How much likelier the least-fit adults in a 122,007-patient study were to die during follow-up than the fittest — a wider gap than smoking. The interview estimates where you sit on that curve, and exactly how to move.
Educational tool built on published exercise-science research. Estimates are directional, not diagnostic — nothing here is medical advice. Your numbers stay in your browser and are never sent anywhere.
Work the rungs in order. Each one pays more per hour than the one above it — skipping ahead means training on a cracked foundation.
Resting heart rate is your engine at idle; push-ups in a row are your structure under load. Both track mortality better than weight does. Type two rough numbers; nothing is stored.
Weight never appears on this scoreboard. A falling resting heart rate and a rising push-up count mean the machine is improving — whatever the scale says.
Your VO₂ max — the size of your aerobic engine — drifts down every year. Training doesn't stop the slide; it moves the whole curve up so the slide never reaches the floor. The dashed line is the floor: below it, stairs, groceries and travel stop being automatic.
Estimated from your answers — a watch or lab test will beat it. Units: ml of oxygen per kg per minute. The independence line is where everyday life starts costing near-maximal effort.
Muscle responds at any age — but the muscle you rebuild at 60 is muscle you spent a decade living without. The gap between the lines is strength you never got to use.
Every hour you train carries a multiplier stamped with your age — years of strong, independent life bought per weekly hour. It shrinks every birthday, which is why the young hold a superpower most of them never spend.
Training is a request; sleep is when the body signs off on it. Run the same training year on less sleep and a percentage of every session quietly fails to bank — like a fund fee, it compounds against you.
In studies of athletes, sleeping under 7 hours also roughly doubles injury risk — the fee can turn into a drawdown.
Alcohol isn't a moral failing; it's just rarely priced. Evening drinks measurably degrade that night's deep sleep and next-day recovery. Here's the bill, so you can pay it on purpose — keep it, trim it, or trade it.
Miss a few weeks and fitness sags fast — but the rebound is faster than the decline, and the sooner you restart, the less there is to reclaim. The enemy isn't the missed week; it's the missed week that becomes a missed year.
Print these on an index card and you've captured most of the science.