 Next question is from Michael Lifts, 247. As we get into our 40s and 50s, how would you program the deadlift and squat and is one better for us as we age? Okay, so, okay, still doing it. I'm gonna answer the last part, is one better for us as we age. Okay, let me rephrase the question. As we get into our 40s and 50s, should I practice and maintain my ability to squat and bend over and pick things up? Yes. I hope you maintain that till the day you die. I was gonna say like I could see myself squatting and deadlifting when I'm 80, I hope. Those are fundamental human functions. So now is one more important than the other? I hate that question because they're both very important, but I guess if I had to pick one over the other, I'd say the squat probably edges out the deadlift in terms of function, but they're both extremely important. How would you program it? Really depends on the individual. I think for the average person, squatting and deadlifting once a week and practicing once a week is probably, so long as you have good mobility and all that stuff, you're probably okay, but the key is gonna be to train yourself in a way to be able to maintain good mobility and form in those exercises as you age. And if you start to lose mobility, if you notice that in your 50s, I can't squat like I used to, don't abandon the squat, address the reason why you can't. Well, and I think to like treating both of these with the proper intent and like making it a skill that you wanna like maintain the whole time is utmost importance. And I think why it doesn't seem like you'd still do this when you're older is a lot of people that have the intention of always PR-ing or always having to have these aides in terms of like, oh, my knees kinda hurt, so I'm gonna work through that pain and I'm gonna keep trying to add load. I'm gonna wrap my knee. Yeah, and so they're gonna do all these different things to just try and sort of patch up where the holes are instead of actually going and working on the holes simultaneously and reinforcing their joints along that journey. I think that's something that's totally disregarded, which is not the way that I foresee myself going through that as I age and going into the later years even like I wanna maintain both of those simultaneously. So I was asked recently on one of my Instagram Q&A things, if I were to pick three movements that I could only do for the rest of my life, what would those three movements be? And they said, and then why? And so I said, squat, deadlift and overhead press. And the reason why is not because I think those three exercises are necessarily the best three exercises that anybody could possibly do, that's not the reason why, although they are arguably three of the best movements up there. The reason why is I know if I can properly do an overhead press, properly squat and properly deadlift that I'm late in my years, 70, 80, 90 years old, I am definitely probably pretty healthy overall as far as from a movement perspective. It means I've got pretty good. And those are the areas, I picked the three that I think people lose, to do an overhead press at the age of 60 or 70 is very impressive. Not a lot of people can hold a barbell straight up above their head, even if it's lightweight, straight up above their head. Most of them can't do it with no weight. I used to train people in advanced age and they could not strain their arms straight. They could not strain their arm up a little bit. So the point of me explaining that was it's not the exercise, it's the ability to be able to do that exercise. And so why I'm bringing that up with this question is that's the answer to this for this person when it comes to squatting and deadlifting. It's not so much the exercise itself, it's the ability for you to do it. And if you can't do it, because you're older, the goal should be to get to a place to do it. Who cares if it's 200 pounds, 100 pounds, whatever. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you can perform a squat with good form, perform a deadlift with good form and do an overhead press with good form. If you can do those things, you're gonna have a very healthy shoulders, very healthy hips, have a strong back, things that are extremely important as we age. And if you struggle with those things right now, the worst thing you could do is to abandon them. Don't abandon them, work on getting better at them so you can perform those movements. And if you can stick to those three movements, because I tell you what, I foresee myself this way as I get older. I mean, of the three of us, I would say I'm probably, I don't know, maybe Justin and I could, Sal's the most neurotic when it comes to exercise. Consistent. Yeah. Right, Sal's the most neurotic when it comes to you. You can reframe that. Yeah, call it however you want. Consistent, neurotic. And then Justin and I, Justin and I, I don't know, we're probably similar that in Doug. And I think that there's highs and lows. I see myself like this, like there's a lot of times, I already do this now and I'm not even 40 yet, where I might just be doing squatting those movements. That's it. Because I, and all the things that, that make me do those movements well. So what I, what includes that is like the mobility webinar that I just did, those types of mobility exercises, those all helped me perform those three movements. You know what I'm saying? Or working on Indian clubs, like I know Justin likes to do all those things. But the reason why he does all those things is so he can do those three movements I just said. You know, the reason why- The reason why he goes away. Right, the reason why he does all those crazy Indian club and May spell stuff, because he does that, it allows him still to overhead press with comfort and strength really well. If you do all the 90-90 stuff and the combat stretch, that'll allow you to squat and deadlift to good depth and with good form. So I'll always be doing things. And that to me, I'll always be watching that. Like, can I still deadlift a decent amount of weight? Can I, it doesn't need to be my PRs when I was younger and training seven days a week. I didn't want to be able to just be strong enough to be able to be doing at least my body weight or more in these movements. And if I'm doing that, man, I'm gonna be very happy with myself in my 70s and 80s. Yeah, we have, like every now and then we'll get somebody asking about weight belts and the proper technique with those or like shoes, elevated shoes and all these sorts of things. And you know, like I think it's great that you wanna get in there and be able to lift heavier and be able to feel more support and feel good. But now you're negating the other half of training that you should be focused on, which is making sure everything joint wise is accounted for. Like I can go down to that depth. I can withstand that amount of load on my back and brace properly. I just wanna, I wanna personally train myself like thinking into the future of when I'm 60, when I'm 70, when I'm 80, like I wanna be able to pick something up and not have a bunch of shit that I'm relying on to do that. Yeah, you're gonna walk around a weight belt for your whole life. You know, this reminds me, I totally forgot about this. When I first started working out as a kid, I used to hear this a lot from my family. And I always thought it was the most strange, odd question ever where I started building muscle, I started training and my family members would tell me, well, what happens when you stop? And I remember thinking to myself like, well, what do you think happens? Yeah. It goes away and they, well, that's why I don't wanna do it because it goes away when you stop. Well, why are you gonna stop? There's not a single, listen, there's not a single skill that you could learn as a human that doesn't degrade if you stop practicing it. It's just the bottom line. Look, stop talking for 15 years and then start talking again and see how your language comes out. Like nothing works that way, nothing. I always thought it was so strange that people would ask that because I look at them like, of course. It's the same thing that I used to get when I first started becoming a personal trainer when I was 20. And you know, the critics would always say, well, what are you gonna do when you get into your 40s and 50s? Exactly, that's my point. I'd be like, well, what do you mean? You don't think there's people that need still training even when I get older? I don't understand the question. There's like, well, yeah, I mean, sooner or later you're gonna get old. Your body's not gonna be all buff and fit. I'm like, huh? It's like, no, I plan to lift my whole life. It's a practice, it's always a practice. The goal is to not lose any of these skills. Now, of course, the bottom line is age does affect the body. So am I gonna lose my ability to deadlift 550 pounds? Yeah, probably. But what's more important to me is my ability to be able to deadlift. My ability to be able to move that way and feel good. My ability to live a full life and to have good mobility. And that comes from consistent daily practice. And I'll tell you what, it's more important to exercise consistently when you get older than it is when you're younger. When you're younger, you're kind of resilient. You're like, I see kids, they eat garbage, sit around, do whatever. And they're kind of okay. And then you train them a little bit and they change their diet and their body just magically transforms overnight. Doesn't necessarily happen that way as you get older. It takes a lot longer. So the consistency is even more, as Adam would call it, neuroticism. It's more important as you get older because as you get older, your body wants to adapt in the opposite direction faster and faster and faster as you get older. When you're 50 and you stop working out, your body moves backwards really fast. When you're 20 and you stop working out, it moves back, but not so quickly. To the point where I used to have clients in their 70s where they would train with me and we'd see some little progress, little progress, little progress. And then for whatever reason, sometimes they would stop. I wouldn't see them for like six months. They'd come back and it was like, oh my God, you aged 10 years and six months. Your body was just waiting for that opportunity to take everything back and then some. Your goal as you get older is the same goal you have now as when you're younger, is can I continue to perform these very, very basic fundamental movements? And if I start to notice issues or problems with these movements, like what Justin said, rather than patching it up and throwing on a belt and putting something around your elbow and rubbing Ben Gale over your body, figure out why. Why is my deadlift starting to feel more stiff? Why can't I squat as good as you used to? Fix the issues that are causing that and so that you can continue to do these? Well, this is exactly why we wrote Maps Prime Pro. And I know that it was probably one of the more confusing programs for us to promote and to get out there. A lot of people confuse it with Prime and they think, oh, it's just a harder version than I get. No, it's completely different. And we've actually talked about renaming it because I think it's confused so many people and really what it was designed to do. We go through seven of the most important joints in your body and there's a test to do and it's pass or fail. Either you can take that joint through its fullest range of motion with good control and strength or you can't. And the truth is most people will fail quite a few of those tests. And that's especially as you age, right? If you're 20, maybe on your limber, maybe you do all of them and you're like, oh, no big deal. And that's normal for a very young kid. But as you get older, because you haven't been addressing these things, you're gonna fail more of those tests. Now the answer is when you fail it, isn't like, oh, now I just skip all these, no. In there, then from there, it shows you movements, mobility drills that you should do to help improve and get better. And the perfect examples when we talk about squatting and deadlifting is the hips and ankle stuff, which is what I was talking about with the 90, 90. Like 90, 90 completely changed my squat, completely. It was just four years ago, you can go back and see old videos of me squatting. And I've got this really wide stance and I can barely get down to 90 degrees and what people don't see in the videos after I was done squatting, I was laying on the ground, I was grabbing my low back because it was on fire because my mechanics were off. And the old version of me would have said something like, well, squatting is just not for me, I'll leg press instead and do leg session. That's the worst thing I could have done. The best thing would have been had I started doing what I'm doing now in my late 30s, back in my 20s, when I first started noticing that, when I first started noticing the low back pain and the bursitis in my hips instead of eliminating exercises that seem to make it worse, I should have tried to dig deeper into why is it making it worse? Why am I not able to do something as basic and functional as a squat and work towards getting better in that? And that alone is a great goal for most people listening right now. Like that, if you could just overhead press, squat and deadlift, the rest of your, and you did only those three movements and the stuff that you need to do to do those movements, you would be in a great place when you get older. Yeah, the old adage, you don't lose, if you don't use it, you lose it, super, super true.