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An Interview with Kevin Jardine
Our Live Better, Longer series (a thought-provoking interview series that takes a deep dive into longevity) is back with our sixth interview! Our host Kelly Stranburg, had an enlightening interview with Dr. Kevin Jardine, a physical medicine practitioner, high-end performance coach and the Founder of Feeling Pretty Remarkable- Longevity. Below are some selections from Kevin’s interview where he delved into the importance of physical well-being as a crucial factor in achieving longevity (be sure to watch the video for the full interview!):
Kelly: Welcome back to our next episode of Live Better Longer. My name is Kelly Strandberg, and Live Better Longer is brought to you by the amazing team over at Dividat. I'm so excited for our guest today. We have Dr. Kevin Jardine. Kevin, please introduce yourself to the audience today.
Kevin: My name is Kevin I've been in the health and human performance world for three decades. I love everything related to getting the most out of life by being able to get the most out of your body and I'm really happy to be here to share some insights and passion towards greater physical health.
Kelly: We're excited to learn from you! So, what our audience doesn't know is that Kevin is a longevity expert. Kevin, tell us, why this part of aging, focusing on longevity through physical well -being, and how you become so passionate about that.
Kevin: You know, the longevity portion becomes more important the longer you traverse through life. I don't think it was always something that was a priority for me. I have always been interested in physical health and physical performance. And I was fortunate enough to work at the highest echelon of professional sports and with different athletes from various different disciplines and I was always in awe of how the body functioned. Why did it break down, how to get it better, as far as being able to resist that break down in those injuries, and eventually over my career became much more interested in “how do we expand that and extend it so that decade after decade you can still get a high degree of physical activity of a life without worrying about breaking down.” I really started to see in my practice that the number one thing that was going to affect somebody's quality and quantity of life was whether they had the physical capacity to be able to go out there and enjoy it. It wasn't the scary things that we think about like Alzheimer’s and dementia, and those are scary, but just purely based on stats, the biggest threat that people have is whether they're going to break down or wear out or degenerate over time with the wear and tear of life.
Kelly: What was that aha moment that made you go “all of this work I've done with these elite athletes, it needs to come over into the general public into aging adults?” Was there a concrete moment that made you go, “Wait, I have a humongous base of knowledge and passion. I can help everybody with their daily lives?”
Kevin: If I had to say that there was one thing, it really is the challenge of trying to get the everyday person to experience being able to get more out of their bodies, and not just physically go through getting the adaptations that they can create from challenging themselves with exercise, but the motivation side, the psychology side, because I found it was way easier to give things to a top performing athlete whose bodies are so finely tuned at being able to adapt to different stresses, whether it's physical or not. And then the everyday patients that I was seeing, getting them to make those small course corrections in their lives, getting them to apply some of these principles to be able to get their bodies stronger and more resilient became so much more rewarding.
It was great to take the sciences of working at the top level of sport and be able to figure out which pieces the everyday person could apply and be consistent with. Because I've always told my clients, the best program in the world is the one you're going to do because consistency is king. And being able to really solve for that, “How do I get them started so that they start to see some momentum and get some confidence built up by building their overall competence by becoming a more physically active person?” And it snowballed from there.
Kelly: I like that, thank you. When you think about the current state of longevity across society, what would you love to see change or improve?
Kevin: I want people to fundamentally understand that they have everything they need to engage in some of the strongest pillars of promoting a healthier, longer life already at their fingertips. They don't need advanced this and diagnostic that and super supplement over here, all these different things. What they really need to do is just learn to breathe a little bit fuller, to spend a little bit more time outside, to challenge their bodies beyond what they're physically being demanded of currently. To spend time with people that they care about, to have a little bit more passion and purpose towards the things that they want to pursue in life. All of those we know really help people live longer, higher quality lives.
So, we can enhance that even more and we can maybe speed some of that up, or know whether or not you're doing the right things by some of the testing and evaluation and different advanced strategies for training or different pieces of equipment. We can definitely enhance it, but you don't need it to be able to make significant changes in your life. I would like to see that the message is out there that people have what they need within them to really pursue being a healthier person.
I think given my career and my background, one of the biggest barriers I've seen that keeps people from being a healthier version of themselves is that they don't identify with being a healthy person. They have this identity that “I'm not very athletic. I didn't do very well in high school sports.” Therefore, I'm not an athlete and I don't like the gym so I'm not healthy but I'll go and do some things they tell me are healthy things to do but I don't identify with it hence I never connect with it hence it feels like a chore and it really bites into that consistency factor. So, identifying that they are humans engaging in a physical life and that we're all athletes (some of us get paid and some of us don't) but we're all athletic and we all have everything we need and access to it to be able to go up another level in that active, healthy, longer living life.
Kevin: I do think the whole aspect of “Does somebody relate to something”, I've always said relevance is one of the key issues of why we have such challenges in humanity right now. If we could solve for relevance, if people connected more with “Why is it relevant to have a healthier body”, “Why is it relevant to think about other people” (even if we're not directly influenced by what's happening to them right away), we just have a better society in general. But sticking to the physical health side, you're absolutely right with being able to connect it to people. And what I've done over my years of practice honing that in is I will often differentiate for them things like looking at certain daily movement rituals or exercise as physical hygiene because I talked to them about the buildup of physical plaque that can occur with just everyday life and every injury that any human has ever had on this entire earth is really where the demands that they've been imposing on their body have exceeded their capacity. And I will talk to them about physical hygiene movements, being their movement as medicine, their daily movement ritual, very much like they would go and brush their teeth every day to prevent plaque from building up. And then more vigorous exercise, more structured exercise is targeting building their capacity up even more so that they can go out and elevate the demands doing the things that they love, whether it's tennis or pickleball or walking up a flight of stairs and knowing you can get to the top without taking a break or picking your grandkids up without fearing that your back is just going to break underneath of that pressure. So, it is important to kind of put it into terms that they'll understand.
I literally just got a message today about this. One of our females in their 60s emailed me and she was concerned that she’s seeing so much of a gain in her strength with one of the programs that we're doing with one of our advanced pieces of equipment and now she’s concerned that she’s going to put on bigger bulkier muscles because she automatically associates strength with size and hypertrophy. So, it takes some educating out there to let people know that that's not the case especially in that demographic that did not grow up exercising with the intent to change their physicality, in particular, not wanting to look bulky or muscular in certain demographics in certain age groups.
Kelly: I appreciate that share and I love the analogy about the plaque and cleaning it up on the regular, if you will. Now, Kevin, there's something that you are doing that is so unique. You’re the first person I've met who is embarking on the concept of longevity gyms. Can you share with our audience what a longevity gym is and what your ultimate goal is because I love your goal in life. Do you remember the goal you shared with me?
Kevin: Yes, to make my clinical job obsolete (laugh). So, I've been diagnosing and fixing broken bodies for decades. I love it, it's very rewarding and I'm very honored to be able to help people and continue to help them. But I wanted to do more because 90% of the people that have walked through that door to come and see me really didn't need me if they had a certain physical capacity to endure those demands that they're imposing. And it could be just every day battle against gravity. We live in a predatory environment where gravity is hunting us at all times. So, they just didn't have that capacity. And hence their bodies broke down and then they come in here and they're looking for treatment. The reality is their bodies are not deficient in treatment, they just needed to build up that conditioning. So, I wanted to embark upon putting something together that, given my decades of experience of understanding why people break down and why they don't even go to some of the solutions that are available there, like different gyms and all of these different options they have to build healthier bodies, why they weren't doing it, and that's how I created the longevity gym. It really takes all the guesswork out of what people need to be doing to build stronger, healthier bodies. And we use quantifiable data to prove the success and be able to get people better results in less time with less injury. Because people, they don't know what to do. I mean, even before I was in the clinical world treating injuries, I was in the exercise physiology world. I love exercise. And even I get confused when I go to the gym, like, how many sets am I going to do? What weight am I going to pick up today? You know, how am I going to do this? What am I going to do with that? So, I knew if it was a hurdle for me, it was going to be a roadblock for them. And that's why I created the longevity gym.
Kelly: I'm super excited to see and follow the success of the longevity gyms you have embarking down the road. Okay, final question for you, Kevin. What is the number one tip that you would like to give to our audience, that they can either easily embrace for themselves or be able to use with clients?
Kevin: If I was going to give one thing (if it's related to physical health longevity, because I do get the, "What's the one thing?" question quite a bit when I speak and stuff like that, and with longevity, there is no one thing. I mean, I'm a huge advocate and I am pursuing and really disrupting the physical longevity space with what we're doing, but longevity is much more complex than just one thing. It's not one aspect that you can do) but when it comes to physical health and overall longevity, if we had to pick one thing, I would say it is going outside in nature, going for a hike on terrain that's changing so you have to use your balance and stability muscles and you're in nature getting that forest bathing effect that we know to be real. You're wearing some type of weighted vest or a pack like rocking or just a weighted vest so that you can load your spine exceptionally good for people who are concerned about losing bone density that axial loading or loading your spine is exceptional. And then go and do that with somebody that you are friendly with, that you can confide in, that you know you can speak openly about some of the challenges you may be facing. And that by itself would really give you everything you need and really give you a great starting point for boosting your own physical longevity.
For more insights and tips from experts and thought leaders in the health and wellness industry, be sure to check out our interviews with Michele Wong of Active Wellness, Anna Hall of the Purpose Equation, Mike Studer, Eric Levitan of Vivo, and Tony Galvan of Vi Living. It's inspiring to hear from different perspectives and learn from other’s experiences in the field!