The Workout Philosophy 78-Year-Old Bodybuilders Taught Arthur Brooks

I do have a very strong and very disciplined morning routine, and I study love and happiness. So it's not as if I'm, you know, going deep into the physiology of actually how I can have the best amount of muscle mass and minimum amount of body fat. I want to have more love and happiness in my life, and it's not easy. So I'm a specialist in human happiness because it's hard for me. That's the first thing. I know everybody who does research on happiness in the psychology and behavioral science world — they're doing it for a reason.

But one of the things that I found is that discipline and an understanding of your own human physiology — the biology and neuroscience — is critical for actually becoming a happier person. So I have a morning routine that I dedicate to being both more productive and having higher well-being. So I'm managing mood, because high negative affect is characteristic of my personality, and I also need to be really productive, because the morning hours are when you're most productive, especially in creative stuff — almost everybody experiences this. And that starts with what you just mentioned, which is called the Brahma Muhurta. And I've studied a lot in India. I go to India every year. I have spiritual teachers, but also I'm very interested in behavioral science in the Vedic tradition. They came to a lot of truths way before Western social science actually came upon this. And one of the ideas was Brahma Muhurta, which in Sanskrit means the creator's time. Now a muhurta is 48 minutes long. So two muhurtas — the Brahma Muhurta — is an hour and 36 minutes before dawn. And the whole idea, going back thousands of years, is you get up an hour and 36 minutes before dawn, and you'll be more creative, more in touch with the divine, more productive, and happier.

This was always the contention. So, of course, it's been put to the test in modern behavioral science research. And sure enough, we don't know if two muhurtas is the right number of muhurtas. But the whole point is, getting up before dawn has incredible impacts on productivity, focus, concentration, and happiness. If you're getting up when the sun is warm, you've lost the first battle for mood management, and productivity is what it comes down to. So my days always start before dawn. Now I usually set the clock for 4:30 in the morning, which is a lot before dawn.

4:30 is a good time for a lot of different reasons. You try to retrofit your schedule to what you need to do, for sure. And that's a long time before dawn in the winter, and not that long before dawn in the summer. And our listeners in Helsinki are like, 'What do I do in July?' I mean, okay, you know, you have to tailor the routines to what you're doing, but it's very clear that this is good for productivity and very good for happiness. And then the most important thing is, what do you do right after that?

I pick up heavy things and run around.

Well, the most important room in my house is the gym. And I've always had a good gym in my house, down in the basement of my house. Now, down in the basement of my house is also living one of my kids and his wife and their two sons. So I have to be real quiet lifting heavy things, keep clanking around down there, because, like, I don't want to wake up my grandchildren. But, you know, I do, generally speaking, two-thirds resistance, one-third zone two, but I tailor that to what my day is going to look like. So if I have a sedentary day, I'll do more zone two to start the day. And if I know I'm walking around — I'm walking around campus or whatever I have to do — I know I'm going to be walking seven or ten miles that day, I'll do all resistance. And so that really depends. Or if I'm going on a hike with my wife on Saturday or something. But that's seven days a week. I do an hour in the gym seven days a week.

Yeah, for sure. I'm very old school. So my resistance training — actually, I learned the routines that I do when I was in my 30s. I really started lifting when I was in my 30s, and, you know, my dad died, and I changed a lot of the things in my life. I quit drinking alcohol in my 30s, and I did a lot of things differently that I hadn't done before, because I wanted to not have the future that I saw in the windshield of my life. And one of the things that I did was I started getting serious about my fitness and going to the gym. And I thought to myself, you know, what's my goal? My goal is not to, you know, turn into a statue and, you know, be admired. I mean, I've been married for a long time at that point. I mean, that was sort of done. And besides, my wife doesn't care. She just wants me to be happy and healthy. I wanted to be doing that in my 70s. I wanted to be healthy in my 70s. I wanted to be hanging out with my wife and, you know, dandling my 11th grandchild on my knee when I was 78 years old. So what I did was — I've always been on tour. I've always traveled constantly all throughout my career. Every city I'd go to, I'd find the oldest iron gym I could find. Why? Because that's where the old dudes train.

And now I'm the old guy, right? So my wife says that, you know, sleeping with me is like holding a leather sack of ropes, which I think is a compliment. I'm not sure, you know, but I've been married decades to her. Decades. But I would go to these iron gyms for 78-year-old guys who are completely shredded. They look like, you know, old roosters, and they're working out. And I would say, 'Teach me, teach me, maestro, you know, the sensei, teach me what you do.' And they would give me this advice, and I followed that advice assiduously. And so what it is is I'm old school: push, pull, legs.