JJ Virgin says exercise is the most powerful way to extend your life. An Austrian study found that walking downhill works your muscles just as much as walking up, so brief bursts of activity like climbing stairs or walking a dog uphill count as real exercise.
that when I look at longevity and especially quality of life with longevity, that exercise seems to be the biggest lever that we could pull on it. What are your thoughts?
Yeah, absolutely. And 3 books ago, I wrote The Energy Paradox, where I introduced the concept of exercise snacking— that short bursts of activity actually do extremely good. And it's these, you know, weeding a garden or taking your dog up a hilly slope and down a slope. And there's a really cool study out of Austria. They looked at people who got the opportunity to either ride a cable car up to the top of a mountain and walk down, or walk up to the top of the mountain and ride down. And the study, of course, figured, well, you know, people who ride up and walk down, they're not going to get the benefit that the people who walked up and rode down. Well, turns out it's exactly the same benefit, because what they didn't take into account is when walking down, you're working again, you're breaking against gravity. That's the, that's the exciting news. So hills work really good as an exercise program.
