Age With Power and Grace
Jeff Cavaliere is jacked, but he’s no gym bro. Nor does he brook “bro science,” a slang term for fitness and nutrition advice that sounds convincing but lacks scientific evidence and ignores individual differences and goals.
Cavaliere ’97 (CLAS), ’07 MS first made a name for himself as head physical therapist and assistant strength coach for the New York Mets during their 2006–2008 National League East Championship seasons, something that wouldn’t have transpired without his older sister and fellow alum Amy (Cavaliere) Falco ’96 (CAHNR).
“My track at UConn was originally pre-med,” he says, “but I saw what my sister was doing in PT, working with people that are athletic, and I thought that might be a little bit more appealing.”
These days, Cavaliere is best known as the founder of Athlean-X, a fitness brand with more than 14 million YouTube subscribers. Cavaliere stands out amid a vast sea of fitness influencers for his ability to integrate physical therapy principles into strength training — and to make athletic training accessible to a broad audience, particularly men and women who want to stay strong, athletic, and pain-free as they age.
“I have been bitten by the reality of aging,” Cavaliere, 50, says. “Things are starting to fail me.”
One of those things is his right bicep. A few years ago, he was walking his twin boys to school when one of them slipped on ice, and as Cavaliere tried to grab him to break his fall, he “felt a giant pop” in his right elbow.
“That stunned me, because I’ve handled heavier loads than my child my whole life, and that shouldn’t happen. The harsh reality is that despite how prepared you might be, aging is undefeated, and your body can always give out.”
That means your fitness goals, says Cavaliere, should be more about feeling good, moving well, and staying active, as opposed to just achieving a chiseled physique or chasing a new PR for your one-rep max on the bench press. But even with these modest goals, one thing you shouldn’t sacrifice as you get older is strength.
Age-related sarcopenia, the progressive loss of muscle mass that occurs with aging, poses serious health risks in our later years. Reduced strength makes it harder to perform everyday activities like climbing stairs or even getting up from a chair.
“Those that don’t address it are going to lose a higher percentage of their strength,” Cavaliere says. “Those that do are going to still lose some, but it could be greatly minimized.”
That’s key, because weaker muscles can’t stabilize our joints and limbs as well as they used to, and this increases the risk of losing balance and falling — which in turn leads to an increase in mortality in old age. For example, a broken hip significantly increases mortality in older adults. After a fracture, many people become immobile, which raises the risk of blood clots, pneumonia, pressure ulcers — and further muscle loss.
One of the most important priorities Cavaliere recommends working on is grip strength, which is not only essential for daily activities like opening jars, carrying groceries, and using tools, but can help with balance and reaction time during slips. “Grip strength is not only something that’s going to fortify you and help you to live a longer, healthier life with higher quality, it’s also something that can be an indicator of your overall state of readiness or recovery.”
“What I like to do is a bar hang in the morning,” he says. That’s just hanging on a bar with your arms straight for as long as possible. “You get other benefits of spinal decompression and shoulder mobility, so you’re getting a better overall bang for your buck when it comes to improving your overall health.”
In addition to strength, Cavaliere emphasizes the need to preserve power, which includes both the strength and the speed with which we can move weight through space. His go-to exercise here is the medicine ball slam, which is just what it sounds like: Raise a medicine ball over your head and slam it to the ground. As a twist, he recommends rotational medicine ball wall slams that are performed by standing perpendicular to a wall, holding the ball at your side (the one farthest from the wall), then slamming the ball into the wall by rotating. In both, the idea is not to merely move the ball but to accelerate it.
“The important thing is not where you start but what you build up to,” Cavaliere says. “For all of us who seem to be getting busier and busier as we get older, we actually still have opportunities to maximize our fitness. Today I think there are ways that you can build muscle with higher focus and less overall time spent in the gym, and see much better results.”
Just don’t skip leg day, bro.
By Steve Neumann
Illustration by A. Richard Allen