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Today’s Health Upgrade
The correct answer is…
Number you won’t forget
Weekend workout challenge
Weekly wisdom
How to gain more clarity (when all options seem good)
Yesterday’s Hunt: SIGNIFICANT STRESS
Yesterday’s newsletter included the first-ever “APC Hunt.” It’s a mix of a daily quiz and a scavenger hunt. We included a question — based on yesterday’s newsletter — and asked you to send us the correct answer.
The Correct Answer: Tyrosine supplementation only appears to benefit the brain when you're under significant stress, when demanding conditions are actively depleting your brain's neurotransmitter supply.
At baseline, your brain already produces enough tyrosine to meet its needs, so adding more changes nothing. The studies that found real cognitive benefits used conditions most of us will never encounter on a Tuesday: 24-hour sleep deprivation, 90-decibel noise environments, and military combat training.
We randomly selected 20 people who answered correctly, and they will each receive a $20 gift card to the APC store.
Every week, we’ll now include several hunts, each with a different reward. Internally, we’ve been calling it “The Catch.” What do you think? Like it, or think you have a better idea? Reply to this email and let us know your thoughts.
Health
Number You Won’t Forget: 39%
Why Walking Speed (Even On A Stroll) Still Matters
You've probably heard the advice: get your steps in. Hit 10,000 a day. And while the 10,000-step number isn’t based on hard science, the idea that you should walk more is good advice. But how much you walk isn’t the only thing to consider.
A meta-analysis of more than 508,000 people adds something important that most step-count advice leaves out.
Researchers found that walking pace was linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, suggesting that how fast you walk matters beyond how long or how often you walk.
Scientists analyzed data from 10 cohort studies, following participants for 8 years. Compared to a slow stroll (under 2 mph), walking at an average pace was associated with a 15% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. A fairly brisk pace brought that down by 24%.
But if you really push your pace and move at more than 4 mph, the scientists found it was linked to a 39% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
In other words, each additional kilometer per hour of speed was associated with a 9% drop in diabetes risk.
Researchers believe faster walking puts more demand on your muscles, improves insulin sensitivity, and triggers cardiovascular adaptations that slower movement doesn't, at least not at the same intensity.
Pace may also partially reflect underlying fitness, which means people who walk faster might already have metabolic advantages. That's a limitation of the current research, meaning we can't say faster walking causes lower diabetes risk.
Still, the finding that pace matters independently of duration is genuinely useful. If you're already walking, picking it up slightly — not dramatically, just enough to feel your breathing change — is a low-cost upgrade with a meaningful association.
You don't need to walk like you’re training for a race. Just walk like you're running a couple of minutes late, and it might offer extra health benefits.
Together With Rogue
Weekend Workout Challenge
In 1996, Dr. Izumi Tabata published a study showing that 4 minutes of supramaximal interval training matched the aerobic gains of an hour of daily cardio and produced anaerobic improvements that steady-state couldn't touch. The fitness world eventually lost its mind. Then, social media stripped out everything that made it work
Today, "Tabata" means almost anything with a 20/10 timer. Bodyweight circuits at 60% effort. Strength training repackaged as cardio. Stuff that's a little uncomfortable but never really hard. That's not Tabata. That's a lie with a timer.
Here's what the original actually demands: maximum effort for 20 seconds, 10 seconds of rest, repeated 8 times. Eight sets. Four minutes. And by round 4 or 5, those 20-second intervals should feel like they're happening in slow motion. That's the point. That's when it's working.
The only rules that matter
20 seconds maximum effort. Not "hard." Not "brisk." Maximum. If you could hold a conversation, start over.
10 seconds rest. Barely enough to breathe. That's intentional.
8 rounds max. No more, no less (unless you need it to be less). If you can do more, you probably didn't go hard enough. If you can't finish 8, you probably were doing it right and just aren’t there yet.
How to know if you're doing it right: At some point around rounds 3 to 5, your output should be declining. Your sprint in round 8 should look nothing like your sprint in round 1. If rounds 1 and 8 feel similar, you sandbagged it. The protocol is designed to break you down. That's what makes it work.
5 ways to do it this weekend
These are not the only ways to do Tabata, but they provide variety depending on the equipment you have available. Pick one. Just one. Set a timer. Commit to the full 8 rounds. That's your workout.
Fan bike
The fan bike is uniquely brutal because resistance increases with your effort. Sit, grip, and sprint. Your legs and arms both pay. If your gym has one and you haven't tried a real Tabata on it, this is your weekend. If you want to buy one piece of cardio equipment that’s easy on the joints and incredibly challenging, it’s hard to beat this one.
Jump rope
Double-unders if you have them. Fast singles if you don't. The goal is maximum rotations in 20 seconds — not a tempo you can sustain. Your shoulders and lungs will get the memo around round 4.
Kettlebell swings
Hip-driven, not arm-driven. Choose a weight you can move explosively for about 15 reps per interval. The swing has a natural rhythm that works great with Tabata. By round 6, your hinge will be earning its keep. If you need kettlebells, these have you covered.
Dumbbell squat and overhead press (thruster)
Squat deep, stand up, press overhead, all in one fluid movement. You're looking for 10 to 14 reps per interval. You will start feeling this after a couple of rounds. When the fatigue arrives, it comes for everything at once. That's the whole point. Here are our dumbbells of choice.
Med ball slams
Lift the ball overhead, then drive it into the floor as it owes you money. Pick it up fast. Repeat. This one runs on aggression as much as fitness. Aim for 8-10 hard slams per interval. It's aggressive, it's satisfying, and by round 8, you'll understand why the workout should end.
Mindset
Weekly Wisdom
We have a hierarchy problem with effort.
The PR gets the screenshot, the caption, the celebration. The day everything clicked — the energy was there, the weight moved like it was supposed to, the stars aligned — that's the day we remember. That's the day we point to as evidence of who we are.
But the workout we did when we were exhausted, stressed, and had every legitimate reason to skip it? That one disappears. No caption. No acknowledgment. We barely even count it.
Here's what that gets backward: the terrible workout you did anyway might be more impressive than the PR.
The PR happened on a good day. The ugly workout happened on a hard one. And it's the hard days — the ones where you show up anyway — that are actually building the person capable of the PR.
We overestimate the grand gesture and underestimate the daily one.
We wait for the transformation moment, the breakthrough, the dramatic before-and-after. And while we wait, the days pile up exactly as they always have.
The truth about dramatic transformation: It doesn’t just happen. It takes many days. And the days are made of habits, and the habits haven't moved.
Maxwell wasn't making a motivational observation. He was pointing at the mechanism.
Life is not changed by decisions. It's changed by what happens after the decision — the repeated, unglamorous, often invisible actions that actually accumulate into something.
Arnold understood this viscerally. He has talked about the workout as a non-negotiable, not because it's always extraordinary, but because it's always a win. No matter what else happens in a day — a deal falls through, a conversation goes sideways, the world decides to be difficult — the workout already happened.
That win is locked in. And a locked-in win changes how the rest of the day feels, which changes what you do in the rest of the day, which changes your life.
That's the compounding power Maxwell is pointing at. It's not the size of the habit. It's the daily presence of it.
Turn Wisdom Into Action
The mistake most people make is trying to overhaul everything at once — sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress, screen time, hydration — as if transformation is a renovation project you complete over a long weekend. It isn't. And the attempt to change everything usually results in changing nothing, because nothing sticks when everything is in motion.
What actually works is simpler and more boring: find the one daily friction point that's quietly costing you, and redesign the routine around it.
Not because it's the only thing that matters. Because it's the thing you can actually change today, and because one changed daily habit builds the evidence that changing daily habits is something you're capable of. That evidence matters more than the habit itself.
Better Questions, Better Solutions
The Clarity Bottleneck
Most people don't struggle to think of goals. They struggle to choose between them.
You want to get stronger. Spend more time with your kids. Build something on the side. Sleep more. Stress less.
The list isn't empty; it's overfull. And when everything feels important, nothing actually gets prioritized.
So you keep asking the wrong question.
Old Question: What goal should I focus on next?
Better Question: Which goal, if I don't focus on it now, will I most regret ignoring?
The wrong question makes you weigh ambition against ambition. Everything sounds worthy. Everything competes. You end up paralyzed, or worse, you pick whatever feels urgent instead of whatever actually matters.
The better question changes the filter.
Regret isn't about what you want. It's about what you value. And those two things are often further apart than we admit.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman spent decades studying how people make decisions, and one consistent finding is that people dramatically underestimate how much future regret will bother them, particularly regret over things they didn't do, not things they did.
Inaction haunts us more than action does.
That asymmetry is the key. When you ask "What should I focus on next," you're thinking like an optimizer and trying to pick the highest upside.
When you ask "what will I regret," you're thinking like someone who has to live with the answer. The second version is harder to fool.
A goal that's driven by ambition can wait. A goal that's driven by regret usually can't.
If you need help with clarity, try this simple exercise:
Write down your top three goals. Then, for each one, finish this sentence: "If I'm still not doing this five years from now, I'll feel..."
The one that stings most is usually your answer. That's the priority your gut already knows. The question just gave it permission to speak.
And that’s it for this week. Thanks for being a part of the positive corner of the internet. Remember, you have endless opportunities to get better every day. Don’t overthink it, do something, and repeat. Have a fantastic weekend!
-Arnold, Adam, and Daniel
Better Today
Take any of these tips from today’s email and put them into action:
1. Walking Faster Than 4 mph Could Cut Type 2 Diabetes Risk by 39%
A meta-analysis of more than 508,000 people found that walking faster than 4 mph was linked to a 39% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and each additional kilometer per hour of speed was associated with an additional 9% reduction in risk. Researchers believe faster walking creates greater muscle demand, improves insulin sensitivity, and triggers cardiovascular adaptations that a slow stroll doesn't produce at the same intensity. You don't need to race; just push your pace enough to feel your breathing change, and the data suggests you're doing something meaningfully different than a casual walk.
2. Why The Workout You Did on Your Worst Day Is More Valuable Than Your PR
The workout you grind through when you're exhausted, stressed, and have every reason to skip it may be more valuable than your best performance on your best day. The PR proves what you're capable of, but the hard-day session proves who you are. Arnold has called the workout a non-negotiable, not because every session is extraordinary, but because a completed workout is a locked-in win: no matter what else falls apart in the day, that's done. John Maxwell's principle — that life changes through daily habits, not single decisions — points to the same mechanism: it's not the size of the habit, it's the daily presence of it.
3. Stop Asking What to Focus On — Ask What You'll Regret Not Doing
Research on decision-making found that people consistently underestimate how much future regret will bother them, and that regret over things never attempted outweighs regret over things tried and failed. The problem with goal paralysis usually isn't having too many priorities; it's asking "what should I focus on next" instead of "what will I most regret ignoring" — two questions that activate completely different decision filters. Write down your top three goals, finish the sentence "if I'm still not doing this five years from now, I'll feel..." for each one, and the one that stings most is usually the answer your gut already knows.
The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards
We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.
The Content: All APC emails are researched, written, and fact-checked by the APC editors (see bottom of the email), with written contributions from Arnold (noted with “Arnold’s Corner”). Links take you to original studies (not second-hand sources).
Does AI play a role? Not for the primary content, but it is used in two ways. The main items are original content written by the APC team. The summaries at the end are AI-generated based on the human-written content above. We also use an AI tool to review our interpretations of the research and ensure scientific accuracy. We don’t assume AI is right, but we use technology to hold ourselves accountable.
Yes, we have partners (all clearly noted). Why? Because it allows us to keep the APC emails free. We first test products, and then reach out to potential partners who offer ways to help you improve every day. The bar is set high, and to date, we have turned down millions in ad deals. (Example: we will not partner with any non-certified supplements or those without evidence in human trials). If we won’t buy the product, we won’t recommend it to you. And if there’s no evidence it works, then there’s no place for it here.
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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell
