harder all the way through.” This develops explosive strength by requiring a high rate of continuous force.

Overcomes Sticking Points. At some point in your training career, you’ll discover you have sticking points — places in the lift where you can’t seem to go any further. For example, I had a period where I was having trouble locking out my bench press. I started adding chains to the lift and because the barbell got heavier as it moved up, I was able to really train getting through lockout. Once I took the chains off, the barbell just felt super light throughout the lift.

As Matt explains, because accommodating resistance overloads the parts of a lift where you’re strong and keeps the weight light where you’re weak, you get “more velocity going into the sticking point; you often get higher up and in a better leverage position before the sticking point really catches up with you.”

Challenges your muscles in a different way. Accommodating resistance, especially in the form of bands, forces you to stabilize the bar. It also improves bar control and requires you to stay tight throughout the lift.

Chains vs. Bands: Pros, Cons, and Best Uses

There are two ways to add accommodating resistance: chains and elastic bands. Each one has its pros and cons:

Chains. Chains provide a resistance curve that deloads and loads in a more linear way compared to bands. As Matt explained, “They don’t actively pull down on the bar; standard gravity applies.” That makes them easier to control and more forgiving. Chains are easy to set up. Just hang some chains from the bar. (I’ll show you how below.) They’re ideal for beginners and excellent for matching the strength curve while still helping with sticking points.

Bands. Bands offer more extreme variable resistance. “Bands actually increase the speed of gravity,” Matt said. “What I mean by that is if you let go of the bar, it would fall faster than gravity alone because the band is actively pulling the bar down.” Bands also introduce horizontal forces, so if your form is off, you’ll know. They’ll yank the bar out of alignment, making them less forgiving but more effective for exposing weaknesses.

They’re also more intense, which makes them better for advanced lifters seeking explosiveness. The other upside of bands is they are cheaper and quieter than chains. You can use bands at a public gym without causing a clanging metallic ruckus.

One of the downsides of bands, I think, is that they’re kind of a pain to set up. You need a squat rack that will allow you to use band pegs. And you have to make sure you place the bands on the barbell evenly so that everything remains nice and smooth during the lift and you’re not getting pulled in different directions.  

When to Use Chains or Bands

Start with chains if you’re new to accommodating resistance. They’re more forgiving and help you build confidence in your lockout without compromising form. Bands are better for experienced lifters who want to train explosively and work on bar control and speed.

“When you’re really trying to get fast and explosive, bands are probably the better choice,” Matt noted. “But for hypertrophy and learning to get through sticking points, chains are awesome.”

How to Program With Accommodating Resistance

Here’s Matt’s guidance on programming:

• Use accommodating resistance no more than once per lift per week.
• Favor chains if longevity is the goal; bands for short bursts of explosive training.
• Use bands for 4–6 weeks before deloading and taking a break from them.
• Use chains for 6–8 weeks before deloading and taking a break from them.

The reason there’s a differential in the length of time you can train with chains versus bands is that bands are harder on the body while chains are easier.

Use Accommodating Resistance in Your Supplemental Lifts

Matt thinks one of the best ways to add accommodating resistance is to use it with your supplemental lifts. That’s how he programmed it for me when I was using it regularly.

A sample week of barbell training with accommodating resistance might look like this:

• Upper Day 1: Main Lift — bench press; Supplemental Lift — chain shoulder press
• Lower Day 1: Main Lift — squat; Supplemental Lift — chain deadlift
• Upper Day 2: Main Lift — shoulder press; Supplemental Lift — chain bench press
• Lower Day 2: Main Lift — deadlift; Supplemental Lift — chain squat

Setting Up Your Barbell for Chain and Band Work

To get the full benefit of accommodating resistance, setup matters. Here’s how to do it right:

Chains

I got my chains from Rogue Fitness. I got the 5/8″ chain kit, and it comes with:

• (2) 15LB lengths of 5/8″ chain with carabiners. I’d get two more 15LB lengths of the 5/8” chain, so you’ll have 30 pounds of total chains to work with.
• (2) 4′ lengths of 1/4″ chain with carabiners. This is your leader chain that you’ll hang from your barbell. Once you’ve got that leader chain hanging from the barbell, you’ll hang the heavier 15LB chain lengths on it.

In addition to a chain set, get yourself some EZ Straps. They make attaching chains for deadlifts a breeze. More on that in a second.

Secure the Chains to the Bar

For bench, squat, or press, you’re going to loop the small leader chain around the barbell sleeve, like so.

Then attach the big ol’ heavy chains to the leader chain with a carabiner. Attach the carabiner to the leader chain so that when you’re at the top of your lift, one or two chain links should still be on the floor.

Should look like the above when all is said and done.

For the deadlift, just place your EZ Straps on the deadlift bar and thread your chains through the rings.

Super easy!

Bands

In my opinion, bands are kind of a pain in the butt to set up. If you don’t set them up evenly on both sides, your lift is going to be screwy.

You can also use bands on weight machines if you’re a machine guy.

Deadlift

Anchor the bands to band pegs in your squat rack. You’ll need four pegs like above. If you don’t have band pegs, you can loop them around heavy dumbbells, but anchored bands are more secure.

Start with light or medium bands. When you set up your bands, the band should have slight tension, even at the bottom of the lift. This will typically require you to double up the bands.

Squat

You’ll also need band pegs for the squat. Place the band pegs in the middle of the rack where your midfoot would be when you unrack and walk back the weight.

Remember, bands pull down harder than gravity, so you gotta stay tight and controlled during the lowering phase.

By incorporating accommodating resistance, you can train more explosively, recruit more muscle fibers, and bust through your sticking points.

And when you’re using chains, you’ll look like a badass doing it.

Give it a try and soon you might be hitting a new PR.  

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Planet Fitness — and gyms like it — have long been the butt of jokes in the fitness world. Full of purple decor, “lunk alarms,” free pizza nights, and “judgment-free zones,” but lacking in barbells, squat racks, and deadlift platforms, it’s known as the kind of place in which serious athletes and dedicated lifters wouldn’t be caught dead. Planet Fitness has a rep for being the kind of gym fitness newbies join in January, aimlessly putz around in for a few weeks without changing their body, and then stop going to — while continuing to pay for a membership that is notoriously hard to cancel.

That was basically my take on Planet Fitness for a long time.

Though I had once been a member of one nearly twenty years ago — when Kate and I were first married and couldn’t afford anything else — I had subsequently become the kind of garage-gym-training barbell zealot who looked down my nose at so-called “globo-gyms.”

But, in middle age, I’ve been changing my mind about some things; for example, while I used to be a free-weights-only purist, I now think fitness machines can play a healthy role in building strength and muscle.

That got me wondering if I’d also misjudged Planet Fitness and similar gyms.

So recently, I decided to return to Planet Fitness for the first time in a couple decades to see what kind of training you can actually get done in a cheap globo-gym. I got a day pass to a nearby location to check it out and do a workout.

The experience surprised me.

Here’s my report.

Note: Because the internet has made us all so damned jaded and cynical, this is NOT a sponsored post for Planet Fitness. I have no relationship with them and have not received a dime from them. To get the day pass, I had to fork over my phone number and email, and I am now being bombarded with promotional texts and emails from Planet Fitness. Sacrifices must be made for journalism! I’m using Planet Fitness as a stand-in for all chain gyms (like 10Gym) that offer cheap monthly membership fees.

My Return to Planet Fitness: First Impressions

The Planet Fitness I visited sits in a strip mall and once housed a Walmart many years back.

Signing up was a breeze. I told the guy I just wanted to train for the day, and he said they had a free day pass for potential new members that I could use.

I said I wasn’t interested in joining, just training for the day.

“That’s cool. You can still use the free day pass. Have a great workout!” he replied. No upsell. No pushing me to join.

Nice.

Had I joined up, I could have bought a year’s membership for $15 a month, plus a $59 start-up fee and a $49 annual fee. Added altogether, that comes out to $24 a month for a year. It’s a good deal; many gyms are double and even quadruple that.

I walked around the facility to get a lay of the land.

My overall first impression of Planet Fitness after not visiting in nearly twenty years?

Surprisingly impressed.

This Planet Fitness was really clean and well-maintained — cleaner and better maintained than the $75-a-month gym I belonged to before building my garage gym.

Even the bathrooms/locker rooms were really clean.

I didn’t see anything about pizza night, but I wouldn’t be opposed to a slice of Papa John’s after a training session as long as it fits my macros. Pizza is a decent post-workout food — a nice balance of carbs, protein, and fat.

They still have the “lunk alarm.” It never went off while I was there. I imagine it rarely, if ever, does; it’s more branding symbol than disciplinary device.

And honestly, as a curmudgeonly 40-something, I’m glad Planet Fitness has a rule against people being loud while working out. While there’s evidence to suggest that grunting and yelling can slightly improve your athletic performance, you have to balance that modest boost against annoying and distracting other people. One of the tradeoffs of working out in a communal space is that you’re honor-bound to act as a considerate communal citizen.  

Lunks who make a bunch of noise while training are, in the words of Mark Rippetoe, disrespectful “ostentatious, histrionic pussies, that are trying to make noise to call attention to themselves.”

I’m not a fan of dropping weights, either, unless you’re doing Olympics lifts.

As far as that third potential lunk-alarm-triggering infraction, I’m not sure how you judge whether someone is judging and if/how that’s enforced.

So overall, I find the idea of creating an alarm to police what should be implicit etiquette silly, but tolerable.

Now, what about the equipment?

Better than I remembered.

While they are emblazoned in a garish purple primer, there were plenty of machines for every body part you’d want to train. Most of it was Precor, but they also had some Hammer Strength machines. All of the machines were in great condition. They looked new. Here are the machines you’ll find at most PF or 10Gyms:

• Chest press machine
• Shoulder press machine
• Pec deck/reverse fly machine
• Shoulder lateral raise machine
• Lat pull-down machine
• Seated row machine
• Leg press and extension machine
• Hamstring curl machine
• Hack squat machine
• Bicep curls and tricep extension machine
• Calf raise machine

You can create a program that works your entire body with all those machines.

Besides the machines, PF had several cable towers where you could do lat pull-downs and tricep pushdowns. There was a functional trainer (which we’ve written about before).

Planet Fitness’ dumbbell selection was impressive. Their dumbbells were from American Barbell and felt nice in my hands. You could create a full-body workout with just the dumbbells they have.

While they don’t have squat racks, they do have Smith machines. I’m not a huge fan of Smith machines (especially for bench press), but they’re a decent option for squats, RDLs, rows, and lunges.

And, of course, they had plenty of treadmills and elliptical machines where you could do Zone 2 cardio while watching Columbo.

In addition to the absence of squat racks, there are indeed no barbells or deadlift platforms.

But, you’ve still got everything you need to create a well-rounded fitness program and get jacked in the process.

The Science of Muscle Growth Doesn’t Care About Your Gym’s Branding

Here’s the thing about muscle growth: it doesn’t care if your gym looks like Barney the Dinosaur, whether you’re using barbells or machines, or whether you’re paying $15 or $100 a month for a gym membership.

Your muscles respond to mechanical tension and progressive overload. Period.

When you subject a muscle to sufficient mechanical tension and then allow it to recover with adequate nutrition and rest, it grows. This process is the same whether you’re using a 500-pound barbell or a leg press machine with the pin set at 300 pounds.

Research confirms this. Studies have found that free weights and machines are equally effective in increasing strength and muscle mass. As long as you’re getting adequate mechanical tension to stimulate muscle growth and are progressively overloading your muscles workout to workout, you’ll get bigger and stronger . . . even if you use bright purple weight machines.

A Sample Routine You Can Use at a Cheap Globo-Gym

So you’ve got everything you need to get jacked at Planet Fitness or 10Gym.

I had a great upper-body workout while I was there. Got a fantastic pump with that purple Barney the Dinosaur equipment.

Below is a four-day upper/lower split you could do at any Planet Fitness across the country:

Day 1: Upper (this is the exact workout I did on my visit to PF)

• Machine Chest Press: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 3 sets of 10-15 reps
• Lat Pull-Downs: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Machine Shoulder Lateral Raise: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Pec Deck: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Machine Bicep Hammer Curl: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Cable Tricep Pushdown: 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Day 2: Lower (Quad focus)

• Smith Machine RDL: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Hack Squat: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Bulgarian Split Squat: 3 sets of 8-12 reps
• Seated Leg Extensions: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Smith Machine Calf Raises: 3 sets of 12-15 reps

Day 3: Upper

• Machine Shoulder Press: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Hammer Strength Machine Press: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Machine Seated Row: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Face Pulls: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Dumbbell Curls: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Dips: 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Day 4: Lower

• Smith Machine Squat: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Single Leg Dumbbell RDLs: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Leg Press: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
• Machine Leg Curls: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Glute Machine: 3 sets of 12-15 reps
• Machine Seated Calf Raises: 3 sets of 10-15 reps

I’d do this Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I’d do cardio on Wednesday and Saturday.

You can also use this prompt for ChatGPT; it created a really solid upper/lower split for me:

You are an expert fitness trainer who specializes in hypertrophy. Create an upper/lower 4-day split using equipment that you can find at Planet Fitness gyms. Goal is to pack on as much muscle as possible.

If your budget or circumstances lead you to Planet Fitness or 10Gym, go for it. Train hard, be consistent, focus on progressive overload, and you’ll be surprised by what you can achieve in that purple and yellow judgment-free zone.

The iron doesn’t care where you lift it. And neither should you.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

Do you have a goal to lose weight? If so, you’re probably thinking about how you need to exercise more. And that can certainly help. But what about the 23 hours a day you’re not at the gym? How much you move during those hours — from walking to the mailbox to fidgeting at your desk — can be just as important in winning the battle of the bulge.

Here to explain the importance of what’s called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, is Dr. James Levine, a professor, the co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s Obesity Solutions Initiative, the inventor of the treadmill desk, and the author of Get Up!: Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It. James explains how much more sedentary we are than we used to be and what happens to your body when, as the average American does, you spend two-thirds of your day sitting. He shares how doing the lightest kinds of physical activity, even standing more, can help you lose a significant amount of weight and improve other aspects of health, from your sleep to your mood. And we talk about how to easily incorporate more NEAT into your day.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Role of Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis in Resistance to Fat Gain in Humans — James’ overfeeding study
• AoM Article: The Digestive Power of an After-Dinner Walk
• AoM Podcast #552: How to Optimize Your Metabolism
• AoM Article: The Importance of Building Your Daily Sleep Pressure

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Do you have a goal to lose weight? If so, you’re probably thinking about how you need to exercise more, and that can certainly help. But what about the 23 hours a day you’re not at the gym? How much you move during those hours, from walking to the mailbox to fidgeting at your desk, can be just as important in winning the battle of the bulge.

Here to explain the importance of what’s called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, is Dr. James Levine, a professor, the co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s Obesity Solutions Initiative, the inventor of the treadmill desk, and the author of Get Up, Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It. James explains how much more sedentary we are than we used to be, what happens to your body when you spend half of your day sitting.

He shares how doing the lightest kinds of physical activity, even standing more, can help you lose a significant amount of weight and improve other aspects of your health, from your sleep to your mood. And we talk about how you can easily incorporate more NEAT into your day. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/neat.

All right. James Levine, welcome to the show.

Dr. James Levine: Thank you so much for having me, Brett. So you have spent your career researching obesity, particularly how our physical activity levels can contribute to how trim we are or how fat we are. When it comes to the way our body burns or uses calories, you’ve broke it down in your work, and there’s basically three ways our bodies burn calories. What are those three ways our body uses calories?

Yeah, the three basic ways we burn calories are there is the basal metabolism. Basal metabolism accounts for about 60% of the total. The bigger you are, the bigger your basal metabolism, or more specifically, the greater your lean body mass, the greater your basal metabolism. Now what’s important is, yes, it’s actually the majority burn, but you can’t change it. So moving on, the next one is the thermic effect of food. It accounts for about 11% of the total. Now, those are the calories you expend when you convert your meal into intermediary metabolites like glycogen and glucose.

So, if you have three meals a day, you’re gonna have three thermic effects of food. It accounts for about 11% of the total. Guess what? You can’t really change it. Now, the remaining component, where we’ve done 60, we’ve done 10. So the remaining component is about 30% on average of the calorie burn is through activity. Activity is either non-exercise activity or putting on your lycra spandex shorts. I know, Brett, I think you adore those and going off for a run.

We all know what exercise is, but most people around the world actually don’t take purposeful exercise at all. So all of their calorie burn through activity is through non-exercise activity. And in terms of calories, we call that non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And Brett, as a micro sidebar, if I may, even if you do go and do pilates three times a week or whatever that may be, when you actually work out how many calories you burn doing those three classes, which are 30 minutes, and you’ve done the three times a week, you’ve driven there, and so on and so forth. That only averages out to about 100 calories a day, and that’s if you’re having a proper workout.

Dr. James Levine: And so really, for nearly everybody listening to the podcast, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis are the calories you burn through daily energy activity.

Brett McKay: So, okay, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, shorthand, it’s NEAT. It’s called NEAT.

Dr. James Levine: NEAT.

Brett McKay: So basically, it’s just anytime you move during the day, like I’m standing up while doing this interview, talking to you, I’m gesticulating. That is NEAT, correct?

Dr. James Levine: NEAT are the calories you burn throughout the day. That is exactly correct. And I’m also standing up, Brett. There we go. Twin standards. But yeah, it’s all those calories you burn throughout the day. And it’s the calories you burn sort of as you get out of bed and go make coffee and go and collect the mail from the mailbox. It’s the mooching around you do during your day. It’s even sort of the tapping on the table as you’re waiting for the website to upload. And it’s sort of chopping up vegetables in the evening as you’re making your dinner. It’s wandering around the supermarket. It’s all those things you do that aren’t sleeping and eating.

Brett McKay: And how many calories, you’ve figured this out… Like how many calories do we burn in a typical NEAT activity? So if we’re just walking from the couch to the kitchen or we’re doing laundry, like what do we, like how much does it actually burn?

Dr. James Levine: So let’s think about that. First of all, as you know, what’s your NEAT for the day, and then how do you actually get to that number? So as we sort of agreed, it’s about 30% of your calories throughout the day. So that’s gonna be about, for an average person, about 700 calories. Now, what’s really, really interesting about NEAT is if you sort of look at this, if you compare 100s of people, the data set is 576 people living in high-income countries.

What you can see is actually an astonishing variation. Some people will burn 2000 calories a day more NEAT than other people. Example, if you happen to be a mail person delivering mail on foot throughout your day, or you work in agriculture, you can actually be burning 2000 calories a day more through your NEAT than if you’re actually sitting behind your desk all day long and then sitting in the evening in your rather comfy armchair.

Now, how does that actually compute? Now, what’s most important about all of this is that the sort of the biggest way of burning calories through your NEAT is to get off your bottom and walk. And I don’t necessarily mean sort of striding around, I mean mooching around. So if you get up and just walk at one mile an hour, which we call shopping speed, that’s sort of the speed when you’re going through TJ Maxx looking for the best deal. You’re walking on average about one mile an hour. You double your energy expenditure. You’re burning an extra 100 calories an hour.

So, you can immediately appreciate if you spend two hours online doing your shopping, sitting on your bottom versus mooching around at the mall for a couple of hours, there’s 200 calories right there. Now, if you walk a little bit faster at two miles an hour, you’re at 150 calories an hour. So now, Brett, you and I are both upstanding as we’re doing this podcast. We could either sit down absolutely statically still and burn almost nothing above basal. Or we could sort of stroll at about two miles an hour, which is the speed of a walk and talk meeting, and burn 150 calories each.

And so, when you actually compare people with very high NEAT to people with very low NEAT, people with very low NEAT are sitting on their bottoms all day. People with the highest NEAT are up mooching around, doing stuff on their feet, whether that’s at work or at play.

Brett McKay: All right, today, what’s the typical amount of NEAT that most Americans get? I think you said 700 calories?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, that would be a reasonable number right there. But again, as you’re listening to this, remember the key thing, Brett, is that this is highly variable. So as you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re somebody sort of a bit like my job, which is 100% behind a computer screen every single day of the week, then you know intuitively that that’s too much sitting. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this now, if you look at job postings, they will even put as a warning on the job posting, this job requires excessive sedentary time. It’s actually extraordinary.

On the other hand, if you happen to have a job, whether that’s working in a warehouse, whether that’s working in a bakery, whether that’s working in fields, whether that’s sort of something much more ambulatory, that could even sort of be a greeter at Walmart, if you like, where you’re also mooching around. You can imagine having a NEAT five, six, 700 calories a day more than the person confined to a sedentary job.

Brett McKay: So there’s been a lot of talk about rising obesity rates in the United States, and there’s been different arguments put forth about what the cause is. It’s people are eating more, people are eating more sugary foods, people are eating more fatty foods. And you highlight research, but oftentimes it gets overlooked is that people are just moving less. Do we know like how much less we are experiencing NEAT in America today?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah. If you go back sort of 200 years to the Industrial Revolution, people moved from agricultural environments into the cities. And then what happened, of course, is there were production lines in the big factories. And then what happened, what, in the 1950s or thereabouts, people started sitting down working behind desks. And in fact, office desks were actually designed including the chair with the wheels, to stop people getting up and moving because the ergonomists back then believed that if you could stop people getting up and walking, they would actually be more productive if they sat behind their desk all day long. They were wrong.

But, that is exactly sort of how things have evolved to push us down in our chairs. And are we sitting too long? Oh, my goodness. Yes, we are. How do I know that? Is it just because of the rising obesity rates that you talk of? And there are really good data to the effect that we have sat progressively more and more and more over the last 200 years. But in fact, our calorie intake has not increased substantially. The only data showing that it has are actually from Australia.

So yeah, our calorie intake has been constant, but it’s too much for the degree of inactivity we have. And it’s not Brett, just about obesity. There are 27 other chronic diseases and conditions associated with sitting too much. And that means things like diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, even some types of cancer, and of course, musculoskeletal problems. And so, yes, on the other hand, you may be listening to this podcast and smiling. It’s quite interesting, but it’s bigger than that. It’s really serious stuff. And it’s not just our bodies we’re hurting. We’ve set up a society whereby our kids are gonna ultimately receive the world we’ve created for them.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I think it’s interesting you point out this lack of activity, physical activity on a daily basis is probably driving the obesity, a big factor in driving the obesity. You talk about, if you even look at office work, you talk about this in one of your books. If you look at office work 50 years ago compared today, you did a lot more moving in the office than today. You had to move even if you were just doing a desk job.

Dr. James Levine: This is a 100% correct. I think back to sort of when I started in the day. I’ll give you a fantastic example. My very first job was working for a really famous professor called Professor Davies, who is an osteoporosis professor. And of course, as you may be aware, osteoporosis is growing quicker and quicker, partly due to the lack of activity. And she asked me to gather papers about a certain document she was writing for the World Health Organization. I said, I’d love to.

Now, those papers were scientific articles. And in order to gather them, I kid you not, I literally had to get on my bicycle and cycle across London to probably one of 15 different libraries to gather all the articles she needed. Yes, it took a lot of time. But my goodness, I’d come into her office, sweat pouring down my back. Today, click, click, click, click, click, it’s done. And just taking that simple example, all of us listening who are of a certain age, remember how difficult things used to be where we used to have to go and get resources.

We used to… We even have to sort of walk to the printer, which was actually in the printing room. Yeah. Now we barely… We can actually spend our entire day when you think about it in the office at work. And if I need my lunch, click, click, click, DoorDash right to my desk and get home, drive through, click, click, click, Pizza at my door, and on we go. And if you sort of step back and actually think about how much time I spend sitting every day, if you think about it, what’s really interesting is you can’t really imagine a world where you don’t spend it sitting because it’s sort of a subsidiary symptom of how we actually live.

And so you don’t sort of analyze, Oh, I’m sitting a lot at the moment. You just live your life, you see. And so this is what’s happened. It sort of crept up on us. And all of a sudden, we’ve all become these terribly sedentary and rather unwell and sort of slightly blue, sedentary office workers, both in the office and at home.

Brett McKay: When some people, or I think when most people notice that I’m gaining some weight, I notice that I don’t move around all that much ’cause I have an office job that doesn’t allow me to move around all that much. They think, well, I can take care of this with just diet and exercise. But you argue that diet and exercise will never be enough to compensate for the lack of NEAT. The problem with dieting, just reducing calories, is that you can’t do that forever.

So, let’s say you reduce your calories and you do lose weight. Because you’ve reduced the amount of calories you’re consuming. But in order to continue the weight loss with calorie reduction, you have to decrease the calories even more because you’ve likely decreased your metabolic, overall metabolic rate, resting metabolic rate ’cause you’re smaller. So your body requires fewer calories. And so, it gets to a point where it becomes unsustainable. And I think…

Dr. James Levine:Let me jump in there, if I may, please. ‘Cause you’ve touched on a really interesting point. Not only is everything you just said correct, but it’s even sort of more subtle than that, if I may please. When somebody loses weight through caloric restriction, through cutting their calories down, yeah, body fat is disseminated. Somebody can also lose some lean body mass and body weight declines on a lower calorie intake. The trouble with this is the body is not a static system. The body, brilliant in its design, adjusts and actually becomes more efficient.

So in fact, once you’re at that lower caloric intake, the body is working more efficiently, making it actually more difficult to lose more weight. So you’re not even dealing with a sort of a simple mathematic is I’ve decreased my calories in, I’m now going to be able to maintain a lower body weight easier. That actually isn’t true because the body will sort of counter-regulate to make it more difficult to maintain your body weight.

Brett McKay: And then also exercise just relying on focused exercise activities to offset the amount of being sedentary. As you said earlier, it’s not gonna do much in the long run ’cause you might just burn 100, 200, 300 calories and that can’t make up for being sedentary every other hour you’re awake.

Dr. James Levine: Purposeful exercise for the sake of improving your health, like going to the gym or something like that, is fantastic if you like to do it. Let’s be clear about that. If you like to go to the gym, keep doing it, please. It’s really good for you. It’s really good for your health. But very interestingly, again, for even people who go to the gym, the harm associated with sedentariness, as you say, all the other time that you’re not at the gym, which is basically 95% of your week, the harm of sedentariness is still not eliminated.

So, if you go to the gym, great. But if you’re sedentary, you’re sedentary. And if you’re sedentary, it’s causing you harm.

Brett McKay: I feel like in the last decade or so, people, whether… You’re talking about dedicated exercise or just physical activity in general, people have been kind of down on physical activity as a method of weight management. There’s this idea out there that you can’t exercise your way or burn your way to weight loss. Diet is what really matters. If you move more at some times, you’re just going to slow down. At other times, your body’s gonna find ways to just compensate for that extra activity somehow.

But you did a study that proved, Yes, activity can keep the pounds off. It was this really complex study. You basically got a bunch of people, including yourself, and then you overfed them 1000 calories a day. And then you just watched what happened. Who gained weight and who lost weight. So walk us through that study. And what did you learn from this study?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, Brett, it was extraordinary. It was called the Great Overfeeding Experiment. And that is exactly what we did. But I have to tell you, this wasn’t done using a computer watch or guessing. This was done meticulously in metabolic laboratories at Mayo Clinic. It was a big, big deal. Every single food item was weighed and measured chemically. Every single movement was captured. Every calorie burned was analyzed. And even how people change their body fat was measured using precise technology down to a few 100 grams.

It was extraordinary work. A huge team of people helped do it. And what we found were two things that I think are really important. You can take a group of people, none of whom have obesity, and you can expose all of them to 1000 calories a day of overfeeding for months on end. And the extraordinary thing, first of all, is this, one person can take nearly all of those extra thousand calories and deposit it in body fat. That person is super prone, almost like a sponge absorbing water, to developing excess body fat.

On the other hand, another person can receive the same amount of excess food and somehow magically through their brain get up and start spontaneously moving. Their NEAT can increase for extra 1000 calories they’ve received. Their NEAT can increase 700 extra calories a day through movement, not going to the gym, through movement. 700 calories extra a day. On one hand, you’ve got somebody who seems to absorb every extra gram of food and deposit it in their body fat.

On the other hand, you’ve got somebody who you can overfeed a 1000 calories a day and gains almost no body fat because they switch on their NEAT. They get up and they move. So what you realize is, first of all, some people are really predisposed to gaining obesity. Yeah, we all know that and I’m sure some of your people listening are nodding their heads right now. But other people have this capacity from inside of the brain to get up and move so much more that they don’t gain any weight with overfeeding. And they never went to a gym. So that’s the first thing. Now what’s the second thing? The second thing is probably even more important than that.

The second thing is, if you are one of those people nodding your head right now, if you’re one of those individuals who has a tremendous susceptibility to gaining excess body weight, as soon as you sniff extra food, what you realize is that the body is designed in such a way that you can not gain more body weight. You cannot gain excess body weight and develop obesity if you are up and you are moving and your body has the capacity to do this. And you can even burn up to, if you like, 700 calories a day extra based on those data. So it’s a beautiful idea. You can win. You don’t need to go to the gym.

You can get up and move 100s of extra calories a day, whether that’s converting a standard meeting at work to a walk and talk meeting, whether that’s converting shopping online to actually shopping by foot, whether that’s getting your groceries delivered to your door from the supermarket, or actually going to the supermarket and physically choosing it. You can integrate movement into your day, so much so to stave off excess body weight, and you can even burn up to an extra 700 calories a day doing it.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Did you all figure out what causes some people to have that natural tendency to, when they consume more calories, they just start moving more naturally and others don’t do that? Is there a gene?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, we spent a lot of time on that. And again, what’s fascinating is this. Think about it for a second. So what we did in that experiment is we got completely healthy, normal volunteers and we overfed them. We checked that they took every single extra calorie that they were given. We measured that. We even measured their urine in their stool, I should tell you. We had freezers full of poop. And what we then measured was that people responded to that by increasing their NEAT, their movement throughout their day. If you think about it for a second, how did people know to do that? It had never been discovered before.

I mean, how did that happen? People, if you like, knew to do it subconsciously because there’s a mechanism in the brain that counter-regulates how our food relates to our activity. And we thought, well, we’ve got to go and try and find that area in the brain because then we can actually help people really achieve their goals. And so we had a whole neuroscience team led by Dr. Novak, a brilliant young neuroscientist, and she identified tiny parts of the brain right in the hypothalamus, which is an old part of the brain that switches on your NEAT and switches on NEAT more in some people than others. So in fact, right at the center of your brain right now as you’re listening to this podcast, your brain is analyzing your calories in, your calories out, and is propelling you to move more or move less. So yes, there’s a deep biology underpinning this.

Brett McKay: Okay, so in some people, there’s a part of the brain that’s more discerning or more activated so that whenever you take in excess calories, it sends a signal to move more. And then in some people, that part doesn’t switch on as strongly. But a big point you make in all of your books you’ve written is that even if you don’t have that natural tendency to want to move more whenever you consume excess calories, you’re not destined to be an inert lump. You can still take action. It doesn’t have to be big change. Just take small, tiny changes throughout the day to counteract that.

Dr. James Levine: Absolutely. And the trick, if you like, I actually, as somebody who looks after patients, I really don’t like tricks. But nonetheless, for you, Brett, the trick. The trick to all of this is to make a decision. Is to make a decision with your day? Today. Is today going to be the day I’m gonna get up and take control of my life and step forwards? Or is today gonna be the day I stay on my seat? If you decide to stay on your seat, my only prayer is that tomorrow you think the same question of yourself.

On the other hand, if today is the day right now that you are going to get up, take control, and take a step forward, the moment you do that, you will do it tomorrow and you’ll do it the next day. And the data suggests that if you can find those moments throughout your day to consistently be up and moving, and you do it for 21 days approximately, it will become a habit. Just like sitting down in the evening every evening and binge watching is a habit, you can actually have really cool and healthy motivational movement habits as well.

So, if you can find those moments to get up and move throughout your day and keep doing it, it will become a habit. It’ll become part of your life. And here’s what the data from… We’ve worked in over seventy US corporations, here’s what the data from corporations show, it’s really great stuff, is once you’ve taken on one good habit and done it for 21 days, we call it the NEAT ripple effect, is a good movement habit will beget, will make another movement habit. And so, one becomes two, and all of a sudden two becomes four. And what happens is people who are sitters become people who are movers.

And people who become movers also influence their families, their kids, husbands, and wives, and friends to become movers as well. And so, there’s a NEAT ripple. But the trick, the trick, the trick is to think right now, today is today. I’m gonna get up and take control of my life and take that first step forwards or not. And if the answer is yes, do it now. In other words, Brett, what I’m saying is, if you can get it into your mindset, into your thinking that I’m gonna fight the chair, I’m gonna win this battle, you can actually do it.

Brett McKay: And what’s great, you offer suggestions on how you can do that. I think the trick is understanding, Okay, our social environment is pushing us to be sedentary. Everything is like, you do everything sitting down. And I think one trick is just, can I do this typically sedentary activity? Can I do it while moving somehow? So, you offer suggestions like, if you like to watch TV, get yourself a really cheap treadmill. You can find them on Amazon for 300 bucks now. They’re so cheap. And then just stick that in your television room. And while you’re watching your favorite show, just walk at one point one miles per hour on that treadmill. Or if you like playing video games, do the same thing. You can play a video game while you’re walking. Or like you said, if you take phone calls during work, don’t do that sitting down. Do that while you’re walking.

Dr. James Levine: You are a 100% correct. And I’m telling you, what’s really cool about this is the other thing I mentioned is once you’ve… And I will tell you now, 300 bucks for a treadmill in your house, that’s expensive these days. I mean, they’re coming in at a $100 now, or you can get a secondhand one, or you can get… People are throwing away their exercise bicycles. I mean, take it, refurbish it, put it in your TV room. And you’d be surprised that you can binge watch, I’m actually starting to re-watch Seinfeld again, I hate to tell you this, but I can binge watch Seinfeld gently cycling on my stationary bicycle.

It makes almost no noise and I’m getting just as much TV. And there is so much we can do if we put our mind to it. And the other thing, Brett, you mentioned is we sort of, society has put us in our chair. But the other thing to think about for a second is how we can change the society. Now, I don’t mean changing the world, let’s be serious, but how can I change the society I live in? So, next time if I’m dating, next time I choose a date on, I can’t remember the name of the website, whatever, where you’re swiping left and swiping right, I’m actually going to choose a date for somebody who also likes to go walking.

I’m going to sort of say, next time we all sit to come for my birthday, and for those of you listening, my birthday is November the 20th. Next, for all of you who are going to come to my birthday party, yeah, we’re going to have cake, you bet we are. But also, once we’ve done our cake, we’re also all going to go out for a walk together, we’re going to do a family walk. So, we actually have the opportunity to influence the micro society we live in, but we need to choose to do that. And it’s all part of the same thing, make that decision, take your first step, and the rest is going to flow from there.

Brett McKay: And one thing you point out in your book is that you work with a lot of patients who have had extra weight, and just by simply increasing the amount of NEAT in their lives, they’ve been able to lose weight, a lot of weight. They don’t even become serious gym goers, they’re just moving more during the day.

Dr. James Levine: A 100%. And so, yes, and if you like, there is the world of what I call testimonies, and this is fine, and I’m a 100% respectful. But as somebody with a science background, I’m actually more interested in the hardcore data from the scientific studies. And the scientific studies conducted in normal US office workers show that even in people who don’t want to lose weight, they will tend to lose weight and become more active. But in people who want to lose weight, people will start, if they activate their lives, they take on NEAT, are going to be losing 10 to 20 pounds slowly and gently, if you like, without breaking a sweat. And they’re gonna do that over six months, and then over the six months, the same.

And so, what’s really powerful about this is, Yes, 60% of the population may be dieting in any given year, but what’s really cool about NEAT is NEAT is going to help you keep off that excess body weight, and it’s going to nudge you forwards and forwards and forwards. And what’s important about this is you’re not gonna get a sports injury from NEAT, you’re not gonna have to pay a gym membership for NEAT, everyone can get up and move throughout their day without paying a penny for doing it. And what it’s gonna help with, for those people who want to lose weight, you don’t have to lose weight, even if you have excess body weight, you’re not obliged to. If you want to, this will help.

Brett McKay: So we’ve been talking about the benefits of NEAT and weight loss, but you mentioned earlier, there’s other benefits to moving more throughout the day. How can NEAT improve metabolic health? We’re talking like how we regulate glucose.

Dr. James Levine: Oh, this is really, I hope we have enough time for this, Brett, but let me explain briefly. This is super cool. Experiments were done where healthy volunteers came onto a research centre, very, very carefully monitored, and their glucose from their blood was being monitored every 30 seconds. These individuals were given breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the metabolic unit in the research centre, and then were instructed to get on with their normal day. And that was, computer work for the morning, then lunch, computer work, and a bit of Facebook, and then dinner, and then evening time, Facebook, binge watching, and TV, okay?

And we measured their blood glucose every 30 seconds continuously throughout the day. And what actually happens is, when you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, your blood glucose climbs to a mountain and then slowly descends over a total period of about an hour and a half. After each of the three meals, that’s what happens. Then we said to people, we want you to do exactly the same day again. We’ll measure your glucose again. We’ll give you the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner again, but we want you to do one single thing different. After every meal, we want you to take a 15-minute walk or stroll at one and a half miles an hour. That’s literally strolling.

15 minutes after every meal. Now, as I mentioned, without the stroll, normal day, you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, your blood sugar, your blood glucose climbs to a mountain, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you add a 15-minute stroll, that’s it. The mountain becomes a hill. It literally halves the size of that blood glucose mountain. 15-minute stroll after each of your meals. The biggest predictor of Type 2 diabetes is the size of those mountains. So all of a sudden, for taking a 15-minute stroll after each of your meals, everyone listening can do this. You halve your blood glucose response to meals and potentially risk of Type 2 diabetes. What a win, win, win!

Brett McKay: Now, that is really powerful. Another thing you talk about is the benefit of NEAT to our mental health. I know a lot of people out there are struggling with their mental health. What effect can NEAT have on that?

Dr. James Levine: There has not been one clinical trial in depression prevention that includes a walking program. That hasn’t helped people. Many of us are susceptible to feeling blue. I am. Feeling low, feeling bad. Most people listening will know that when you’re feeling bad and you go for a walk, for a reason you quite can’t understand, you actually feel a little bit better. What’s really powerful are the data that show that if you actually sort of take on NEAT walking as part of your routine, that will actually help you feel brighter, smarter, and sort of more alive. All of us already sort of know this. We all know this. When you’re down, somebody says, let’s go for a walk, and you feel better.

This is actually a truth. And so for those of us who can take on a NEAT approach to life, not only is your sort of body going to be better, whether that’s with respect to obesity prevention or diabetes, blood pressure, whatever it may be, but actually you’re gonna feel brighter too. And what’s really cool is once you feel brighter and happier doing a little bit of walking, even after each of your meals, guess what? You’re gonna keep doing it and you’re gonna take on more stuff so you can feel even brighter and happier. And again, that’s what the data suggests.

Brett McKay: Another thing you’ve seen in your research and working with patients is that a lot of these patients that come to see you, they talk about, I’m just so tired all the time. And it seems weird because like, you’re just sitting around all day. Why would you be tired? But I think everyone has experienced how doing absolutely nothing can just be exhausting. And by incorporating some more light physical activity during your day, it’ll actually give you the physical energy you need to do the things you want to do in life.

Dr. James Levine: I think we all, again, know this to be a common truth, but Brett, that allows me to touch on one other thing, which is so important and this will not shock anybody. Sleep. Sleep is a critical component of this equation. It is absolutely critical. And the data on NEAT and sleep are fascinating. We brought people again onto our amazing research centers at Mayo Clinic. These are extraordinary places where people volunteer to do studies to help us understand what’s going on. And we brought them onto the research center. And we said, Have a good night’s sleep in your normal way.

Get used to our facilities. And people did. What we then did is we sleep restricted people. We said to people, you’re gonna sleep 30% less. We’re gonna wake you up. We’re gonna twiddle your toes. We’re gonna keep you awake. And my goodness, yes, you’re gonna get tired. And that’s exactly what happened. But here is what the data show. The data shows when you sleep restrict people, they eat more. We all know this. When you’re tired, this is me, by the way. Okay. This is me. When I’m tired, I eat more.

This is always the case. For some reason, you reach for the choc, you reach for the chips, whatever it may be, but you eat more. This is what happens when you sleep deprived. You’re feeling tired, you’re feeling pooped out, you’re noshing, you’re eating a few snacks here and there. But the one thing when you’re tired you don’t want to do, is to get up and go for a walk. When you’re fully rested and you’ve got good sleep, you get up and you feel, what’s the word we all use? Energized. That’s what we feel. And that energized means get up and go for a walk. Get up and do some cool stuff. Let’s do something fun today. And guess what? You think less about that food you’re going to lean on to deal with your tiredness.

So I fully understand that people may have two or sometimes three jobs. I totally get it. I totally do understand that there is tremendous stress at the moment and tremendous mental anguish. But if you can find a good method to get good sleep, whether that involves, for example, stopping your coffee at noon or starting to relax early in the evening so you’re ready for sleep, not stressing yourself out with text messages or arguments before you go to bed, whatever it may be, if you can find a method of getting good sleep, that is a critically important part of the NEAT equation.

Brett McKay: Well, I also think moving more can help you sleep better. I’ve noticed my own life. There’s this idea I’ve heard about sleep pressure. You have to build up some sleep pressure so your body wants to go to sleep. And one way you can do that is just moving more. I’ve had the best nights of sleep when I’ve had a really active day. I think the best night of sleep, I’ve been chasing this night of sleep for 20 years now is when my wife and I, we went to Rome. And you just walked. There’s, like, all day. You’re just walking hours on hours. And I remember we came back to our hotel and we just laid down and we just both fell asleep. We didn’t wake up until, like, 14 hours later, and we both felt that was the best night’s sleep.

And I think it’s because we just walk so much. And I noticed in the times where I don’t move a lot during the day, I have a hard time falling asleep.

Dr. James Levine: This is 100% correct, your body… If you remember earlier, Brett, we were talking about the parts of your brain that are sort of monitoring all of this, one question you’ve got to ask yourself is, Okay, I’ve now got my movement going, just as you say. You walked around Rome all day, you sort of met your NEAT goal set by your brain. What happens if you don’t? And I think a lot of people actually understand this, but haven’t necessarily thought about it the way you put it. So if I am sort of forced to sit in meetings all day long, and I assure you that’s often many of my days, you get home sort of feeling this sort of anxiety. This sort of tightness inside of you. And I don’t know about you, but I get this thing sort of like my thoughts, and I get frustrated and irritated much more than if I’d actually had an active day where I dissipated all of my energy. And I think the other thing that, again, many people relate to, when you’ve come back from work and it’s been a day that you’ve been in your chair, you haven’t been up, moving and so on and so forth, what’s one thing you do? You reach for a beer. Really, what that’s saying is I need an anesthetic. There’s too much pressure in my head. I need to anesthetize myself.

And so therefore, the complexity of getting a good night’s sleep absolutely relates to the need to burn off the energy that our body needs us to burn off. We’re designed to get up and move. If you suppress the human, the human doesn’t do well. We get really internally upset by that, and we need to move. So part of our argument is that by forcing people to be seated all day, it’s fundamentally unnatural to people, and they need to move just to function normally. And your day in Rome is illustrative of that.

Brett McKay: So we talked about some ways people can incorporate more NEAT into their lives. There’s an activity that you do sitting down. See if you can do that standing up or even walking. For people who want to incorporate more NEAT in their life, is there a goal they should shoot for? Like, what’s the minimum dose of NEAT that we need to get before we start seeing that benefit? Is it an hour of extra NEAT two hours? Is there steps? What have you found in your research?

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, I mean, this is a terrific question. There has been a huge vogue, as many people know, to buy various gadgets, to look at various watches and sort of monitor stuff. Now, if you’re somebody who loves monitoring stuff, go for it, enjoy it. That’s great. But what is actually the truth and again, when you study this in sort of normal folk, what you find is if you give people a monitoring device, they’ll use it for a short period of time, and it can be literally, I kid you not, days. And their use of that monitoring device will fall off almost exponentially, almost sort of like over a cliff face, and they’ll sort of put it into a drawer. And how many people listening today have exercise monitoring devices, wearable little things that are in their drawer that’s powered down, that’s unused? So my advice to people is to actually look at it completely differently.

If you love monitoring stuff, get the equipment. It’s great. If you’re going to take on for yourself a goal, I suggest you take on one goal, not 100 goals. One thing. What’s the one thing you’re going to do for the next few weeks, and let’s say for the sake of argument, is every Thursday, and this is as simple as it gets, every Thursday I have to do a conference call with central corporate where they talk about health and wellness, whatever it is. It’s a 40 minutes call every single week. I only have to listen to fulfill my obligations. So I’m going to do that walk and talk. That’s one thing I’m going to do every Thursday. Super simple. Actually, what I’m going to do is I’m going to have a little chart on my fridge, and every time I do it, I’m going to put a check mark against it until I’ve done it 21 times. Monitoring, as simple as it gets.

On the other hand, I’m going to be a different person. I’m going to say, you know what? My daughter loves the art stuff, and I live in Washington DC, where all the galleries are free at Smithsonian. So once a week, I’m going to go with my daughter and we’re going to stroll through the art gallery, and we’re going to do that together for two months. Now, honestly, do you need to put that on your fridge to remind yourself to go for a walk with your daughter in the art gallery?

No. What you want to do is to do it for three weeks and it becomes a habit between you and your daughter. And so what I suggest again, is be smart, what works for you. But pick something, find a way of monitoring it, and do it. And the last concept I’d like to share with you in this regard is the idea of rewards. Now, rewards are great, okay? They’re really, really cool. But again, you have to be smart. So giving yourself a reward to go to the mailbox and collecting your mail on foot every day, to me, honestly, sounds a bit silly. I’m not going to reward myself for collecting the mail. However, if my goal is to walk a half marathon, and I had this amazing patient who did this, she came into clinic in her wheelchair, and she sent me a photograph of her and the grandchildren when they walked a half marathon.

I kid you not, it was like, it blew my mind. Her reward was if she could walk a half marathon, she’d saved up enough money to go to South Dakota for a week. That was her reward and that was her goal. And she actually said to me, Actually, the reward was to do it. So I think if you can think of the idea of finding things that you want to do, finding a method to record it, and then finding a method to recognize yourself, pat yourself on the back, or have some sort of achievement recognition that you’re off to the races.

Brett McKay: I love it. So just find ways to move more. That’s it. Again, it’s not hard. It doesn’t have to be that hard. It could be as simple as standing up at work occasionally. It could be doing the walk and talk, something that I’ve done after reading your book, or we’ve done this for a long time as a family. When we park somewhere, we park the furthest away so we can walk there, take the stairs. Kind of becomes a game. Finding ways you can move more in an environment that is fighting for you to sit more. It’s kind of fun to be a rebel. I’m going to move more instead.

Dr. James Levine: Yeah, be a rebel for yourself. Do it. Get up and move.

Brett McKay: Well, James, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

Dr. James Levine: Well, I mean, it’s fantastic. If people wish to go to the library and get the book, Get Up. It really summarizes the work we did in the lab. It’s, of course, available on our favorite online website as well. And that’s great. But also places like mayoclinic.com have really high quality information on the Internet. And so please please make a decision to get up and move today and learn more from these various resources and make it happen for yourself.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, James Levine, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Dr. James Levine: It’s my pleasure as well. Thank you so much, Brett. I really enjoyed it.

Brett McKay: My guest today was Dr. James Levine. He’s the author of the book Get Up!: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can do About It. Check out our show notes at aom.is/neat, where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com and while you’re there, sign up for our newsletter. We got a weekly edition and a daily edition. They’re both free. It’s the best way to stay on top of what we’re doing at The Art of Manliness.

And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay reminding you how to listen to ao podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

We all need sleep to maintain our physical and mental health and perform our best.

So it’s unsurprising that there’s no shortage of content out there about how to improve your sleep.

Unfortunately, so much of it repeats the same things you’ve heard a million times before: keep a consistent sleep/wake schedule, stop drinking caffeine later in the day, keep your room cold and dark, etc.

Those fundamentals matter — and if you’re not doing them yet, they’re worth implementing. But if you’ve already got the basics down and are looking for some lesser-known strategies to enhance your sleep, we’ve got you covered below.

What follows are 45 fresher, research-backed tips for improving your sleep, drawn from Trick Yourself to Sleep: 222 Ways to Fall and Stay Asleep from the Science of Slumber by Kim Jones. Chances are, you’ll find at least a few that will help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling more rested.

Daytime Activities That Can Improve Sleep

While we typically think of what affects sleep largely in terms of what happens at night while in bed, the foundation of good sleep is built during your waking hours.  

1. Process Information and Emotions in the Light of Day

There’s plenty of evidence that stress is a major saboteur of sleep. When your head hits the pillow full of anxious thoughts, drifting off can feel impossible. Additionally, since sleep is the time the brain organizes the day’s information, processes emotions, and works through problems, it stands to reason — though this is just a personal theory rather than a scientifically proven fact — that going to bed with a big backlog of unprocessed inputs forces the brain to work harder overnight, leading to less restful slumber.

To avoid this kind of evening overload, get a jumpstart on your cognitive processing during the day. Don’t wait until your head’s on the pillow to start sorting things out. As you go about your day, take short breaks — five minutes every hour or so — for daydreaming, reflecting, and journaling. Use these pauses to process emotions, mull over dilemmas, and defuse stress.

2. Meditate

Another way to avoid an evening overload of sleep-disrupting stress is to meditate during the day. While we typically think of the mind-calming benefits of meditation in relation to our waking hours, by preventing a build-up of anxiety, the practice also makes it easier to wind down and sleep more soundly at night. Just 20 minutes of daily mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve sleep quality in people with insomnia.

3. Work by a Window

Exposure to natural daylight helps calibrate your circadian rhythm and boosts mood-regulating neurotransmitters, both of which support better sleep. If you’re stuck in an office all day, even sitting near a window can make a difference — research shows that people who do sleep 46 minutes longer each night than those working in windowless spaces. If a window seat isn’t an option, eat lunch outside or use breaks to get more sunlight exposure.

4. Move as Much as Possible Throughout the Day

Physical activity is a well-known aid to sleep, but is seriously underrated. The more you move, the more “sleep pressure” builds up — a drive, fueled by the accumulation of adenosine, that makes it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep at night.

Dedicated exercise is clutch here, of course, but even small bits of activity help build sleep pressure too. So rather than seeing physical activity as an all-or-nothing proposition, look for ways to incorporate movement naturally throughout your day: stand during phone calls, take brief walking breaks every 30 minutes, periodically do a quick set of squats while watching a movie, etc.

5. Exercise Outside When You Can

Research shows that outdoor exercise — even just 30 minutes of walking — helps people fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly than the same amount of indoor activity. Natural light exposure combined with fresh air and physical exertion creates a powerful sleep-promoting combination.

6. Challenge Your Brain

It’s not just physical exercise that builds sleep pressure; mental exertion does as well. Fill your day with reading complex material, learning new skills, solving puzzles, and having meaty conversations, and you’ll sleep better at night.

7. Seek Novel Experiences

You can give your brain the kind of cognitive challenge that builds sleep pressure simply from encountering sheer novelty. When researchers in one study exposed participants to new and stimulating environments, they fell asleep faster and enjoyed more deep sleep than on routine days. If you’ve ever visited a museum, you’ve experienced this phenomenon firsthand; you probably felt surprisingly fatigued, and it wasn’t just from walking around — it was also from your brain taking in so many novel stimuli.

You don’t have to visit a major attraction to score this effect. Even small changes help: take a different route home from work, explore a new neighborhood, or visit an unfamiliar store.

8. Create Microtransitions Between Work and Home

Research has found that people who mentally carry work stress home sleep worse and wake more frequently. To prevent the grind from following you through the front door, build in a “microtransition” — an intentional ritual that helps you shift out of work mode and into domestic life.

Hit the gym on the way home, take a few minutes to meditate in the driveway, or change clothes as soon as you walk inside your abode. Check out this article/podcast for more tips on creating an effective microtransition.

9. Prioritize In-Person Socializing

Perhaps it’s because of the mental-fatigue-inducing cognitive processing involved in having conversations or simply all the feel-good neurochemicals that are released when we connect with others, but face-to-face social interaction is associated with better sleep onset and maintenance. So meet up with friends and loved ones whenever you can to slumber more soundly.

10. Stay On Top of Your To-Do List

Research shows that procrastinators are up to three times more likely to experience sleep problems. Leaving tasks unfinished creates cognitive loose ends that your brain continues processing during the night, while completing even small tasks provides a sense of closure that allows your mind to rest easy.

11. Take a Sundown Stroll

You’ve probably heard that getting morning light regulates your circadian rhythm and improves sleep. But taking a walk when daylight is fading helps too. Researchers have discovered that an evening walk, particularly at dusk, significantly improves sleep quality in insomnia sufferers. Walking at sundown helps synchronize your body clock as natural light fades, preparing your system for sleep.

12. Cultivate Purpose

According to research, people with a strong sense of life purpose enjoy significantly better sleep quality, perhaps because having this sense of direction reduces stress and boosts the kind of psychological resilience that carries over into slumber. To increase your sense of purpose, spend time in reflection, engage in activities that align with your values, and set meaningful goals.

Nutrition and Eating Habits

What you eat — and when you eat it — can have a surprisingly strong effect on how well you sleep.

13. Skip Spicy Foods in the Evening

Research shows that eating spicy foods close to bedtime can negatively affect sleep by raising core body temperature, which interferes with the body’s natural cooling process needed for sleep onset. Capsaicin, the compound responsible for heat in chili peppers, triggers thermogenesis, making it harder to fall asleep and leading to more nighttime awakenings. To avoid these effects, it’s best to enjoy spicy meals earlier in the day.

14. Limit Saturated Fats

High saturated fat consumption is associated with lighter, less restorative sleep and more nighttime awakenings. Focus your diet on heart-healthy unsaturated fats from nuts, seeds, avocados, and olive oil instead of the saturated fats found in processed foods and fried items.

15. Implement a Dinner Curfew

Eating too close to bedtime redirects blood flow to your digestive system rather than allowing your core temperature to drop for sleep. Consider adopting time-restricted eating — confining meals to a 10-hour window (such as 9 AM to 7 PM) — which studies show improves sleep quality and prevents middle-of-the-night digestive disturbances.

16. Boost Your Fiber Intake

Research shows that people who consume low-fiber diets take longer to fall asleep and experience less deep sleep. Prebiotic fiber, which is found in foods like garlic, onions, leeks, and artichokes, seems to be particularly beneficial. In one study, subjects on a prebiotic-rich diet spent more time in restorative non-REM sleep and showed resilience to stress-related sleep disruption.

17. Eat Walnuts as an Evening Snack

Walnuts naturally contain melatonin — the hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles — as well as magnesium and healthy fats, which can aid in relaxation and overall sleep quality. A study found that eating walnuts increased circulating melatonin levels in the body. Eating a small handful of them a few hours before bedtime can help prepare your body for sleep.

18. Make Sure You’re Getting Adequate Potassium

Potassium can improve sleep by reducing nighttime awakenings and helping muscles relax. This effect is especially notable in people with low dietary potassium intake. To boost your levels (though you don’t want to go too high with potassium), consume food sources with significant amounts of the mineral like sweet potatoes, white beans, bananas, and avocados, or take a supplement.  

19. Stay Hydrated

Mild dehydration is a common cause of nighttime awakening, whether from a dry throat or your body stirring to seek water. Maintain consistent hydration throughout the day, tapering off in the evening to minimize bathroom trips. The right balance will keep you comfortable through the night without interruptions.

Creating a Sleep-Friendly Environment

The state of your bedroom can go a long way in promoting a good night’s sleep.

20. Wash Your Sheets Weekly

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 73% of people report sleeping more comfortably on clean sheets. Beyond the psychological comfort, regular washing removes accumulated sweat, oils, skin cells, and dust mites that can disrupt sleep. Once-a-week washing is the sweet spot for most sleepers.

21. Declutter Your Bedroom

One study found that people sleeping in cluttered rooms took longer to fall asleep and experienced worse sleep quality. Beyond the practical annoyance of navigating a messy space, visual clutter stimulates your brain and can raise cortisol levels. Your bedroom should be a sanctuary, not a reminder of unfinished business.

22. Get a Bigger Bed

If you share a bed, size matters. The average person moves 60-70 times per night, providing plenty of opportunities to disrupt their partner. The Sleep Council recommends this test to see if your bed is sufficiently large: lie side by side with your partner, arms behind your heads and elbows out — if they touch, your bed is too narrow. Get the largest bed that your budget and room size will allow.

23. Sleep Scandinavian Style

As Dr. Wendy Troxel explained on the podcast, if sleeping in the same bed with your partner disrupts your sleep, it’s perfectly fine, and can actually be beneficial, to get separate beds. But if you’d rather not physically part, take a cue from Scandinavians and try using two single duvets instead of fighting over one shared covering. This approach eliminates the nightly tug-of-war and allows each person to select their preferred warmth level, significantly reducing sleep disruptions from temperature differences and blanket stealing.

If you’d like the top sheet + comforter set up, another option for separating bedding while staying physically close is to get two full or twin-size mattresses/beds, each with their own bedding set, and put them close together.

24. Get an Air Filter

Research indicates that people living in high pollution areas are up to 60% more likely to sleep poorly. If outdoor air quality is a concern, consider using an air purifier in your bedroom. Focus on HEPA filters that remove particulate matter and VOCs, which have been most strongly linked to sleep disruption.

25. Hide the Time

When sleep expert Dr. Merijn Van De Laar came on the podcast, his number one tip for better sleep was not watching the time, noting that “We know from research that if you watch the time, then it takes up to 20 minutes longer to fall asleep again.” Clock-watching during sleepless periods only increases stress about lost sleep and how you’ll function tomorrow. So keep your smartphone in another room, take off your watch before bed, and turn your clock away from view.  

26. Ditch Your Sleep Tracker

While it may seem counterintuitive, ditching a sleep tracker can actually improve sleep — at least for some people.

Those with insomnia often get more rest than they think, and seeing that confirmed by a tracker can ease anxiety and promote better sleep. But for others, tracking creates more stress, triggering what’s known as “orthosomnia” — a fixation on perfect sleep metrics that paradoxically worsens sleep quality. Trackers can also lead to a “nocebo” effect, where you feel tired simply because the data told you that you should.

If your tracker helps you build better habits, great — but if it causes stress or contradicts how you actually feel, it may be time to trust your body over your device.

Bedtime Preparations

From how you spend the hour or two before bed to what you do once you’re in it, certain activities and rituals are especially effective at helping you wind down and prepare your mind and body for restful sleep.

27. Sip, Instead of Chug, Your Last Fluids

If you regularly wake up at night to urinate, try stopping fluid intake about 10 hours after waking. When you do have your last drink of the day, sip it slowly rather than chugging it.

As the day goes on, your body becomes less efficient at processing fluids. Drinking a large amount quickly can spike urine production, and not all of it is eliminated right away; the excess can linger and continue filling your bladder hours later, potentially waking you up while you sleep.

In contrast, drinking slowly allows your bladder to handle liquids in smaller, more manageable amounts — reducing the chance of a backlog that carries into the night.

28. Do the Double Void

If you still find yourself waking up to pee at night despite cutting off fluids hours before bed, try the “double void” technique. First, use the bathroom as usual, then wait about 30 seconds and try again. Alternatively, go once before brushing your teeth and again right before getting into bed. This simple practice helps ensure your bladder is fully emptied, reducing the chances of a nighttime wake-up call.

29. Rock Yourself to Sleep

It’s not just babies who are soothed by gentle rocking. Adults are too. A study showed that adults who napped in a rocking bed fell asleep faster and enjoyed deeper sleep than when the bed remained stationary. The rocking motion helps synchronize brain waves into patterns associated with quality sleep. Rocking beds are actually available on the market, but a more practical implementation of this idea is to sit in a rocking chair to relax for a few minutes before you lie down in a standard stationary bed.

30. Soak Your Hands in Warm Water

You may have heard that taking a warm bath about 90 minutes before bed can improve sleep. The heat draws blood to the skin’s surface, and when you step out, the dilated blood vessels help dissipate core body heat. This drop in core temperature signals the body to produce melatonin and promotes sleepiness.

If you don’t have the time or patience for the rigmarole of a full bath, soaking your hands in warm water for at least five minutes can induce a similar effect. The palms contain specialized blood vessels that are especially effective at radiating heat, aiding in core temperature cooling.

31. Mindfully Do the Dishes

Sleep is improved by having a wind-down routine — knocking off from all mentally or physically taxing tasks at least an hour before bedtime.

But if you must complete one last chore before bed, make it hand-washing dishes. A study found that participants who focused on the sensory experience of dishwashing — like the warmth of the water and the smell of the soap — experienced a 27% reduction in anxiety. This calming effect can help ease the transition into sleep.

32. Read a Physical Book

Reading before bed is a well-known wind-down habit, but its effectiveness is often underrated.

One study found that just six minutes of reading reduced stress levels by 68% — more than listening to music, drinking tea, or playing video games — by lowering heart rate and relaxing muscle tension. Less stress translates into an easier time falling asleep.

Physical books, with their unlit pages, may be especially calming, offering distance from both the temptation to check social media and the cortisol-spiking content it so often delivers.

33. Write a To-Do List

It’s not just completing to-dos during the day that aids sleep, but preparing to tackle future tasks as well. Researchers found that people who spent five minutes writing down upcoming tasks fell asleep approximately ten minutes faster than those who merely documented completed tasks. The more detailed the to-do list, the quicker participants nodded off. This “cognitive offloading” helps free your mind from the responsibility of remembering everything overnight.

34. Address Worries Constructively

Research supports the idea that writing down your worries before bed can help improve sleep. This practice is particularly effective when you write down worries and potential solutions. People who document both their concerns and possible next steps experience less “pre-sleep cognitive arousal” than those who only list their worries, making it easier to fall asleep.

Schedule a 15-minute “worry session” in the early evening (around 6 PM) to document problems and brainstorm concrete next steps, and this will head off bedtime rumination.

35. Warm Your Neck

Studies have found that warming the back of your neck to about 104°F (40°C) before bed improves both sleep onset and quality. This specific warming helps reduce sympathetic nervous system activity (which creates alertness) while increasing parasympathetic activity (which promotes relaxation). A warm compress or heated neck wrap (plug-in and microwavable options are available) can do the trick.

36. Release Jaw Tension

When you clench your jaw, it sends signals to your brain that you’re under stress, reinforcing anxiety that can make it harder to fall asleep. Instead, aim for a relaxed, slack jaw — like a trout’s. When your mouth is at ease, your brain takes it as a cue to relax the rest of your body, too.

If you’re struggling to release jaw tension, try this: place your thumb under your chin and slowly open your mouth while applying gentle resistance. Hold for a few seconds, then relax. Repeat 5–10 times. You can also massage your temples in small circles with your fingertips to relax the temporalis muscles, which play a key role in jaw movement.

37. Sheathe Your Feet

When you warm your feet, it dilates blood vessels and helps release heat from your core — a key signal your body uses to initiate sleep. Cold feet not only block this process but can also simply be uncomfortable and keep you awake. Research shows that people who wear socks to bed fall asleep faster, sleep longer — by an average of 32 minutes — and wake up less during the night compared to barefoot sleepers. If your feet tend to run cold, try wearing socks to bed or placing a hot water bottle at your feet.

38. Practice Gratitude

You’ve probably heard that regularly writing down what you’re grateful for can boost both physical and mental health — from lowering blood pressure to lifting your mood. But gratitude has sleep benefits, too: by shifting you into a more positive frame of mind, it can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Each night, try jotting down five good things from your day — whether it’s a thoughtful gesture from a colleague or simply snagging a great parking spot.

39. Relax Your Tongue

Your tongue holds more tension than you might think — you may be pressing it against the roof of your mouth right now without realizing it. Like a clenched jaw, a tense tongue can send subtle signals of stress through the body, making it harder to fall asleep.

To release this hidden tension, press your tongue firmly against the roof of your mouth, then let it drop completely as you allow your jaw to hang slightly open. Keep both the front and back of your tongue relaxed, letting it rest heavily in your mouth. This simple act of release can become an effective cue for full-body relaxation.

40. Apply Gentle Warmth to Your Abdomen

Research shows that gently warming the skin — especially around the abdomen — increases neuronal activity in brain regions that regulate sleep. Try placing a warm (not hot) water bottle against your stomach. The key is subtle warming, just slightly above skin temperature, as too much heat will disrupt sleep.

41. Let Your Thoughts (Even If Negative) Come and Go

Thinking stressful or worry-inducing thoughts as you lie in bed can create mental arousal that makes it harder to fall asleep. Paradoxically, actively trying to fight these thoughts can actually backfire — making them more persistent and sleep more elusive; research has shown that people instructed to suppress specific thoughts before bed took longer to fall asleep than those allowed to let their thoughts flow naturally.

Instead of resisting unwanted thoughts, try acknowledging them without judgment, then gently shift your focus to your breath, positive reflections, or calming visualizations.

42. Try Sleep Restriction Therapy

Counterintuitively, spending less time in bed can improve sleep quality. If you’re lying awake for hours, track your actual sleep time and initially restrict your time in bed to just that amount (but no less than five hours). For example, if you average six hours of actual sleep but need to rise at 6 AM, don’t go to bed until midnight. As your sleep efficiency improves, gradually move your bedtime earlier in 15-minute increments.

During the Night

Even if you successfully fall asleep, it’s normal to wake up during the night, and these tips can help you return to sleep more easily.

43. Embrace Stillness When You Wake

If you wake during the night, resist the urge to toss and turn. Movement signals your body to increase alertness and can trigger adrenaline production. Instead, calmly maintain stillness while taking slow breaths, focusing on the sensation of the sheets against your skin or the coolness of air on your face. This mindful stillness often allows sleep to return naturally.

44. Apply Acupressure at Heart 7

Traditional Chinese medicine — and some emerging research — suggests that massaging the Heart 7 acupressure point (also known as the “Spirit Gate”) may help relieve anxiety-induced insomnia. To find it, look at the crease on your wrist directly below the gap between your ring and pinky fingers; you’ll feel a small hollow beside the tendon on the outer edge of your wrist. Using your thumb, gently press and massage this point in a circular motion for about a minute on each wrist. This simple technique may help you fall asleep more easily — and return to sleep if you wake up during the night.

45. Keep Your Eyes Half-Shut During Middle-of-the-Night Bathroom Trips

When nature calls in the middle of the night, avoid turning on bright lights — even brief exposure can suppress melatonin and make it harder to fall back asleep. Before bed, clear a path to the bathroom that’s easy to navigate in the dark, or use a dim nightlight if needed. If your trip to the loo will inevitably expose you to some light, try to keep your eyes partially closed to minimize the impact. The less stimulation your brain receives, the easier it will be to drift back to sleep.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Many evenings during the week, you’ll find our family playing basketball in the driveway — parents vs. kids.

Something I started to notice earlier this year, as I went head-to-head against my 14-year-old son Gus, was that while he was becoming more explosive with his athletic moves, I had gotten significantly less springy.

While he could turn on a dime to make a quick cut to the basket and effortlessly jump for a rebound, I found myself relying on my larger body to slowly muscle into position for a shot.

I was definitely still a lot stronger than Gus — I just couldn’t turn that strength into force as quickly as he could. It felt like I had lost the gear for it.

We talk a lot about strength and muscle gain here on AoM. If you’re looking to get bigger and stronger, you’ll find plenty of articles on those topics.

But an area of fitness that we’ve overlooked, but I’m now starting to appreciate more and more as I move into middle age, is muscle power.

What I was experiencing in my basketball match-ups against Gus was a diminishment in this capacity.

Researchers have given the age-related loss of muscle power a name: powerpenia. And growing research shows that it’s a key predictor of whether you’ll be able to pick up your grandkid, climb a flight of stairs, or hoist your keister off the toilet when you’re 70.

Here’s what you need to know about powerpenia — and how to resist it.

The Muscle Decline Trifecta: Sarcopenia, Dynapenia, and Powerpenia

You’ve likely heard of sarcopenia — the loss of muscle mass with age. It typically begins around age 40 and accelerates after age 60. Muscle mass typically declines by .5-1% per year after 40. Sarcopenia leads to frailty in old age, which makes it hard for old people to get out of chairs, let alone get up from the floor if they fall down.

Then there’s dynapenia — the loss of muscle strength. Sarcopenia contributes to dynapenia, but there are also other things going on that lead to age-related declines in muscle strength. Mostly it comes down to our neuro-muscular system becoming less efficient at activating our muscles. Muscle strength declines along a similar trajectory as muscle mass, with a loss of 0.5–1% per year after age 40.

Both sarcopenia and dynapenia can be mitigated and even reversed with regular strength training, which is why we’re big fans of weightlifting.

In 2024, researchers introduced a third area of concern: powerpenia — the loss of muscle power.

Muscle power is the ability to display strength quickly; it’s explosiveness. Examples of muscle power in action include jumping for a rebound, sprinting, and punching. But muscle power doesn’t just come in handy in sports. Muscle power is also what lets you:

• Sprint to catch your kid running into the street
• Jump out of the way of an object about to hit you
• Lift something quickly
• Bound up stairs two at a time
• Catch yourself during a fall

Powerpenia may be the new age-related muscle concern on the block, but it seems to be the most influential factor in the maintenance of our physical vitality. In fact, a recent study found that power — not strength — is the best predictor of whether older people are able to successfully navigate the activities of daily living.

The interesting thing about muscle power is that it actually drops faster than muscle size and strength — as much as 2–4% per year after 40. That means by your 60s or 70s, you might still look pretty solid and even test decently on a strength test, but you’ve lost the explosiveness needed to stay agile and independent.

Why the rapid decline? Three big reasons:

First, there’s the loss of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Fast-twitch fibers are responsible for generating quick bursts of strength and speed, and they naturally atrophy faster than slow-twitch fibers as we age and don’t call upon them.

Second, there are the changes in our tendons due to inactivity. If you don’t regularly do activities that require you to display strength quickly, your tendons become stiff and less efficient at storing and releasing energy, making explosive movements harder to perform. The degradation of tendon health from disuse explains why a lot of middle-aged guys injure themselves when they decide to play pick-up basketball for the first time in a decade. It’s why I got a bad case of hamstring tendonitis a few years ago when I decided to do a sprint workout after years of not sprinting.

Finally, as we age and don’t call upon our fast-twitch muscles for explosive activity, our brain and nervous system become less efficient at telling our muscles to contract quickly.

How to Fight Back Against Powerpenia

After my lackluster performance in basketball games against Gus and after reading the research on powerpenia, I decided I needed to do something to counteract the decline of muscle power that comes with middle age.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to do.

Here are some things I’ve started to incorporate into my physical training to fend off powerpenia:

Plyometrics

Plyometric exercises develop explosive power by training your muscles and nervous system to react quickly.

You don’t have to devote an entire workout to plyos. You can add one or two plyometric exercises to your regular strength-training routines. Here’s what I’m doing:

Before my first lower-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercises:

• Power Skipping. Perform a regular skip, but jump and lift your knee as high as you can. I do this for 15 yards, three times.
• Box Jumps. Stand in front of a box or other suitable platform. Try to find a box that’s at least 18″ off the ground. Jump onto the box. To avoid injury, step rather than jump down from the box. Do three sets of five jumps.

Before my second lower-body workout of the week, I do the following plyos:

• Broad Jumps. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, swing your arms back, bend your knees, and then explosively jump forward as far as possible, using your arms to help propel you. Land softly with your knees slightly bent to absorb the impact and maintain balance. Do three sets of five jumps.
• Pogo Hops. Stand with your feet together and begin jumping straight up as high as you can. When you land, begin the next jump as quickly as possible. Do three sets of ten hops.

Before my first upper-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercise:

• Plyometric Push-up. Assume a normal push-up position. Lower yourself to the floor. With explosive force, push off the floor with enough force that your hands leave the ground. Do three sets of five push-ups.

Before my second upper-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercise:

• Overhead Medicine Ball Slam. Raise the medicine ball overhead and slam it down as hard as you can. Do three sets of ten slams.

As I continue with these plyos, I’ll probably rotate some of them out and substitute some of the plyometric exercises we’ve written about here into my routine.  

Hill Sprints

Hill sprints are one of the most potent weapons against power loss. They engage fast-twitch fibers better than flat-surface sprints while also reducing impact on your muscles and tendons, thus reducing the likelihood of injuries. Besides training for power, hill sprints are a great HIIT exercise.

Find a 20–30-yard hill. After a warm-up, do 4–6 sprints up the hill at 80–90% effort. Walk down slowly to recover. Rest 1–2 minutes between sprints. You just need to do this once a week.

For more tips on doing safe and effective sprints in general, read our Grown-Up’s Guide to Sprinting.

If you’re looking for another powerpenia-fighting cardio/HIIT exercise, jump roping is a great one. We’ve got a whole guide to that, too.

If it’s been a long time since you did the kind of explosive exercises outlined above, you may be concerned that trying them will get you injured. Start slowly and gently, to be sure. Doing things like stepping down from the box after your box jumps and sprinting uphill will help lessen the risk of injuries. And you can do things like broad jumps and hill sprints on softer surfaces like grass.

But you do need to steadily ease into these movements to avoid a kind of catch-22: avoid plyometric exercises out of fear of injury, and you actually increase the risk of injury when life suddenly demands an explosive movement.

The only way to safely rebuild this capacity is to train it — gradually and consistently. And once you have it back, don’t stop. Keep training these movements into old age, until the day you’re truly no longer capable of doing them.

Here’s to Powerful Aging

I’ve been doing these power exercises for about a month now, and I’m already noticing a difference.

I’m still not as explosive as my teenage son, but I can better shift myself into that gear when we face off on the driveway court.

And knowing that training for power will keep me strong and capable as I age — not just in the game, but in life — is the real win.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

The bench press can kill you. It’s the one lift where the barbell is directly above your throat and the vital organs in your upper body, and there’s pretty much no way to bail out if you fail the lift. 

Because the bench press can potentially kill you, you want to take extra precautions to ensure your safety during the lift. One of those precautions is using a spotter. 

The problem with using a spotter on the bench press is that pretty much everyone does it wrong. Amateur and well-meaning spotters are so focused on making sure the barbell doesn’t kill the lifter, that they get in the way of the lifter performing the lift correctly. The typical gym-bro bench spotter will distractingly hover over the lifter’s head and place their hands close to the bar so that they’re ready to assist the moment they see the lifter seem to struggle. Worse, they’ll touch the bar while the lifter is struggling to push it upwards. That just messes up the bar path, and in assuming some of the effort of the exercise, deprives the lifter of the benefit of completing what could have been a successful, albeit grindy lift.

You’re spotting well on the bench press if you’re mostly out of sight. You should only touch the barbell to assist the lifter if you see the barbell going down (when it should be going up) or if the lifter asks for help. 

Even when using a spotter, I’d recommend taking some of the same precautions that you would when safely bench pressing without a spotter. Specifically, NOT putting collars on the barbell. If for some reason you as the spotter aren’t able to help the lifter get the barbell back up into the J-hooks, you’ll be able to help him tip the barbell to one side or the other to let the weights slide off.

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

You know that feeling.

You hit a bunch of reps on some bicep curls and then crank out some tricep extensions.

You can feel your arms swell and your veins pop. Your skin feels tight over your bulging muscles. Your t-shirt sleeves look like they might burst at the seams.

For a brief, glorious moment, you kinda look like Steve Rogers after he got the Super Soldier Serum.

You’ve just experienced a solid “pump.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger famously described the pump as “the greatest feeling you can get in a gym” and said the sensation was just as satisfying as sexual ecstasy.

I might not go that far in describing the pleasure of a good pump, but there’s no denying the psychological boost that comes from seeing instant visual evidence of your hard work.

A lot of gym bros love the look and feel of a pump so much that they’ll judge the success of a workout based solely on the pump it produced. They’ll then begin to “chase the pump” from workout to workout so they can feel like Steve Rogers several times a week.

But does chasing the pump actually build muscle, or is it just a fleeting moment of vanity that contributes nothing to long-term gains?

Let’s take a look at the research.

What Actually Happens During the Pump

The pump is a temporary swelling of the muscles that comes from lifting moderately heavy weight at high reps. The scientific name for the pump is “transient hypertrophy.”

While the pump is often associated with the biceps, you can get a pump in other muscles as well, including the chest, delts, and quads.

When performing multiple reps of an exercise like the dumbbell curl, the repeated muscle contractions compress your veins — the blood vessels responsible for carrying blood away from your muscles. At the same time, your arteries, which deliver oxygen-rich blood to your muscles, continue pumping in an increasing supply. Blood keeps flowing in while the outflow is restricted.

This imbalance creates a traffic jam within the muscle, leading to a buildup of blood. As pressure rises, plasma is forced out of the blood vessels and into the spaces between muscle fibers, creating the tight, swollen, glorious experience known as the pump.

The Fleeting Glory of Pumped Muscles

Remember the scientific name of the pump? Transient hypertrophy.

The pump might make you look jacked in the gym mirror, but its glory is temporary.

When you experience a pump, your actual muscle fibers aren’t growing bigger at that moment. Muscle growth comes while you’re recovering from your workout. It’s more like your muscles are water balloons that are being filled with extra fluid. Eventually, those fluid-filled muscle balloons shrink back to their normal size. Blood flow returns to normal, plasma gets reabsorbed, and your muscles revert to their regular size.

While you can have a degree of muscle swelling 48-72 hours after a workout (usually caused by inflammation in the muscles), the dramatic pump you see immediately after training fades within hours.

You’ve probably experienced this yourself. You crush an arm workout, get an amazing pump, and flex your biceps for your wife to show her your bicep vein. But by the time you’ve showered and gotten dressed again, the pump has disappeared.

The superhero has returned to his civilian identity. Bummer.

Does the Pump Help With Long-Term Muscle Growth?

While the pump is temporary, some bodybuilder bros argue that it does indeed contribute to actual long-term muscle growth.

A few studies have found a correlation between getting a pump and muscle growth.

A study that put previously untrained men through a six-week program involving leg extension exercises showed that those who experienced greater initial muscle swelling (pump) after their first session showed better hypertrophy gains by the end of the program.

Another study found a positive correlation between immediate post-workout pump in the lower leg muscles and long-term hypertrophy in those same muscles.

However, these studies don’t definitively prove that the pump directly causes muscle growth. The relationship could be correlational, or other factors might be at play.

It’s Mechanical Tension, Not the Pump

While we don’t know if the pump plays a role in long-term muscle building, we do know for sure what dynamic does: mechanical tension.

Mechanical tension refers to the stress placed on muscle fibers during resistance training. You achieve mechanical tension when you train a muscle close to failure. This adaptation process is what leads to real, lasting muscle growth.

While chasing the pump might feel good, the key to long-term muscle- and strength-building is choosing and consistently executing a training program that progressively overloads your muscles and causes mechanical tension in the muscle.

A Quick Upper-Body Pump Workout

That being said, there are times when training just to get a pump makes sense. Maybe you want to look jacked before a date or before a photoshoot.

If that’s the case, here’s a quick pump workout that’s aimed at maximizing blood flow and will get your upper body looking (temporarily) swole. You use light weight at high reps with minimal rest between sets for this; there’s no need to push yourself to failure.

• Push-ups: 3×15
• Chin-ups: 3×5
• Dumbbell bicep curls: 3×20
• Cable-rope tricep press-downs: 3×20

Again, keep the weight light. You shouldn’t feel sore and destroyed after this. You should just have a nice, solid pump.

Finding Balance in the Iron Game

The iron teaches us many lessons if we’re willing to learn; one is about balancing immediate gratification with long-term vision.

The pump feels great. It provides instant visual feedback and can be motivating when progress seems slow. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating those moments when your muscles are temporarily full and defined.

But true progress in the iron game comes from consistency, progressive overload, and smart training principles. It’s all about long obedience in the same direction. Let the pump be a byproduct of your training, not its purpose. But enjoy that pump when you get it!

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

If you were a kid in the 1950s and you got socked during a playground fight, chances are the remedy for your ensuing black eye would involve a nice T-bone steak. Before ice packs were widely available, chilled meat was the go-to household remedy for treating a black eye because it offered a way to cool the area and decrease swelling without applying raw ice. Nowadays, we’ve got more tools and a bit more knowledge at our disposal when it comes to the treatment of shiners.

Black eyes happen when there is trauma to the area. The color comes from bleeding that occurs under the skin near the eye. In most cases, black eyes aren’t serious. But, they can signal a more significant injury. If you have double vision, blood showing in the white part of your eyeball, vomiting, or dizziness, you should see a doctor right away. Black eyes can be signs of more severe injuries, like skull fractures. But, for commonplace black eyes, here’s what to do to get them healed up as quickly as possible.

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Flu and cold cases are at all-time highs this year. I got the flu two years ago. Never felt sicker in my life. It was awful.

Kate got it too, and felt nigh near to death’s door at times, but she seemed to recover faster than I did and wasn’t moaning and groaning as much as I was. She was in bed for a couple days and then was back to work. Meanwhile, I was holed up in our bonus room upstairs for a week, alternating between Tylenol and Advil to manage the fever and body aches.

Kate has always teased me about being overdramatic about my symptoms whenever I get sick.

But, truth be told, I don’t think I’m exaggerating. I genuinely feel damned awful when I come down with something, and all I want to do is moan and lay in the “sick hole” upstairs for days.

Other couples have noticed a discrepancy between how men and women experience sickness — with men seeming to have more severe symptoms while women can power through the sniffles without missing a beat. So much so that we’ve named how men experience sickness as the “man cold” or the “man flu.”

But is the man cold actually a thing?

Do Men Get Sicker Than Women?

Many people have noticed that guys seem to feel sicker and feel sicker longer than women do when they get the flu or cold. And there are clinical studies that bear these observations out.

According to one study about the differences between men and women when they get the flu, women report more flu symptoms than men, meaning that while a guy might just have a fever and body aches when he gets sick, a woman might have both those symptoms plus cough, headache, runny nose, etc. But men are two times more likely to be hospitalized when they get the flu, which suggests that of the symptoms they do experience, they experience them more severely.

You saw this pattern with COVID-19 during the pandemic. Around the world, severe cases of COVID were predominantly among men, with men’s mortality rates 1.6 times higher than women’s. (It’s worth noting that some of this difference may be due to men generally having poorer health and being more likely to delay seeking medical care when COVID symptoms worsened.)

Surveys have suggested that men take about 1.5-1.7 days longer to recover from the flu than women. But other studies have shown that men recover faster from the flu than women. 

So, based on some studies, men do experience more severe symptoms, for longer. Man flu/cold might be a thing. 

But why would there be sex differences between how men and women experience sickness?

Blame the Man Cold on Testosterone and (Low) Estrogen

It all comes down to sex hormones. At least, that’s what the research suggests.

Testosterone, which men typically have 10-20X more of than women, can be a double-edged sword. While it increases muscle mass and puts hair on your chest, it also suppresses inflammatory cytokines like IL-6, potentially prolonging recovery from the flu by delaying viral clearance.

Testosterone also gives men a larger hypothalamus region, which, among other things, regulates body temperature. Scientists theorize that this enlarged hypothalamus could explain why men often report higher fevers during infections. And because fever drives some of the unpleasant symptoms of the flu or a cold, like chills and body aches, more severe fevers mean a more severe sickness.

Estrogen also plays a role in immune function. It seems to boost it. While men have estrogen, they don’t have anywhere near the same amount as women. Women’s elevated estrogen levels seem to enhance antiviral responses by boosting interferon-γ production, which slows down viral replication in illnesses like the flu. The retardation of viral replication can take the edge off of symptoms in women. What’s interesting is that this female hormonal advantage diminishes after menopause, when estrogen levels go down in women. Postmenopausal women have an immune response that aligns more closely with men’s.

Other studies show that women have additional immunity advantages over men, like stronger innate (first-line defense) and adaptive (targeted) immune responses. This can help clear infections faster.

So, men’s high testosterone makes them more prone to getting sicker longer, while elevated estrogen in women helps blunt the severity of symptoms and helps them recover faster.

Scientists hypothesize that these hormonal differences between men and women are evolutionary in origin and represent a “reproduction-immunity trade-off.” Females evolved to have less testosterone but stronger immunity to protect offspring during pregnancy and breastfeeding; men evolved to have more testosterone, giving them weaker immunity to disease but greater strength and drive for the tasks of hunting and fighting.

Is Man Flu Just in Your Head?

While many scientists think that man flu is real and biologically rooted, others argue it’s psychosomatic. In other words, man flu is all in your head, man.

A study from the University of Glasgow suggests that men are less in touch with their biofeedback signals (which helps in understanding how one’s body feels), which could result in reporting that their symptoms are more severe than they truly are.

Another study suggests that men and women objectively experience the same severity and duration of flu and cold symptoms, but men subjectively rate some of them as more severe and longer-lasting. The study examined how the sexes experienced the common cold and found that while men and women experienced physical symptoms (like nose and ear issues) similarly, men reported emotion-based symptoms, such as mood changes and psychological distress, as being more severe. The researchers of this study concluded that the man cold is just in dudes’ heads.

Why would men subjectively experience more severe cold symptoms? Some researchers theorize that because men are conditioned to be stoic, tough, and productive, and to power through things, when they do experience a sickness, they see it as an opportunity to take a break from these expectations; they amplify the severity of their symptoms to elicit sympathy, get taken care of for once, and justify taking off work.

I’m not sure I buy that, but that’s the argument.

Perhaps it’s the case that, since women historically were responsible for the lion’s share of childcare, which creates urgent obligations (kids still need to be fed and diapered even when their parents are sick), it’s more ingrained in women to bounce back and make sure the family is tended to. Is that difference rooted in evolutionary biology, cultural expectations, or a mixture of both? There’s no conclusive evidence to know.

How to Treat the Man Flu/Cold

Personally, I think the man flu/cold is a thing — an actual biological phenomenon. It’s been interesting to watch how my son Gus’ experience of sickness has changed as he’s moved from boyhood to teenagehood. As a boy, he’d get sick and be down for a day or two. Now that he’s 14, and has testosterone coursing through his veins, he experiences sickness like I do. He feels like garbage, and he’s out for longer. He just wants to go up to the bonus room and be by himself to wallow and moan and groan. Whenever either of us gets a bad cold or flu, we just tell the family, “Well, I’m off to the sick hole. See you when I feel better.”

You treat the man version of the cold or flu just as you would its female counterpart; do the stuff your mom told you to do when you were a kid:

• Drink plenty of fluids. Water is best, but you gotta get some ginger ale in there. It’s a miracle elixir.
• Keep your eating light. Soups and saltine crackers are clutch.
• Avoid caffeinated drinks.
• Get plenty of sleep and rest.
• Alternate between Tylenol and Advil to manage pain and fever.
• Watch The Price is Right and The Young and the Restless.

Most colds and flu bouts take about 4-7 days to clear. You could experience lingering fatigue for up to two weeks.

When you feel the first symptoms of sickness, take an at-home test to see if you’ve got the flu, cold, or COVID. If it’s the flu, get a prescription for xofluza. Taking it within 48 hours of your first flu symptoms can reduce their severity and duration.

While whether the man flu is an actual physiological thing or just in guys’ heads is up for debate, doctors all agree that we shouldn’t label men as whiny when they get sick because it could delay men getting the care they need to get better, which could result in worse outcomes — including death. Be sure to go see a doctor if:

• Your fever reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit or higher or is above 100 for over three days.
• You have difficulty breathing or chest pain.
• Your symptoms get worse after an initial improvement.
• Your symptoms last longer than three weeks without improvement.

Trying to tough out a sickness and continue your normal routine isn’t wise; it will just prolong the sickness and delay your recovery. In keeping your sickness lingering on for longer, you’ll actually lose more productivity in the long run than just completely taking time off and letting yourself heal up. It’s in your best interest, and in the best interest of your family, who wants to see you bounce back as quickly as possible, to hit your rest and recovery hard. At the same time, your household may be hurting without your help, so don’t wallow unnecessarily, and once you’re ready, get back in the saddle.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

For several decades, people’s reported sleep quality has declined. This, despite the fact that specially optimized sheets, mattresses, and sleep trackers have emerged during that time, and despite the fact that the amount of time people are sleeping hasn’t decreased for over fifty years.

In other words, people aren’t sleeping less than they used to, but are less happy about their sleep than ever before.

My guest would say that to improve our experience of sleep, we’d be better off looking past the reams of modern advice out there and back in time — way, way back in time.

Today on the show, Dr. Merijn van de Laar, a recovering insomniac, sleep therapist, and the author of How to Sleep Like a Caveman: Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night’s Rest, will tell us how learning about our prehistoric ancestors’ sleep can help us relax about our own. He explains that the behaviors we think of as sleep problems are actually normal, natural, and even adaptive. We talk about why hunter-gatherers actually sleep less than we think we need to, how their natural wake periods during the night might explain our own sleep patterns, the methods they use to get better sleep, and why our modern efforts to optimize sleep could be making it worse. Merijn shares when it’s okay to use a smartphone before bed, the myth that you have to get eight hours of sleep a night, how to intentionally use sleep deprivation to improve your sleep, and more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.