10 Big Ideas to Optimize Your Movement (An 80/20 Guide To Becoming an Energized Perpetual Motion Machine)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimize Mastery series. Today, Module six, Fundamental two, movement. We're going to help you optimize how you move your body. We started with eating. Today, it's all about moving. The primary intention is to help you become an energized perpetual motion machine such that you can experience energized longevity. We've talked about energized tranquility a lot and we'll talk about that today as well. But energized longevity, you have the most radiant energy right now than you've ever had in your life. And we're going to help you extend many, many more of those moments, create more longevity. As always, we've got 10 big ideas. Let's take a quick look and then we will jump in. First big idea is wild cavemen in a zoo in space. We're going to talk about what we used to do, how much we used to move relative to how much we move. Today. Estimates are we moved 10 times more in a day. We're going to talk about when we were wild cavemen. We were amazing. We were fit, we were healthy. Now it's more like we're in a zoo in space. We're going to bring some NASA research to play and talk about what happens to zoo animals and some parallels with us. Then the second idea is we're going to make a big distinction that Katie Bowman offers. A lot of teachers echo, but when we think about moving our bodies, we usually think about exercise. Well, we want to draw a circle. That's movement. That's a big circle. And then draw exercise right inside that circle. You and realize that movement transcends and includes exercise. This is not called exercise. It's not eat, exercise, sleep, et cetera. It's eat, move, sleep, et cetera. So movement transcends and includes exercise because you can be active and sedentary. You can hit the gym and then not move the rest of your day. Not a winning equation. Movement, exercise. Then we have time released magic pills. Time. Time released magic pills. Exercise is like taking a little bit of Ritalin, a little bit of Prozac. We're going to talk about the power of exercise. Then we're going to talk about the power of moving your body by walking. So I'm going to suggest you count your steps and you take a walk. That is our fourth idea. We're also going to talk about philosophers and some great thinkers who have solved a lot of Life's and the world's biggest challenges while walking Darwin, Immanuel Kant, some other great individuals. Then the fifth idea is you as that perpetual motion machine. We're going to talk about OTMs, opportunities to move, finding little opportunities in your day to move the thousand second exercise and micro movements. Then the sixth idea is the fact that movement, exercise, this is a well being tool more than a weight loss tool. A lot of people think that exercise is how you lose weight. And that's because in part we've been influenced by the junk science we talked about in eating. That $12 billion the junk food industry spends on junk science has convinced us that it's an energy balance issue. You just need to move more. Our food's not that bad for you. You just need to burn more calories. Not really. First you need to get your weight right by optimizing your nutrition. Then you use your exercise as a well being tool, not a weight loss tool. That's a big idea. The seventh idea is Aristotle's yoga plus hormesis and chronic cardio equals chronic stress. We're going to talk about Aristotle's virtuous mean. Right? You can have a vice of deficiency or a vice of excess. You can work out too little or too much. Many of us who are into optimizing go a little bit too far this way. But we want to see where you are. Be flexible, have that yogic mentality, if you will. That's Aristotle's yoga. We'll have fun with that. The eighth idea is the voices in your head and giving yourself a gift. We're going to talk about P90X. Founder and creator Tony Horton wrote a great book and he talks about the voices in his head. One of the most fit guys on the planet. Most days doesn't feel like working out. That's fine. He has the ultimate voice of consistency that gets him to do it. He says that's about as exciting, that voice as a wet dish rag. Right? He's not always rah, rah, rah, but he does it. We want to honor that voice in our head and then give ourselves the gift of energized longevity. Right. Versus thinking that our exercise is a choreography, gift versus chore. The ninth idea, we're going to create time to move our bodies and we're going to make some trades and we're going to stack it. I'll share with you the workout I did this morning where I stacked time with the kids, time outside moving my body and giving Alexandra time. By training with them, I chased them around our trail while they rode their bike. I brought my jump rope. Awesome workout. Where I was able to do a lot in one period of time. We're going to talk about that. Making time. Then the 10th idea is make it all a game. Have fun with it. One of the researchers we're going to talk about is Joan Vernikos, who was the head of life sciences at NASA, responsible for making sure the astronauts who went to the moon came back healthy. And then she studied them. We'll talk about what she learned, but she has a great idea. She says, look, if you like rowing, make it fun. Pick your favorite place you'd like to travel to on the planet, maybe Fiji. Then map out how far it is from where you are to Fiji and go row that distance over an aggregated period of time. Make it a game. I'll talk about my 1:10, 100, 1000, 10,000 game that I play every day and challenge you to create your own game. Then the 11th idea is it's time to Spartan up To become a certified optimized coach. You need to do a Spartan race with us. Or the equivalent of we're actually going to have a little break between the 10th idea and the 11th, and we're going to play a video that our film genius Ben created for us, capturing our first optimized coach class, doing the Spartan race, so you can feel the effervescent joy. The collective effervescence is how Kelly McGonigal puts it in her great book, the joy of Movement, which, by the way, is the book to read. You want to understand the power of the science of moving your body, the joy of movement. Kelly McGonigal, she talks about collective effervescence. When a group of people engages in physical movement together, magic happens. You're going to watch that video and feel it. I have goosebumps right now sharing that, imagining that time we had together. And we're also going to talk about how to get ready for the Spartan race and what your number one obstacle is to successfully completing. And I'll tell you right now what it is. It's the story you have in your head that you can't do it with. We need to get you to the starting line, and then you're going to know at the finish line how many other things you didn't give a shot at doing. And we're going to go make ourselves stronger and use those obstacles. Ohms style, et cetera. That's the overview. Let's jump in. All right, so our first big idea is Wild cavemen in a zoo in space. And then we're going to talk about moving your DNA. As you might have noticed, I have busted out my little ipod which I use for my aura scores. We visited this in eating. We looked at our resting heart rate and heart rate variability. We looked at mine and I shared what happened when I gave myself the night off. Remember rule number three of nutrition is what? Rule number one is don't drink your sugar. Rule number two is what? Throw away your factory food. Rule number three, give yourself the night off. We need to have an eating sunset, digital sunset last input tech and then eating sunset last input for food. Right? Then what happens? Well, we reduce our risk of getting cancer or having a recurrence of cancer. We help ourselves with weight loss, with energy and with heart rate variability. So last night I hit the four hour window. So we'll start with the heart rate variability and resting heart rate. Then I'll share some stats on the movement. But first, wild cavemen. Do you know how much they moved in a given day? They moved like it was their full time job, up to eight hours a day, these wild cavemen. And guess what? That was you and me. John Ratey, Harvard psychiatrist, wrote a book called Go Wild, right? He talks about the fact that, look, in our essence, we are wild animals who have been domesticated, right? We're now sitting here almost like we're living in our own artificial zoo, which we'll talk about what happens when you put an animal in a zoo, right? Things change. We'll actually go straight there. You put in a wild whale in, into a little pool. Think of an orca whale, you know what happens? Its dorsal fin falls down, it just flops. It stops using it and doesn't work anymore. Guess what? We have the same issue. So these wild cavemen moved up to eight hours a day, right? He talks about that. Katie Bowman talks about it in Move youe DNA, another great book. Kelly McGonigal talks about this in the context of modern hunter gatherers who move one to two hours, up to two hours basically of moderate to vigorous activity. Moderate to vigorous activity more than walking, which they then also do for hours a day. Right now that's 120 minutes. 100 to 120 minutes or so of moderate to vigorous activity. Your heart rate's getting up, you're feeling it, right? Not crazy, chronic red zone level, but Moderate to vigorous. 100 to 120 minutes. You know what the average American moves in terms of moderate to vigorous intensity? What would you guess per day? 10 minutes. 10 minutes. The old wild caveman moves moderately to vigorously. 10 times more per day. So they move more in one day than we do in 10 days. Right. And that's only the moderate to vigorous. Then when you look at how sedentary we are, which we'll talk about a lot, you're going to have even more problems. So think about that. Think about the fact that they moved five to ten miles a day. And then if you use Aura or some other fitness tracker, go look at your data. Go look and see how much you move. Now, I kind of sort of look at my activity on a daily basis, but as I was prepping for this, I looked more closely. Right, let's see how I'm doing versus the wild caveman. First of all, I hit the resting heart rate and heart rate variability numbers I love by eating early 40. Resting heart rate average. I'm sorry, lowest 75. Heart rate variability average. Awesome. Stoked about that. 90 readiness. I'll take it then. Yesterday I moved. Thank you, Aura. Seven minutes high. So it's kind of a mellow day for me in terms of working out hard, but 2 hours and 21 minutes of moderate activity. So boom, wild man high five. We hit the two hour mark on moderate to vigorous. And then I moved, surprisingly, another seven hours of low movement. And I think that's mostly because of what we'll talk about with the thousand. Second thing, I'm not sedentary for long stretches of time. In fact, the number was 2 hours and 56 minutes of inactivity. So wild cavemen, where are they? In a zoo? We talked about that orca losing its dorsal fingers mobility. Right? Strength in that fin because it's not using it often. Imagine you losing and getting atrophied vis a vis where you were as a wild caveman. And then we moved to NASA. We moved to space. So, Joan Vernikos, health scientist at NASA, when we landed the first man on the moon, discovered some fascinating stuff. You launch an astronaut into space, the moment they leave gravitational pull, their bodies start changing dramatically and quickly. Within days and weeks, they age the equivalent of years and decades. Their bone density goes down, their aerobic capacity shrinks. Right? Their blood plasma changes. Literally. They show signs of aging in weeks. Days and weeks and months that look like years and decades. Check out our notes on sitting kills moving heels for that. Now she tells us that when we leave gravitational pull. As an astronaut, that is very similar to being sedentary on planet Earth. If all you do is sit down and then you don't move all day long, you experience the same diminution in health and accelerated aging as that astronaut. And we know this from bed rest studies and other studies, Right? So this is why many people say sedentariness is the new smoking right now. Is that actually precisely accurate? Probably not, but it has a lot of parallels and we want to be mindful of that. And we'll talk about how to make sure that you are not active and sedentary soon. For now, we'll go to the final point here, which is move your DNA. You have trillions and trillions and trillions of cells, and estimates range from 15 to 70 million. Katie Bowman wrote a whole book on this called Move youe DNA. She tells us nearly every single one of those cells is programmed to run on your movement. So if you're not moving, it's as if you're telling yourself to die versus to live. To nourish your cells, to literally feed them with the oxygen they need and to help them remove the waste within them. And you need to move your body. You need to move your DNA. Remember the wild caveman in a zoo in space as we go get our energized longevity on. Hey, this is Brian again. I hope you enjoyed that overview of a Mastery Series session and got some wisdom out of it you can apply to your life today. What was it again? You can learn more about our Optimize Coach program at Optimize Me Coach. And here's a fun little video we put together featuring some of our Optymyz Coach graduates describing what they got out of our program and why they loved it so much. You can also check out hundreds of other testimonials at Optimize Me Coach. Have an awesome day and let's do this.