This 105-Year-Old’s Secret Weapon Proves Fitness “Experts” Are All Wrong

I’m talking about something even more important — his VO2 max level. That’s a measurement of the amount of oxygen your lungs can use while you’re exercising at your maximum capacity.

Conventional “wisdom” says it’s impossible to increase VO2 max after the age of 50.

So how did Robert do it?

He changed the way he exercised. He went from traditional aerobic activities to the kind of exercise our bodies were designed to do.

At 105, French cyclist Robert Marchand is living proof that you can boost your lungpower at any age.

I’ll tell you more about that in just a minute, but first I want to tell you a bit more about Robert’s story.

Not long ago, Robert caught the attention of a French university professor of exercise science, Véronique Billat.

In working with athletes, Billat had seen the very same thing I see on a regular basis at the Sears Institute for Anti-Aging Medicine:

Lungpower increases as you increase the intensity of your workout — even in older adults.

But Billat had never studied someone over the age of 100. Robert was 101 at the time. He had been cycling for more than 30 years, but usually pedaled at a leisurely pace.

Billat wanted to see if increasing and varying the intensity and acceleration rate of his workouts improved his lungpower.

Why does that matter so much?

Because lungpower is the number one predictor of how long you’ll live. How well you breathe determines how long you’ll stay active and healthy.

So Robert started to include high-intensity workouts into his training. After two years, Billat measured his progress.

The results?

Robert’s VO2 max had increased 13%. Increasing his intensity improved his lungpower.

And it is further proof that most fitness “experts” are clueless about exercise.

They typically recommend cardio or endurance- type training — hours and hours of exerting yourself at a steady pace. The truth is that’s one of the worst things you can do to your body, from heart health to bone strength to weight management.

The Harvard Health Professionals Study backs me up on this. Researchers followed more than 7,000 people. They found that the key to protecting your heart isn’t endurance. It’s intensity.

In fact, researchers proved that the more intense the exertion, the lower the risk of heart disease.¹

And that’s not all.

Another Harvard study compared vigorous and light exercise.² Those who exercised more intensely had a lower risk of death than those who performed at a lesser intensity.

Exercise Isn’t Normal

Despite Robert’s love of cycling, the truth is that exercise is not natural for humans.

Yes, you read that right...

For most people, “exercise” means jogging... attending an aerobics class... or walking for miles.

The human body isn’t designed for that.

Our primal ancestors had to be able to accelerate to 100% of their energy capacity to escape being someone else’s dinner. They had to do the same thing to chase down their own food. It was a tough life. But we were built for those kinds of challenges.

Since then, though, we have created a world full of leisure. Staying active is no longer a requirement for staying alive.

And that adds up to some very serious consequences for the human body.

When I started working with athletes almost 30 years ago, I noticed their number one problem was lung capacity.

I discovered that modern lungs are smaller than they were in hunter-gatherers. Our cardiopulmonary (heart-lung) systems have become seriously deconditioned because we don’t use our bodies the way our ancestors had to.

And that’s a big problem.

Lung capacity gives you access to life-giving oxygen. As I mentioned above, it’s the number one predictor of how long you’ll live.

The medical journal Chest did a 29-year follow-up to the Buffalo Health Study. They followed over 1,100 people up to age 89. They found that the better your lungs work, the less likely you are to die of any cause.

The correlation was even stronger for heart disease.³

When I learned that, it struck me that fitness training had been focusing on the wrong thing for years.

Stop Burning Calories and Start Building Lungpower

By the time you reach 30, your lungs start to decline. Slowly, most people unconsciously alter their activities so their lungs can keep up.

By 50, you’ve lost 40% of your breathing capacity. And the decline continues for life. If you get the flu at age 35 or 40, you can shrug it off. But if you’re 65 or 70 and you get the flu or pneumonia, you won’t have the reserve lung capacity to sustain you.

That’s why the death rate is so much higher for seniors who get these respiratory diseases. They simply don’t have the lung capacity to get them over the hump.

As your lungs shrink, you get tired more quickly. You become less vital. You get colds and the flu more often. It takes longer to recover from illness. And you’re more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke.

In fact, lack of oxygen reserves causes 50% of all heart attacks. 

But workout “gurus” know nothing about lung capacity or what builds up your heart. They still keep telling you to do “cardio” to burn calories. That only wears down your heart and lungs. 

Most doctors aren’t aware of this, either. They don’t bother to measure your lungpower during a visit. Yet it’s easy to do, and I measure it for my patients here at the Sears Institute for Anti-Aging Medicine. 

The best way to tell how powerful your lungs are is by measuring your VO2 max. 

VO2 max is usually written in milliliters of volume per kilogram of body weight (ml/kg) because oxygen and energy needs are different depending on how big you are. 

The chart on the right shows typical VO2 max measurements for non-athletes.  

Notice that VO2 max generally declines with age. But you don’t have to let it. In fact, increasing lungpower is one of the things that most excites me about working with my patients. 

But you can’t do it with cardio. 

Building Lungpower Is About Working Harder, Not Longer

The American Journal of Epidemiology looked at respondents from the famous Harvard Health study. They followed over 13,000 people for 15 years.

They found that people live longer if they do vigorous exercises, but not if they only do light or moderate workouts.⁴

And the risk of death kept getting lower and lower for those who expended the most energy. That wasn’t true for those who expended energy for the longest time.

In other words, intensity is the key to lowering risk of death.

In fact, too many long, drawn-out cardio sessions will make you lose even more lung capacity.

I proved this myself early on in my career. As far back as college I was working on the problem of lost lung volume. I put patients with low lung volume into running programs. To my surprise, their lungs shrank.

The problem is that cardio and running were not how we evolved to move.

MoVE — Exerting Your Body the Primal Way

For millions of years, we had a strong evolutionary drive to put out a lot of energy really fast. It was the difference between getting dinner and being dinner.

But that’s all changed.

We are still perfectly adapted for a life-and-death struggle between predator and prey. But most fitness experts have us doing long sessions of cardio. It’s not natural to repeat the same movement continuously 10,000 times over.

That’s why most exercise doesn’t feel natural to us.

The motivation to do physical activity used to be dictated to us. That’s lost now.

Somehow, we’ve got to find the motivation to do this high-level physical exertion on our own.

It’s a fact... Exertion will help you live better, longer... You will have more power, a sharper mind, higher libido, better performance, and a lean, muscular body.

But it’s up to YOU to find the motivation to start. You have to figure out what your own personal motivating triggers are...

Do you want to be able to chase around your grandkids?

Do you want to be able to play 18 holes of golf without feeling winded?

Do you want to lose weight?

Do you want to prevent a heart attack?

Figuring out what motivates you is key. It’s what I call MoVE — Motivation for Voluntary Exertion. We MUST find a way to voluntarily do the same type of activity our ancestors did.

Build Your Heart and Lung Capacity with PACE

My PACE program is specifically designed to build lung and heart capacity. PACE stands for Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion. You progressively challenge your maximum cardiopulmonary output through exertion.

And it doesn’t matter what your age or fitness level is when you start.

I had a female patient who weighed 250 pounds. Her starting point for becoming fit and lean was walking for 45 seconds. That’s all she could do.

That took her to her maximum cardiopulmonary exertion, and she was out of breath and panting. So she would rest, and then do it again.

After two years, she was 98 pounds lighter, and her heart and lungs were a lot stronger with plenty of reserve capacity.

My patients have been using PACE to build heart and lungpower for years. And it just takes 12 minutes a day.

The secret is short bursts of intensity. With PACE, your goal is to quickly hit a peak of intensity and then rest. Gradually, you increase your intensity as each move becomes easier.

Getting Started with PACE

To get started with PACE, here is an example of your first workout. It’s a single period of exertion followed by recovery. 

Tomorrow, do this again, with a focus on slightly increasing the challenge each time.  

The trick is to start off slowly and work your way up. Give yourself a reasonable challenge, then stop and recover.  

That builds back your cardiopulmonary power because it forces your heart and lungs to get stronger so they can handle the next challenge. 

To Your Good Health,