In recent years, health optimization (often referred to as “biohacking”) has gained mass media attention as more people flock towards the appealing idea of boosting their longevity. Yet, in the performance world (think bodybuilders, strength athletes, and the like), many have yet to truly acknowledge the need to prioritize their longevity. Beyond that, they remain unaware of the positive impact prioritizing longevity actually has on their shorter-term, performance-related goals. Yes, you can have killer performance now while setting your body up for years and years of health and well-being down the road.
As a 50-year-old lifetime natural athlete who lives and breathes longevity while still maintaining high levels of performance, I can confirm that these two worlds coexist beautifully when you understand how to merge them. With a biological age of just 26 (as proven by world-leading labs), I am living proof. In fact, I firmly believe making longevity a bigger priority supports higher performance levels.
Let’s break down why having a “now-only” focus can ultimately backfire on your body down the line, why thinking about your later years can benefit you right now, and how I personally achieve the best of both worlds.
The Pitfalls of a ‘Performance Only’ Lifestyle
Leading a performance-orientated lifestyle can provide many health benefits, but it can also cause damage and impede longevity. Just take a look at some of the best athletes at their peak versus 10 years after retirement. Are they a picture of health? Often not, because pursuing high performance is a massive stressor on the body—one that, if not managed correctly, can have many consequences over time.
Many people chasing high performance in the gym or on the field push the boundaries with food intake and stimulants to achieve momentarily higher physical outcomes, even if it means heavily compromising lifestyle factors like sleep quality, recovery, and stress regulation.
For years, I lived with a terrible sleep cycle and ate multiple times during the night all to pack on muscle mass. Although it certainly helped me grow, the negative impacts on my circadian rhythm, central nervous system, testosterone, and ability to recover were profound. None of it was conducive to longevity and it took me several years to completely reverse this negative pattern because my circadian rhythm had become so reliant on my eating schedule. That is just one of many examples of how our performance-related goals can overtake our long-term health priorities.
Read More: The Best Foods And Supplements For Longevity
Prioritizing Longevity Boosts Performance
When we combine our objectives of improving performance and enhancing longevity, we experience a wide variety of benefits, such as:
- Inflammation Regulation: This allows for a healthy recovery rate (and better performance) and helps work against aging to increase our healthspan.
- Enhanced Central Nervous System (CNS) Status: A well-functioning CNS ensures we can perform well now, while also promoting gut health, cognition, and heart health over time.
- Optimized Metabolic Health: Our ability to utilize calories and maintain healthy body composition is a plus in the short-term and vital for avoiding chronic health conditions like type 2 diabetes down the line.
- Elevated Energy: By easing systemic inflammation, we experience improved physical energy and cognitive function.
- Enhanced Natural Hormone Output: Enhancing sleep quality and managing cortisol dramatically improves overall natural hormone balance, supporting performance levels and overall well-being.
- Reduced Risk of Injury: A bigger-picture focus helps us keep inflammation in check and ward off injuries, allowing us to perform at a high level for longer.
My Personal Journey
To give you a full insight into my own journey, I need to tell you about my diagnosis of severe mold toxicity in 2014. My ability to sleep was crippled, my brain fog was out of control, and my ability to recover worsened by the day.
This agonizing chapter in my life put me face-to-face with the loss of my health—and inspired me to go down a rabbit hole of biohacking. I had long mastered nutrition and performance, but longevity had never really been a part of the conversation until this point.
Since then, I have adopted longevity-oriented biohacking practices, such as:
- Daily ice baths
- Daily red light therapy sessions
- EMF-blocking protocols
- Earthing
- Blue light-blocking protocols
- Meditation
- Daily blood sugar, HRV, and sleep quality tracking
- Full blood panels every three to six months
Collectively, these protocols help lower inflammation dramatically, enable me to reach a parasympathetic (otherwise known as the “rest and digest”) state with ease, increase my energy, and enable my body to recover with newfound efficiency. As a result, my performance has improved dramatically. In fact, I have been able to put on more size while eating less food—and without the pain of inflammation in my joints that I once experienced.
This is why I have devoted my life to helping people discover how to combine performance and longevity—because they can co-exist, and the impact it has on our health-span is incredibly powerful!
Your Blueprint For Boosting Performance And Longevity
If you’ve spent years pursuing high performance and hitting PRs in the gym, I can completely understand how shifting your approach, committing to new practices, and switching up certain elements of your current routine can feel daunting. I felt the same way.
Here are a few initial habits I recommend starting with—each of which leads to tangible results and is easy to fit into your day. From there, you can graduate to more sophisticated biohackery should you so choose!
1. Manage Your Blue Light Exposure
The simplest way to get serious about longevity while augmenting your performance capacity is to improve your sleep, which is foundational to improving all areas of your health! Insulin sensitization, testosterone optimization, and growth hormone and cortisol management all improve when we prioritize sleep.
We live in a world where we are exposed to blue light often all day and right up until we go to sleep—and this exposure has been shown to dramatically impact our circadian rhythm.
Creating a rule by which you avoid your cell phone, laptop, or TV for one hour before bed will immediately help set your circadian rhythm up for a better night’s sleep. I would also suggest wearing blue light-blocking glasses, to be thorough. On countless occasions, I have witnessed people improve their sleep scores substantially through this one change.
2. Make Friends With Cold Water
I’ve used cold water exposure for years and typically take at least one ice bath a day.
The benefits of this practice are profound and include toning the vagus nerve and helping increase overall physiological resilience as you learn to breathe more slowly.
Read More: 5 Health Benefits Of Cold Showers
As a starting point, spending two minutes in a cold shower every morning is a phenomenal way to prime your nervous system for the day ahead and experience anti-inflammatory benefits, too.
3. Get Your Feet On The Earth
Earthing is an incredibly powerful tool we can pretty much all access because all it requires is standing barefoot on the ground outside for 10 to 15 minutes. This helps regulate our central nervous system by removing negative charges from within the body. As I stand on the grass, I can literally feel my body relax. It is a tremendous daily habit to help the body shift into that incredibly important parasympathetic nervous system state. I recommend reading Earthing by Clint Obor for more specifics on the science behind it.
4. Nail Your Nutrition
Though biohacking practices can help you become far more proficient at dealing with stress, sleep better, and fine-tune your internal biology to thrive, I would be remiss not to mention the importance of nutrition. Optimizing both performance and longevity is highly predicated on consuming foods that are wholesome, free of processed additives, and ultimately easier for your body to assimilate. By sticking to natural foods, you help your body lower inflammation, which is how we augment health-span while boosting performance. Whenever possible, consume grass-fed, humanely-raised animal foods and organic produce.
5. Clean Up Your Supplement Stack
With my background in natural bodybuilding, IRONMAN Triathlons, and other adrenaline pursuits, I understand the demands of a high-performance lifestyle. I also now understand the importance of health optimization and a longevity-oriented focus. That’s why I co-founded Unmatched, a supplement brand that truly empowers you to attain the highest levels of performance and recovery possible while prioritizing longevity. To do this, I knew a new standard had to be set: ZERO artificial colors or sweeteners, grass-fed-only proteins, and formulas that simultaneously sustain high performance without sacrificing the long-term.
I’m sure you’re no newcomer to sports nutrition supplements and that you’ve experimented plenty with your regimen over the years. Here are four Unmatched products I recommend leveling up your routine with to balance the scales between performance and longevity.
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Grass Fed Whey Isolate Protein
We require a diet higher in protein (from extremely high-quality sources) to optimize recovery, performance, and longevity. Far too often, people hit their protein targets at whatever cost, often dealing with GI distress and inflammation along the way. The naturally sweetened and lactose-free Grass Fed Whey Isolate we formulated uses some of the world’s most premium protein, from cows grazing on the green pastures of Europe.
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ElectraShred
Hydration is a cornerstone of performance and longevity, yet so many people fail to remain adequately hydrated. ElectraShred is a phenomenal solution for enhancing your hydration status, and it also supports metabolic health with the inclusion of a patented form of chromium picolinate, as well as sustained energy levels with the help of acetyl l-carnitine. It also contains ingredients for blood sugar stability and antioxidants to beat off free radicals. On a completely practical side note, it tastes absolutely incredible, and is a completely guilt-free way to make your water taste delicious, so you can sip on it all day.
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Longevity EAA
Essential amino acids are incredibly important for recovery. With Longevity EAA, we only use fermented EAAs. We also included some incredibly sophisticated ingredients, including a licensed form of Spermidine, which has been shown to help with the removal of “zombie cells” that accumulate with age and increase internal “biological lag.” We also added the body’s master antioxidant glutathione.
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Immuno-IGG
Bovine colostrum has been recognized for its health benefits, specifically for the gut, for years. Immuno-IGG is a groundbreaking ingredient that has already been backed by a white paper highlighting its superior qualities to bovine colostrum for numerous reasons, including its much richer immunoglobulin content (and the fact that it’s dairy-free). Anybody serious about elevating performance, health-span, energy levels, recovery, and longevity must prioritize gut health and integrity. Adding Immuno-IGG is an easy first step to doing that!
Final Thoughts
For decades, the worlds of performance and longevity have collided in conflict rather than co-existed in harmony. Today, we are learning more and more that they can actually compliment one another—and by realizing that for yourself, you can unlock new levels of potential for both the short- and long-term!
A natural pro bodybuilder, IRONMAN competitor, and ultra-marathoner, Kris Gethin is widely known across the health and fitness space as one of the leading experts and body transformation specialists in the world. As the co-founder of Unmatched supplement brand, former editor-in-chief of BodyBuilding.com, author of the best-selling book Body by Design, co-founder of Kris Gethin Gyms, and member of The Vitamin Shoppe Wellness Council, Gethin has helped educate and change the lives of millions of people.