SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to the Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today.  On this episode, I'm going to share with you three fitness tests that you can do right now to see if your body is fit for a longer lifespan. Now, all three of these tests are backed by science and we're going to go through the research and they're also simple enough to do at home right now. So follow along with me to learn the science, how to do each test, and most importantly, how to improve your performance on each test to make sure that you are fit and ready. For a long healthy life. Now, each of these three tests are going to be progressive. So we're going to do the easiest test first and work our way to the most challenging test.

And we're going to start off with test number one, which is the gait speed test. A comprehensive analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association of walking speed studies shows that down to the tenth of a meter per second an older person's pace along with their age and gender can predict their life expectancy. Just as well as the complex battery of other health indicators. So instead of a doctor assessing a patient's blood pressure, body mass index, chronic condition, smoking history, and all these other common factors to estimate their survival, a lab assistant could simply time the patient walking a few meters and predict just as accurately. The person's likelihood of living 5 or 10 more years, as well as their median life expectancy.

So again, this test is just as accurate, crazy as it sounds, as this whole battery of blood work and looking at these different lifestyle factors. Simply lining the patient up or lining yourself up and doing this gait speed test can accurately predict your life expectancy. Now, if you're like, what the H E double hockey sticks is a gait speed test? Is this how fast I can jump over a gait? Is this how quickly I could close a gait? No, I'm not talking about any of that stuff. I'm talking about your gait referring to your stride. We can also use synonymously your walking speed test, but we're really looking at your stride, your pace, your step pace. And now the question is, how do I do this test? How do I get the data that I'm looking for? Now, this is based off of the six-meter gait assessment by longevity scientists at the Mayo Clinic. And what you need is a relatively flat, open, straight space. Grab yourself a tape measurer, or you could even use your phone to do this, by the way, and measure out a six-meter stretch of flat ground, and that's about 19. 69 feet for those of us who are metrically challenged. 

Alright, so measure that off. Now what we're going to do is we're going to mark the beginning and end of that eight-meter stretch with cones, painter's tape, or any other visual marker that you like. Next, grab a friend or a family member to time you with a stopwatch or, of course, you can simply use a timer on your phone. Now, this is important, since this test is measuring your gait speed, once you've already started walking, give yourself a couple of extra meters before you get to the starting line. All right, so give yourself a little bit of space to basically get a walking start. You can mark off a couple of extra meters before the starting line if you want, but your timer doesn't start until you hit the official six-meter starting line.

Now you can go ahead and complete your gait speed test and record your time and remember this is important as well. This is not a sprint walking test to see how funkily you can speed walk as fast as you can. This is your normal brisk walking speed say if you were walking through the airport, totally on time, but you still want to get to your terminal with decisiveness just in case. And if you ask my wife, apparently I walk fast as hell in airport, no matter what we could be two hours early. It's a thing. And she's often actually recorded me, but I just, it's just one of those, I guess it's a dad thing, you know, and she's just, you know, kind of oblivious. Oh, you know, look over here. Look at the little duty-free. Oh, that's a cute outfit. Oh, look at the puppy, whatever. She can just take the time off.

She can mentally relax. But I feel this deep Maui Moana, based navigational energy that I got to get the family where we're getting. Alright, so I don't know if anybody can resonate with that. Any couples out there that have experienced a similar dynamic. But yeah, she talks a lot of mess about me walking fast in airport. But that is my normal brisk walking speed. She just might not realize at the time because it's a thing with being in an airport. But whatever your normal brisk walking speed is, that's what you want to complete and do on this test. Now, after you complete your test and you have your time, grab a calculator, which again, it's our phone today.

Grab a calculator and calculate your official gait speed in meters per second. Type in 6 for the 6 meters. And divided by your test time to get your meters per second. So if your time on the six-meter gate test was 1. 95 seconds, take six and divide it by 1. 95. And that equals 3. 08 meters per second is your official gate speed. Now, anything around three meters per second or more is fantastic. Please understand, obviously, it's difficult to articulate this. Through an audio medium and so what I've done is I've completed a video version of this for you to show you all the tests you can see me doing all the tests that we're going to go through and to send you a chart on where you land on the particular tests all you got to do is go to themodelhealthshow.com/longevitytest okay. Longevity test together as one word. So that's themodelhealthshow.com/L O N G E V I T Y T E S T, Longevity Test. 

And so again, you can see this visually, hang out with me. It's going to be super cool. You're going to see me at my home, see me at the studio, and completing some of these tests, and also getting you a chart to see where you land, because this stuff is important. The tests that we're going through today, again, they've been found to be just as accurate as these wide, dynamic, huge battery of tests, looking at all these different factors. And the question should be, why? Why is a test like this so accurate in determining how long we're going to live? Well, there are several factors embedded into how this test is correlated with life expectancy.

Not so obvious things influence our gait speed, including our body weight, blood flow, muscle function, the health of our brain and nervous system, and more. And by following these tips that I'm going to share with you and improving your speed on this test, you will inherently improve all of those things I just mentioned. Now, of course, if we're younger and this test is super easy, we want to keep it that way. We want to make sure that we keep our gate speed up throughout our lifetime. And that's what this is about as well. You do not. Have to have a big degradation in your gait speed as you age, but you have to be intentional. You have to be proactive. You have to train for it. So now let's talk about how to improve and maintain our gait speed for a lifetime. 

And number one, the best way to improve your gait is to use your gait. The best way to improve your stride and your ability to walk is to walk. Now, the key here is walking. Intently and often the number one way to pass the gate speed test with flying colors long into your senior years is getting in plenty of steps in a day. Now, according to data published by the American Heart Foundation, walking for an average of just 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes or more, but that's the minimum effective dose can lower your risk of heart disease and stroke by 35 percent and lower the risk of type 2 diabetes by 40%. The researchers called it a wonder drug, all right, part of walking is having a healthy stride, and a healthy walking gait. Additionally, getting in an adequate amount of steps has been found to significantly increase lipolysis, the breakdown of stored body fat to be used for energy, improving our insulin sensitivity, improving your hormone health.

In fact, a study published in the journal Endocrinology looked at the connection between the amount of steps taken each day and testosterone levels. And the researchers tracked middle-aged men for the study and stated, "percentage changes in serum testosterone levels were significantly correlated with the total number of steps taken per day". Most noteworthy as far as increasing testosterone and being protective of our hormones, in particular testosterone, was seen at 8, 000 or more steps per day. So the question is, how many steps are you getting in each day? We could put this in terms of steps, we could put it in terms of minutes, whatever you like. But somewhere around 30 minutes a day? Or 8, 000 steps per day is really that minimum effective dose for overall encompassing metabolic health and longevity.

Now you can track this with a simple watch and see how much time you're getting in. Or you can get yourself a pedometer in every device now. Phones and Apple watches, the list goes on and on. Our tracking, our steps if we Turn on the capabilities. But if you're trying to get a little bit free of the EMS, you know, give a little tech-free time. You can get yourself a simple old-school pedometer, right? I've got one on right here. Actually stay strapped up with it. I stay ready. All right, being able to just keep an idea about how many steps I'm getting in. So I run this experiment from time to time just to see where things are at. Just doing what I do on a daily basis, just live my, my, my normal life.

Not necessarily even proactively getting out and " going for a walk". I tend to get in around 8, 000 steps a day, just living and being human, throwing a nice brisk walk on top of that easily hitting 10 K or more. Now, another way to improve your performance on the gate speed test is to improve the mechanics of your walking. And that starts literally from the ground up with the health of your feet. Your kinetic chain that powers the way you move starts with your feet. The kinetic chain is the way your body's segments work together to perform an action. It's a complex system that involves your muscles, joints, nerves, fascia, and so much more.

And dysfunctional walking and dysfunctional movement very often springs from dysfunctional feet. So keep in mind, this is our contact with the earth itself. Our feet are so remarkable. They're one of the most complex entities that we have on our bodies. Your foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, 19 muscles, 107 ligaments, and each of your feet has over 200, 000 nerve endings. This is for a reason. This is because our feet are meant to collect data. About our environment and about our responsive movement. This is something that we were designed to have this contact and this intelligence. There's really so much intelligence collection happening with our feet when our feet are allowed to do what feet do.

Now obviously we live in a culture where our feet have been abused. Let's just say it. We'll just say it. Our feet have been abused, crammed into shoes that are not shaped like feet. And we've decided that this is normal. And all manner of foot dysfunction is now the majority today. Alright, so we can go to the extremes of saying someone has hammer time in their shoe. Alright, if you've ever seen Shaquille O'Neal's Foot, which I do not recommend it. If you want to sleep tonight, do not look up Shaquille O'Neal's Foot. But movies like Boomerang, for example, with Eddie Murphy. I'll never forget this, you know, he was looking for that perfect girl. He had the, you know, she's beautiful.

She's sweet, funny, all the things, checking all the boxes, but he had to make sure that her feet were nice. And there's a scene where he's got this beautiful woman who he's hooked up with, played by Lila Rashad. And as she's asleep, he slides the cover back to get a look at those feet. It was bad news. All right. She had what he referred to as hammer time in her shoe and with her feet and it was a huge turnoff. It was a no go, had to move on. And eventually he finds what he deemed to be the love of his life. Checked all the boxes, had him glazing. And she had great feet and the whole thing is played by Robin Givens.

And for him it was trying to be happy, happily ever after. But of course if you've seen the movie, it's not how it went. And so we've got these extremes in culture, like our foot is supposed to look bad if it's unhealthy. It's not, it's not about that. You can have super cute feet that are wildly dysfunctional and causing not just foot pain, because that's where the mistake is. We might think that if our feet are unhealthy, we're going to have foot pain. But what our bodies do with this powerful kinetic chain is it will compensate. It will find ways to compensate from not getting that data in. With those, again, over 200, 000 nerve endings. And so it might compensate with issues with our ankle, with our knees, with our hips, with our back, with our neck.

This kinetic chain runs from the ground up. And so, we need to create a movement. It's already happening, but take part in this movement to rehabilitate our feet. To allow that infinite intelligence that we're born with. Have you ever seen a baby? A baby just is like the feet, their feet, their toes splaying all the time, spreading the toes, ah, just, it's constant. It's just like, it's just a data collection. And then suddenly we're crammed into shoes. For most of the day, for most of our lives, and that intelligence gets turned off. And so part of being able to maintain a healthy gate for our lifetime to be able to walk healthily for our lifetime is taking care of our feet.

There's some great advancements going on, but number one, first and foremost, if you can spend more time without shoes on, all right. Take your shoes off, spend more time barefoot, at least at home, take your shoes off. And I'm saying this because I grew up in a culture, we didn't do that. All right, we keep the socks on, we keep the hoop and socks on and some slides. All right, all the time, even at the house. All right, and even if it's not in shoes, the bounding nature of just even wearing socks all the time, in addition to wearing the shoes all the time. We never get a chance for that intelligence, that direct contact with the ground. And so, spend more time with your shoes off.

Of course, there are shoes now. Huge innovations with shoes and different shoe companies that are creating shoes with a wide toe box and all that kind of stuff. New stylish innovations in that. As you'll learn, we'll talk more about this. A wide-toe box is simply not enough. Because there are some instances where if you've been wearing tight shoes and then suddenly you just get a shoe with a wide-toe box. It can make your foot problem worse. What we need to do is to create some separation, that toe splay. And that's why having individual toe boxes for our shoes, especially when walking and rehabilitating our feet is so powerful. And I spent literally one year testing out these shoes before I decided to talk about them that have individual toe boxes that also have new stylish because I'm a stylish guy.

So some cool designs that I can wear and feel good about and my doing my training and so generally if I'm doing like a leg day, especially if I'm working out outside in my house or pretty much all the time when I go for a walk, I put on my Peluvas. All right, and Peluvas are these innovative design from one of the guys again if you're looking at longevity. Somebody who's actually an example of this. All right, my guy, Mark Sisson, now over 70 years old, he's one of the fittest people I've ever met. And he walks his talk, literally, and he spent years, and he shared the story with me personally, just really working to design these shoes and to provide the very best shoes that provide a diversity, a variety of ways that the shoes can be used. And so, I tested them out for an entire year, and after that I was like, All right, you got me.

I'm moving better. I'm feeling better. For whatever reason, it's like unlocking more physical intelligence, more physical literacy. And it's just something that I just simply didn't realize until I did it. And so I highly, highly recommend, as a matter of fact, you need to do this. Rehabilitate your feet. Get that intelligence turned on from the ground up. Get yourself some Peluvas. Go to peluva.com/model. That's P E L U V A. com/model. Use the code model at checkout. Okay. You've got to use the code, use the code model at checkout, and you're going to get 15 percent off. All right. Storewide. Now, again, I encourage you to do your research on them.

Check out why they are far and away better than any other shoes that are coming from again, a healthy premise of rehabilitating your feet, but why paloozas are so much better. All right. So head over there, check them out. Peluva.com/model. Use the code model at checkout for 15 percent off. And all I want you to do is just start walking in your Peluvas. All right. It's going to make so many aspects of your life better. I'm not saying to get out and to, you know, go hiking with them. I'm not saying to go skateboarding with your palovas. I'm not saying to get to do all the, just walk, just walk in them and where you can wear your "regular shoes". As well, when you're going to work and just doing your daily hangout stuff, but just at least walk in the palovas and you're going to notice a huge difference in your overall foot health, but your health overall.

Now, going back to why this physical test is indicative of our life expectancy factors like again, blood flow, muscle function, and the health of your brain and nervous system, deeply impact your performance on this gait speed test. For example, gait speed can decline over time or it can happen abruptly in the case of an event like a stroke that can alter your nervous system and your motor control. So is there a way to help get your motor control back online faster? Well, one of the most high leverage ways to do it is by walking backwards. A study titled, A Backward Walking Training Program to Improve Balance and Mobility, 18 test subjects who had reduction in motor function due to a stroke. They randomly placed the participants into either a standard balance training group, or a backwards walking training group, to see their impact on walking speed, balance, and balance-related efficiency.

After just one month, The participants who did backwards walking training had significantly greater improvements in both backward and forward walking speed than standard balanced training. Backwards walking was so effective in improving walking speed and balance that the researchers stated backwards walking should be studied as a, quote, preventative modality for future fall incidents, unquote. Walking backwards. All right, there's so many nourishing aspects of that simple act. But these are things again that we do as kids. We play around, we move laterally, we move backwards. You know, life isn't just a forward movement. And so how often, when's the last time that you walked backwards? And many of the issues, like we have certain forces, this forward momentum.

What happens when we reverse that movement and create some alternate forces, some opposite forces? and help to reduce and decompress certain things, compress certain things in a different way. So I encourage you to add in a little bit of backwards walking, just get a little bit more of this input, but be safe and smart about it. All right. We don't want to walk backwards and it's like a bunch of people around or a bunch of objects and obstacles. But the funny thing is once you've Started walking backwards for a little bit. You start to become more aware. Your proprioception, your awareness of things that you can't even see with your eyes.

You start to just feel when stuff is around you. Again, there are so many animals in the animal kingdom that have this awareness. We have it too. But we dumb ourselves down, our physical power and our senses get dumbed down over time by putting ourselves in these very rote, standard boxes of movement, what we're wearing, and several other factors. Again, our environment is shaping our bodies, it's shaping our performance, and unfortunately, unknowingly, it's often shaping our potential. So we want to break out of these boxes. That's what this is all about. Today, this year, and moving forward, is breaking out of these standard boxes. The boxes that we put ourselves in, the boxes of food, that our food comes in, the boxes we put our feet in.

Get out of the boxes! All right? We're gonna go out of the box this year. And a big part of that is focusing on getting these steps in, making sure that we're improving and protecting our gait speed, adding in some backwards walking is one of those hidden really interesting ways. Backed by science to be able to do that, but also we can improve our gait speed by number one, using our gait and also by understanding that efficient walking and an efficient gait springs from a synchronistic dance between your upper and lower body. Walking is really a whole-body movement. All right, so not walking because it's not practice makes perfect. It's practice makes permanent. So, if you've trained yourself to walk like a robot, to walk all stiff, arms at your side, barely moving your upper body, that's not efficient walking. We're not designed to walk like that.

It's an upper and lower-body dance. So, it's a bit of a, a saunter, right? Your upper body is moving on the opposite side as your lower body, as you're walking, naturally, right? So, your shoulders should be more incorporated. Get a little bit more swagger. In your walk. All right. So practice makes permanent. So not just walking, but walking like a human walking with a saunter, with some elegance, like a dance. And also for a little bit of an added challenge. If you're already getting your steps in and you're just like, I want to add a little bit more challenge to my walk. Just keeping in mind that walking can be something that is very. parasympathetic, relaxing, great for burning stored body fat, but just adding a little bit more challenge to it.

Just add some resistance. Right. Put on a weighted vest, put on a backpack, nice and snug. And, you know, throw a couple of weights in there or carry something. Right. We've gone on hikes together where my family was taking turns carrying a kettlebell, just a little one, but just being able to like incorporate little things to be creative. Make the walks fun. And you know what else makes the walk fun, is doing it together. Walking with other people whenever you get the chance, but also put yourself as a priority. Make sure that you're getting your steps in no matter what. And train for this like your life depends on it because it very likely does.

Train for this by walking every day with good mechanics, with a healthy gait built from the ground up, with healthy fully functional feet, great proprioception, and full energy flowing through your kinetic chain. All right, we're at our second one of these science-backed fitness tests to ensure your longevity. And test number two is the single-leg balance test. A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine titled, successful 10 second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals. Uncovered some eye-opening results. The study found that people who are unable to stand on one leg for 10 seconds in middle and later in life have almost double the usual risk of premature death.

The researchers evaluated the health information and balanced test results of 1, 700 people aged 51 to 75 and all free of walking problems. And then they followed them for seven years. After accounting for a variety of confounding factors like their weight, underlying health conditions and more, the scientists determined failing the balance test was associated with an 84 percent higher risk of dying within the study period. That is insane. Again, This stood out, they addressed, these were confounding factors. They accounted for other things that can end their life prematurely. Again, being overweight, underlying health conditions, things like exercise, habits, smoking, the list goes on and on. But being able to do this balance test was associated with an 84 percent higher risk of dying, if you were unable to do this within the study period.

Now, the question again is why, what does this have implications for? Now, most folks still don't realize just how devastating a fall can be once you're into your senior years. For most people, for the average person, having an event like that very quickly transitions to a swift decline in overall health and premature death, right? These things generally proceed in a short distance after somebody suffers a fall in their senior years. Now again, this is the average person because just like kids fall, adults fall, seniors can fall as well and still be okay. But the question is, why is this test so effective? And number one, it's ability to prevent falls in the first place by being a measure of our balance. 

Also being able to catch yourself if you do stumble because having all of this proprioception balance, being able to catch yourself if you do stumble so you don't fall. All right. So preventing falls in the first place because of that awareness and that balance, catching yourself, having other aspects of your body and your nervous system and your muscles kick in, if you do stumble. And also, if you do fall, being able to fall more gracefully because your body is working in more of a synergistic fashion, this kinetic chain, there's a lot of intelligence there, and you're able to fall, but not fall in a way that you hurt yourself. 

Plus there's a level of strength and resilience that comes along with being able to balance ourself to stay strong in a position. A strength and resilience of our muscles, our bones, connective tissues that stabilize us and support us if we do experience an impact force. Alright, so, this is important. Now, how do we do the test? First of all, get yourself into an open space where you don't have a lot of obstacles again, obstacles around for you to do something silly. and to fall and hurt yourself. All right. So make sure that you have a nice open space and then I want you to pick which leg you're going to balance on first. Now, here's how you do it. According to the test that was done on these participants, we'll just say we're using our left leg to balance first. So to balance on our left leg, keep your arms at your sides.

So we're not doing a tight-rope walk. Keep your arms at your sides. And slowly place the top of your right foot onto your left calf. Stand that way for 10 seconds. Then, switch legs and repeat the test with your other leg. 10 seconds, test is done. Congratulations, you've passed this test. Or, if you didn't make it, give yourself another chance. Alright, try it again because, again, if you haven't been balancing for a while, sometimes it's just a, you know, kind of like riding a bike, just finding that rhythm again, and you'll be able to pass the test. But if this is something that you're really struggling with, we've got some strategies to get better at this.

And I would do these things that I'm going to share with you regardless. All right, because this balance test is just one aspect of something much broader. Again, the best way to get better at a balance test or any test is to practice the test. All right, so practice doing this simple test. So that's number one. Number two, practice doing additional single-leg balance movements like hinging forward, right? So you get onto one leg and you go into a single-leg RDL, right? Single-leg Romanian deadlift where the leg kind of swings backwards. You hinge at your hips. You can even add some weight with this, right? In the opposite hand of the leg that you're using.

You can either grab yourself a kettlebell or a dumbbell and you can work on your balance that way. You can also stand there on a single leg and shift your other leg into other positions, move around a bit, right? So you can stand there, lift your leg up, right, raise your knee up high, and then try and open your knee up, where you open your hips up. You can put your leg out to the side, like an old-school, like, Jane Fonda workout, kicking that leg up to the side. You can do all kinds of stuff while balancing on that single leg. Then some more advanced movements would be to do something called bounding, where we're hopping from one leg to the other laterally, right?

So maybe you're hopping like a couple of feet from one leg to your other leg and not putting your, the leg that you land on, keeping that leg on the ground and not allowing your other foot to hit the ground, right? So you gotta gather yourself and keep your balance for a few seconds and then bound back to the other side. Right, so that's called bounding, and that is great for overall athleticism, but also great for improving your balance and proprioception. What I found to be really effective, especially if you're more advanced in your fitness, is to do some single-leg jumps, right? So single-leg jumps, like for example, using a jump rope and jumping rope on.

One leg at a time, right? So maybe you do ten on one side, you switch sides, and you do ten hops on your other leg. That's one way to go about it. And something really cool that I've been doing recently is using my heavy rope, right, my rope flow rope, and doing single leg movements. And actually my whole family, because I knew I was doing this episode today, was doing that at home yesterday, and I was so impressed by my wife's balance. All right, she's got some amazing balance. She was like, Oh, I do yoga. She was like, she attributed to yoga. But I was like, she's not gonna be able to do this because, you know, it's not easy. My older son, for example, is doing it. And there's one movement that is kind of throwing him off with the heavy rope.

And again, by the way, if you want to see these tests, see me demonstrating these tests in these exercises, make sure to utilize the resources. Again, I'm going to send you the video when you go to themodelhealthshow.com/longevitytests. But we were balancing on a single leg and then. Using this heavy rope and swinging it underhand, side to side, overhand, side to side and doing some dynamic stuff with swinging the rope with one arm. And again, it's a weighted rope, and so it requires a lot for your body to maintain its balance. So again, these are some different strategies to improve your performance on this balance test.

And there's also a lot of crossover in all of these longevity implements. One of those being another high-leverage way to improve your balance is walking backwards. So implementing a little bit of backwards walking can help to get that motor control, your balance back on line even faster. But another one of these things that has crossover and how to dramatically improve your balance is to free your big toe. Free your big toe. The big toe, also referred to as the great toe, is primary in your ability to stay balanced. A 2009 study titled The Role of the Great Toe in Balance Performance put test subjects through various balance tests, including single-leg balance tests with their toes constrained like what would be in a typical narrow shoe versus when their toes were unconstrained like when we're barefoot with good toe splay.

So when I say toe splay, that means your toes are spread out. After compiling the data, the researchers stated, "Our results indicate that constraining the great toe deteriorated the subject's single leg stance performance and worsened the directional control ability during forward/backward weight shifting". Translation, we get physically dumber when our toes are crammed together. Alright, we get dumbed down. This doesn't mean that we are dumb. But physically our bodies, our intelligence, our physical intelligence starts to become muted. Now here's the key. What are we doing? How do we fix this? How do we free the big toe and get this intelligence back online?

Even if you have a shoe with a wide toe box, that does not mean that your toes will automatically seek their natural splay again. In fact, studies show that over time, the toes are trained to stay together, and simply switching to a shoe with a wide toe box can make things related to the great toe constriction worse. When your big toe is forced into your other toes by wearing shoes with a narrow toe box, over time, one of the most common conditions that develop is called hollux valgus, better known as a bunion. A study cited in the journal Prosthetics and Orthotics International sought to find if bunions could be reversed by one, putting participants in the shoes with a wider toe box or two, putting participants into shoes with a wider toe box and having participants wear toe inserts to separate the toes for several hours a day. 

At the end of the 12 month randomized controlled trial, the bunions of the participants who simply wore shoes with a wider toe box actually got worse. Whereas the participants who wore shoes with a wider toe box and spent time with the toe separators had remarkable decreases in their bunions and related pain. Now the key is, you don't have to do these things separately. You don't have to wear a shoe with a wide toe box and then spend your evenings with toe separators on. You can do both at the same time when you wear shoes with a natural wide splay and individual toe boxes. Alright, get you some shoes who can do both.

And this is again why I love the Peluvas, because I can get that foot rehab in and check all these boxes at the same time. Again, this is just the primary shoe. That I do my walking in and it's made such a big difference. So again, check out Peluva.com/model, use a code model for 15 percent off. Now moving on big toe strength itself embedded into this one is one of the greatest physical predictors of longevity. A study titled reference values for toe grip strength among Japanese Adults aged 20 to 79 years was published in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research. And the scientists found that across various age groups, they found that they could tell how well people looked after themselves based on how strong their feet were, how strong their foot grip strength was. The data accurately predicted people's age, exercise habits, drinking habits, sleeping habits, and more.

It's pretty fantastic. The question is, what are some exercises to fix and strengthen our feet? Well, part of it is just getting some movement inputs and some pressure into the parts of our feet that have been compressed. So just getting a soft like massage ball like my videographer has right now, I'm looking at right here on the floor. Coincidentally, he didn't know he's going to be doing this today. And sitting down and putting some pressure, putting your foot into that ball and move it around, move it around your foot with some pressure. And you could, that's the thing about it, you can add or reduce pressure. And even a tennis ball could work.

But there's balls that are pretty good designed for massage and things like that. I don't want to do something too hard when it comes to your feet. But being able to put pressure on your parts to help to relieve the tension there. Self-massage of the feet, other help with massage for your feet. Doing functional toe spreads. So just being able to extend your toes. Trying just proactively maybe do a couple of sets of maybe like 10 to 20. Of just trying to spread your toes out wide and then relaxing. Also, and what was noted in a report that came along with the study was using actual flexion, trying to grip stuff with your toes, like trying to maybe put down a towel and stepping on the towel and then trying to grab the towel with your toes is creating flexion.

It's like doing little toe curls. Alright, so stuff like that can help to improve that grip strength of the feet, improve the health of the great toe, and much more. So again, to improve your performance on this balance test, there's so many different inputs that we can do. And 10 seconds is just, again, that's that bare minimum. Let's strive to be able to do this even longer. And to get better at all manner of balance inputs. Another huge obvious way to do this is walking. Walking is a balancing act as well that we're just designed to inherently do. Spending time and doing more stuff with your shoes off. And of course being safe and smart about this.

I'm not saying to take your shoes off and go for a hike or go hoop barefoot. I'm not saying any of that. All right, but just when you can spend more time, especially in your, in your home. And if you want to have a little bit of, if you want to have something that provides a little bit of comfort or a feeling of protection for your feet, you can get some toe socks as well. And a lot of times when I'm not wearing Palooza shoes, I'm wearing the socks. underneath my quote regular shoes. So that's another thing you could do. And it creates that splay. It creates that, that intelligence is getting kicked on with your individual toes, being able to be separated. And now we're at our final one of these three fitness tests to ensure your longevity and test number three.

And I said, we're going to get progressively more challenging test. Number three is the sit. and rise test. A study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology titled ability to sit and rise from the floor as a predictor of all cause mortality revealed how the ability to sit and rise from the floor is a significant predictor of mortality in people between the ages of 51 and 80. It was so telling in the data how important this ability is because Every unit increase in their score, i. e. improvement in being able to do this, led to an additional 21 percent improvement in their survivability. And the question again is why? Well, sitting on the ground is something that humans evolved to do.

In many ways, it's something our genes expect from us for the expression of our various aspects of mobility. How we move and how we sit, our data inputs, and sitting on the ground engages muscles, ligaments, tendons, and more in certain ways that translate to more functionality, while we're not sitting. In the practical action of sitting down and getting up from the floor increases overall strength, flexibility, and mobility. Again, this simple act translates to so many other aspects of our daily life. And the ability to take care of oneself and our survivability. So how do we perform this test? Well, basically we're looking at how do we go from the standing position to getting down and sitting on the floor cross-legged without using our hands.

And using your hands does deduct some points. Again, you'll get the spreadsheet and to see how this points are accumulated when you go to themodelhealthshow.com/longevitytests. Yeah, it's okay. If you got to use a hand or use a little bit of assistance as you're trying to get acclimated to this. But we're trying to see how we get from standing position to the floor, cross-legged, and then back up again without using our hands. All right, so you'll be able to see me demonstrate this. But also understand that this is such a powerful predictor of our longevity and we can get better at this. How do we get better at this? Number one, spend more time doing the thing. Spend more time is sitting on the floor. Getting your body acclimated to those inputs of sitting on the floor.

If you come to my house, most often if we're hanging out, if we're in my living room, I'm usually sitting on my floor. This is something that's probably been the last six years has been the majority of my time I spend sitting on the floor versus, you know, we got a comfy couch set up and, you know, chairs and all that kind of stuff. But I generally sit on the floor and I'll spend time just getting these different inputs in, right? So of course, yeah, sitting crossleg for a bit, but the floor will give you feedback that you need to move, right? So you can put your body into all different shapes as you're sitting there. You can do a 90-90 sit.

You can sit with one leg pulled next to you, one knee pulled up next to you with the other leg extended. I can sit in a semi-kneeling position. There's so many different inputs that I can get. And another encouragement is, improving on this test as well, is to be able to spend some time sitting in a resting squat position as well. And this is something you can improve by, and this is going to require better hip mobility, ankle mobility. A lot of factors go into a resting squat. So just spending some time there, you know, maybe 20 seconds every now and then hanging out in a resting squat. And if you need assistance, you can just hold on to a stable implement, right?

So maybe this is like the side of a couch or, you know, if you're at the gym hanging on to like a bar for the universal gym or something like that, and being able to sit down into a resting squat and spending some time there can help with this as well. But the bottom line is, just spending more time sitting and hanging out on the floor, and dynamically, in different ways. Of course, nine times out of ten, I use my hand to get up. But this test is seeing if you can do this without using your hands. And there are many different ways to get up from the floor without using your hands as well. And this has just been found, again, as one of these longevity tests to ensure your longevity. Now, of course, there's no one test that can determine how long you're going to live. or live healthfully. These tests are just about stacking conditions in your favor. They're about being proactive in your fitness and your functionality and paying attention to the movement inputs that ensure you can do the things you want to do and live a long, healthy life.

I appreciate you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. Again, you can get more resources when you go to themodelhealthshow.com or slash longevity tests, be able to see the videos, how to do these tests and also get charts to know where you're landing in these particular tests. And most importantly, What to do to improve on all of these science-backed longevity tests. We've got some epic masterclasses and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon. 

So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to TheModelHealthShow. com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.