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Good morning. It’s Tuesday, September 16th.

In today’s email:

• Learn: A Vital Sign - Grip Strength

• Try: The Bar Hang

• Watch: The Wild Ones

• In the News: Sam Altman and Your Brain

• Brain Games: Speaking of Your Brain - Kyudoku

Stat of the Day

World record for longest Bar Hang - by Kenta Adachi of Japan, in November 2022. (Guinness Book of World Records)

Learn

A Vital Sign: Grip Strength

One of the first things I do when I get to the gym before a class starts or I pick up a weight, is hang from a bar for about 30 seconds. It’s become one of my little rituals to warm up my body - but it might also be one of the things that helps me live longer.

Why Grip Strength Matters

It’s pretty common knowledge that “grip strength” is a key measure for health.

But it’s not that grip strength is really that special. It’s just that any other measure of strength - chest (bench press), back (lat pulldown), quads (squats) - reflects more of our focus on a specific exercise routine than our overall strength.

Grip strength doesn’t lie. It’s not just about your hands - it’s pretty much impossible to have a strong grip and not also strong forearms, shoulders and back muscles. That’s the reason it’s now become a good proxy for total-body strength, neuromuscular control, and our overall resilience.

A study from The Lancet suggests grip strength really is a biomarker of aging. The results of the study are pretty crazy:

“There can be no doubt that grip strength predicts future all-cause mortality across a range of populations.”

And this one really got me -

“Grip strength is a more powerful predictor of cardiovascular outcomes than systolic blood pressure (the big number).”

It’s true.

And blood pressure matters - a lot. So that means strength is super important.

Researchers also found that low grip strength is associated with a 72% higher risk of dementia and significantly higher risk of death from any cause.

And as Dr. Peter Attia points out, grip strength may literally be the difference between catching yourself in a stumble versus suffering the kind of fall that changes everything in your later years.

Why the Bar Hang?

There are lots of ways to increase your grip - and ideally it’s not sitting on the couch and squeezing a grip strength device while watching football. (But I guess it’s better than sitting watching football and NOT doing that).*

Some of the key exercises for grip strength are deadlifts, pull-ups, and farmer’s carries. 

But the bar hang (also called the dead hang) might be the one you should do most often. It only requires a bar, is something you can do every day, and helps prevent injuries rather than risk them.

• Simple standard: No fancy equipment, just a sturdy bar.

• Binary outcome: You’re either hanging or you’re not.

• Full-body test: Hanging connects grip strength with shoulder stability, spinal decompression, and core control.

• Time-based metric: Easy to track progress.

It’s rare to find a single exercise that works as both assessment and intervention, but the bar hang does both.

Beyond Grip: Other Benefits of Hanging

The best part about the bar hang is that there are ton of other benefits beyond just grip strength, including:

• Spinal decompression: We sit all day and our spine compresses together as gravity crunches us down to earth. The hang gently creates more space between our vertebrae, easing compression from all our sitting or even from a heavy workout of squats or presses.
  

• Posture reset: Similarly, most of us have a rounded back from sitting all day in front of a screen. By pulling shoulders back and down, hangs counteract this forward slump and actually improves our posture.
  

• Shoulder mobility: I hear from so many readers about shoulder pain and restricted mobility as we get older. The thought of throwing overhand or serving a tennis ball isn’t in the cards anymore. Dead hangs stretch and strengthen lats, traps, and rotator cuff stabilizers - muscles critical for increasing our range of motion and helping us actually use our shoulders pain-free.
  

• Core stability: When we use the right form during a hang, we are forced to engage our core - the deep abdominal muscles - supporting our spinal alignment. This is just as essential as doing those planks.

If we spend most of the day sitting - what’s 30 seconds to help give ourselves a “reset” - oh, and live longer??

* Another way to measure the minimum strength number - if you have a grip strength measurement tool (something all docs should start using): the minimum grip strength should be at least 57 pounds for men and 35 pounds for women.

Try

The Bar Hang

The key - like any exercise - is to make sure you’re doing it the right way with good form.

1. Find your bar. A pull-up bar, sturdy playground set (sometimes I do it on the swings with my kids), or gym rig. Ideally you want the bar high enough so that you can hang without bending your knees.

2. Grip the bar. Hands just slightly wider than shoulder width. Overhand grip is the standard (palms facing away from you).

3. Set your shoulders. Pull them slightly down and back - don’t let them shrug up to your ears.

4. Engage your core. Think about pulling your belly button in toward your spine. At the same time look forward, not up at the bar.

5. Hang. No swinging, no kipping. Just try to stay still.

6. Breathe. Smooth, steady breaths calm your nervous system and keep you from fatiguing too quickly.

Pro Tips:

• If you can’t get your feet off the ground yet, loop a resistance band under your feet for assistance.

• Use chalk or gloves if your hands slip.

Success: How Do You Measure Up?

What’s “good enough”? Depends on your age, gender, and goals. A rough benchmark from Attia and others:

• Men (40s): Aim for 2 minutes

• Women (40s): Aim for 90 seconds

• Adjustment: Subtract ~10 seconds for each decade past 40 (or don’t)

Don’t stress if you’re nowhere near these numbers right now!

If you can hang for those 2 minutes, then chances are your upper body, posture, and core are all working as they should.

And if you can’t? Well you can’t…yet. That just means you’ve found a daily practice that will make a huge difference in your health, with just a bar and a few seconds of stillness.

Most of us can’t hang more than 15-20 seconds on our first try. But making it a consistent habit (i.e., daily) you’ll be absolutely amazed at your progress in just a couple months.

So here’s your challenge: next time you pass a pull-up bar, don’t just walk by. Grab it, hang, and see where you are today. Start with 10-20 seconds, and add time in small increments.

Just Remember: The real win isn’t chasing a number. It’s the ability to trust your grip when life throws you off balance. It’s standing taller after hours at a desk. It’s knowing your body can still connect strength from fingertips to core to spine.

Pro Tip: Start tracking this daily Quick Win in the Thrive25 Personal Longevity Advisor. It’s these micro-habits that have the biggest impact on our health right now and for the next 25+ years.

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Watch

The Wild Ones

My kids became obsessed with this show. Three guys go all over the world trying to film endangered animals - like the 150 Malayan Tigers, 75 Javan Rhinos and 370 North Atlantic Right Whales left in the world.

The goal is to find ways to film these animals in places never seen before to track them and figure out how to help save them from the brink of extinction. The footage of these remote locations is incredible and if you’re anything like me - you see what it really means to be truly alive and a part of our connected world on Earth.

H&L in the News

Q-Tips Can Hurt You: Your ears clean themselves - so put down the cotton swab. Experts explain the real risks of earwax removal and share safer, science-backed ways to protect hearing and keep your ears healthy. (Washington Post)

Reboot Your Aging Brain: Sam Altman–backed Retro Biosciences is launching human trials for a pill to revive autophagy, clear brain “gunk,” and target Alzheimer’s - aiming to add a decade of healthy, vibrant life. (Business Insider)

Build Engines, Not Ideas: Alex Osterwalder, creator of the Business Model Canvas, busts the innovation myth: real innovation = new growth engines. Borrow Amazon’s playbook - simplify, test, focus on facts (not opinions) - and reinvent beyond R&D. (Big Think)

Brain Games

Kyudoku

This one is a 4/5 on the difficulty scale, so block a few minutes for this puzzle!

Kyudoku is a 6x6 grid where you need to use logic to find nine unique numbers (1 to 9) so that each row and column has a sum of 9 or less. The 4 highlighted in yellow is given.

Here’s a little help to get started. Because we know 4 is given, we can’t use 4 again (gray boxes) and we can also eliminate any numbers that would make the sum of the row or column with the given 1 more than 9 (blue boxes). Again, this is a little tougher - good luck!

Credit: Brainzilla

** For answer, scroll to the bottom of the email

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Brain Games Answer

We’re 40-something dads that felt our bodies and minds start to slow down and we’re not ready for that. We found too much information on every subject. So we started Thrive25 to transform what we’ve learned into something useful for the rest of us to spend just 5 min a day to optimize our health & longevity.

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