Simple Daily Test to Improve Longevity | Jeff Cavaliere & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Longevity Test

00:00You have a post that really humbled me and people are going to laugh. They're going to be like, "I can't believe you can't do that." Well, now I can do it. I'll explain what it is in a moment. But a longevity test. Oh boy. That includes test of balance, strength, and um inner fortitude.

00:15And that's the put your shoes and socks on, standing on one foot, obviously one foot then the other, not sitting down, but doing that in the morning every day. And I'll tell you, if you're training hard, that lower back's going to ache a little bit when you first, you know, first thing in the morning.

00:34This is a very cool test. And I force myself to do it now. And I have to say, a lot of mornings, I'm like, I just want to sit down and put my shoes on, you know, and I got this puppy now and he's grabbing my shoelaces, which makes it even more dynamic.

00:47But in all seriousness, it's it's a very interesting, very simple test. If you could just explain what it is, folks, trust me, you want to do this every single day. So, they call it the old man test. is is gender neutral, though. It could be a woman test.

01:00Everybody is fair game. The

How To Perform The Test

01:02goal here is to simply put your sock and your shoe on the floor on both sides. Lay them down in front of you. Um, untie your shoes. Make them sure they're they're loose enough that you can get them on your foot. Stand on one foot to begin the test.

01:15Lean over, pick up that shoe or pick pick up that sock, put the sock on, pick up that shoe, put it on, tie it, and then put the foot down. Only after you've tied the shoe can you put it down. and then go and do the other side. And it is difficult.

01:28It is very very difficult. It happens to be one of the tests that I do a little bit better than other tests. But um we were joking before I told you that I about twice a year I still get back pain every now and then and mine came from leaning over to put my sock on the other day and my whole back felt like it was going to blow up on me like that.

01:47So there's a lot going on inside the body when you're doing this, right? Why would my back all of a sudden seize up on me when I'm going to pick put on my sock? Because you don't realize the responsibility that those lumbar parispinal muscles have in trying to control even just leaning forward and they're trying to make sure that you're doing it at a pace that's safe for your spine.

02:07So doing this every day is a little mini workout for those muscles. And again, we we I I I think we tend to get so lazy as we get older and complacent and so that once you start sitting down, you're just going to sit down when you put on your socks and shoes.

02:25What's the need to get up and do this every day if I'm comfortable putting it my, you know, doing this sitting down or, wow, this was easier cuz I sat down today. You can't be seeking easy. If you seek easy, you're going to get old a lot faster.

02:40So, this test is testing your balance. It is testing against some of the mini dynamic control from those muscles in the low back. It's is testing your ankle mobility in a way because you're going to get a lot of this going on, the pertabbation through your ankles and your knees and it's testing your hip strength because again once you go on one leg, you're now talking about pelvic control the same way we did before.

03:01So, you have to have good strength there. But it's not uncommon for people to not be able to pass this test. But with practice, like anything else, you're training these muscles to get stronger, and you're training these your your balance, and you're these are all skills that can be learned and improved.

03:18They're all trainable. I actually put a a video out not long ago about um different measures of of longevity, and one of them was that test. Another one was pull-ups. Another one was the number of push-ups you could do. We we could

Testing Your Glute Medius Strength

03:33talk about these after, but the number one was like going back to your glute media strengthening. Can you lay in a side lying plank position with the top leg up about 45°? You could keep it stacked. It's a lot easier to stay in a plank position.

03:47You raise that leg off of the other. Now, it's all relying on that lateral pillar strength of the underside hip, the one closest to the floor. So, one arm down, one or on the on the elbow. Okay. Heels stacked at first. Yeah. At first. Okay.

04:02On your side. So, side plank, not just lying on your side. Side plank. It's not the the uh the the picnic date uh stance. It's uh um you lying on your so side plank and then you're going to raise the top leg up to make a 45° and see if you could hold that even for just 30 seconds and it's difficult.

04:21You'll feel a lot of shaking. You'll feel a lot of of um sagging of that bottom hip because you're you're asking your glute medius on that underside leg to hold you up into that position. So the beauty about that series of tests though is that they're all trainable.

04:37So if it's trainable, it's fixable. You can improve as you have, right? You've you're now much better at at the test. Oh yeah, old man test. Yeah, definitely. Um there are mornings when I want to cross one leg over the other kind of go into like what do they call it that like kind of pseudo crow pose they talk about in yoga like rest the ankle and the other like and sometimes it people are probably laughing at this.

05:01Go try it folks. Some people might do it just right away is very easy. Many people will find this difficult like to the point where like I don't think I can do this but quickly get good at it. Yeah, strength is not even like a determining factor or predictor here either.

05:16You could be very very strong and do incredibly poorly on this test because you're not strong in these areas. Or you could just have bad vestibular balance, right? You could it could be that alone. Once you start to lean forward or look down, you don't have good control.

05:30But there it is testing a variety of things. And if it if you do poorly on it, you can look a little deeper, investigate a little deeper through additional tests to try to find out exactly where your weakness is. But it but it's a good broadspectctrum test to see how how good your your functional balance is.

05:47Yeah. Some people people might wonder how do you work up to it? There's something called Velcro shoes. No, I'm just kidding. The uh or slippers like there it's easier, right? It's going to be quicker. Right. Right. Yeah. I think um it's definitely worth trying and uh I

Practical Tips For Daily Implementation

06:01think identifying these weak points um I think is just so critical and I'm probably going to say this 20 times during today's um recording but for the young guys and gals who are thinking oh like that thing is so easy trust me with time it's the gradual creep of little things that you stop doing.

06:16I'm going to add the side plank uh in cuz I'm I just haven't been doing much planking. Not much isometric stuff. And I'm sure that I've got a weakness somewhere along the chain of muscles that's required to do that properly. Yeah. And what I love about these sorts of small things that support doing the big things for much much longer, hopefully forever, is that they don't have to be done as part of the standard workout.

06:38and they can be incorporated into like you're watching something on Netflix and you just kind of move some furniture out of the way and you just do these at that time which is really cool and important because it's not just about like an additional workout because people are slammed.

06:51They've got so much to do and like how am I supposed to do all this stuff and be with sunlight and this and that but it's it's straightforward. Yeah. Well, that it look I think the thing that you've done better than anybody is practical implementation of the things that are going to benefit people that are not time consuming or overly timeconuming.

07:08They're e easily implemented. A lot of what I focus on is when we're talking about these drills or exercises to do, a lot of them are body weight or a lot of them are done in minimal space because the more elaborate it becomes or the more timeconuming it is or whatever it is, there's just so many reasons for people not to do them and they are going to be viewed as the extra stuff until they become adopted and they realize how much they're helping them.

07:32It's always going to be viewed as the extra stuff originally. So to get someone to buy into the concept, open up the time frame where they can do them. Let them do it during watching Netflix. Let them do it while me while I'm on the floor doing some crunches after I've or done my workout.

07:47Like open up the restrictions so that you're still getting the effect, but you're you're you're minimizing the the uh prescription of it. So it's so demanding people don't want to do it.