Keep It Moving with Jill Brand

Longevity has become a status symbol, marketing term, and in some spaces, a kind of show. Jill Brand joins The AGEIST Podcast to talk about what gets lost when better living becomes another performance, and why movement remains one of the interventions that actually changes daily life.

As Head of Branding, Content, and Creative at Pvolve, Brand challenges us to think on muscle, mobility and stability, GLP-1s, injury prevention, and the psychology of trusting your body. The episode gives listeners a clearer way to think about fitness after 40. Rather than as punishment or spectacle, Jill urges us to consider it to be the work that keeps people independent, capable, and connected to the lives they still want to have.

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Key Moments

“Movement is life. Move your body.”

“Muscle is kind of like the secret to long life, to better living.”

“Whatever gets you moving is the right workout for you right now.”

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Click Here for the full interview transcript.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Fear of movement is a real thing. And I think that's tremendously connected to your stability. You think of stability as just balance, but it's also really kind of like connection to center. It's this control that comes from the center that has you in control of your body movement. And that sense of control of your body, your appendages from the core takes away the fear of movement in a lot of ways. Stability training has like a deeply psychological component too. Movement is life. It's transformational in that way.

SPEAKER_04 0:46

And you see that with people who are older and they've sounds really mean, but they've just sort of made a decision to be old and not move. And if you make a decision to not move, that's exactly what's going to happen. Welcome to the Ages Podcast. This is episode 294. I'm David Stewart, and my guest this week is Jill Brand. Jill is the chief marketing officer for PVOL, the fitness company built around functional movement, strength, mobility, stability, and what they call a more intelligent way to train. I met Jill at Athlet Tech, where we were both on a panel together, and she immediately struck me as somebody who could play a very good game of verbal tennis. Smart, fast, funny, and very willing to call nonsense when she sees it. And there is a lot of nonsense out there in the longevity world these days. In this conversation, Jill and I talk about longevity, which has become one of those words that suddenly appears on everything. You can almost feel the marketing departments discovering it in real time. Longevity skincare, longevity drinks, longevity clinics, longevity supplements, longevity everything. Yeah. Some of it's real, true, but some of it is just expensive theater. And that's putting it mildly. Underneath all the comedy, this is a very practical conversation about the basics. Sleep, food, stress, connection, movement, and especially strength. We talk a lot about these things here. I'm going to talk about a little more today. Jill brings a useful perspective because she sits at the intersection of fitness, culture, and women's health, and how that intersects with consumer behavior. What do we buy? We talk about GLP1s, muscle loss, and why strength training has moved to the center of the health conversation and why people still need a very clear instruction. You know, you go to your doctor and you say, get fit. I don't know. Never made any sense to me. We also talk about the importance of hobbies. What are you doing out there to like enrich your life? Tennis, singing, skiing, indoor skydiving, pottery. That one didn't go too well for me. Yeah. You learn more about that. The bigger idea is that novelty matters. Being new at something matters. Letting yourself be a beginner again may be one of the most underrated longevity practices ever. Which brings me to the Super Age games. Coming to New York City, November 7th. This is the first ever longevity competition. This is about measuring capacity. It's not about measuring age. Strength, mobility, coordination, power, resilience, and the willingness to show up. Jill's whole point in this conversation is that movement is life. And that is very much in the spirit of the Super Age Games. You can learn more at games.superage.com. And before we get to Jill, a quick shout out to everyone who's given our show a five-star review. Your feedback helps us grow and it brings you more conversations just like this one. Let's talk to Jill right after a brief word from our sponsors. True Nutrition is protein powder you build yourself with the exact ingredients, flavor, and sweetener you want. I like that because believe it or not, I'm fairly particular about what I put in my body. With True Nutrition, I get to play chemist. On their website, I can choose the protein base, the flavor, how sweet I want it, and add things like collagen, fiber, probiotics, or aminos. It takes a few minutes and then your custom mix is saved for next time. The flavor and texture are excellent, with no chalky aftertaste. And I like that it can be sweetened with monk fruit too. Head to TrueNutrition.com slash AGIST and use code AGIST for 20% off your first custom protein blend. That's true nutrition.com slash ageist code AGIST. Go build your own mix and take 20% off. Once you've had a protein you actually look forward to, you won't go back. Every movement we make starts with energy, and that energy starts inside our cells. As we age, our mitochondria, the little engines that power us, can become less efficient. That affects strength, recovery, resilience, all the things we actually care about. Timeline developed MITAPUR with Urolithin A to support metophagy, the process that helps clear out damaged mitochondria so our cells can work better. I think of it as working closer to the source. Timeline's clinically proven formula is now available at a new, lower price. Midapure now starts at $79 when you go to Timeline.com slash AGIST. That's Timeline.com slash AGIST. This season I've been paying more attention to the energy curve. Coffee can be useful, but too much of it and I end up wired than flat. Element Lemonade Iced Tea has been a better afternoon move. It uses full black tea extract with electrolytes, so the caffeine feels steadier and there's no sugar, artificial colors, or dodgy ingredients. Sharp and clear is the goal, especially when it's hot out and hydration matters. Get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash agis. Find your favorite flavor or share with a friend. That's D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T.com slash agis. We're back. Let's give Jill Brand a call right now. Jill, so wonderful to see you. Where does this podcast find you today?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

So great to be here, David. I am in Sag Harbor in the Hamptons.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Oh my gosh. Oh, I love that town. It's so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

It's the best town in the Hamptons for sure.

SPEAKER_04 6:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

It's a gorgeous day and feels good to be here.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

That's right. Are you do you spend the summers there? How does it is this the weekend?

SPEAKER_00 6:17

I spend the full summer here. So kids get out of school and we stay here till basically Labor Day. That's not to go back to the city at all in the meantime if I can help it.

SPEAKER_04 6:29

That that's the way to do it, right? Like the back and forth, you're gonna lose your mind.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

And every year, traffic somehow manages to get worse and worse and worse. So if you can park here, it's a blessed life.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

That's the way to go. Jill, there's so many things to talk about. I had such fun with you when we were at Athlet Tech. We were on this panel together, and I thought she knows how to play verbal tennis. This is really good.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

It was it was like verbal sparring, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

That's great. It was great. Look, someone's got to bring the entertainment. It might as well be us, right?

SPEAKER_04 7:06

As Emma Greedy says, who's bringing the heat, right? Jill brought the heat.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

It's gonna be me.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

What I want to talk to about a little bit today is this whole sort of field, or depending on your point of view, cesspool of longevity that's just filled with like, I feel like every brand in the world is like discovered this word and they just paste it on there. What's going on here?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

A couple things are going on. I think people are optimizing everything, right? We're all watching each other on social, we're all watching each other age in reverse and wondering what are they doing? What are they doing? What are they doing? And this notion of not just long living, but better living, optimal living is it's the ultimate luxury, right? Like if you can afford to spend your days working on making your life better, making your skin better, your body better, your hair better, your nervous system, that is truly like the ultimate luxury. And everyone wants a piece of it. I mean, I know in my own life, what's kind of amazing is like I just turned 40 and all my friends look better than ever. Like we all look better than we did when we were 30. It's just like it's crazy, and people will spend. And so you add longevity as a mar, you know, as like a as a word in your on your website in your Instagram bio, whatever, and like it's like you can forex your r your rates or something. So it is it's there is real science there, and there's also some junky cesspool science there too.

SPEAKER_04 8:55

So in my view, there's like five things to like move the needle, right? So like go to sleep, make that important in your life, be thoughtful about what you eat and you know, what you're drinking, be thoughtful about how you're moving your body, take care of your stress, get some sort of stress management program because I'm sorry, you're stressed, and then figure out some sense of connection to like other people or something better than you. That's like 97.5% of it. The magic blue pill, that's not gonna work unless you're doing these other things. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

That is kind of funny. The reality is, is it's it is that simple, right? Like everyone wants to be told that like their sorcerer that told them to like shake their ass on the full moon is gonna like make them live long, you know. Like they all wanna believe that it's that easy, but it it really is like the fundamentals. I will say what's funny about that is I think because of GLP1s, where all of a sudden there is a magic pill for the first time ever.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

Okay. If all right, so if you have diabetes, if you are morbidly obese, yes, absolutely, this is a longevity drug. No question. However, if you're 20 pounds overweight, or you feel you're maybe you're not, you just think like you want to lose 20 pounds and you want to look better in a bikini, taking a GLP1, there's some upsides. I know people who are not diseased and they they microdose GLP1 like once a month because it does have anti-inflammatory stuff, but it it also you gotta be really careful about your food and your exercise and all. I mean, you've got to like double your attention to that, or you're looking at muscle and bone loss. And sorry, that's not I that's completely true.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

I mean, I live on the Upper East Side, you know, so I'm around a lot of Upper East Side ladies. I read at one point that actually the highest density of GLP1 usage in America is on the Upper East Side. And you know that that doesn't correlate with the highest density of diabetes and morbid obesity. So but people are speculating that GLP1 microdosing will just become part of your longevity protocol. You go to your derm, you get your filler, your Botox, you go get your prescription for your the world that I'm in. I told you everyone around me is getting fitter, younger, aging in reverse. And I do think GLP1s play a role in it. It's not to say it's not without their risks. And many people think of it as like, could this be the way that I drop the 10 pounds and then I maintain, and then guess what? They go off of it and they put all the weight back on. They go right back, you know. So it's it's a magic pill that turns out to be also a little bit of just real life, right? Like it's still real life too. But I think that has messed with people's heads a little bit because there's this is like there's this pill now that like is curing obesity, which was like the one thing it felt like that was protected. Like it's like you had to do the work. Now you don't have to do the work anymore.

SPEAKER_04 12:27

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SPEAKER_01 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:55

Fitness, scientifically based fitness. Now, talk to me about what are you seeing. Are GLP1s increasing people wanting to get fit, or do they just say, like, I don't need to do this?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

So there is a cohort of people that are like, I don't need to do right, like it's a magic pill. It's their most people, what ends up happening is you lose the weight, you start losing weight, and all of a sudden you're like, gosh, I feel better. Like now imagine if I worked out too. So I think it has this compounding effect. People are spending more on plastic surgery. People are divorcing more because they're like, God, I look great. I don't need you anymore. Like, I could do better than you. Like, but it has all these psychological impacts. And I think what we're seeing is two things being true. One is the known risks of a lot of the weight is actually muscle, and muscle as truly like a longevity organ, like all of that, all of that information is much more prolific now. And so people are taking GLP1s and understanding that they need to pair that with a really thoughtful strength routine. So there's that cohort of people. And then I do think there's also this other, this other thing of like, gosh, I feel better. I wanna, I wanna double down. So you end up eating eating healthier, you end up working out all of that as part of just the the changes you're seeing.

SPEAKER_04 16:27

That's really wonderful. And that's very encouraging. I mean, I've heard from people who they don't like the way they look. So they they feel like they have they're carrying too much weight. And because of that, they don't want to go to a gym. They don't want to go to an exercise class because they don't want people to see them like there's a sense of shame about that. So what I hear you saying is this drug with some people can eliminate that shame barrier so then they can go and participate. That sounds great to me.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Actually, it's interesting, like PVOV, we're not the first to identify this, but just how it really is expanding the TAM, right? Like how more people are going to be turning to strength training because of all the known risks and because of what we just said. And so we're actually in a clinical study right now showing people who are on GLP1 medications and having them pair that with the PVOV method, the PVOV workout, and you know, proving some really impressive outcomes about the ability to stymie muscle loss and also help stimulate more muscle growth.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

Well, let's take the other side of that. I think Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe coined the term uh social x-ray and your zip code. There's a lot of that. Is it an age thing? Like, are I'm just gonna say mostly women, right? So are older women more averse to exercise with the GLP ones or and and younger people are like, well, I know I need to take care of this muscle. Like, are you seeing anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Not not really. I mean, I think just culture at large is moving more towards like this idea that muscle is kind of like the secret to long life, to better living. Like, I I think that's just proliferating in culture holistically. One of the things that I spend a lot of time kind of talking about is historically it was the case that you would go see your doctor and they would say things like take this medicine, you should eat healthy, you should work out. Okay, that's like a pretty broad, unspecific, right? You know, now working out strength training is sort of like at the center of the conversation. It's like this is the thing you need to be doing, is making sure you're preserving muscle loss and building muscle because that is what is going to keep you living well, living independently, living the life you want for the long haul. And it's just it's kind of amazing to see that shift. And I and I think only more and more, and that's like one of the things that Pe Balve is really betting on is like, okay, so it's it's more at the center of the conversation, but people also don't necessarily know where to start, right? Like they need to be told, like, do this thing. And there's a lot of conversations about like, you need to be strength training, you need to be working on lower body strength, you need to be working on upper body strength, but it's still that's that's quite unspecific. The onus is still on you to kind of figure out, okay, am I going to a getting a trainer? Am I just I'll search YouTube, but like, how do you know what what to do? And am I doing it right? And so we've really kind of put together the full system. So it's get this equipment and do this exact program. Like, here is the program, and it's gonna cover all the things. And by the way, we run clinical studies on our workout, which, like, just to contextualize what that means, we actually have partnered with the University of Exeter in the UK, which is like the leader in sports medicine research. And we run studies on our own workout against a constant, and the constant being like the standard exercise guidelines that are given, you know, from NHS and the American College of Sports Medicine. They give like these standard guidelines of cardio, strange, etc. And so we've got groups of people going through the PVOV workout for 12 weeks and proving outcomes that really, really outperform kind of standard guidelines, which is really exciting because again, it's it's a it's an actual prescription. It's like do this thing. So that's been like that's been really cool. And the outcomes are not some of them are qualitative. How easy is it to do? How easy is it to stick with, quality of life, enjoyment of exercise, which by the way, all those things really matter, right? If you hate the thing, you're probably not gonna stick with it. But then there's also quantitative measurements of like you know, like they do DECA scans and we we test the amount of muscle growth and all of that. So it's it's been really cool to be part of it. And like when you talk about living in a cesspool of longevity, that's really the difference. Like we can all say, go shake your ass on a Tuesday in the full moon. But like when you've got real published studies, that's how you kind of stand out in a cesspool.

SPEAKER_04 21:38

We're just joking before we get on the call. Like, uh, I'm sure at eudaimonia, somebody is gonna say, like, you only shake your ass on a full moon, not a half moon. I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Right, exactly. It that's the longevity, that's the secret to longevity.

SPEAKER_04 21:56

Get that protocol right. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Half moon, though, is half-life, right? You have the life on a half moon.

SPEAKER_04 22:04

Exactly. I'm so sorry you got the moon phase wrong. You're dead in a year. I'm here.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

You're dead. I'm sorry you didn't listen to the prescription.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

So you brought up a couple of things here that I think are real friction points for people. And that is the it's not even choice. There's just so much possibility. People get you just get overwhelmed. Like the example you said, if a doctor says to you, eat well and get fit, what exactly is that down.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Let me write that down.

SPEAKER_04 22:33

I'll write that down. Okay, today, get fit. Okay. Yeah, I'm on the case. I mean, this is not anything against the medical profession. They're really great at what they do. I think that for an individual, it's sort of on us to then put on this cut the constellation around that. Like, you need to eat whatever better, or you need to eat healthy food. Okay, what does that mean? And finding out like what that means and finding out like as far as movement, how much movement? What's the prescription? I know for myself, my problem is I move too much. So I have to like scale back the movement.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

I don't think that's a very common problem.

SPEAKER_04 23:11

It's not a common problem, but it's something I have these new, these new guys that I'm working with here, and they train a range of people. And some of them are I live in a town with a lot of Olympians. It's not like rare here. And they're like the best, the best athletes are the lazy ones because they only do exactly what you tell them to do. The ones like you overtrained. You're the problem. We need to get you to do only what we tell you to do and less stop. Go lay around, be lazy.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Wow. Wow. That's pretty bespoke.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Well, and like, God bless you. But I think that's pretty bespoke. I mean, I always tell because people ask me about workouts all the time. At the end of the day, working out works, right? Like, move your body, find something you enjoy doing. Because if you enjoy doing it, you're far more likely to do it. Like, I always say that, you know? Then at a certain point, you might evolve to say, okay, I've been doing that thing, but you know what? I think I'm ready for like the next thing. And that's when you start to educate yourself on like, yeah, that like dance cardio was it's fun, it gets me to move, it endorphins all that great. But I wonder if I, you know, wanted to do something that maybe offered a little bit more muscle tone or whatever, you know, and you start to look and you find. And like I I say this all the time. Like, I I go to workouts, I try different things. If you put five pound weights in my hand and I'm jumping around, I'm going like this long enough, like, yeah, my muscles are getting doesn't make it necessarily the most like biomechanically sound workout, the smartest workout, the best workout. So that's when you start to like maybe dig in a little bit more and understand like, okay, what's the methodology here? Like, what you know, how intentional is this? Why are we bopping around like that? You know? And I think like PVOV does a really good job about that. It's basically at this point, 90% of my workout is Pivov. Um, I just think it's just like a smarter, very rooted in physiology. And that comes from like stacking strength with mobility and stability, which are these like other things that people don't really talk about, but really, really matter. And they matter as you age, certainly. Like, you know, having range of motion, having the ability to control your body and support it on one leg, for example. Like those things really matter as you age. But like, I also have found that when you train those other things, like your physical body, the results today actually like transform way faster. Because, for instance, if I have more range, I can activate that muscle in more ways, right? I can activate it more deeply from more different angles. And so, like the sculpting, the toning component of it all, like the physique transformation also happens more effectively, too. So that's my spiel on workouts.

SPEAKER_04 26:21

We're gonna take one more quick break. When we come back, Jill and I get into hobbies, fear of movement, injury, stability, and trying something new as an adult may be much more important than we think. I used to think the afternoon fade was a caffeine problem. Have another coffee, push through, keep going. But caffeine mostly mutes the signal that tells you you're tired. The fatigue is still there, building underneath, and when it wears off, you feel the drop. What I like about Element Lemonade iced tea is that it takes a different approach. It uses full black tea extract. So the caffeine comes with L-theanine and polyphenols, the way it exists in the plant. Then it adds a meaningful dose of electrolytes, sodium, potassium, and magnesium, the same foundation as Element's Core Hydration Mix. For me, that makes sense in the summer. Heat, training, travel, long work days, all of that asks more from the system. I reach for lemonade iced tea when I want something that feels clean, steady, and actually refreshing, with no sugar, artificial colors, or strange ingredients. Get a free eight-count sample pack of Elements most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash agist. Find your favorite flavor or share with a friend. Once again, that's D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T.com slash AGIST. There are various reasons we move, right? So I like to ski. I like it. It's fun.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:43

It's recreation. It's there's a competition element to it, but that is not fitness.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

I don't know. I don't know that I agree with that. Did you ski as a child? Like, did you grow up skiing? Yeah. Or you took it. You did. I mean, I didn't, and I've like tried it as an adult, and I'm I'm a pretty like athletic person. My kids who are seven and five and three, the three-year-old hasn't been on skis yet. But the other two, like, they can ski better than I can. It's profound. I mean, that like muscle memory thing. But what a day or two hours with like doing a lesson or whatever, like my inner thighs, it's other things too, but that's a workout. That is very physical. I guess I'm immortals like us.

SPEAKER_04 28:29

What I do is I train for this sport.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

Like my wife, I think her first time on ski, she was, I don't know, 38 or 40. And just the sensation of the sliding, you're on this hill thing. It's just so foreign to walking. It's just different thing.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

I'm so jealous of the people who did it growing up. I'm like a toddler on skis. Like it's, it's uh, it's it's really humbling.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

It's really, really humbling. That's actually a whole other thing I was thinking about with like vis-a-vis longevity. I think adults taking on new hobbies, challenging your body in new ways, with challenging your brain, you know, being new at something. It's like got all these things that I just, I'm like, gosh, this has to keep you young, right? It's got this has to keep you young. It's it's humbling in like a really in a really good way. It's it's scary in a really good way. It's exciting, all those things. So I've like, I've I'm like a very big uh proponent of adult hobbies.

SPEAKER_04 29:33

Oh, I did this thing. You would love this thing. It's skydive training.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

And do you intend on skydiving at the end?

SPEAKER_04 29:41

Well, I've no I have no interest in jumping out of a plane.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:43

But it's this like tube, essentially. It's about 15 feet across with a gigantic fan underneath.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Oh, I've seen these things, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:51

And so you go in with somebody who's like uh they know what they're doing, and they they sort of help you. And every time you sort of move your just small moves, your hands or your feet, your body goes like all over the place. They spend like you're like 10 minutes to sort of orient because it's weird, like there's no gravity, right? You're just sort of like flying around in the in the air. And then the guy's like, he's like, Well, do you want to fly? And I was like, Oh, okay. And the thing is about 50 feet tall, and suddenly he holds his body in a way so it captures the wind, and you're it's like something out of the Wizard of Oz.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

You're just like, whoosh, you're like 50 feet up in the air, like just floating in the air.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

It's just like is it scary?

SPEAKER_04 30:30

My experience was this child sense of wonder. Oh my god, this is this is weird. It's a little scary. I think I'm okay, yeah, but I've never felt like this before.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Wow. Does it feel very physical?

SPEAKER_04 30:46

In a way, it's very physical because just moving your fingers in a different way will determine like, does your body spin around? Does it go upside down? Like what happens to you? So you sort of have to get like that kind of dialed in.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

The people who are in there with there's a guy in there with you. I mean, he's done like thousands and thousands of hours and he jumps out of airplanes and all this stuff. So this is like totally normal to him. But to like a regular pedestrian person, this is like an utterly novel experience.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

And it's kind of like would you want to do it again?

SPEAKER_04 31:21

I would I would. It's sort of it's sort of parallel to like, I haven't done psychedelic drugs since I was like in college. But like I said, it's sort of like what I hear people like that, it's like this different reality. It's like you're just dealing with this. There's the gravity isn't the main force, it's the wind. And like, yeah. So anyway, anyway, if you ever have a chance to do that, Jill, I never considered that, but that sounds interesting.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

It makes me think of like what are the things in your life that actually take you out of your own thoughts? Like, what are the moments like and that's like for me what hobbies do? Like I I play tennis and when I'm playing, I feel completely disassociated from the rest of my life in like the best way.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

You know, it's like it's so cool because I work full-time, I have three kids, I'm married. Like, I got a lot, I got a lot of bosses, you know. I got a lot of people I answer to. And it's really like this one slice of time where I really just feel like completely disassociated from it all. I like take voice lessons, same thing. Like, I'm wait, wait, back that up. Voice lessons, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:36

Or singing?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

For singing, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:38

Unreal. Tell me about that. Why do you why are you doing that?

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Well, I'm I'm a musical theater kid. I grew up doing musical theater.

SPEAKER_03 32:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

And it's my happy place, but I don't access that anymore. You know, the last time I was like on stage performing was in college. I and actually I just had my 40th birthday and we had a big party and I performed. I did a whole like I did a set. And so I was kind of training for I was training for that. And it was just so fun. Like it's just again, it's like these things that it connects me back to like my childhood, my mom's a performer. It's this out of body, like completely this thing that is so different from every other thing that I do. That it was just, I mean, it was so it's it's really fun. It's really fun. That sounds terrifying to me, but um being on stage is one of those things that for many is the worst possible thing they could ever imagine having to do. You know, for me, it's like I love it. I like come alive, you know. I like I really love it.

SPEAKER_04 33:44

I like being on stage. It's the singing on stage.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

The singing part, the singing, fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Fair enough.

unknown 33:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:51

But I think that back to your point here, this idea of novelty, doing new things and things that are not that have nothing to do with this other thing, you know, these other things we do in our life. And I think that experimenting and failing, and I I took a pottery class about a year ago. And I thought, oh, this is really good because I'm kind of physical, so it's like clay and but you're also not running around.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Like I feel like you're all it's not too active, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

Yeah, you have to sort of focus there and could control the thing. And um they gave me eight blobs of clay, and seven of them ended up on the wall next to me because I spun them off the wheel. Like I thought, oh, this is gonna be easy. Oh, I'm gonna make this amazing cause. No.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

That sounds like a great bore. I did you go back for a second pottery class?

SPEAKER_04 34:42

No, that was it. That was it. I was just like, no, I this is not my thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Yeah, not your thing. I can understand why someone would find that very compelling. Hands, creation, all of that, that would be a great bore to me, I think. I don't even like pots that much. So Okay.

SPEAKER_04 35:02

Okay. All right. So, what are your ambitions, Jill? So, what if you're thinking about things that you want to do that you don't know how to do at the moment, what are you aspiring to?

SPEAKER_00 35:12

I think I'm I'm starting to do it. Like the thing, like tennis. I have a group of friends who are excellent at tennis. I'm the worst of them all. And like I want to I want to beat them. One day, I'd like to beat one of them. That would be really great. The problem is, is I'm getting better, but so are they. So that is the challenge. Performing at my 40th birthday, it was so thrilling to do it that it it reminds me that, like, and just to say so. My mom is still to this day performing. I'm not gonna say her age because she would kill me, but she's still to this day, she works full-time and she still performs. Community theaters all over New Jersey. You can find her. And she's like always got a script in her purse. She takes dance lessons, voice lessons, acting lessons. She goes to like an acting workshop when such and such teacher is in from LA who she loves, you know, like she's really mastered the art of adult hobby and like keeping that alive in a way that I I just I give her so much credit. I look at that and I'm like, that's where I'm heading. Is like when I'm when I've got a little bit more room to breathe in my life, when I don't have little kids and all these things, like picking that back up, I think would be something I would want to do.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Oh, that's fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

My name in lights.

SPEAKER_04 36:40

We oftentimes get we just we get sort of distracted and sort of like off track by life and career and family, and then but somebody one of our writers told me the other day, like you just sort of look back and like, what made you really happy when you were like five or six? And then that's probably some something parallel to that, or that's a leading indicator, yeah. It's what's gonna make you happy today, and you just forgot about that because you know, this other stuff happened around you.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

But were you an athlete growing up?

SPEAKER_04 37:13

I was always super active, you know, very high energy, difficult to manage young boy.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Some things don't change.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

My wife would agree with that. I like to make things. I always really like to make things. And so now I just make like really big things. But at some point, I'll probably go back to like making small things, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

You have children, yeah? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:41

No.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Well, that's also like another interesting lens, like as a parent, you know, like seeing some of yourself, seeing those things start to emerge in in your young children. And sometimes like planting them yourself and like imagining them, you know, there's that dimension too. But that also is like a nice kind of reminder of God, I did love, I did love that when I was seven, you know, it's like it's fun.

SPEAKER_04 38:09

And you see it in them.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 38:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Parenting is pretty wild. And also, what's crazy is like I've got three, so I've got a couple of data points, you know. I've girl, boy, girl. And they're all so different. And it's not like us implanting on them. It's like they are just they are who they are, and they learn differently, and their personalities are different, and it's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 38:34

Did you play tennis today?

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Not today. I will play on Sunday. I play on Tuesdays and Sundays.

SPEAKER_04 38:40

Did you p-volve today?

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Today I actually did heavyweight training with a trainer. I peev five days a week. I tennis once a week, I weight train with a trainer once a week. Yeah, we call P-volve like it's kind of like prehab. Like Yeah. Oh, there's a great word for it. Yeah, we're really like coaching your body in proper biomechanics such that if you have an injury, we're probably gonna help it.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

And we're also just gonna prep your body such that it it's less likely to get injured. It's more resilient, it's more like supple, it's a lot more resilient. And I've definitely found that to be the case. That's like also really cool. Like the testimonials that we get from our members are just pretty profound. They're just different than most fitness companies. It's not, it's not just I look better than I've ever looked, which like we get that too, and that matters, and that's amazing. But it's like I've suffered from sciatica for 20 years, and this helped me. I used to not be able to walk up the stairs because of such tremendous knee pain, and this has helped me, and now I'm like climbing, I'm hiking every Saturday with my kids, you know, or whatever. Like you hear things like that, and that's really cool. Like it just movement is life.

SPEAKER_04 39:54

It's transformational in that way, which is And you see that with people who are older and they've sound really mean, but they just sort of made a decision to be old and not move. And if you make a decision to not move, that's exactly what's gonna happen.

unknown 40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

It'll be taken away from you.

SPEAKER_04 40:11

As you're as your, you know, as your mobility shrinks, your world shrinks.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

True. And injuries, that's a forced lack of movement. And that's a that's its own line. You know, so that's why like having, you know, preserving your body, pre-habbing your body is also like tremendously important because that's not a choice. That's a decision is made for you that all of a sudden is gonna impact the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_04 40:41

As somebody who's kind of sporty, I mean this is like a third surgery on this knee for a long time. Like, just like a curb would like kind of freak me out. Like, oh, there's a curb. Okay, how am I gonna navigate this? Is it right foot down or left foot down? Oh, I have to like, you know, like going down the stairs in the subway would just be like, is the leg gonna collapse? Am I gonna make it down the stairs? That's not the case. Now, the knee feels really great. It's like stable and it's like, oh boy, I can run up downstairs wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:09

But I have a whole other understanding when I see people going down the stairs and they're very careful, they're holding the railing. They're I totally get what's going on here. And just like, take your time. It's all right, you know, I'm not gonna rush past you. I understand.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

I mean, fear of movement is a real thing. Like that's real, that's a real I and I think that's tremendously connected to your stability. Because like stability, you think of stability as just balance, and it is, but it's also really kind of like connection to center.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

It's this control that comes from the center that has you in control of your body movements. Like that's also stability. And that sense of control of your body, your appendages from the core, from your center, takes away the fear of movement in a lot of ways. Stability training has like a deeply psychological component too. We call it like mind to muscle.

SPEAKER_04 42:05

I've had various injuries over the years. And like if I'm injured, there's a psychological impact to that. So I feel under threat all the time. Like I feel vulnerable in my body because I'm afraid, like, if I've hurt my arm, I don't want to like, I'm more careful. I I don't want people to bump me from that side. But that psychological effect is not just limited to physicality. My ability to take in new ideas or see new people or any kind of novelty, like, because that that is also a challenge, right? You have to sort of rise to the challenge if you're gonna all these sort of new things. If I feel under threat, if I'm injured, I feel under threat. Quite literally, my focus narrows.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Interesting. My husband's uh a college athlete. He's had so many injuries, surgeries. He's had, I think, eight knee surgeries. So I understand all of this. It sucks. Just sucks. And then you overcompensate, and then you injure the other thing, you know.

SPEAKER_04 43:09

It's like so the recovery from these surgeries, it's like, okay, you gotta like build the muscle on stuff back. That's the easy part. The hard part is the neuromuscular stuff that you've you've built up all these compensations and different poor movement patterns. So you have to un undo it. Building muscle is easy. Anybody can do that, but you've gotta like rewire your brain to move things in a different way. That's harder.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Just pall. Avoid all pall.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

Stop doing that crazy shit. Just go to peevall.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Stop doing all that other stuff. That wacky stuff. Don't forget about the full moon on Tuesdays. We gotta we gotta shake our ass.

SPEAKER_04 43:50

Do you shake right first, or you just start with the left? Like, do you go on the on beat or the off beat?

SPEAKER_01 43:55

The off beat left.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

Off beat left, okay.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

On beat right will straight up kill you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:04

Yeah, you gotta call up Huberman. I got a new protocol, Andrew.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

Exactly.

unknown 44:09

Jill.

SPEAKER_04 44:10

This has been fun. We gotta do this more often.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

I'm in.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

What what do you want to leave our people with today?

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Movement is life. Move your body. And whatever gets you moving is the right workout for you right now.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

If you don't use it, you lose it.

SPEAKER_04 44:27

So that's that is right. Jill, you are a shining star.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

And with a musical performance. Is that did I just hear you ask me?

SPEAKER_03 44:43

Once a ham, always a ham.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

Well, and as a matter of fact, I've got a show tune right here.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

What a coincidence.

SPEAKER_04 45:08

If you were to just break into song right now, I'm not saying you should, but if that was an option, what would that look like?

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Probably Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tonneal.

SPEAKER_04 45:23

Oh, I think of the Joy Division version of that. Love will keep us together by the Captain and Teneal. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

It's a banger. It's fun.

SPEAKER_04 45:30

Wow. Okay. I've been heard Captain Teneal since I like 50 years.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Full of surprises, David.

SPEAKER_04 45:36

Okay. All right. Well, till next time.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Till next time. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

SPEAKER_04 45:42

Yep. Excellent. Great to see you. Always fun. I'll speak to you later.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_04 45:47

Bye. That was Jill Brand. I really like her line. Movement is life. Oh my God. Like if you can't move, what else is there? It's simple, but it's true. When our movement gets smaller, guess what? Our world shrinks with it. I know a lot about that. We lose confidence, we avoid stairs, we avoid travel, we avoid new things. The shrinking can happen quietly, and then suddenly we find ourselves boxed in. I've had a lot of experience with this lately because of knee replacement and surgery and recovery, building the muscle back is fairly straightforward. For me, the more interesting challenge is the neuromuscular part, that compensation patterns that built up over years. And are these, you know, they're these little protective habits that my brain puts out there to like protect my body, but it doesn't work out so well long term. So it compromises the muscles and makes me move sort of differently than I should, bad movement patterns. And this means I have to essentially manually override my subconscious in order to move my knee and everything above and below on the chain that needs to move properly. So this has given me, I gotta say, a much more empathy for people who move carefully. Like when I see someone taking the time on the subway stairs, maybe they maybe they're holding the railing, they're thinking through each step. I understand this in a new and very direct way. And as Jill said, stability is not just balance, it's a sense of control over your body. And I gotta tell you, like, you know, last year when I was going downstairs, I'd be holding on the railing because was my left leg gonna buckle or not? And if it buckled, I was gonna tumble. So, you know, stay next to the railing. So fortunately, past that, knee works much better now. The other thing I liked was Jill's point about adult hobbies. Yes, tennis, voice lessons, performing at her 40th birthday. That kind of thing matters. And it gets us out of these usual loops that we live in. It makes us new at something again, which can be hard, can be challenging, but hey, you know, what's the alternative? It introduces a little humility and a little bit of wonder, both of which I think are really great for us. With that in mind, let's keep looking for new things that give us that strange sort of childlike feeling of being out of our normal reality. You know, I did indoor skydiving. That was insane. It's like one of the most magical things I've ever done. Pottery, no, as I mentioned, that didn't work out so well for me. And I've got a lot more deeper respect for anyone who can keep clay on the wheel, let alone make something attractive out of it. So in the end, to me, this conversation was a reminder that longevity doesn't have to be exotic. I mean, I think there's just like a lot of rabbit holes you can go down, but it really is the basic stuff. Move your body, build, preserve your muscles, stay curious, try something new, keep your world from shrinking. Some of the, I'm not going to name their names, but they're all about sort of avoiding things. Make your life smaller. My feeling is make your life bigger. And that's my thoughts. Anyway, that's it for this week. Stay strong, stay vibrant. We'll see you next time. Take care now.