As a counter-weight to the typical longevity discourse, I’ve been thinking about ageing wild. Less pale, min-maxed, porcelain doll style; more free range, chop-wood-carry-water blue centenarian decathlete. Why? I’m in my mid-thirties, lead an active life, and want to remain in motion well beyond my sixties. The aim is to make graceful the degradation that comes with the natural cycle of life, as well as attempt to continually deepen and expand the attributes that don’t have to decay. So, the question is, “How?” The answer is, “standards”.
Inspired by physical standards and benchmarks—from Dan John, Strongfirst, Movnat and Peter Attia to various military and SpecOps rubrics—and discussion with friends, I’ve come up with the following. It’s designed to promote high quality movement capacity as I age through my thirties to my sixties.
It reflects my personal movement and lifestyle preferences without being too niche or too extensive. It integrates mitigation against scientific mortality markers like body composition, grip strength, fluency to/from/on the ground, and musculoskeletal weakening, alongside activities requiring genuine skill, coordination, power, strength, endurance and resilience.
As a standard, it’s supposed to wrap around my existing life and activities, as part of a larger, movement-rich life, and be amenable to year-round, ad hoc testing performed whilst nasal breathing. Any of my current or future training regimes should not be tilted to game the metrics or optimise performance on the standards; the standard is a diagnostic and compass more than a test.
Here’s what it looks like. Note that these are metrics I’ve explicitly set for myself; feel free to tweak them to your use case or swap out elements for an equivalent benchmark or constraint. Indented below each is a note on what that specific piece is solving for.
- Weight: 85-87kg (10-12% BF)
- Energy / calorific balance, consumption patterns, load accumulation
- Climb: Flash 6Bs
- Pull pattern (strength, endurance), coordination, composure
- Swim: 20min open water, persist, out of depth
- Cold tolerance, composure, swim skill
- Grapple: 10 x 5min rounds, 1min rest, fight to win (control, submit)
- Composure, all over mobility and strength (esp. hips), fight / defence IQ
- Hang: 2min dead hang
- Grip strength, shoulder health, pull strength / endurance proxy
- Handstand: 30sec balance
- Shoulder health, proprioception, coordination
- Sit: 20min seiza sit and breathe
- Ankle / knee / hip health, breath pattern, psych health
- Ruck: 3-5miles, 20-35kg, pace tbc
- Lower limb health / strength endurance, core engine / capacity
- Run: 60sec 400m
- Work capacity, anaerobic capacity, psych drive
- KB snatch: 24kg, reps for 5mins
- Power endurance, hip and shoulder health
- KB TGU: 36kg, reps for 5mins
- Strength endurance, all body movement skill
- Pistol squat: Bodyweight, 3-5 per side
- Lower limb strength and mobility, proportional strength
- Broad jump: 9ft / 2.75m
- Power expression / energy transmission, coordination power-weight ratio
Don’t worry if this looks a tad ambitious. It kinda is. Proficiency on all the above is a high bar—and one I don’t yet meet myself. That’s the point. Nevertheless, it is achievable. Plus, there’s some real specificity here. I grapple, climb, ruck, and have trained with kettlebells for a long time; the standards incorporate that whilst still solving for general movement capacity and longevity constraints.
Remember, this is a personal standard, not a societal mandate. That being said, if you have a similar structure to this that you use, I’d love to hear about it. And if you don’t I encourage you to construct one. Standards versus no standards is a more important distinction than high standards versus low ones. For me, for now, though, I’m heading into 2026 with the intent to lay the foundations that sixty year old me can stand tall on.
Swell & Cut 