Your Doctor Says You're Fine. Can You Deadlift 200 Pounds?

You get your bloodwork back. Cholesterol's okay, blood pressure's okay, blood sugar's okay. Your doctor shakes your hand and says, "You're healthy. See you next year."

Here's my question: healthy compared to what?

I've been coaching since 1999. I've coached at the Olympic Training Center, and I've coached with guys in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s who just want to feel like themselves again. After all those years, I've landed on something a lot of people look at me sideways for: physical performance is one of the best measures of health we have, and almost nobody is measuring it.

Doctor numbers are necessary. They're not enough.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-doctor and I'm not anti-bloodwork. Get your labs done. Know your numbers.

But think about how we judge health right now. We've got normal ranges for everything in your blood. There's a box for your cholesterol, a box for your glucose, and a box for your testosterone. Land inside the boxes and you're "healthy."

Now ask yourself where the box is for your strength. Where's the normal range for your conditioning, or for how well you move?

There isn't one. Nobody hands you a printout that says, "Your deadlift is out of range, let's talk."

So here's how I look at a guy's health. I break it into three pieces.

1. Your doctor numbers. Blood pressure, labs, all of it. The goal here isn't to be the lowest or the highest. It's to be in the Goldilocks zone. Not too much, not too little.

2. Your body fat. Same idea. The goal isn't the lowest number you can starve your way to. There's no prize for that. It's optimal. For most of the guys I coach, when they chase health instead of a number, they land somewhere around 10 to 18 percent and stay there.

3. What your body can actually do. This is the one that separates healthy from really healthy. Two guys can have the same labs and the same body fat. One of them can pick up something heavy off the floor, carry it, sprint for a bus, and get off the ground without using his hands. The other can't. Those are not the same level of health.

I'll put it simply. I would never give up my performance for better biomarkers. If I had to pick one, I'm keeping what my body can do.

So what's the standard?

If we're going to treat performance like a health marker, we need standards, the same way we have ranges for blood.

Here's one I use a lot: every guy, regardless of how old he is, needs to be able to deadlift at least 200 pounds safely.

Notice that last word. I'm not talking about grinding out an ugly rep with your back rounded like a scared cat. I'm talking about picking up 200 pounds with good positions, under control, the way you'd want to pick up anything heavy in real life: a bag of mulch, a suitcase, a grandkid.

Why the deadlift? Because life is the sport. Picking things up off the ground is about as basic a human job as there is. If you can't do it well, everything else gets harder and riskier as you get older.

And it doesn't stop at strength. The order I build guys in looks like this:

• Strength first. It's the base everything sits on.
• Then power. Being able to move fast. This is the first thing that fades as we age if we ignore it.
• Then conditioning. The engine.

Most guys over 40 do this exactly backwards. They spend an hour on the treadmill, never lift anything heavy, never move fast, and wonder why they feel fragile.

"I'm too old to start lifting heavy."

I hear this all the time. "Shouldn't I go lighter weights, higher reps now that I'm older?"

No. If anything, you need strength more as you get older, not less. "Keep it light" is how a lot of guys slowly lose the very thing that protects them.

But the answer also isn't to throw 200 pounds on a bar on Monday. Most of the guys who come to me have never really been taught how to use a barbell. So we start with a wooden stick. We learn how to move first: how to hinge, how to brace, how to get into good positions. Moving well is the non-negotiable. Then we add load.

That part is boring, and it's also why guys get strong without getting hurt.

You're probably capable of more than you think

Here's something else people look at me funny for: I believe a guy over 40 can be stronger and in better physical shape than he's ever been in his life.

Even if you played sports, you probably never came close to your potential. Back in the day there wasn't real strength and conditioning for most athletes. If you lifted, it was probably old-school bodybuilding stuff. You were good at one narrow thing.

I've got a guy named Bill on my team. He's 71. He's been training with me for over three years, and he's ranked #4 nationally in his age group. He didn't get there by keeping it light.

I'm not saying you need to compete. I'm saying the ceiling is way higher than you've been told.

Run your own checkup

Next time you get your labs back, give yourself a second checkup:

• Can you pick up something heavy off the floor with good form?
• Can you move fast if you need to, like a quick sprint or a jump?
• Can you work hard for a few minutes and recover?
• Can you get down on the floor and back up without a struggle?

If any of those are a "no" or a "not sure," that's not a judgment. It's just information. It tells you where your health has room to grow, the same way a high cholesterol number would.

Your doctor's job is to tell you if something's wrong. My job is to help you find out how right things can get.

Build a body that lasts.

— Tony Bevilacqua, Athletic After 40