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Today’s Health Upgrade
The longevity test everyone overlooks (And it’s free)
How to set yourself up for more success
Are some workouts better for fat loss?
Adam’s Corner: Sometimes, life sneaks up on you
Longevity
The Most Overlooked Measurement Of Longevity
This might sound like the type of information you’d get from a horoscope, but there's a health metric that could predict whether you'll thrive at 80, and most people have never measured it.
The quality of your relationships at age 50 is a predictor of your physical health 30 years later, and one study suggests it could be more accurate than cholesterol, blood pressure, or BMI.
That finding comes from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest-running study of human life ever conducted. Since 1938, researchers have tracked more than 2,500 participants across three generations, collecting medical records, brain scans, blood work, and thousands of interview hours over 85 years.
When they looked at who was healthiest at 80, people with satisfying relationships at midlife had less cognitive decline, lower rates of heart disease and diabetes, and lived significantly longer than those who were isolated.
The mechanism works through stress. When you have people you trust, you can share a hard day and literally feel your body calm down. Without that, you stay stuck in a low-grade fight-or-flight state. Over decades, that chronic stress erodes your health from the inside out.
A meta-analysis of 148 studies confirmed the pattern: strong social ties improved survival odds by 50 percent, an effect comparable to quitting smoking.
Scientists call it "social fitness," and like any other type of training, it needs regular assessment and deliberate practice. Your social fitness covers everything from who you'd call in the middle of the night to who encourages you to grow and who you just enjoy being around.
If you want to pump up your social life, write down up to 10 people who matter most to you. For each one, ask which of those roles they fill. Look for the gaps. Then pick one gap and take one small action this week: a text to someone you trust but haven't confided in, or scheduling time with someone who makes you feel like yourself. That's your first social fitness rep.
Together With DeleteMe
Your Environment Is Working Against You (Here's How to Fix It)
You've probably blamed yourself for a bad habit at some point — the late-night snacking, the skipped workout, the doom-scrolling at midnight. But what if the problem was never your discipline? What if it were your setup?
A meta-analysis of more than 200 studies (covering over 2 million people) found that changing your environment is roughly 2.5 times more effective than willpower, education, or information at shifting behavior.
In other words, the people who stick with better habits aren't more motivated. They've just made the right choice the easiest one.
The study highlights the importance of choice architecture. The idea that how your options are arranged matters more than what your options are. Change the layout, and you change the behavior.
When it comes to improving your diet, the researchers found that changing what’s available, visible, and convenient around you consistently beats informational approaches like calorie labels or health warnings.
A randomized controlled trial tested this in 19 real-world workplace cafeterias over 25 weeks. Researchers substituted lower-calorie options and slightly reduced portion sizes without removing any items. Nobody was told what to eat. Workers purchased 11.5 percent fewer calories per day.
Same people. Same appetites. Different environment.
Google saw this play out in its own offices. When employees started gaining weight from unlimited free food, the company didn't lecture anyone. They placed vegetables at the front of the line, replaced smaller plates, and moved candy into opaque containers. Their New York office reportedly cut 3.1 million calories in seven weeks, without a single memo about healthy eating.
The takeaway isn't just about food. It's about a principle: when your environment is designed against you, no amount of effort fully compensates. When it's designed for you, good decisions happen on autopilot.
Start where it's easy. Put fruit on the counter and move snacks to a high shelf. Set your gym clothes out tonight. Prep lunches on Sunday, so Monday's healthiest option is also the path of least resistance.
But it’s not just about what you eat. Your environment influences you in ways you can’t see. Your job? Find the parts of your environment you didn't design at all.
Right now, hundreds of data brokers are selling your name, address, phone number, and family details to anyone willing to pay. You didn't set that up, but it's working against you, making you a target for scammers, spammers, and identity thieves. It's the digital equivalent of a kitchen full of junk food you never bought.
DeleteMe fixes that environment. They find and remove your exposed personal information from hundreds of data broker sites, then keep scanning to make sure it stays gone. Their privacy report shows you exactly what was out there and what they deleted, and a team of real privacy advisors backs it up. It's why Wirecutter named them the #1 data-removal service.
You set up your kitchen, your gym bag, and your morning routine to work in your favor. Your digital life deserves the same redesign. Check out DeleteMe at joindeleteme.com/PUMPCLUB and use code PUMPCLUB for 20% off.
Because the best defense isn’t more effort. It's a better environment.
Fact or Fiction
Is There Such A Thing As A “Fat Loss Workout?”
If you judge your workouts by how sore you feel the next day, you might be measuring the wrong thing. New research suggests the training approach that helps with fat loss is the one that lets you push harder, not the one that leaves you wrecked.
When researchers compared full-body workouts to body part splits, those doing full-body workouts lost nearly 1 kg (almost 2 pounds) of fat, while those on traditional "bro splits" actually gained a small amount of fat.
But that might not be the detail that matters most.
Researchers randomly assigned well-trained lifters (averaging 6-7 years of experience) to either full-body training five days per week or a traditional split routine, targeting each muscle group once per week. Both groups were prescribed the same volume (75 sets at 70-80% of max). After eight weeks, the full-body group lost more body fat.
But here’s what stood out: The full-body group also reported up to 7 times less muscle soreness.
Despite identical programming, the full-body group accumulated significantly more total volume (410,653 kg vs 353,244 kg). The researchers believe that spreading sets across muscle groups reduces fatigue, allowing lifters to maintain higher loads and complete more reps. Less breakdown per session meant better recovery between sessions, allowing them to push harder more often, leading to better results over time.
This was a small study, and the researchers didn't directly measure daily activity. The full-body group also performed more total work when warm-up sets were included (it’s why we teach how to do work-up sets in The Pump Club app).
If fat loss is your priority, it might be worth trying full-body sessions (it was how Arnold originally trained, and the style used in many of The Foundation Workouts). You might find you can train with more intensity while feeling better day-to-day, and that combination tends to move things in the right direction.
Adam’s Corner
Sometimes, Life Sneaks Up On You
I stepped onto the court, thinking the hard part would be playing to the standards I set for myself.
The spacing. The timing. The rhythm of the game that used to live in my bones. I’ve played basketball my whole life, until I didn’t. There was a stretch of my life when I could hold my own with former Division I players. I played all the time. Sometimes for three hours without thinking twice.
But this isn’t about basketball.
The last game I played was in 2010, right before I left Men’s Health magazine. Back then, we ran full-court games twice a week. It was just part of life.
Then life filled up. Work expanded. Kids arrived. Responsibilities multiplied. Basketball didn’t disappear; it just stopped getting invited. Fifteen years passed quietly. These days, I get far more joy out of watching my oldest son play. The kid can shoot, and he loves the game. To him, I’m just an old man who rebounds and tries a little too hard, teaching him to fall in love with defense.
So when a few friends of mine asked me to join their men’s league, I said yes with some hesitation. Not because I didn’t want to play. But because in the back of my mind, I knew I wasn’t prepared. We were the old guys in a young league. I expected to be winded. I expected my shot to be rusty. I expected my timing to be off.
What I didn’t expect was how hard my body would revolt.
I train consistently. And hard. I can backpedal an 800-pound sled up and down the turf, and I can still easily chase down my kids. (Okay, my youngest daughter is only one, so let’s not oversell that.)
But if I’m being honest, somewhere along the way, I stopped sprinting. And I don’t cut, or change speed, direction, and intention every few seconds. I don’t jump over and over and over again. And basketball is all of that, stacked together, demanded without mercy.
I played in the league. We had no subs. I played for forty minutes. We lost the game. I was out of gas, but I felt fine. Until the next day hit.
I wasn’t so much tired or sore. I felt old. And that was new for me.
I’ve had plenty of injuries: knee reconstruction, breaking my back twice, hamstring tears, and shoulder tears. Pain has never been foreign. But those injuries weren’t about age. They were about damage and recovery. I healed. I adapted. I moved on and got better.
This was different.
One game — something I once rolled out of bed to do for hours — has left my knees aching a month later. It sucks.
But it also taught me something I didn’t want to admit: You really do lose what you don’t use. And the uncomfortable part? I thought I was using it.
I train. I’m strong. But lifting weights isn’t playing basketball. And shooting around isn’t chasing guys twenty years younger, faster, and bigger than you.
The illusion was that general effort protected specific ability. It doesn’t.
This experience changed how I’m going to train. Not because I’m chasing youth, but because I’m not done playing. And if I want to keep doing the things I love, I can’t just train hard. I have to train appropriately.
To be clear, there’s nothing “wrong” with how I train. But if I want to play sports, I need to run. And if I want to stay young, well, it’s not just about how I look with my shirt off. It’s about how I move and what I do as I age, so I can keep doing it whenever I need to call upon any particular skill.
Once that dawned on me, that’s when the thought widened.
That’s when I realized the court was another lesson that applied to so many more areas: How many things in life do we stop doing not because time has passed, but because preparation has?
We show up unprepared, it hurts, we perform poorly, and we tell ourselves the same lie: “That season is over.”
Sometimes we get our ass kicked because we didn’t try.
Sometimes we get our ass kicked even though we worked hard.
Those are not the same thing.
One teaches humility. The other teaches precision. You realize there are levels to intention. And this isn’t just about sports.
It happens in relationships when we stop practicing curiosity and wonder why the connection fades.
It happens at work when we stop learning and feel “stuck.”
It happens with our kids when presence erodes quietly, not dramatically.
It happens with creativity, friendships, intelligence, and play.
Atrophy is sneaky. It doesn’t announce itself. It waits until the moment you ask something of it.
It’s a lesson that we are what we prioritize.
And yes, time is scarce. Everyone’s stretched. Everyone’s tired. But that makes the question sharper, not softer: What are you assuming has passed, when really, what passed was your commitment to protect it?
My sore knees are a walking reminder that the things we think we’re safeguarding — if we don’t train them with intent — will fail us when we need them most.
So go a layer deeper. Train for what matters. Prepare for the moments you still want to have. Don’t confuse effort with relevance.
Because when the time comes to perform — on the court or in life — you don’t magically rise to the occasion.
You rise (or fall) to the level of what you choose to prioritize. -AB
Better Today
Take any of these tips from today’s email and put them into action:
1. Strong Relationships at 50 Improved Survival Odds by 50 Percent. Here's the Science Behind "Social Fitness"
An 85-year Harvard study tracking more than 2,500 participants found that the quality of your relationships at age 50 predicted physical and cognitive health at 80 more accurately than cholesterol, blood pressure, or BMI — and a meta-analysis of 148 studies confirmed that strong social ties improved survival odds by 50 percent, comparable to quitting smoking. Researchers call it "social fitness," and like physical training, it requires deliberate practice, starting with identifying who fills key roles in your life and closing the gaps.
2. The Science of Choice Architecture: Why Your Setup Matters More Than Your Motivation
A meta-analysis of more than 200 studies covering 2 million people found that redesigning your environment — what's visible, available, and convenient — is roughly 2.5 times more effective than willpower or education at changing behavior. In one workplace cafeteria trial, simply swapping in lower-calorie options and adjusting portions cut purchases by 11.5 percent without anyone being told what to eat.
3. Full-Body Workouts Beat Bro Splits for Fat Loss And Caused 7x Less Soreness
When researchers assigned trained lifters (6-7 years of experience) to either full-body workouts or traditional body-part splits with identical volume, the full-body group lost nearly 1 kg of fat in 8 weeks while the split group gained a small amount. And the full-body group reported up to 7 times less muscle soreness. The likely mechanism: spreading work across muscle groups reduced per-session fatigue, allowing lifters to accumulate significantly more total volume (410,653 kg vs. 353,244 kg) and recover better between sessions. It’s why Pump Club Foundation workouts have proven to be so effective for tens of thousands of users — because they let you push harder, without beating up your body, allowing you to show up more consistently and see results.
4. You Don't Lose Ability Because Time Passes. You Lose It Because Preparation Stops
General effort doesn't protect specific ability: strength in one area won't save you in another you've quietly neglected, whether that's movement, relationships, creativity, or career growth. The things we stop practicing don't announce their decline; they wait until we need them and reveal how far we've drifted from what we assumed we still had.
The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club
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? Yes, in two places. Everything above is original content written by the APC team. The summaries below 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 these emails to remain free. We 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
