VOL. 3 · MAY 23, 2026

Memorial Day weekend. Saturday before the long Monday.

THE RESEARCH — Strength Predicts Mortality, Independent of Cardio

In 2008, researchers at the Cooper Institute followed 8,762 men aged 20 to 80 for nineteen years. They measured both cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular strength — bench press, leg press, the boring stuff.

The result: men in the lowest third of muscular strength had 30 to 40% higher all-cause mortality than men in the top third — even after controlling for cardio fitness, body fat, smoking, and family history. Strength wasn't a proxy for cardio. It was its own independent signal.

You can run a sub-eight-minute mile and still die early if you can't carry your groceries.

The takeaway: Cardio and strength are independent levers — you need both. The deadlift, the row, the press, the carry are not optional after 40. They protect more than your physique. They protect how long you live, and how much of that life you spend on your own two feet.

Ruiz et al., 2008 (BMJ, 337, a439)

WORTH REMEMBERING

Memorial Day weekend. The men we remember Monday weren't optimizing their morning routines. They were carrying brothers off ridgelines in places most of us couldn't find on a map.

We owe them more than a discount mattress sale. We owe them lives lived with seriousness — the kind of seriousness they paid for.

TRY THIS WEEK — Carry Heavy, Three Times

Pick the heaviest two objects you can hold safely — kettlebells, dumbbells, sandbags, jugs of water if that's what you've got. Walk with them. Forty steps, set them down, breathe, walk forty more. Repeat for ten minutes.

Do it three times this week.

You will feel it everywhere — grip, forearms, traps, core, glutes, lungs. The farmer carry is the closest thing the modern man has to what our great-granddads did every damn day. The strong grip it produces — benefits every aspect of life.

You don't need a gym for this. You need a driveway and ten minutes.

FROM THE BOOKSHELF — Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

My all-time favorite historical fiction by Pressfield brings you up close with the Spartans at Thermopylae. It is the rare book about ancient war that reads like it was written by someone who'd been there. The 300 Spartans who held the pass against the Persian army for three days are not painted as gods — they're painted as men. Tired, scared, married, doubting, and standing anyway.

There's a scene where the senior officer, asked what makes a soldier brave, answers that the opposite of fear is not its absence. It's its companion. Brave men are afraid and act anyway.

Reflect on that this Memorial Day weekend. Then think about which men in your life would hold the line when the line needed holding. Be that man for someone else, even when you are afraid.

CLOSING THOUGHT

Memorial Day always lands strange. Pool parties and grills and a four-day weekend — and somewhere underneath it, men in flag-draped boxes that nobody at the party knew.

This weekend, pour out a finger of bourbon for them. Tell your kids about them by name. Do not feel guilty about having fun and enjoying time with friends and family. But do not miss the fact that what we are enjoying is in part due to their ultimate sacrifice.

Lift heavy. Eat well. Love fiercely. Live the life they paid for, and live it like you mean it.

See you next Saturday.