The internet is awash with clever posts and videos about “important fitness benchmarks” that everyone “should” achieve to call themselves fit. It’s fun to consider challenges that express full body functional fitness for longevity, but most everything you see is random and unsubstantiated by longevity science or practical analysis of peak performers. Consider most of it clickbait, designed to spark controversy or elicit FOMO.
Besides the randomness of the benchmarks, it’s highly objectionable that there is no age grading to this stuff! A fit, athletic college kid has different standards than someone who’s 50, 60, or 80. It’s instructive to learn that Masters track & field research reveals around a six-percent decline per decade in peak performance. This insight is calculated from the world records in the five-year age divisions from age 30-34 up to 100+. For example, running 400 meters in 60 seconds at age 50 compares to a 63.6 at age 60, and so forth; calculated across every event. Do you want to know what the absolute best longevity benchmark performances are, by far?:
Things that you personally enjoy doing and want to do for the rest of your life!
If your main goal is to be relevant in your adult basketball league or shoot low golf scores, train to be the best you can be in these endeavors. For scientifically validated longevity benchmarks, we need challenges that demand functional muscle strength, cardiovascular endurance, and mobility/flexibility.
Remember, the #1 cause of demise and death in Americans over age 65 is falling and related adverse consequences. For example, become bedridden with a broken hip, lose what little conditioning existed prior, and succumb to a routine illness like pneumonia. We talk about working on balance to prevent falls, but we also have to preserve explosive muscle power with anaerobic exercise. Realize that catching yourself from falling is essentially performing a sudden, single rep max effort with extremely off-balance bodyweight. In another article, we'll present some scientifically validated, age-adjusted fitness challenges that are excellent markers of longevity.