Michael Easter

Im there anticipating some reenactment of Desert Storm. But what I get is closer to Desert Om. Close your eyes to begin this meditation, Horton says. I want you to focus on the sensation of the breath. When thoughts arise, notice them without judgment. And then she occasionally reminds the group to feel the breath or notice and let go, until after 15 minutes she announces, Times up.

WARM DOWN Some of the SOFLETE guys stretch it out after a workout.

Were at a weekend retreat held by SOFLETE, a fitness-content company owned by Special Operations personnel that isnt following the long-held narrative of how people in the military, first responders, and other active men and women should train, live, and do their jobs. Army Rangers and Green Berets, Marines, firefighters, police, and SWAT members, along with an accountant, an electrical lineman, a roughneck, and others: Most of the 25 people here have taken lives, saved lives, and undoubtedly seen some shit. Together this group is seeking something like enlightenment: zenning out, exploring the psychedelic landscape of Joshua Tree National Park, and speaking the capital-T truth about the state of being an elite serviceman or -woman in 2019.

Each of them landed in the Mojave after a bout of burnoutfrom too many stressful deployments or hours on duty or patrol; from military-style beatdown workouts and the nagging injuries that ensued; from the idea that those who keep us safe, or even civilians simply interested in military culture, must be part of a stoic, tougher-than-thou caste. The SOFLETE peeps are here doing something about that burnout. But they also know that the feeling extends far beyond the Mojave. Which is why theyre also scaling up their efforts on various media channels and through a training appto bring the next generation of Special Operations training and tactical thinking to the masses.

CALL IT THE military-fitness complexand its now at industrial scale. Its the thousands of books, podcast episodes, Instagram feeds, seminars, and fitness programs that promise to reveal the physical and mental magic that makes Special Operations warriors so tough. The space is dominated by testosterone-emboldened vets and brands whose messages are basically this: The answer to all your problems is to adopt a military mind-set, or mental toughness, which is loosely translated as grinding harder and longer than the next guy and never quitting or showing weakness.

As more troops and first responders have adopted these hard-line training and mind-set tactics, more and more of them have become mentally and physically beaten up and broken down. That can put them and their teams in dangerous positions, or just ruin their ability to live a healthy civilian life. The U.S. Army has publicly stated that injuries are a modern military epidemic, and a study funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory discovered that about 20 percent of its Spec Ops soldiers each year experience injuries that require medical attention. For every 100 soldiers, there are 25 annual injuries. The top cause of those injuries? Not bullets or IEDs. Exercise. Going too hard, too often. Team workouts consisting of ten-mile hikes while wearing 60-pound packs, followed by more pushups, situps, and flutter kicks than you can count, followed by whatever else a soldier does on his own in the gym, be it CrossFit, ultrarunning, or bodybuilding. In fact, the researchers say, 77 percent of these injuries could be avoided with improved injury-prevention programs.

Another problem, says Briones, is that many Special Operations guys are either bodybuilders, bodyweight ninjas, or pure endurance athletes. Theyre fitness specialists in a job that requires strength, speed, stamina, and mobilitythe capacity to drag a 200-plus-pound fallen comrade in full gear, sprint for cover during a firefight, ruck through the mountains to a mission point, or hold a covered-but-contorted shooting position in a sniper nest.

The military branches are fully aware that the way their personnel train isnt exactly optimal. And theyre working on itwith varying degrees of success. The Army says its on a bold mission to change its culture of fitness so that training transfers to combat more effectively, reduces the risk of injury, and improves soldier readiness and resiliency. Major General Lonnie Hibbard, who commands the U.S. Army Center for Initial Military Training, calls it holistic health and fitness. Its loosely described as physical fitness and performance enhancement, but also mental and spiritual fitness.

But whether the plan will make it out of the bureaucratic swamp and onto basesand then survive thereis anyones guess. In 2009, for instance, U.S. Special Operations Command funded the Armys creation of Thor3, a fitness program with its own facilities staffed by physical therapists, strength and conditioning coaches (poached from Team USA and elite sports programs), and sports nutritionists. It focused on optimizing the physical and mental conditioning of Special Forces operators and helping injured ones recover. It worked when it was implemented, improving fitness and reducing injuries, but it was slowly defunded and often neglected by untrained team leaders who didnt realize its value.

You also have the unseen scars, of course. The suicide rate among veterans is 50 percent greater than that of the general public, and police officers and firefighters are more likely to die by their own hand than in the line of duty. The New York Times recently reported that <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO06/20190508/109420/HHRG-116-GO06-Wstate-TanielianT-20190508-U1.pdf" id="14c66b3c-7c26-3ccd-a64d-d3a2a9e55c84"> more than 45,000 </a> veterans and active-duty service members have killed themselves in the past six years. That is more than 20 deaths a dayin other words, more suicides each year than the total American military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

KIESEWETTER AND HINES talking training programs for the SOFLETE app.

Mental toughness isnt just doing more reps or miles than the next guy or getting through a selection course; its using smarter-not-harder approaches to fitness, even if that means you wont be the strongest, fastest, fittest-looking guy in the gym. Its knowing when to back down and take a day to take care of yourself. Its checking your intentions, and even asking for help and recognizing your vulnerability. As the branches slowly trudge forwardthe new fitness assessment test, for example, has been in the works for years and wont be ready for rollout until late 2020SOFLETE is filling a gap.

Now heavily meditated, the group rises from the seated position. Next up at the Mojave retreat: yoga. Nope, these SOFLETE dudes are not what you might expect from top military personnel. Surfers, hippies, hipsters, and snowflakes...who also happen to have body counts is how they describe themselves. But they may be onto something. The company began in 2015 with the intention of providing fitness programming exclusively for Special Operations guys. For them, the stakes of military fitness are much higher than looking cool on the Gram. The wrong fitness program can prevent servicemen and -women from advancing past a Special Ops selection course, stalling their career, or, even worse, put them in harms way on the battlefield.

SOFLETE is rethinking warrior fitness with sane fitness programming served with a side of woo, which just may be what military men and women need to be better at their jobs. Yeah, I meditate. Yes, I do yoga. Yes, I do all these things that some people may associate with femininity or something, says Brian Hueske, 38, a career Green Beret whos built like a grizzly bear and who now also works for SOFLETE. But Im doing this stuff to maintain performance. At the end of the day, Im doing this stuff because it makes me better at killing bad people.

Modern-day Rambos with a softer side and no pretension to badassery? Could my experience in the desert have all been some strange hallucination? I needed to find out.

AND SO IT is that a few weeks later I find myself at SOFLETE headquarters in Durham, North Carolina. In the desert, I saw the restorative side of SOFLETE. Now Im about to experience how the company builds elite war fighters and glean insights into its special marketing sauce thats part rah-rah inspiration, part parody of bro science. That it took just four years for the company to go from a single workout shared by PDF to a 6,000-square-foot building and a reach of 2.5 million people each month speaks to the efficacy of SOFLETEs workouts and the thirst for military-themed merch.

There are eight of us performing a mobility warmup on the 50-foot strip of turf that runs through SOFLETE HQ, which is part no-expenses-spared CrossFit-style gym, part content-creation studio, and part office. By the 2010s, the SOFLETE brain trust had started to realize that the message of the military-fitness complex was all wrong. Between deployments, each of them was running an elite gym, all looking for the fitness sweet spot where a warrior is optimized to performat a moments notice, over an entire career. Special Operations guys never know when theyre going to have to go on a mission, says Doug Kiesewetter, 38, an Army Special Forces weapons sergeant and partner at SOFLETE. Any day could be the Super Bowl. So imagine Tom Brady doing a burner workout and endless miles of rucking with an 80-pound pack every day leading up to the Super Bowl. How would he play? Not great, right? But thats essentially what many other military- fitness companies were and still are asking from their users.

SLED WORK Jamie Christenson and James Ramsey train at SOFLETE HQ.

In 2011, Id spent the year doing a popular military athlete program, says Hueske as he adjusts the settings on a camera hell use to capture video that SOFLETE will post to its social-media channels and website, dieliving.com. The site covers fitnessy topics like how to avoid boot-camp injuries and how to eat for performance, as well as mind-set stuff like dealing with failure, the trials of coming home from deployment, and grappling with the badass identity that society forces on military guys. Every day, Id do an hour of 80-pound sandbag Turkish getups, followed by these crazy high-intensity workouts. I always felt crushed, but thats what I was told would work. It didnt.

We had a training mission to raid an enemy compound, and to do that we had to climb up this huge hill in full kit with all of our breaching equipment, which is like 90 or 100 pounds of gear, he says. By the time we reached the top, I was smokedand the actual mission hadnt even started.

THE SOFLETE CREW training at their HQ in Durham, North Carolina. From left: Ryan Peters, Christian Hines, James Ramsey, Hueske, and Kiesewetter.

For someone like a pro CrossFit athletewho can eat perfectly, sleep eight hours a night, get massages, and all thatregular all-in workouts can be effective. But military guys typically eat shitty food, get shitty sleep, and have shitty access to recovery practices (no ice baths in Tora Bora). Pounding away at balls-to-the-wall workouts eventually hurt Hueskes back. So then I was forced to recover, he says while snapping photos of the group performing the warmup routine that will mobilize our legs, hips, and shoulders, three areas that military personnel commonly injure. During Hueskes rehab, a colleague called him aside and, in the furtive tone you might use when confessing to another man that you like to sing along to Taylor Swift when youre driving to work, said, This training youre doing...I know you think its cool, but youre totally wrong. Heres what you need to do....

The guy began explaining that how hard youre dragging your skull across the dirt does not correlate with a workouts efficacy, says Hueske. It only sets you up for injury and crap performance. A military strength coach gave him some programming that ticked a lot of fitness boxes and pushed Hueskes limits but also stressed recovery and improving his mobility. I was working out less, Hueske says. I felt like I was sandbagging, but I stayed the course.

Soon after, he was sent on another training mission. It was a six- or seven-hour infiltration where we were carrying heavy gear through the woods slowly and deliberately, he says. When we arrived at our destination to start the mission, I still had 95 percent left in the tank. It was a meathead revelation. The other SOFLETE guys had similar come-to-fitness-Jesus moments. Briones was once involved in a four-hour firefight in Afghanistan when a burned-out team member went down with heatstroke in hour three, putting the entire team in danger as they tried to evacuate him.

I watched my peers break themselves from overtraining and spend years trying to rehab while still needing to go to war, says Kiesewetter. Running patrols in Afghanistan and Iraq, theyd walk with a hitch in their step, fail to turn on speed and power when they needed it most, and just generally move like dudes a decade older. Christian Hines, the SOFLETE employee who models many of the exercises in the app and who came from the Armys 82nd Airborne, watched as many of his teammates were removed from their daily duties and training because they injured themselves trying to one-up the next guy in some timed workout or deadlifting session.

Now warmed up, were moving on to a strength phase. Well do three sets each of back squats, box jumps, and bench presses. The squat-and-jump combo leverages a phenomenon called post-activation potentiation, which research shows may give you a boost in strength and power.

Two of the cofounders of SOFLETE, whom well call Bill and Greg (they wished not to be named due to their roles in the military), saw the same issue of overkill. The original idea for SOFLETE was inspired by a peer of mine, says Greg. He was perpetually hurt from military fitness programs, which is so common among SOF guys.

HIGH-INTENSITY SWINGERS The SOFLETE team doing a kettlebell workout near their HQ.

In 2014, Greg went on a deer-hunting retreat with a nonmilitary friend named Aron Woolman, a successful Wall Street trader then in his mid-30s. Theyd spent the weekend discussing the problems with military fitness programming, and after talking with Woolman, an astute business mind, Greg decided they should do something about it.

So Greg, Bill, and Woolman did. They saw an opportunity in fitness plans that prepare men and women for Special Operations selection camps, which have low pass rates. Most other programs mimicked the hell of selection, following the train how you fight mantra, says Greg. Think daily miles of heavy rucking and anything else that sounded militaryish and awful. But while they zigged, Greg and Bill zagged. If you throw on a 70-pound ruck and walk for 12 miles, you get tired pretty quick, says Greg. Then every step is sloppy, on uncontrolled terrain, while youre weighted down, so the potential to twist an ankle or knee is extremely high. If that happens, there go your chances of passing selection.

Gregs and Bills experiences at selection told them that a better strategy is to strengthen all the muscles involved in rucking and to build an aerobic base. If you can back-squat 400 pounds and run a respectable ten-mile time, youre going to do well in the ten-mile ruck run, says Greg. The three men put together a PDF of a selection-prep program, which included lots of military-specific strength and conditioning fundamentals but very little heavy rucking, and tossed a brand on the file: SOFLETE, a combination of SOF, the acronym for Special Operations Forces, and athlete. Then they uploaded it to the Internet.

The PDF took off, says Bill. It got a shocking number of guys through selection camps. We were running SOFLETE as a small passion project, but by October of 2015 we realized that we should focus on running it as a business, says Woolman, a laid-back type who acts as the CEO and mom of the company. The othersKiesewetter, Briones, and Huesketook notice, everyone started talking, and SOFLETE gained speed.

That initial PDF has evolved into more than 100 different programs based on your goalbuilding strength, endurance, or muscle, for example, or prepping for a huntall accessible on the SOFLETE app for $34 a month, making them easy to do on bases and in gyms around the world. They tick all the boxes a war fighter needsraw strength, explosive power, all-day endurance, and killer speedwhile sneaking in, through nutrition coaching and extended mobility warmups and cooldowns, the never-say-die durability that helps modern servicemen and -women survive deployment after deployment and thrive in kinetic modern warfare.

FLIP OUT Hines celebrates the end of the workout.

Durability is critical for todays Spec Ops personnel, as America increasingly leans on its elite war-fighting teams. Special Operations are now active in over 90 countries, and members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have even testified that the constant deployments are taking a physical and mental toll.

SOFLETE workouts are hard, and we encourage people not to flip the idiot switch, but the recovery components are key, says Kiesewetter, the funny brother of the group, who, thanks to his sleeves of military-style tattoos, appears in many SOFLETE videos. This idiot-switch-free approach to holistic fitness training is why this band of irreverent servicemen has amassed a hell of a following. The company has grown 2,000 percent since the end of 2015.

Each training program is like a symphony, every workout building to a larger goal. The 12-week Juggernaut program, for example, stresses developing muscle and power. It does this via compound lifts like the deadlift, back squat, and power clean. But it doesnt neglect durability and stamina. Juggernaut has plenty of mobility and accessory work, plus biweekly days featuring sessions such as eight sets of 400-meter runs at a slow pace. Harmonized programs are common in professional sports, but not every military-fitness company has caught on.

Each SOFLETE program goes through the meathead brain trust: six combat-experienced Special Operations personnel who have an alphabet soup of fitness credentials. This hive mind sets them apart. Many other military-style programs are written by a single guy. And that guy may be a fitness pro who has no military background, which oftentimes causes him to measure success by a servicemans numbers in the gym, rather than his performance at war.

DOWNWARDLY MOBILE The crew doing a yoga-inspired cool down.

That gym-based mind-set is dangerous. Because the more you push your performance limits, the greater the toll your training takes on your body. SOFLETE prioritizes durability over absolute performance, says Kiesewetter. Having enough fitness and durability is what allows you to stay out of harms way mission after mission. With SOFLETE programming, youre probably going to have to give up being the absolute biggest, fastest, strongest guy in your unit, says Hueske. But you will be third or fourth best in all those metrics over 20 years, while the guys who are number one keep rotating because they get injured.

The group is cranking out the strength exercises before we move on to a stamina phase, which will entail doing as many rounds of 1,000-meter rows, 400-meter runs, and 400-meter farmers walks as possible in 13 minutes. Beyond the SOFLETE brain trust, theres John Warren, an Army sniper; Mike Crellin, a police officer in Houston; Nolan Bastien, a firefighter in Indianapolis; and Phil Sussman and Dave Ploch, of different wings of Army Special Operations. These men are the converted. SOFLETE programming helped with the back pain that Bastien, 39, had due to subpar exercising programs and overtraining. Thats made him, his team, and the public safer. Im a more functional part of my crew, he says.

The apps nutrition programming helped Crellin, 37, lose 80 pounds and Warren, 30, eat well consistently. The app calculates your carb, fat, and protein needs based on your size, goal, and activity level. Not into counting macronutrients? Cool. Who is? The app also spits out a days worth of recipes that fit exactly into your macros. The recipes are complexfor example, pork chop with veggie-loaded orzo or chicken with sweet-potato mash and roasted sproutsbut if youre kitchen-phobic, each week youll prep meals on Sunday and eat the same meals every other day.

When the workout ends, we form a sweaty circle around Sussman, who found yoga after an armored-vehicle accident sidelined him with pain and depression. He leads us through a series of poses that hit areas that tend to be particularly tight in war fighters and desk jockeys alike. Ploch digs the yoga part. He enlisted in 1996, has been deployed 14 times, and may be seeing more. I now know I have to work out smarter to keep mobile and flexible, he says. SOFLETE stuff is keeping me in the fight.

WE COMPLETE THE LIFTING part of the workout and now the gym is functioning as a full-fledged content studio, like Peloton but with less spandex and spinning. Im curious to finally learn what the heck the logowhich is stamped on everything from bumper plates and med balls to T-shirts and water bottlessymbolizes. First, though, Hueske has set up lighting and is interviewing Bastien for a series on how first responders have benefited from SOFLETE. Were trying to reach out to more guys with jobs like those, says Kiesewetter. And average guys. Theyll do that by holding more events like the one in Joshua Tree and by expanding the app.

SOFLETE is still a young company experiencing growing pains. The current version of the app, for example, offers a ton of programs, and its not clear how, say, one 80-plus-day strength program differs from the 14 other programs. In January, it plans to launch the app 2.0, which will include a more streamlined process of putting users into the programs they need. Youll be able to link it to an Apple watch, and your training, recovery, and nutrition will automatically scale based on recovery metrics from the watch. Anyone can comply with a three-month exercise program, says Kiesewetter. The challenge is how to make them comply with recovery practices as well.

Hueske, the brands media maven, elaborates. The word yoga has so long been synonymous with, like, leaf eating, he says. To get guys in my unit to do stuff like this, wed call it tactical stretching. So it is with SOFLETE, which often has to shape its message for testosterone-addled men who would perhaps rather not tread the same workout territory as their girlfriend.

We move off the turf to some couches. Im spent and feel like Ive put in hard work, but Im confident Ill be able to walk down the stairs tomorrow. I sip a shake of SOFLETE Fruit Hoops cereal-milk-flavored protein powder and water as the guys talk about SOFLETE products. We wanted a protein powder that tastes like the milk thats left after you eat a bowl of cereal, says Kiesewetter. They also sell a cinnabun-flavored protein powder and a melatonin, chamomile, and lavender nightcap called Teddy Bear Night Night.

KIESEWETTER AND HINES shoot video for the SOFLETE app.

Each guy is wearing some version of a SOFLETE T-shirt, which all feature the brands logo: a spade with a skull and two crossbones. The logo is also prominent in the brands dieliving.com stories. But what is it, exactly? An homage to the death cards that American troops would leave on Vietcong theyd killed in battle during the Vietnam War.

When that first PDF dropped, they shared it with friends and family on Facebook, says Woolman, where the logo and the mission caught the eyes of service personnel, law enforcement, first responders, and people interested in military fitness. We have just enough of the badass imagery to get people in the door, like the logo, and our military backgrounds probably help, says Kiesewetter. But then once people are in, its like, Hey, heres the yogawe give them the workouts and lifestyle advice they need.

The vernacular of the instruction is also uniquely direct. Take, for example, a recent Instagram video about correct pullup form. Caption: Were here to help if your pullups are hot garbage. Or the caption of a similar video about squats: If your front squat is jank as fuck you need to watch this video.

But sometimes that marketing humor borders on offensive. Take the description of a SOFLETE camo hat: Whether youre two steppin through Compton or playing IED hop scotch outside of Kabul, this snapback will drop every pair of panties within a six block radius. SOFLETE also once sold a cologne called Flex Offender. I spent two nights on the couch after my wife found out about that one, says Woolman.

While SOFLETE is making real progress with fitness, its not always as on point when it comes to helping break down the stereotype that military guys arent the most culturally sensitive creatures. Some of that is the brand trying to maintain authenticity, writing product descriptions that mimic how Spec Ops guys talk in a team room. And some of the blowback may be a consequence of a way-too-woke culture that has an amplified voice in social media. Woolman says SOFLETE is evolving and that the more offensive stuff is held over from the beginning of the brand. And I will say weve always been equal-opportunity offenders.

KIESEWETTER AND HINES prep a SOFLETE podcast with Hueske and Peters.

Its a theme Kiesewetter takes up. We all learned that that humor is a way to avoid uncomfortable situations, he says, speaking of the awkwardness that not only a trained killer but any person with a Y chromosome might feel opening up to the softer side of life. Hueske adds, And we just dont take ourselves too seriously. Lots of other militaryish companies do. They hope this makes SOFLETE videos and other content more accessible.

Theres an uncanny valley of how badass someone is in the military, says Hueske. In my career, Ive found that the most badass guys whove done the hardest stuff will never tell you about it. They never want to be recognized as badass. As we sit around laughing, Gogginss book, Cant Hurt Me, comes up, and its message doesnt resonate. Ploch (who, as a reminder, has deployed 14 times) smiles and says, You can get hurt in this job.

In 2017, a venture-capital firm approached SOFLETE. The team met a few Patagonia-vest-wearing finance types. Big money was on the lineenough to make SOFLETEs founders rich. They had just invested in another military brand, and they asked us, What are you guys against? says Woolman. We didnt understand the question. So they said, Well, are you against hipsters, liberals, people for gun control? What are you against? We said, Were not against anything. Were for helping people, for being authentic, and for pushing your personal boundaries and living your best life.

And then the SOFLETE guys all went to practice yoga.

DAWN'S RAYS ARE creeping west across the Mojave, crawling up Joshua trees and barrel cacti, as a group of U.S. Special Operations warriors sit cross-legged, all lined up and scanning the dry horizon. These exquisitely tattooed, overmuscled rogues have descended upon this desert from across the nation. Alongside them are a handful of first responders and a few civilians. Chests slowly rise and fall as each person inhales and exhales the cool, dry air. One among their ranks ...

The Spec-Ops Guys Behind The App Transforming Military Fitness

Stand up and kick off your shoes. Spread your feet hip-width apart with your toes pointing straight ahead. Now squat. Go as low as you possibly can, making sure you dont raise your heels off the floor or slump forward. If you couldnt drop your butt to just a few inches above the ground, you just discovered your problem.

Sitting in a squat position is the most natural movement for the body, says Roop Sihota, a Bay Area physical therapist. Thats because the joints and muscles you need for squattinghips, knees, ankles, core, quads, glutes, and moreare your powerhouses for everything from walking and running to swinging a golf club and doing yard work. If you cant squat properly, your joints are probably too stiff and your muscles too tight. That causes you to lose your ability to move properly, which in turn affects delicate areas such as your knees and back.

The result? Potential pain and injury, and decreased range of motion over the long haul. Thats why learning to squat might be the most important thing you can do for your fitness and wellness. If youre wondering why you failed the test in the first place, the answer is simple. Humans were meant to sit in the squat position. Then chairs came along.

Learning to squat might be the most important thing you can do for your fitness and wellness.

Ever since first grade youve probably been sitting in a chair eight hours a day, five days a week. A chair delivers comfort, sure, but its also an unnatural structure that your body adapts to. Such cultural practices as skull flattening and neck stretching proved this phenomenon quite effectively.

In a chair sitting position, your hip and ankle muscles shorten and your stabilizing core muscles turn off because the chair supports your body. Over time, your hips and ankles tighten while the core areas weaken, explains Doug Kechijian, a physical therapist with Resilient PT in New York City. Tight, weak muscles are a recipe for pain, injury, and compromised performance. But when we spend a greater amount of time squatting, our hips and ankles dont become tight or weak.

When a muscle becomes overly tight, your brain may sense the area as threatened and send pain there as a way to entice you to move, says Kechijian. For example, sciaticaa chronic pain in the ass, literallyoccurs when your hip muscles become too tight. The reason therapies such as foam rolling and stretching temporarily relieve pain is that they reduce some tension. Learning to squat correctly means youll loosen these muscles for good and banish your pain.

Men and women warming up for training in gymnasium

Performing nearly any physical activity on tight and weak muscles is a bad idea. If you run on immobile ankles and tight hips, you risk hamstring or knee injuries because power and impact shifts to the wrong areas, says Marco Sanchez, cofounder of Movement as Medicine, a massage and movement therapy clinic outside Boston.

When a guy with tight hips and ankles picks up anything from a barbell to a bag of mulch, he cant reach the ground while keeping his back straight. So his spine bends, sending the load there. That can cause a disc bulgeand a world of hurt. Nearly every sport requires motion from the hips because your hips give your body rotational power. Take golf: If your hips are too tight, driving a ball can lead to back pain because youre moving from your spine instead of your hips.

An inability to squat can lead to pain or injury in every joint in the body, Sihota says. In fact, research shows that people in rural areas of some developing countries where the sit squat is a common resting position have the lowest incidence of posture-related problems, like lower-back pain.

In your workouts, a full range of motion in moves like the barbell squat and the deadlift is impossible if lack of flexibility in your hips and ankles make it difficult for you to drop into a full or deep squat. (And if you do it anyway, you could be vulnerable to pain or injury, especially if youve loaded up the weight.) That makes the exercise less effective because you engage fewer muscles and keep them under tension for less time. The result: You see less return from your work-out for the same amount of effort.

Learning to squat properly is more than a game changerits a life changer. Youll notice fewer aches and pains. Youll reduce your risk of injury. Youll build more muscle across your body. Best of all, youre likely to see your performance improverunning faster, smashing a ball farther, punching harderin just about every activity you do.

These tests can help identify whats sabotaging your squat. You may have just one problem area, or threehips, core, and ankles. Feel free to do the fix for longer than we recommend; itll only help you reach your goal faster.

Hips and/or Core

This test tells you whether your problem is tight hips or a weak core. Lie on your back and assume a squat position lying down: Bring your knees as close to your chest as you can. Cant get them past your hips? Your hips are too tight. If you can bring your knees high, then your core just isnt strong or stable enough to support your squat position while standing, says Sanchez.

Your ankles need to flex enough to let your knees track over your feet, allowing you to distribute your weight evenly. This test tells you whether your ankles are too stiff to allow that. Stand in a staggered stance facing a wall, your front foot 5 inches from it. Push your front knee as far forward as you can, attempting to touch the wall with it. If your knee cant touch the wall, you failed.

Hold onto a doorjamb, the frame of a squat rack, or a chair. Now drop into a squat, using the frame, rack, or chair to stabilize your body just enough to keep from falling. Your torso should be upright and you should feel your core engage. Breathe deeply in the position for up to 30 seconds. Stand up. Thats 1 rep. Do 3 reps, 3 days a week.

Get down on all fours. Extend your left leg; your knee should be above the floor. Move your right foot beneath your left leg and pin your right heel to the outside of your left knee. This is the starting position. Now move your hips back and forth to the right for 1 minute, feeling your right hip stretch. Switch sides and repeat. Do this drill once a day.

Do the ankle test above for 3 sets of 5 reps every day. Also foam roll each calf for 1 minute a day: Grab a foam roller, sit on the floor, and place the roller under your right calf. Roll up and down the muscle for 60 seconds. Repeat on your other calf. For a more targeted massage, you can try this technique with a tennis or lacrosse ball.

If you can squat well already, get down in the position and try to hold it with good form for 10 minutes (and have a copy of The Iliad handy so you dont get bored). If you cant do 10 minutes straight, build up to it by holding the squat for as long as you can. Rest for the same amount of time and repeat until you hit 10 minutes. This extended time locks in the position, helping to establish the move.

Do your knees, hips, or back sometimes hurt for seemingly random reasons? Do running, lifting, and playing sports leave you sore in the wrong places? Do you walk around gingerly, feeling stiff all over? This three-second test may reveal the reason.

Learn to Squat to Change Your Life

But if you're sticking to a plan minus any of the traditional weight room implements, you'll get bored of the old standards fairly quickly. These challenging variations on classic bodyweight moves (the pullup, squat, and pushup) will push you to your limits and help to build a physique that just about anyone clanging and banging dumbbells around will envy. Try to add these moves to your bodyweight workoutor any routineby following the instructions and videos below.

Build Muscle Without Weights With These Moves

Hang from a chinup bar so youre looking down its length, your left hand in front of your right. Pull your chin up to the bar, your head on its right side. Remove your right hand from the bar. As you lower yourself with your left arm, walk your right hand in front of your left. Pull yourself up on the bars left side using both arms. Lower with your right as you walk your left hand forward. Thats 1 rep. Work up to 5.

Want another challenge? Check out this pullup variation.

Stop thinking of iron-free exercises as just something you should only do in a pinch, or when you're dedicating your training time to active recovery. You can build a whole program of workouts using only yourself for resistancethere are <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a28518153/bodyweight-workout-conbody/" id="19f77f54-11eb-30de-af7e-083bef500cef"> entire gyms built around these principles </a> , after all.

Sure, those things help. But they dont truly move the dial. The two things that do are a great workout plan, and a will to work hard. With this program, you have the first requirement: the exact same plan as the stars.

You cant buy the second prerequisite.

The effort you put into your workouts was, is, and always will be the great equalizer. It doesnt matter if your annual income is 20 million or 20 thousandno one can do the exercises for you or force you to go the extra mile. If you rise to the occasion, choosing to make each of these 36 workouts a fitness crucible, you have just as good a chance of looking like an action hero as an A-lister.

Dive in, work hard, and make a change. This <a href="https://order.hearstproducts.com/subscribe/hstproducts/239189" id="4b39615a-dd15-36a7-a010-a8a18922bb23"> Ultimate Upper Body </a> workout plan from Men's Health and celebrity trainer <a href="https://www.instagram.com/benbrunotraining/" id="885072a7-b795-38b8-ad86-2c8b3a789ae0"> Ben Bruno </a> is the first place to start. Want to learn more? <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a28522850/upper-body-workout-program-ben-bruno/" id="b76b6fa2-0a4c-35a9-a648-5ac2097c698c"> Read on </a> . If you're already sold, get started with the workout below.

<h1> How to Take on the Ultimate Upper Body Workout </h1>

If you're taking on the Ultimate Upper Body program, youll do three workouts a week (this is just one of them). Perform the workouts on the days that are most convenient for you. One rule: Avoid doing the workouts three days in a row.

The workout is comprised of three groups of exercises, which are composed of either two exercises (supersets) or three exercises (trisets). For supersets, do each pair of exercises1A and 1B, for instancein back-to-back fashion. Perform 1A for the prescribed number of reps, followed immediately by 1B for the prescribed number of reps. Rest for as long as you feel you need. Thats one set, or in this case, one superset. Repeat this procedure until youve performed all the prescribed sets of 1A and 1B. Then move on to the next group of exercises.

If there are three exercises in agroup2A, 2B, and 2C, for instancethats a triset. This time, youll simplydo all three exercises before resting.Continue in this manner until youvedone all of the exercises in the workout.

Each exercise includes the number of sets and reps youll perform. If you see per side after your repsas in 4 sets of 8 reps per sidethat means youre to do eight reps for each limb or each side of your body every time you do that exercise. You may also seeAMRAP, which stands for as many reps as possible.

Youll find that in some cases, youre to do more sets of one exercise than the others. For example, you may be instructed to do 4 sets of 2A, but only 3 sets of 2B and 2C. Simply do 3 sets of each exercise, but then finish any extra sets of an exercise on its own. So youd do three sets of 2A, 2B, and 2C in succession, and then finish that group per-forming a fourth set of only 2A.

Low-Incline Dumbbell Bench Press

<ul><li> Grab a pair of dumbbells and lie with your back on a bench set to a low incline (15 to 30 degrees). Lift the dumbbells up so theyre over your chin with your arms straight. Hold them with your palms turned to the front (thumbs facing each other). Slowly lower the weights to your upper chest, pause, and push them back up over your chin. </li></ul>

Chest-Supported Dumbbell Row

<ul><li> Grab a pair of dumbbells and lie chest down on the bench set to a low incline. Let the dumbbells hang at arms length from your shoulders, your palms facing each other. Without moving your torso, pull the 5weights to your sides. Pause, lower, and repeat. </li></ul>

Dumbbell Straight-Leg Deadlift

<ul><li> Hold a dumbbell in each hand in front of your thighs, palms facing your body. Your knees should be slightly bent and feet shoulder-width apart. Without rounding your lower back, bend at your hips and lower your torso until its nearly parallel to the floor. Pause and then rise to the starting position. </li></ul>

Dumbbell Single-Arm Row

<ul><li> Hold a dumbbell in your right hand, and place your left hand and left knee on a flat bench. Let the dumbbell hang at arms length from your shoulder. Pull the dumbbell to the side of your chest. Pause, and return to the starting position. Do all your reps, switch sides, and repeat. </li></ul>

Hanging Leg Raise

<ul><li> Hang from a pullup bar with an overhand, shoulder-width grip. Keeping your legs straight and torso upright(dont swing forward), raise your feet directly out in front of you. Pause, and lower your legs slowly to the starting position. </li></ul>

<ul><li> Assume a pushup position with your arms straight and your hands slightly beyond shoulder width. Your body should form a straight line from your head to your ankles. Bend your elbows and lower your body until your chest nearly touches the floor. Pause, then push yourself back to the starting position. </li></ul>

Band Pull-Apart

<ul><li> Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Hold a resistance band overhand, with your arms straight out in front of your chest and parallel to the floor. Keeping your arms straight, slowly pull your hands back and out to your sides. The band should be tight and touching your chest. Pause, then reverse the move back to the starting position. Note: If you dont have a large continuous loop resistance band, you can perform the chest-supported reverse fly instead. </li></ul>

This Workout Is the Key to the Ultimate Upper Body

You might think actors have an arsenal of secret weapons to get ridiculously fit: a trainer watching their every move, a private chef forcing healthy food down their throat, a fully stocked home gym.

Get Sculpted With This Ultimate Upper Body Workout

When I help a guy get in shape for a part, we always focus primarily on building his upper body, says Bruno. Why hone your chest, arms, shoulders, and back? Just look at Supermana big upper body is what gets you noticed, and shows youre in shape, says Bruno.

The problem is most men approach training their upper half all wrong. From selecting poor exercises, not working hard enough, or totally overlooking their lower body, the consequences range from imbalances and injury, to wasted time and effort. The one thing you rarely see: the results you want.

Brunos sick of it. Thats why hes a greed to reveal his go-to program for building more muscle up top. The <a href="https://order.hearstproducts.com/subscribe/hstproducts/239189" id="4b39615a-dd15-36a7-a010-a8a18922bb23"> Ultimate Upper Body </a> workout plan is the same program hes used to turn even the lankiest, softest guys into big-screen Greek Gods.

If you choose to tackle the program, youll likely be surprised at how hard you train each session. By hammering your upper body with Brunos hand-selected moves, youll shock your muscles into adapting quickly and pack on new muscle while also shedding fat.

But you wont just be working harder, youll also be working smarter. The magic is in the exercises and how theyre woven together across weeks and months, says Bruno. The Ultimate Upper Body program rests on a handful of cutting-edge, muscle-building philosophies that havent failed Bruno yet. Here are just a few.

Even if your goal is to build a big upper body, says Bruno, you also need to work your lower body. There are two reasons for that. First off, no one wants chicken legs, says Bruno. Second, lower-body exercises tend to be more metabolically taxing, helping keep you lean throughout the program.

But theres a catch, says Bruno: I only choose lower-body moves that direct back to your ultimate goal: building a big upper body.

Consequently, you wont find the typical lower-body muscle-building stapleslike the barbell back squat, for instancein Brunos Ultimate Upper Body plan. Exercises like that are good, but they dont offer as many benefits to your upper body, he says.

Instead, Brunos program focuses on unconventional squat and deadlift variations that hammer your arms, back, shoulders, and core just as much as your legs.

The lower-body movements he chooses are so effective that youll only need to do one each workout. Want to find out just how effective? Try heavy trap bar deadlifts.

Heres how to do it: Load a trap bar with a weight you can lift only eight times and stand inside it, your feet shoulder-width. Bend at your hips and knees and grab the handles. Brace your core and keep your lower back straight as you pull your torso up and thrust your hips forward, standing up with the bar. Pause. Lower the bar to the floor and repeat. Do eight reps. Thats one set. Do four total. To hit your upper body even harder, pause for three to five seconds at the top of each rep. (If yourgym doesnt have a trap bar, you can get a similar effect from heavy goblet squats.)

While the deadlift is categorized as a lower-body exercise, holding a massive load at your sidesas you do during the trap bar variationwill light up your grip, arms, shoulders, and back. Your upper body will be challenged almost as much as your lower body.

Bench Press Mondays have a near-sacramental quality among lifters. And while the bench press has some serious benefits, you may be surprised to hear that overusing it could be why your upper body isnt as pronounced as youd like.

Too much bench pressing tightens your chest muscles. Those tight muscles pull your shoulders forward into a slumped position, which can make you resemble Quasimodo. It sounds counterintuitive, but for many guys the quickest way to immediately look like you have a bigger upper body is to improve your posture, says Bruno.

Nothing is going to happen in your comfort zone

The way to do that: Balance your strength. By performing the handful of critical rowing exercises included in The Ultimate Upper Body program, says Bruno, youll work the muscles opposite your chest. This counteracts all the pressing, and, in turn, pulls your shoulder blades back, so you stand tall and look strong.

Analyze the exercises in all the workouts you do across a week. For every two pushing exercises, such as bench presses or pushups, you should do three pulling exercises, like chest-supported dumbbell rows, pullups, or barbell rows.

Think of a movie star as a multimillion-dollar asset. Bruno does. Like athletes, they need to train hard to hit their goalswithout hurting themselves. If an actor injures himself in the gym, it derails his primary purpose. At best, an entire movie production is put on hold for a few days, costing studios hundreds of thousands of dollars. At worst, the actor is sidelined for so long that hes never able to get ripped, and the studio must find a plan B.

You should treat your body like a multimillion-dollar asset, too, says Bruno. You only have one body, he says. And avoiding injuries allows you to consistently train hard, and thats the real secret to progress.

Build the Ultimate Upper Body With This Program

Youve surely seen <a href="https://www.instagram.com/benbrunotraining/" id="885072a7-b795-38b8-ad86-2c8b3a789ae0"> Ben Bruno </a> s workhis clients chiseled results are projected across movie screens worldwide. Bruno is known as Hollywoods secret weapon, one of the select few guys that A-list actors call when they land a big-budget action role and need to add slabs of lean musclefast.

How You Can Build the Ultimate Upper Body

Charles is your average 50-year-old middle-class family man. He lives in the suburbs of Atlanta, works a 9-to-5 in marketing, does Brazilian jujitsu, and spends weekends watching his kid at wrestling tournaments. Except Charles has a hang-up: He worries about feeling like hes withering, about those growing-old hallmarks like thinning hair, losing a step, and forgetting his buddys wifes name. Charles is the kind of guy whos active on antiaging Internet forums and takes fistfuls of supplements. A few years back, when my granddad had cancer, I watched him die, he says. Charles read up on alternative ways his granddad could attempt to extend his life, but his grandfather didnt try them. Soon after, Charles (who asked not to use his real name) got some news that sent his hang-up into hyperdrive. I took this 23andMe genetic test, he says. I found out I have a risk for Alzheimers. Its a risk that increases as your body ages.

Van is a 72-year-old who managed medical-device sales in Boston until he retired and moved to Spain. He used to run five miles and lift weights three times each per week. But in his late 60s, all that wellness stuff wasnt working so well. I began getting really tired in the afternoons, says Van, who also didnt want to give his name. Id be too tired at night to go out to dinner, and I also started having high blood pressure. I was feeling the effects of aging. His attempts at flinging a kettlebell were halfhearted, and his walks around the neighborhood were getting slower. Van felt the sun was setting on the life of vitality he loved and that he was heading toward a gloomy and inevitable bedridden demise.

Each of these men found a solution to their concerns about aging at roughly the same place and time. They came across information in Reddit threads and on longevity blogs about something that people on the other end of the keyboard said could help them live better for longer. It would make Louis healthier now, as he aged, and as all of his friends saw their bodies fade. It would slash Charless risk of Alzheimers and have guys ten years younger tapping out against him in BJJ. It would kick-start Vans training again and drop his blood biomarkers to those of someone half his age. It had the potential to be more powerful than diet and exercise. But it also had the potential to cause some problems.

It was a curious substance discovered in soil that had been scooped up on Easter Island during a 1964 Canadian research expedition. Scientists studying disease there noticed that people didnt pick up tetanus via their feet as they would expect, and they figured the ground held some secrets. But nobody expected to find this one. The soil sat in frozen storage in a University of Montreal lab until 1969, when a researcher looked for useful compounds in it and came across a molecule that was a powerful immunosuppressant. In 1999, the FDA approved the molecule as the drug Rapamune (sirolimus), also known as rapamycin. By the mid-2000s, rapamycin was found to increase the life span of worms and yeast, and in a 2009 study, it extended the life expectancy of mice by 28 percent for males and 38 percent for females. Twenty-eight percent, plus more energy? That could translate into more than a decade of better years for humans, the Redditors and bloggers said. But there was a catch.

Rapamycin wasnt exactly benign, nor was it something Louis, Charles, or Van could just go pick up at CVS. In high doses, rapamycin suppresses your immune system. The FDA approved it for people whod undergone organ transplants to keep their bodies from rejecting the donated organ. The stuff could put you at risk of side effects. Roughly 5 percent of patients in clinical trials experienced them badly enough that they had to quit the drug. The FDA stamped rapamycin with a black box warning, its most extreme, for drugs that come with serious or life-threatening risksrisks like infections, pneumonia, and cancer.

Still, the forums had links to legit research and showed lots of buzz in the ranks of influential biohackers like Tim Ferriss and physicians like Peter Attia, M.D., whove had MIT researchers and University of Chicago doctors appear on their podcasts talking about the drugs potentially age--bending benefits. Doctors generally wont openly prescribe rapamycin for longevity. Van got lucky and found someone who did. But Louis and Charles, like many people who want something today, went looking around the web.

We talked to many men like Louis, Charles, and Van for this story. They range in age from 27 to 76, and their opinions on the drug go from probably helpful but no better than exercise to easily the most important drug ever discovered by mankind and should be a key topic of discussion in the upcoming presidential election cycle. They are manual laborers, academics, medical doctors, entrepreneurs, and everything in between. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these men quietly experimenting with rapamycin across the country. And if these guys are right, they could be like the lucky rodents in the research, walking around with improved brain health, heart health, and vitality while the rest of us surrender to mortality. Or they could be killing themselves slowly. Its too soon to tell.

scientists still dont know what actually causes aging. Maybe its that your cells stop dividing, or that your telomeres shorten, or that you exhaust your stem cells, or that your DNA becomes damaged and stops repairing itself, or a combination of all those processes. Or maybe its none of them. All we can do to live longer and better for now is treat agings symptoms. So thats what the antiaging community until this point has been stuck with trying to do.

Its a history of whack-a-huckster. In the 1800s, the treatments were patent medicines like Clark Stanleys Snake Oil Liniment and Hamlins Wizard Oil. In the 1920s, antiaging doctors charged $750 to $2,000 for life-extending gland transplants. Medical boards in the late 30s intervened to cut down on these quack treatments. But in the 90s, boomers brought the quack back. This generation was hitting middle age and, having grown up in the turbulent 60s, was willing to question the establishmentin this case, the medical establishmentand turn to self-help. Boomers began popping questionable OTC supplements and getting HGH injections, all in the hope of extra life. In 2002, when the antiaging market hit $43 billion, a group of 51 scientists in the field published a statement in Scientific American decrying the burgeoning, built-on-almost-nothing business of antiaging medicines. No one really cared. Just five years later, the market was expected to reach $64 billion.

History is full of anti-aging therapies; in the 1880s, actual snake oil was touted to fight it.

Which is about the time Silicon Valley stepped in with big data, big science, and big money to, of course, disrupt death. Larry Page, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and other tech billionaires have since funneled billions into life--extension companies such as Calico and the Methuselah Foundation. (See Death Disrupters, page 111.) Much of the new research is founded on an antiaging discovery that occurred all the way back in 1935. It was then that researchers at Cornell found that rats that spent their lives in a state of caloric restriction lived longer.

Eventually, this finding would be connected to that life--extending compound in the Easter Island soil through the microscope of David Sabatini, Ph.D., M.D. Dr. Sabatini didnt set out to get mixed up in this odd world of antiaging, but in 1992, peering down at a sample he was analyzing one day as a student at Johns Hopkins Medical School, he discovered a protein, now called mTOR (short for mammalian target of rapamycin), that would eventually form a link between the way rapamycin might extend life and the way caloric restriction does. He had discovered the mTOR cellular--signaling pathway that answers to rapamycin. The drug just might act on the very causes of aging.

Dr. Sabatini, now a professor of biology at the Whitehead Institute and MIT, explains the mTOR pathway like this: Pretend your body is an old house. Your oldest cells have all sorts of problems and are implicated in your house falling apart. You couldnt fully renovate the old house by bringing in only a plumber, or only an electrician, or a roofer, or a drywall guy, says Dr. Sabatini. Youd need to hire a general contractor, who would hire all those specialists who would then come fix all those problems that needed to be fixed. The mTOR pathway is like the general contractor, signaling to your body to demolish parts of its old cells and replace them with newer, healthier ones.

Dr. Sabatini thinks rapamycin essentially tricks the body into thinking that its in a state of calorie deprivation, which is what causes the contractor to call in all the guys for renovation work. The cellular workers consume your oldest, weakest cell parts, even parts of senescent cells. These are cells that no longer divide and are thought to spur aging and maybe even drive cancer. Which is to say that rapamycin could give you all the benefits of fasting without the ravenous downsides. In addition to the studies on rapamycin in yeast, worms, flies, and mice, in 2014 scientists began work on dogs; it found that those on the drug showed signs of younger hearts and a reversal of age-related cardiac issues.

While this was going on, Mikhail Blagosklonny, Ph.D., M.D., a prolific researcher on aging at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, began writing about his theories on rapamycin in medical journals. He noted its antiaging promise in 2008 and hypothesized that a lower dose than transplant patients take might bring on benefits without side effects. On Christmas Eve in 2014, a study conducted by researchers at Novartis and Stanford and published in Science Translational Medicine confirmed Dr. Blagosklonnys theory. Older people taking the drug for six weeks didnt see their immunity decreaseit actually increased in groups that took as little as 0.5mg a day or 5mg a week. Adult transplant patients typically take a 2mg dose every day.

Today, more than 2,000 clinical trials studying rapamycin are under way around the globe, nearly 1,000 of them in the United States, and even the director of the NIH has blogged about its potential benefits. All of which means rapamycin checks a lot of boxes in the description of a trend thats about to explode: wellness gurus talking it up, credible researchers giving it ink, and enough unknowns to interpret the research in any way that works with your world-view. But the science, as science does, is proceeding slowly and carefully and may never find answers. Because the drug is already generic, drug companies arent interested, and antiaging enthusiasts are going ahead and taking it, sometimes with severe consequences.

in the world of rapamycin for antiaging, guys find ways to get the drug. Louis and Charles searched the forumsnot the somewhat moderated ones, like Reddits, but forums Charles would rather not mention, just to protect them, you know? Charles found a post with a link to an obscure, unregulated pharmacy in India that was willing to ship anyone rapamycin, no prescription needed. Louis got his from a supplier he wont disclose.

Van located the one doctor in the U.S. who would prescribe the drug. His name is Alan Green, M.D., and he treats patients out of his home in Bayside, Queens. Because you have to visit him in person, Van flew to LaGuardia Airport, took a cab to Bayside, and wound up in Dr. Greens office.

With these antiaging meds, there are the sketchy, we-dont-know-the-effects-yet prescriptionsthe ones you get from Dr. Greenand then there are the sketchy sketchy ones from overseas pharmacies and underground suppliers. Many foreign pills are fine, but some arent. The bad ones can be counterfeit, contaminated, tainted, or otherwise unsafe. They can make you sick, lead to dangerous interactions with other medicines you take, and even kill you. In Charless and Louiss eyes, the bigger risk was doing nothing. They each asked for a shipment of rapamycin; Charles got a four-month supply for $100, and Louis got two years worth for about $200.

Vans prescription came from Dr. Green, who takes the drug himself. The doctorfive-foot-ten and 175 pounds when he started, with a rim of white hair around his tan headsays the decision to take it was easy. He had just turned 72, and everything was going to shit. It was clear that I was going downhill fast, says the now-76-year-old. I would get winded easily and wasnt moving as well. I knew I wouldnt be alive much longer if I kept deteriorating at this rate. He came upon Dr. Blagosklonnys work and wrote himself a prescription for 6mg once a week. I didnt have anything to lose, he says. The first thing I noticed is that it became easy to lose weight. I was losing two pounds a week. I also had a marked increase in energy and wasnt getting winded as easily.

Dr. Green continued his treatment for a whole year with nothing but upsides. So I decided, Well, Ill make this available to other people, he says. The FDAs black-box warning is an excellent warningas it applies for use for organ transplants. At the doses for antiaging? Not so much, says Dr. Green. Its not illegal for him to prescribe the medication. Once the FDA approves a drug, health care providers generally may prescribe it for an unapproved use when they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient, explains Jeremy Kahn, a spokesman for the FDA. Overall, one in five prescriptions today is doled out for off-label use, like the blood--pressure drug Inderal being used for performance anxiety or the antidepressant Zoloft for premature ejaculation.

Dr. Green created a website laying out the research and began hearing from people whod found him online. I figured Id see a few patients a month, he says. His phone started ringing far more than that. I think I was Dr. Greens second patient, says Van. The doctor ran Van through a handful of questions about his health history, why he was interested in rapamycin, and what he hoped to get from it. Then he did some basic blood testing, Van says, and wrote him a prescription. Van filled the Rx, dumped six of the aspirin-sized 1mg pills into his hand, and popped them into his mouth. He flew back to Boston, and at home hed take that same 6mg dose once weekly. My blood work quickly became that of someone 20 to 30 years younger, he says.

Dr. Alan Green, 76, had no idea so many men would come to his office in Queens to get rapamycin, which he started taking himself when everything was going to shit.

Seeing Dr. Green isnt cheap. Youll have to travel, and he charges $350 for an initial visit and $100 to $200 for follow--ups. Your insurance wont cover the meds, which cost $75 to $150 a month. Dr. Green now sees about three patients a week, and many are doctors, Ph.D.s, and executives, he says. But that doesnt help guys like Charles and Louis.

They received the rapamycin pills a couple weeks after placing their orders. Charles added a 5mg dose in with all the other supplements he takes and washed the mix downwith water. Louis did the same with a 7mg dose. Both guys take their pills once a week. I dropped 10 or 15 pounds in the three months Ive been taking it, says Charles, who admits he has also been eating better. I feel less sore, like Im taking Advil. I was going to quit jujitsu a couple years ago because of my joint pains, and now Im rolling with 25-year-olds. My hair also seems a lot thicker. Louis has been on and off it for almost a year; he says he cant tell if less joint pain and an improved mood are direct results or merely coincidental. He had some mouth sores, indications of a compromised immune system, but they didnt rattle himhe thought they, too, might just be a coincidence.

Concerns about infections and worse are one reason more doctors arent prescribing rapamycin. Dr. Green says bacterial infections happen in about 5 percent of patients. Ive had a few skin and soft-tissue infections, which I treated with antibiotics, he says, and he emphasizes that the infections can get bad quickly without antibiotic treatment. I have two patients whove developed pneumonia and required hospital treatment. In both cases, theyd delayed a few days to a week or more in starting antibiotics.

I think [prescribing rapamycin] is bordering on unethical, says Dr. Sabatini, who does not take the drug. I think were far away from knowing that there are no downsides to long-term use. Dr. Attia, the influential 46-year-old physician focused on longevity, says he wont prescribe it to other people eitherat least not yet. I take rapamycin myself, so on some level Ive decided its a smart option, he says. But I havent prescribed it to any patients, except one, who is himself a scientist studying rapamycin. And I think that speaks to my desire to better understand the risks, not only of taking too much but also of not taking enough. Well likely never be able to study directly whether rapamycin really helps humans live longer, says Dr. Attia. Its too time-consuming and too expensive to do a study like that well. Well have to rely on some combination of proxies, he says, and scientists are discussing the development of such tests to analyze what kinds of markers could really pin down whats happening with the drug.

Yet Louis, Charles, and Van arent waiting for science to catch up. Theyve been on the stuff for as long as two years and dont plan on stopping. Maybe the three of them, the rest of Dr. Greens patients, and the untold numbers finagling rapamycin off the Internet will be among the 95 percent of people who see no negative side effects. Thats assuming the pills they get are legit. And maybe theyll end up outliving us all. Or maybe theyll find an unknown, unforeseen consequence. Medicine can be a gamble. Some medications sat on shelves for decades before doctors realized they came with harmful long-term side effects and had to be pulled. The painkiller Vioxx, for example, was linked to 27,000 heart attacks and strokes after it was FDA approved, and the acne drug Accutane dramatically increased the risk of miscarriage and severe birth defects in women taking it during pregnancy. Many later sued its maker.

Not that any of those cases will influence the decisions of the antiagers we spoke to. I dont know if itll make me live longer, but hopefully I can head off dementia, says Charles. And I feel good, man. So why not?

Louis is a 27-year-old assembly-line worker in Three Rivers, Michigan. He has no health problems and rarely sees a doctor. Yet for a man in his prime, Louis thinks a lot about cheating death. He researches strategies online, and he even converted to a plant-based diet after hearing from a YouTube channel called Vegan Gains that veganism could extend his life. Louis thinks the diet will buy him a few extra years, but he feels the urge to keep seeking new life-extending methods. Id like to live...

This Obscure, Potentially Dangerous Drug Could Stop Aging

Nicolai Myers, a national strongman champion, wasnt sure whether the kids shaky, 99-pound body could handle the 30-pound medicine ball. But he asked him to try to lift it anyway. The kid, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/smiles_taylor/" id="15db67dc-aefc-3188-a597-ff4478032a2e"> Miles Taylor </a> , a 24-year-old photographer from Carroll County, Maryland, quaked, flailed, and shook as he bent over the ball, attempting to encircle it with his hands and bring it up to his chest.

Attempt one: fail. Attempt two: fail. Three, four, and five: fail, fail, fail.

Taylor has cerebral palsy, a condition that makes your muscles a mess. They become too loose or too tight, spasm, lack coordination, and do anything and everything you dont want muscles to do when youre trying to lift weight. At best, cerebral palsy affects just one limb. At worst, you live in paralysis and can hardly communicate. Taylor is in the middle: He can walk and talk, but its imperfect, and he had to go through extensive childhood therapy to do so.

Learning the lift was like figuring out a puzzle.

Learning the lift was like figuring out a puzzle. Taylor slowly pieced together each requisite movement-hinging at the hips, bending the knees, stabilizing the spine, clasping the fingers, and straightening the knee and hip joints-into one, bringing the ball off the ground and up to his chest. Thats when I got bit with the strongman bug, says Taylor. He had shown up at NeverSate, a Maryland gym, to photograph a competition, but he left a member. That was a year ago.

The hardest part of working out for me has been control, says Taylor. I have to focus on every muscle and every movement to do any lift. His first time deadlifting, for example, Myers had to steady Taylor from falling as he practiced form with an empty 25-pound bar. His body will never be able to get in the traditionally correct position for most lifts, says Myers. So with every lift, we go to the drawing board and figure out where hes the strongest and most stable so hes safe.

When I photograph activities, Im much more stable and have more endurance

Taylor first came to the gym once a week. But within a few months, he was a daily visitor. I now realize the strength I have and want to keep getting stronger, he says. Im a very competitive person. In the winter, Taylor hunched over a barbell and ground out a 200-pound deadlift, sharing the video with his Instagram followers. <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/health/a26253369/deadlift-cerebral-palsy-powerlifter-miles-taylor/" id="c731bdbc-0fe6-349e-a2a3-4be8671173fe"> The video took off. </a> What the world didnt see in the 30-second clip was that Taylors gym strength has benefited his daily life. When I photograph activities, Im much more stable and have more endurance, he says. Simple tasks are easier, too, like moving a pot of water to the stove, and other things people take for granted.

Fine movements are still tricky. He has a harder time putting on his lifting belt that he does deadlifting 200 pounds, says Myers, causing Taylor to laugh. But hes got help for that anyway. The gyms community is like my second family, says Taylor. We do group workouts, and the atmosphere is amazing. It pushes me to keep working. Taylors next challenge: lift a 100-pound concrete stone and carry it across the gym, says Myers. He just keeps getting stronger.

This is one in a series of 12 stories that explores the role of strength in modern life.

This Strength Athlete with Cerebral Palsy is Crushing Stereotypes

I had a superathletic upbringing. I swam and played water polo on the girls varsity team into my senior year of high school. I knew at puberty that something wasnt right, but I didnt know that there was a name for it. I decided to run away from home. And then the Internet kind of blew open my world-I was dealing with the fact that I am transgender.

Back then, in 2006, I found an endocrinologist who issued me testosterone, but it really takes a toll on your body. My appetite increased, and I stopped working out to focus more on, like, just becoming myself. I gained a lot of weight. But I also felt better. Transitioning is not like you just take a pill and then youre done. Its a long process. Ive been going through it for 13 years. Eventually I got top surgery. Im 31 now.

I knew at puberty that something wasnt right, but I didnt know that there was a name for it.

Working out had always seemed impossible without hiding my body, but after surgery I no longer had an excuse. So thats when I started doing my own little lifting workouts at the gym. But I didnt really have the skills or tools to achieve results. And the weight-room environment can be very intimidating. To be a trans person standing among a bunch of men huffing and making noises in front of the mirror is not comforting. The locker room is another scary place.

The locker room is another scary place.

Last year I signed up for a six-week fitness challenge at the Queer Gym in Oakland. Finding the right gym for yourself is so important. In the Queer Gym, I feel like no one is judging me. After the first month or two of classes four days a week, my body started to feel really light.

I feel the change most in bodyweight exercises-when Im going on those, I can really tell how strong I am now, and how far Ive come. It sounds ridiculous, but I love burpees. My energy level went way up. Im now a manager at Olo, a Bay Area company that provides back-end support for restaurants. My attention span, my focus, and my general well-being and feeling of self-worth went way, way up.

How Finding the Right Gym Can Transform Your Life

This as-told-to story one in a series of 12 that explores the role of strength in modern life.

How Finding a Non-Judgy Gym Helped Me Learn to Love Myself

Just five hours after a spark ignited a patch of dry forest in Butte County, California, a phone rang outside of Reno, Nevada. The Camp Fire, which would eventually destroy 150,000 acres and kill 86, was already dire, says Matt Alder, a 38-year old firefighter based in Sparks, Nevada.

Sparks and his 20-man team were called in as reinforcements and they needed to be California-bound by noon. These Nevada boys were ready, having trained to be as tough as the handles of their fire axes. I do CrossFit, says Alder. Filthy Fifty, where you do 50 reps each of 10 different exercises-box jumps, pullups, kettlebell swings, walking lunges, knees-to-elbows, push press, back extensions, wall balls, burpees, double-unders-is particularly appropriate for firefighting. Its long and you have to grind it out. Other members of the squad, says Alder, join him in CrossFit, do a combo of lifting and running, or log hours in the Sierra Nevadas mountain biking, climbing, or backcountry hunting or skiing.

CrossFit Helped This Firefighter Save Lives

Alder geared up, packing the 75 pounds of gear that hed wear and use to combat the quickly advancing blaze: fire proximity suit, axe, pack, and shovel. Five hours later, he and his team arrived in Chico, California, where they were tasked stopping the blaze from jumping Highway 99 and cremating the 100,000 person town. But nothing was going right.

The wind was howling, like we were in a wind tunnel, he says. This made his tasks-dousing the fire, putting down wet lines, clearing brush, and extinguishing embers that jumped the highway-like an extended, life-or-death CrossFit WOD: Sprint the 100-foot, 135-pound fire hose to an ember, douse the flame. Thats one rep.

Alder did those reps nonstop for six hours, after which he and his team were able to force back the fire. The location of their next fight: the rural neighborhoods outside of Paradise. We were searching for people and protecting property, he says.

In full gear, going door-to-door, Alder luckily found no people-theyd all evacuated-but plenty of dogs, which hed call in to be rescued. He and his team then saved what homes they could by putting out creeping fires, creating firebreaks by chopping down trees with axes and chainsaws, and dispersing towering stacks of firewood, which act like tinder for the blaze. Another long grind.

That first shift lasted 48 savage, scorching hours, an adrenaline fueled feat that no workout can fully prepare you for. But itll get you close enough, says Alder. My workouts have taught me that its OK to be uncomfortable, and that translates very well to working long, hard hours, says Alder. My crew on the Camp Fire had a saying that became the theme while we were on the fire line: embrace the suck.

Embracing the suck carried the team through 12 more days of constantly fighting the worst fire the US has seen in 100 years. It was just 100 percent devastation, he says. We spent time looking for bodies in towns where cars had completely melted, even the rims, into puddles of steel, and helping people whod lost everything. Some didnt have a wallet, a phone, anything.

The experience came with a lesson. Physical preparation is critical, he says, but its also not enough. One big takeaway for me, not only as a firefighter, but as a human being, is that you need to be prepared in general, says Alder. Have a contingency plan, keep cash on hand, and have an emergency bag with food, clothes, and toiletries.

CrossFit WODs and MetCon Drills Helped This Firefighter Save Lives

Five days after a golf-ball-sized cancerous tumor was removed from the inner workings of Rhett Bowldens ass, the man got that ass back into the gym. Just for some fan-bike work, says the 39-year-old, who was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in January.

Michael Easter

Articles written by the author

The Spec-Ops Guys Behind The App Transforming Military Fitness

Learn to Squat to Change Your Life

Build Muscle Without Weights With These Moves

Get Sculpted With This Ultimate Upper Body Workout

How You Can Build the Ultimate Upper Body

This Obscure, Potentially Dangerous Drug Could Stop Aging

This Strength Athlete with Cerebral Palsy is Crushing Stereotypes

How Finding a Non-Judgy Gym Helped Me Learn to Love Myself

CrossFit WODs and MetCon Drills Helped This Firefighter Save Lives

Working Out Helped Me Fight Cancer

How Doing Yoga Helps You Deal With Anger

Fierce Strength Tips from An Elite American Ninja Warrior

What it Takes to Be a Sumo Champion

After I Was Shot in the Spine, Strength Training Gave Me My Life Back

How Power-Lifting Helps This Amputee Veteran Battle Depression

How I Took Down a Shooter With My Bare Hands

Can Tracking This Metric Make You Fitter?

You Should Bet on March Madness, But Not For the Cash

4 Keys to Getting Shredded After 50

8 Lessons Young Men Can Learn Training With Men Over 60