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Today’s Health Upgrade
Monday motivation
Get a grip on mortality
Workout of the week
Arnold’s Podcast
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Arnold’s Corner
Monday Motivation
I need you to zoom out.
A lot of you start out in fitness with the wrong idea.
You think this is about 14-day abs or 30-day challenges.
That short-term thinking doesn’t work.
I know it’s the philosophy you see on every magazine cover, every social media fitness influencer’s page, and every ad for fitness.
That’s because it sells, not because it works.
If it did work, 90 percent of people who succeed in losing weight wouldn’t end up gaining the weight back.
They spend their life in a cycle. They find fitness with a short-term fix, and then they lose it.
I have a very simple solution to this. But I must warn you like I always do — simple does not mean easy.
You need to zoom out and focus on the big picture.
Fitness is not a 30-day challenge or even 90 days. Fitness is a lifelong commitment.
You think the work will end when you reach some magic milestone. That leads you to crash diets and unsustainable fitness. You might make it to your milestone, but you haven’t built any habits that can last, and that’s why you end up back to where you started.
Or you run into a setback — an injury or an illness that derails your training. And because your view of fitness is short-term, instead of doing what you need to recover and get back to training, you just give up in frustration.
Or you’re so zoomed in and fired up by false promises that you give up because your progress is “too slow.” You forget that making progress puts you ahead of most people and that losing a pound a week seems small when you’re zoomed in but becomes gigantic when you zoom out and see 52 pounds of weight loss in a year of that “slow” progress.
Your problem is that you keep thinking there will come a day when the work is done.
You need to train your mind to zoom out.
You need to accept that the work is never done.
Look at me. I didn’t stop training when I retired from competing.
If I had a short-term view, I would have been derailed when I had to take time off for my heart surgeries for my bicuspid aortic valve.
But I never quit. I never gave up.
Because I know the mission is for life.
We can all stop moving and training when we are six feet under.
I need all of you to zoom out. Stop chasing short-term promises over and over. Build lifelong habits.
Stop being stuck in the latest trends. Take a long view of your fitness.
When it comes to your fitness, the industry has trained you to be turkeys. You’re ground birds, pecking away in the weeds at the easiest options.
I want you to learn to be an eagle — soaring far above the ground and seeing the whole landscape. You can’t even see the trends from up there — they’re too small to matter.
Start this week. Be an eagle, not a turkey.
Health
Get A Grip On Your Mortality
What’s the heaviest weight you can pick up at the gym? It might seem like an ego test, but it’s much more than that.
Another study suggests that weaker grip strength is linked to a higher risk of mortality, making it a simple but effective way to assess overall health and longevity.
This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed the relationship between grip strength and premature death, but the latest study suggests it’s worth mentioning again. Grip strength isn’t just about hand muscles—it reflects overall muscle mass, function, and neurological health.
As we age, losing muscle (a process called sarcopenia) can increase frailty and reduce independence. This loss of strength is associated with a higher risk of falls, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, and even cognitive decline.
A lack of strength is also associated with accelerated DNA aging, which is linked to disease and disability.
The researchers studied more than 14,000 people above the age of 50 and found that individuals with weaker grip strength had significantly higher mortality rates, even after accounting for other health factors like age, diet, and exercise habits. Some research even suggests grip strength is a stronger predictor of mortality than blood pressure or cholesterol levels.
Want to take the test?
In the current study, men with handgrip strength less than 78 pounds (35.5 kg) and women with handgrip strength less than 44 pounds) had a 45 percent higher risk of mortality.
When adjusted for body weight and BMI, people who were weak relative to all three criteria had a 69 percent higher risk of mortality.
To get stronger, start pulling your weight with any type of resistance exercise, whether lifting dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, or even your body weight.
Need a place to start? Try today’s workout of the week.
Fitness
Workout Of The Week
If you want a workout to build grip (for longevity) and total body strength, we have you covered.
The workout consists of three supersets. In each superset, you’ll perform the two exercises back-to-back and then rest. Once you’ve done all sets of a superset, move to the next pair. If you don’t have dumbbells or kettlebells available, use a rucksack or fill a backpack with books and hold one in each hand to perform the farmer’s walk. You want to make sure the bags are heavy and hard to grip.
Superset 1: 2-4 sets
Complete the first exercise and immediately do the second exercise. Then rest for 2 to 3 minutes and repeat.
Farmer’s Walk: 30 seconds
Pushups: 10 to 30 reps (your strength will determine how many reps you perform)
After you complete all the rounds of the first circuit, then move to the next circuit.
Superset 2: 2-4 sets
Complete the first exercise and immediately do the second exercise. Then rest for 2 to 3 minutes and repeat.
Inverted row or pullups: As many reps as possible
Alternating Lunges (bodyweight or weighted): 8-12 reps per leg
Superset 3: 2-4 sets
Follow the same approach as the last circuit. Complete the first exercise and immediately do the second exercise. Then rest for 2 to 3 minutes and repeat.
Farmer’s walk: 30 seconds
Squats (weighted or bodyweight) 8-12 reps
Give it a try and start your week strong!
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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell
