Dr. Sandro Freitas: Powerpenia

In this episode of the Keiser Human Performance Podcast, the conversation explores the concept of powerpenia, the age-related decline in muscular power, and why it may be even more critical than strength when it comes to maintaining function and independence.

The discussion breaks down how loss of power impacts everyday movements like standing up, walking, and preventing falls, and why traditional strength training alone may not be enough. Emphasis is placed on training with intent, speed, and explosiveness to preserve and restore power as we age.

This episode highlights the growing importance of power-focused training in both clinical and fitness settings, offering practical insights for coaches, practitioners, and anyone looking to maintain performance and quality of life over time.

[00:00:00.16] - Gabe Derman
All right. Welcome back to the Keiser Human Performance podcast. I'm here with Sandro Freitas. Sandro, how are you, my friend?

[00:00:05.21] - Sandro Freitas
Thank you. I'm good, and you, Gabe?

[00:00:07.15] - Gabe Derman
I'm doing awesome. I'm doing great. First things first, we have the Powerpenia conference coming up in July in Lisbon, Portugal. Do you want to take a minute to talk about this event?

[00:00:16.04] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah, this event where we will go in deep about Powerpenia concept, which is a very recent concept that was proposed in literature. In fact, it just has 2 years, but right now, it's being spread worldwide. Because of the global interest on the concept, we decided to organize here a conference in Lisbon at the faculty where I work, in a very beautiful time of the year because it will be summer, with very nice good food and weather. If people don't like the conference, at least they would like the country.

[00:00:49.05] - Gabe Derman
Maybe they can come to Lisbon and do some surfing at the very least.

[00:00:52.23] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah, you can do surfing. You can do both activities in land and in the sea. So you have plenty of offers.

[00:01:00.00] - Gabe Derman
For someone who maybe has never been to Lisbon before, the go-to culinary experience. What food, what dish they need to have if they're coming there?

[00:01:08.03] - Sandro Freitas
They have plenty. One of the typical dishes is made with codfish. In Portugal, we don't capture directly codfish, so we import codfish. We are specialized in importing and cooking the codfish because most of the codfish come from the north of the globe, Iceland, and then they send to here. I think we are the country that best makes codfish food.

[00:01:34.08] - Gabe Derman
What a fun fact, there you go. Maybe we'll have to have a separate episode on food in Portugal. But another fun fact, actually, one of the keynote speakers for this Powerpenia conference, Dr. Tanaka, was actually one of my professors when I was at grad school at University of Texas.

[00:01:48.08] - Sandro Freitas
Oh, that's awesome. I never met him in person. I had the opportunity to talk with him first time, virtually, in the first seminar that we did about Powerpenia when we launched the concept, which was 2 years ago in Brazil.

[00:02:02.04] - Gabe Derman
Yeah. It sounds like you're going to have some smart people there. If anyone is available in the summertime, you want to go out to Portugal, have a nice time, learn a little bit, take part in a great conference, make sure you check that out. We'll drop a link to the conference in the episode notes.

[00:02:14.19] - Sandro Freitas
Yes. By the way, in fact, we have limited places for people to watch here at the conference. So unfortunately, we cannot attend all the people. But because of that, we decided to create virtual registration, so people can assist globally from any spot of the world. They can just register and assist the event online and participate online. Also, too, submit abstracts and works online, which is a nice opportunity to give a contribution so we can better understand the Powerpenia concept.

[00:02:47.15] - Gabe Derman
Okay, great. Let's dive into it then. Let's dive into the discussion today, and that is Powerpenia. To start, for someone listening today who maybe is unfamiliar with this term, why don't we just start with a simple definition of the term?

[00:03:00.00] - Sandro Freitas
Yes. Powerpenia, the word itself, is a neologism, which means that the prefix comes from Anglo-Saxonic, from the English, and the suffix comes from the Greek. We have power, and everyone in the world understands what is power because we use very commonly power in different cultures. So they understand, although power can have different meanings, even in Portuguese. But globally, they know what is power, not the to act, the social power, which is also power, but the mechanical power. Penia means loss. Powerpenia is a concept which means age-related loss of mechanical power or of motor power, but also disease and physical inactivity-related loss of mechanical power.

[00:03:53.22] - Gabe Derman
Thank you for the simple definition. My understanding is in the last few years, with your team, this really became a central focus. Explain how this research project, how this research that was published in 2024, really came together.

[00:04:06.16] - Sandro Freitas
In fact, normally, when people became aware of the problems, they tried to start developing solutions for the problems. Back in 2020, more or less, I started making research on this topic and collaborating with the research groups. More close to 2024, in fact, it was 2023, was the first time that I thought, together with my colleagues, on this idea, on Powerpenia. The numbers at that time made me to think in a strategy and something to fight against for. When I was born, in 1984, there was more or less 5 billion people in the world. Nowadays, there is, I think more. This number that you are showing is not updated. It's like 8.5 billion people. But in 2026, at least 10 billion people will exist. Oh, 2050. There's an error. In 2050, there will be more than 10 billion living. When you look to the percentage of people aged more than 60 years, it will increase a lot. There will be very stress among the demographic dynamics and the infrastructures. We have to have a target to fight against the unhealthy behaviors and the difficulty to get health. That's why we decided to give a name for the marker that probably better represents life, like vitality, which we named Powerpenia.

[00:05:38.23] - Sandro Freitas
Because we have noted that with age, you lose mass. In fact, the day you're born, you have more or less 25% of muscle mass in your body. You may increase during your lifespan until 40%. It depends if you train or not, but let's say 35 if you are a man or woman. But when you look to strength, you have strength ability. For instance, babies, they can grip their hand, do the palmar reflex, and they can support their own weight, so they have a lot of strength in their hands. But when you look to power, the power reserve is low when you're born because you cannot produce work at a faster rate, which means that when you're born, you have very low reserves. Then, with your lifespan, you get your peak very early of power. Later, you get the peak of your strength, and then later, you get the peak of your mass. But you start sooner to lose power, then you start losing strength, and then you start to lose mass. But in the end, the day that you die, you still have muscle mass in your body. You can still produce strength with rigor mortis, but zero power.

[00:06:52.03] - Sandro Freitas
Power is a key marker of your health, especially when you are aging. In fact, it means that the rate loss of power with chronological age is very high compared to strength and muscle mass. We are living in days where we talk about sarcopenia. It's a medical concept since 2016, but no one talks in medical community about powerpenia. That's why we decided to give a name because we wanted to target our enemy, let's say, like this.

[00:07:24.12] - Gabe Derman
You brought up a ton of great stuff and right, sarcopenia, dynapenia, muscle mass loss, strength loss, these are very familiar terms. Why do you think Powerpenia, up until 2024, was so overlooked? Or not appreciated to the full extent in which it should be.

[00:07:42.11] - Sandro Freitas
Let's see. Let's look to the history. When did sarcopenia born? When there was sufficient evidence showing that muscle mass was relevant. When did dynapenia born? When there was sufficient research showing that strength is important. When did power born? When there was not enough, but already some minimal research, very convincing, showing that power is really a good marker of health and vitality. More than health, vitality. Because if you become unhappy and depressed, for instance, you lose power, you don't lose muscle mass. Depressed people, what they don't have is power. They have muscle mass. But depressed people, like you have Olympic medals that they have a lot of muscle mass, and sometimes they don't have power. If you get acute disease, like you get… I don't know how you call it in English. I forgot how to say it in English. But if you get a grip, let's say in Portuguese, [foreign language 00:08:47], you lose acutely power, but you don't lose mass. Power is very sensitive. Let's suppose you don't sleep last night. You lose strength. You don't lose muscle mass; you lose power. Power is very sensitive marker of your vitality.

[00:09:04.14] - Gabe Derman
Let's dive into this phenomenon and understand it better: powerpenia. At the physiological level, what are the main drivers of power decline as we age?

[00:09:15.18] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah. Let me ask you, Gabe, can you move the slide? Before moving to the mechanisms, just to explain, because this is the main picture, this is the main hypothetical model of powerpenia. It's the comparison between power, strength, and muscle mass, which are related to sarcopenia, dynapenia, powerpenia. Although, sarcopenia, nowadays, it is formally determined using strength and not muscle mass itself, which is a little bit confusing nowadays, even among the medical community.

[00:09:51.02] - Sandro Freitas
There are key features of this model. We lose mass, but we lose with much faster rate power and with less compared to power, strength. The onset of decline, of course, first for power, and the decline accelerates later at some points in life. There's a curious fact that there are some tasks that people, they stop doing during their lifespan of power. For instance, there are people living worldwide that they can walk, but they cannot jump anymore. Those people, they gave the last jump in life at a certain point in life. They will not go back again. Maybe some of them, if they really do some training, they can recover their ability to jump, but some, they will not. We have to take care of those people because although they are not able to jump, which implies that probably their running will also be very difficult, they can walk, and we can train them to increase their quality of life and a given capacity to be included in society.

[00:10:55.14] - Sandro Freitas
Power, we lose much faster than strength and mass. What is the physiological mechanism? I prepared some slides. If you could move further, I think a little bit more, just to show you a thing. Now, I think it's before. It's a study that we did with very old people. No, it's not this. Go, go, go, go, go. Yeah, this one. Okay. What is this? This is data from a study which I collaborated with a Brazilian group, which is led by Professor Ronei in Brazil, and Professor Karlin Piettadias, that they quantified muscle mass with DXA, they quantified strength of the knee extension and flexors, and rate of force development during the knee extension. Rate of force development is not power because you are quantifying force in isometric mode, and you have to have displacement to quantify power. Rate of force development is a very close parameter to power production.

[00:11:53.14] - Sandro Freitas
They tested people with more than 90 years old. The more old person was 104 years. Living more than 90 years is very rare in the world. People die normally before that. They tried to see what was the parameter that was associated with chronological age. Among those samples of individuals with more than 90 years, there was no association with muscle mass, no association with strength, but there was association with rate of force development.

[00:12:24.22] - Sandro Freitas
What does that mean? That means that you lose the ability to contract in a fast manner. To contract fast, it's very complex because you need fundamentally neural variables that allow input on the muscles, a very high discharge rate of the motor units, but also coordination, intramuscular and intermuscular coordination to make the muscle contract very quickly. In the end, the soldiers, let's say, no matter how bad they are, you can still produce power. What you really need is a good general.

[00:13:01.02] - Gabe Derman
If we just rewind for a second, I want to take a look at this graph here, and we start talking about powerpenia. You talked about power falling off before muscle mass, before strength. For the average person that maybe hasn't done a lot of training in their life, just the normal person, at what point do they start to see or experience a more significant decrease in power in their lifespan? In this graph here, we have the age in this x-axis. When can we expect some more significant declines in power as we age?

[00:13:31.22] - Sandro Freitas
Okay. I will present it in this manner. Most fastest guy running, Usain Bolt, he reached his world record when he was 22 years old. The strongest man, which I cannot remember his name because… The snatch and the clean, together, he lifted almost 500 kilograms. He reached the all-time record when he was 28. Last year, Mr. Olympia, he had a lot of muscle, right? Muscle. He was 32. The onset that you can be logical, train, and get your record in life occurs in this manner, okay.

[00:14:14.12] - Sandro Freitas
First power, then strength, and then muscle mass. You can first train your power, then give up, go for a competition of strength, and then give up, go for a competition of Mr. Olympia. You can still. The opportunity to increase your tank occurs very early in life. You can reach your tank very early. Then what you have to do to keep your power up is to manage well. Then it's not just a matter of power training. Normal people just think on power training. If you go to slide 14, please, you can see what is the model that I'm promoting right now, together with my colleagues.

[00:14:51.16] - Sandro Freitas
This is a very basic hypothetic model of motor power development and also conserving. Sometimes you don't need to train. You just have to sleep well. Sometimes you don't need to train. You just have to have good nutrition. Sometimes you just have to manage your stress because no stress at all, sometimes it's not good. You have to have very low level of stress to increase your tonus, your motivations, because when you don't have nothing to do, you get bored, so you get depressed, and that's not good to produce power. I think the key is to give training according to these variables. I should train when I have good patterns of sleep, good patterns of nutrition, and good patterns of mental stress. That's why I normally say, be careful with the powerpenia concept because you should not train power every day. That's not the key. It's always a multi-component. Some people may need more, and some people may need less. Although there is evidence showing that if you do supervised program and oriented program with a professional, you don't get hurt. But still, the risk increases when you go with power training, of course.

[00:16:04.14] - Gabe Derman
We think really until your mid 20s to late 20s, that is your time up until that point to build up as much power reserve as you can.

[00:16:15.03] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah, because let's say it's good two things, to have a big tank, but also to have fuel. People may have a low tank, but they can have a lot, all is fuel. What is fuel? Fuel is a combination of training, sleep, nutrition, and mental stress.

[00:16:36.12] - Gabe Derman
Right. So really the goal would be to increase the tank as big as you can, though, but once you get the tank to that size, being able to fuel the tank as time goes on.

[00:16:48.20] - Sandro Freitas
Yes. Having a good reserve is good. I would not say to have the maximum reserve as you can. I think there is optimal level of reserve because it's very challengeable to have a very big, big, big reserve like Usain Bolt have and to preserve that level of reserve. Because if in your young age, you have very big levels of power, the rate loss with chronological age will be much higher compared to other people. For instance, the women, they have less power than men, but they manage better than men with life. Women live more than men.

[00:17:27.12] - Gabe Derman
Right. If you have a larger tank, there is then a significant drop-off, and you really need to view that within the context of your life and life habits to determine if that is a significant issue or not.

[00:17:41.00] - Sandro Freitas
Have a reserve. Have a good tank, a lot of fuel. Sometimes fuel is more important than the tank.

[00:17:47.19] - Gabe Derman
All right. If we think about attenuating the loss of power over time. What are the key ingredients that somebody needs to consider in order to put themselves in the best position possible to not lose power as they age or to help slow down the rate of loss?

[00:18:01.10] - Sandro Freitas
As I said, basing with this model, this is a model of conserving and developing, or developing and conserving motor power. I have to rewrite there on the topic because I will write a manuscript to help people to understand, at least, or share my view, how people can conserve better their power with life. As I said, it's not just a matter of training. Sometimes people should not train and sleep. Because when we train, we have to have motivation. The risk of injury has to be low, and people have to have the wish of training. This is motivation, right?

[00:18:41.00] - Sandro Freitas
Because if you don't have, you can have a personal trainer pushing him, say, "Okay, let's do as fast as you can." But in the end, he is not giving the best he's got. There are certain conditions so people can make power training, which helps two things: increase the tank and also put the fuel inside. For instance, if you just eat and you train, you will put much more fuel inside in your body cells than just eating. That's why fuel is not just a matter of nutrition. The training is a trigger to increase fuel to your body cells.

[00:19:21.12] - Sandro Freitas
You have a lot of issues and methodological considerations. For instance, like the focus. When you are training, if you are thinking in your body, so having internal focus in your body is not the best approach. You must have external focus because in that way, you will be faster. Methodological aspects like these may potentiate your gains.

[00:19:44.15] - Gabe Derman
Awesome. Let's pivot here to assessing power, and maybe the best way is to go about assessing power. How should practitioners be thinking about assessing powerpenia, assessing power in a practical setting today?

[00:19:58.05] - Sandro Freitas
Nowadays, there is a common test, which is sit-to-stand, that normal people apply to old people. Sometimes young people, they're already old. People with 50 years, they are already old. This test has some limitations, and a particular limitation of this test is twofold. First, there is a ceiling effect when you do the sit-to-stand, and you have a lot of variation: 5 seconds sit-to-stand or 30 seconds or 60 seconds. Depending on your life stage, sometimes one test is better than another, and I can give recommendations about that.

[00:20:31.23] - Sandro Freitas
Moving forward, this test has another limitation, which is this is a submaximal test. A submaximal task, you do not approach the limits of power. That's why, in the end, the test itself, it's a performance test. It's not a power test because we don't quantify velocity and force directly. We refer from the performance.

[00:20:55.11] - Sandro Freitas
These three main limitations put us… It's still a good approach because this test has a relation. Depending on your physical condition and your chronological age, it has some meaning, like to recommend people, "You're good, you're not good," to say. But if you want to be more specific, especially if you are with more physical capacity and also more than physical capacity, if you're younger, you can modify the test. For instance, you can just test the jump. This lady, which is my mom, that's a business.

[00:21:35.08] - Gabe Derman
Look at her go.

[00:21:35.22] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah, look. This time that we did this video, she was 72. She's now 75. It was interesting because at that time, she was diagnosed with cancer. I said, "Mom, now you will pay me attention, or you train, or you die. Choose, or you lose your son because I will get mad." She started making training and she got very success because she was doing the training together with the hormonal and chemical therapy treatment. The tumors, they disappear, which were on their monitoring system, lymphatic system. In fact, talking about this test, here, she's giving her best, and I can put the encoder, and I can quantify velocity, which is not power, but it's a good driver of power, and I can see how good she is.

[00:22:33.18] - Sandro Freitas
This test, for instance, is better than the other one. If people are not able to do the sit-to-jump test, they can move back, and they can just do the sit-to-stand. Now, it's suitable. There is no ceiling limit, and probably people performance is approaching more or less their maximum limits, physiological limits.

[00:22:52.23] - Sandro Freitas
For instance, let's suppose you want to make… Right now, I'm working with other colleagues. We have a big network, and we are trying to find solutions for large-scale solutions. One approach was developed by my friend in Chile, Carlos Cruz-Montecinos, that was just saying, "Let's see how many people can jump or not in the world." If you move forward one slide, I can show a very nice data. He just quantified; he did a binary test about the ability to jump unilaterally on the non-dominant limb three times, three consecutive jumps. He noted in a Chilean sample that starting more or less at their 50s, people start losing the ability to jump on one leg. For instance, when you reach 75, just half of the sample is able to jump. When you just compare, what is the difference between people who are able to jump and not able to jump?

[00:23:53.12] - Sandro Freitas
Carlos is now proposing that every doctor should ask their patients, "Are you able to jump?" What he found—I can show the data on the next slide—that people that were not able to jump with less 60 years, they have less strength, less knee extension strength, less power with sit-to-stand. When we look to people that was older than 60 years—you can go move the slide—the same. Every time you are not able to jump, overall, your physical fitness is already bad. You have a very simple test just to identify people that really need help. Otherwise, theoretically, they will die sooner, and they will have, until there, less quality of life.

[00:24:37.18] - Sandro Freitas
There's plenty of approaches. Of course, you can use gold standard equipment like Keiser. I must say, I don't have a Keiser equipment until now. But Keiser, it's probably the brand that most promotes power by their equipment. The equipment has very good quality. That's why very renowned brands like in clubs, Barcelona, like Palmeiras, worldwide, they have their equipment because it's good. If they are buying, it's because it's good.

[00:25:07.21] - Gabe Derman
It looks like you have a number of assessments. That is a very simple question. Can you jump? Can you land? Then from there, you have your sit-to-stand, which you mentioned. You also mentioned a progression that would be sit-to-jump. I'm curious to know more about the other progressions that you have and what would be appropriate for different ages. Can you expand on the different assessments that are available for people for better understanding powerpenia, or power?

[00:25:32.18] - Sandro Freitas
This is complex because when you have a lot of tests and their progression and regression, it depends on the type. We are talking about jumping, but there are humans that don't have legs, and we have to have solutions for them. Another issue about the testing is to have a large scale and feasible approach. Right now, myself and my colleagues, my network, we have been working since from a while on to identifying a large-scale solution to assess powerpenia. I will present that on the conference. I have a solution, a proposal. It's like a nut.

[00:26:05.10] - Gabe Derman
Reserve your seat and tune in online, and you can find out.

[00:26:09.17] - Sandro Freitas
I can let you say it like this. People will like the solution.

[00:26:14.23] - Gabe Derman
As we look at powerpenia and power on a grander scale, what are some of maybe the mistakes or misconceptions when training power in aging populations?

[00:26:26.12] - Sandro Freitas
One of the concerns is the safety. We have published years ago with some colleagues, me, my colleagues. I was not the first author. This was an invitation from a Brazilian group led by Professor Rene, which we wrote a letter to Sports Medicine, showing evidence that it is safe. When we searched the studies that have examined power training and they did some training with individuals, the incidence, or at least the reporting of adverse consequence was really very, very low, which means that when you do supervised exercise—you can put this sentence in your head—power training is safe when supervised and done with the professionals. Of course, if you don't know to do the exercise, and you just do it, you go fast, and you don't warm up and a lot of stuff, you can get hurt, of course. I think the first message to pass all over the communities, if you are with trained professionals, power training is safe.

[00:27:33.06] - Gabe Derman
How do you think, as an industry, we start shifting more towards a powerpenia-centric, a power-centric focus over strength for a large-scale population? I'm not talking about specific athletes or people who specifically need just strength, but just in general. What do you think will help us value that more as a community in performance?

[00:27:53.17] - Sandro Freitas
Three main drivers. Not the only, but three main drivers. First, political. They must understand what is the real impact of exercise overall on the health of humans. Because when they understand they will spend less money on disease, if people are really doing exercise, probably they will pay attention. The second is the medical community. The last consensus on sarcopenia, the consensus which was mainly composed by medical doctors, they excluded power from the concept. They don't understand the power of power. Let's say the power of power. Like, how much power it deals in the meaning of this variable.

[00:28:35.15] - Sandro Freitas
The third is the media. We have to put this on the newspapers, and journalists have to talk about this because they are also not aware. I gave 2 weeks ago an interview, which will come on the news on the next week, to talk about powerpenia and sarcopenia and that stuff. I think most interviews like these have to be on TV. Nowadays, we see things on TV that do not have so much value. I think this has value, so we have to put very strategically on the media.

[00:29:08.04] - Gabe Derman
People talk about not wanting to lose their balance as they age. They talk about wanting to avoid falls. I think you even see things on TV and advertising to help people avoid that. So much of it is tied to strength, this idea of I have to keep my strength or my muscle mass. But I would say, very rarely do I hear people say, "I have to keep up my power. I have to keep my power reserve." It's interesting because I think certainly out in the community, that is what we hear: we have to keep strength, strength, strength. None of us are saying that strength isn't an important factor, and muscle mass is not an important factor. Those are obviously very important things, but we've yet to have this shift into valuing power.

[00:29:48.07] - Sandro Freitas
Making an analogy so can people understand. Let's say like this. If I have just very slow soldiers, I cannot win the war. If I have slow soldiers but strong, with a good general, I have some chance of winning the war. If I have a good general with very fast soldiers, I can win the war.

[00:30:10.14] - Gabe Derman
Simple way to think about that. I like it. In thinking about now all the research that you've seen, all the time you've put into this, any just general recommendations? I know you said it's got to be safe. Is there a vision about how somebody should approach training for power?

[00:30:26.01] - Sandro Freitas
I will say like this. Sleep well, eat well, have a small level of stress, and don't forget to train.

[00:30:34.20] - Gabe Derman
What you're saying is these lifestyle behavioral factors have a ton of value in this entire equation?

[00:30:41.03] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah. I can say the feet are very important, but if I don't have hips, I don't have feet. It's always a multi-component. As I said before, you can have good levels of power, you can have fuel in your tank if you sleep well. If you don't sleep and if you train very well, you don't get fuel. It's all a good component.

[00:31:09.03] - Sandro Freitas
Now promoting Keiser. I'm being invited; I can promote Keiser. Keiser helps you to know the level of fuel you have in your tank and the size of your tank, that says. People have to know their numbers. They cannot know the numbers, let's say, but they have to have a conscience of their body, how it is and how to manage. The four cornerstones are always these: sleep, eat, stress, and train.

[00:31:35.09] - Gabe Derman
Has your group developed any recommendations or leaned into anything related to upper body power? Someone who maybe has a limitation of the lower limbs. What test have you been looking at from an upper body perspective to maybe give somebody an indication of power or powerpenia?

[00:31:49.17] - Sandro Freitas
Very simple. In fact, a very recent research made from a Brazilian group, which was led by Claudio Gil Araújo, has shown that the upper body pull had a much stronger correlation, association with death—it was a longitudinal study—than the strength of your hands and your body mass. Let's say, if your upper body is a particular region of your body compared to the lower limb, in which you have much more motor units of bigger motor units, which means that probably biologically, the region that you will lose more biological power because you can mask that with training is your upper body. But we don't know.

[00:32:38.04] - Sandro Freitas
In fact, we had published a paper in British Journal to call attention for this because there is not so much research showing that which is the body region, not to detect which is the region which has more meaning, functional meaning, but has more biological meaning regarding power levels. Maybe it could be the upper limb because master athletes who don't stop training, they eat well, they sleep well, they have good levels of stress, not too much, not too low, they lose more power in the upper body tasks than the lower body tasks. Maybe depending on your physical activity or lifestyle pattern, the region could be different.

[00:33:27.02] - Sandro Freitas
If you could go for the last slide, 19, I thank you. The nice thing, this is what happens when you are healthy, when you get a good lifestyle, you train, you eat, you are on the top. You will lose with age, of course, but you can still be on the top. Let's look to Cristiano, a Portuguese footballer. He takes care of himself. He sleeps well, he eats well, and probably he doesn't train so much like others because he has to manage. He's on the top. His tank has decreased a little bit, not too much, but it decreased a little bit, but not too much, again. Probably he's the footballer, the most older footballer with the least powerpenia. Powerpenia is an athletic concept.

[00:34:09.13] - Sandro Freitas
If you are not healthy, you are unhealthy, you don't eat well, but without disease, at least diagnosed, and you still don't feel it in your body, you will decrease with age your skeleton muscle and motor function with faster rate. If you are with disease, you accelerate. The difference between unhealthy and a disease pattern, a lifestyle, let's say, it's very close, in fact, because the probability you get a disease, it's much higher. The secret is all the same. Sleep well, eat well, good levels of stress, not too much, not too less, but also the type. Don't forget to train.

[00:34:45.01] - Gabe Derman
I think the goal here would be to have this, with age, stay as high as possible. Have this bar stay up as high as possible, and then fall off like a cliff.

[00:34:56.08] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah. Other people can suffer from our death. Not us. The people that die.

[00:35:02.13] - Gabe Derman
Have you started to take any of this research and start to look at disease populations, or has this mainly been a focus on healthy populations?

[00:35:12.04] - Sandro Freitas
We are starting right now in Portugal, a very big project. Let's translate. The project is called Vita Bella. Let's say, like, life is beautiful, the project. We are starting doing some programs with the community, and we'll also get the data. Our focus is to provide there low levels of powerpenia, decrease powerpenia as most as possible. We'll also get some data to analyze, and we may publish or not.

[00:35:41.20] - Sandro Freitas
In Portugal, we have good food, so easy to eat. Sometimes the stress is also okay if you manage. The sleep, you have to choose. You don't do the work and you go to sleep, but not training too much, yet. Our job is to put them to train because the rest they are doing already. In fact, Portugal has a longevity still considerable. The Portuguese people, in general, they live more than, for instance, Americans.

[00:36:08.00] - Gabe Derman
I was going to say you should come bring that research over to America.

[00:36:11.08] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah, waiting for the invitation.

[00:36:14.02] - Gabe Derman
It's very fascinating. Is there anything that we have not discussed about powerpenia or about anything that you would like to hit on?

[00:36:20.14] - Sandro Freitas
Everything we did not discuss. That's what we were organizing this conference, to discuss more. We are calling all the researchers worldwide to participate. Now they have no excuses because they can either participate in local, they can join the codfish, the sea, the surf, and all that good stuff, and just have a good contribution for the conference. They can also participate virtual. They can submit their abstract. It will be indexed by Frontiers in Aging with a quartile one journal. Very nice journal. And give a contribution for discussion and to find solutions for the world. The world needs.

[00:37:00.00] - Gabe Derman
It's fantastic that this event is being put on. I'm sure with every single year, this will continue to grow and grow and grow and really be an impactful event for the world.

[00:37:11.18] - Sandro Freitas
This event, which people can watch on powerpenia.com, is being sponsored by Keiser. We really thank Keiser. It has given a good help to organize. What we need is registrations from people here to participate because the benefit of the event comes from people that are here, and they give their contribution. If they give their contribution, everyone will love us.

[00:37:36.20] - Sandro Freitas
Probably we will bring the most powerful man living in Earth. He lives in Portugal, and we will test his power levels with the Keiser equipment. He's 54 years. For his age, I have no doubt that he's the most powerful man in Earth. His origin is from Cape Verde, which has people living until 120 years, which is very nice locally in the world. The women, not the men, because the men, they just take risky behaviors, so they don't live too long. They drink, they do a lot of bad stuff, let's say, so they die sooner. But the women, no. The women, they are smart. They live longer. They live 110, 115.

[00:38:14.18] - Gabe Derman
They're way smarter.

[00:38:16.03] - Sandro Freitas
Yeah, men are dumb. I have no doubts. We did a study on football here. We study all the football teams in Portugal together with the Football Federation, and I found a very interesting thing.

[00:38:28.23] - Sandro Freitas
We asked the people in charge of the recovery after the games, what was the recovery method that they gave most value, they consider more important, and what was the method that they classify as important? What do you use more? What is more important? Let's say like this. We did analysis for women teams and men teams. Men say the most important thing to recover is to sleep. What you do more? I eat. There was no correlation what the men say that was important and what they do.

[00:39:02.16] - Sandro Freitas
The women, the correlation was almost 0.97. It was a line. Men said it's important to sleep, I sleep. Second thing is important to eat I eat. They do this and this progression, and they are right. Women are much clever than men. The future is for women, of course.

[00:39:19.19] - Gabe Derman
Any other resources, social media, websites that you want to share? I'm happy to put this in the notes, but maybe for someone listening right now [crosstalk 00:39:27].

[00:39:26.20] - Sandro Freitas
I think right now, the conference, we are on the second edition, powerpenia.com, but we will advance sooner with more information on the website because people can stay connected through that website. We will keep the website just to put the information there. All the news, good and bad news, we'll put there. The next good news, it's the conference 2 and 3 of July 2026, either in local or online.

[00:39:55.09] - Gabe Derman
Sandro, thank you so much. If I can recap all of this, eat well, sleep well, don't be stressed. If you can train a little bit, train a little bit on top of that.

[00:40:03.04] - Sandro Freitas
No, you should have stress. A little bit. Not too much.

[00:40:06.05] - Gabe Derman
Just a little bit.

[00:40:07.06] - Sandro Freitas
Otherwise, if you don't have stress, you get depressed. No power.

[00:40:10.09] - Gabe Derman
If you're going to have some codfish, go to Portugal and enjoy the cod there because it's the best in the world.

[00:40:16.17] - Sandro Freitas
To capture, the best place is in Newfoundland in Canada. St. John's, Newfoundland. You capture them, you bring on the plane, you take it to codfisher, we cook it for you, okay?

[00:40:25.08] - Gabe Derman
If there's one takeaway about this conversation, it's that. Sandro, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the Keiser Human Performance Podcast. We totally appreciate all the hard work that you and your colleagues have dedicated to powerpenia and uncovering the importance of this. I'm really excited to see where this goes and how big this conference will get, and really how the community begins to accept and really appreciate everything there is to know about powerpenia. Thank you so much. I can't wait to talk again soon. Can't wait to hear how the conference goes.

[00:40:55.16] - Gabe Derman
For anyone listening, again, conference, you can do it virtually. Notes will include the link to register. Make sure you do yourself a favor and do that. Sandro, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

[00:41:05.23] - Sandro Freitas
No, thank you. Thank you, Keiser, for the opportunity. Also, thank you for helping in spreading the word.

[00:41:11.11] - Gabe Derman
Yes, absolutely. All right, my friend. Thank you, and we'll talk soon.

[00:41:15.03] - Sandro Freitas
Bye-bye.

[00:41:15.09] - Gabe Derman
Bye.