My Longevity Experience

#81

The start of a new year is always a good time to review what you did last year, what worked and what didn’t.

I produced a lot of Substack content in 2025 but to readers it may not have been clear who I am and what the purpose of the Substack is.

To start this year I wanted to re-introduce myself to subscribers and clarify what The Longevity Experience Substack themes will be for 2026.

The purpose of this Substack is to share real life experience of longevity health practices, from my own experiences and those of my clients who I work with through my health coaching business - Longevity Performance Coaching. This content is based on what works for normal people with busy lives who want to live better for longer.

Let me introduce myself.

A little background on me

I’m 55 years old, living in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. My health coaching business is the final stage of my career as I transition into semi-retirement.

I didn’t start thinking about longevity in the last 5 years when it got fashionable. It was a journey I started in my early 20s when I realised how my grandfathers and father where impacted by heart issues. That is a strong indicator I would be impacted at some point in my life so I have been working on my health and fitness since then.

The big challenge is life and work get in the way and I was no different. From aged 25 I have worked in demanding roles. That have involved long hours of sedentary work. I worked in senior leadership roles in business consulting and multi-national companies that meant being globally mobile, travelling almost every week for over 20 years and eating what ever was available.

I counterbalanced this by focusing on my fitness consistently training 2 to 3 times every week, except for injuries and a house renovation project.

Physical challenges motivate me so from age 13 to 33 I played competitive rugby. Then I transitioned into mountaineering for 10 years. In my early 40s due to time constraints my focus was more on gym work especially strength and conditioning. By the time I was 50 I was at elite powerlifting level. This developed deep experience in different modes of training and what works as you age.

My first purchase when I started work after University was a Concept 2 Rowing machine and heart rate monitor. This allowed me to start recording my activity and performance data when I was 22.

I like data.

That is where my career went as for the last 15 years I have been working in senior roles in the data and AI space. I use what I have learnt doing this to put client data at the core of my health coaching practice. Which is why many of my posts focus on activity and performance data.

Then in October 2021 aged 51 I felt unwell and after about two weeks my heart went out of rhythm, that led to a diagnosis that I had heart failure and had lost 40% of my heart pump capacity. The lack of oxygen in my blood led to liver, kidney and gastric failure. It took 6 months for the medical professionals to stabilise me. The cause of this condition was never fully identified but it is normally caused by a viral infection that damages the heart muscle.

Mid 2022 I started my longevity fight back as life expectancy following heart failure is 4 years and I wanted to live a lot longer than that. My high level of fitness and conditioning before the heart failure diagnosis gave me a great foundation to start the fight back.

This Substack is based on experience not hype

My long journey gives me a different perspective to many of the health and longevity content creators who cover this topic.

Deep exercise experience - 40 years experience of practicing and coaching a wide variety strength and conditioning modes and styles.

Empathy for busy people - 30 years experience of working in high performance consulting and corporate working cultures that demand huge amounts of time and commitment to be successful. Finding the time and energy to focus on health when busy is a key capability I learned over many years.

Qualified - I’m qualified to practice and talk about exercise and nutrition. Many content creators are not.

• Level 4 personal trainer, exercise therapist for chronic medical conditions and back pain exercise specialist.

• Level 4 nutrition advisor focused on age related nutrition and sports performance.

• Level 4 Strength and Conditioning coach

I know how it feels to age - Through my own experience and that of my clients I appreciate that age has to be embraced and adapted to rather than reminisce about past achievements and do nothing now due to fear. There is always a way to do positive things for your health it just will not be as intense as what you did in your 20s and 30s.

Appreciation of the mental and physical daily battle when you are impacted by a chronic health condition - I have lived the same experience and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.

2026 Themes

I plan to cover three themes in this Substack.

1. Evidence based advice on health and longevity practices and how they impact normal people.

2. The challenges of starting and maintaining a longevity health journey.

3. My and our clients experiences of the challenges and benefits of longevity health practices.

The focus is on people aged over 40, as that is the age range of our clients at Longevity Performance Coaching.

Younger readers will get some motivation from what they read and how they prepare for that moment when they hit 40 and age starts to have an impact on life.

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Thank you for being a subscriber. In 2026 I plan to publish a post every 2 weeks rather than weekly. This is to ensure the quality of content remains high and not repetitive.

If you have a questions or topic you want me to cover feel free to send a comment on this post or email on the contact details below.

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