Standing at Palmer Lake on a clear Colorado morning, it’s easy to understand why the Japanese coined a term for time spent in nature. Shinrin-yoku — forest bathing. And where better to practice it than here, surrounded by mountains, forests, lakes, streams, and wildlife. Getting outside is one of the quietest, most durable expressions of longevity — and longevity is something I’ve been interested in for a very long time.
In just over a week I turn 61. I’m in the middle of starting a business — Sisu Longevity Studio. Why start a business when most people my age are planning retirement?
Dan Buettner, author of The Blue Zones, spent two decades studying the handful of places on Earth where centenarians — people who live past 100 — cluster. One thread ran through every region: each of those people had a clear sense of purpose. In Okinawa it’s called ikigai. On Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, plan de vida. The reason to get out of bed. Research links a strong sense of purpose to up to seven additional years of life.
Longevity is mine. Three chapters of my life brought me here.
Thirty years in the Army. My brothers and sisters in uniform will tell you — military service is hard on the body. As a static line parachutist, every landing I ever made was a hard landing. Carrying a rucksack, day after day, wears the body down. And the harsh environments we operated in took their own toll. All of it adds up.
It isn’t only military people who carry that load. Construction workers, blue-collar workers, first responders carry it too. And it isn’t only physical — it’s the stress. Stress hits every one of us, whether you wear a uniform, run a business, or raise a family.
Five Ironman finishes. For a middle-of-pack racer, each one is eleven to fifteen hours on race day — a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a marathon after that. But the race is the small part. The cost is the thousands of training miles leading up to it: the long swims, the century rides, the long runs, the strength work. All of it leaves a mark. Endurance sport taught me a lesson I didn’t learn in uniform: without intentional recovery — sauna, cold plunge, mobility work, functional movement — the body does not keep up.
My parents. Both lived into their 80s. But through the last couple of decades of those lives, the quality was gone. They couldn’t walk the neighborhood. They couldn’t get on the floor with their great-grandchildren and stand back up. They had lifespan. They didn’t have healthspan — the physical, mental, and functional capacity to do the things they wanted to do. I watched it closely, and I decided that was not the ending I was going to accept.
Frailty is not inevitable. There are people in their eighties finishing Ironman triathlons. You are not destined for a couch, a walker, or a scooter.
There is a measurement called VO2 max — the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use. The technical details aren’t important here, but if VO2 max drops low enough, you lose the ability to live independently. Every activity carries a metabolic cost: mowing the lawn, carrying groceries, chasing a grandchild, cooking dinner. If your VO2 max falls below the cost of the life you want to live, that life ends. You train so it doesn’t.
Paired with that is managing stress — and all the downstream consequences of letting it run unchecked. That is what the longevity movement is about. That is what Sisu Longevity Studio is about.
That’s it. That’s why I built Sisu. Military service and blue-collar work are hard on the body. Endurance sport demands recovery. Frailty is not destiny.
The Finnish people capture all of this in one word: sisu. Its full meaning is the subject of another piece. Sisu Longevity Studio embodies the spirit of that word.
Come visit us at the corner of Interquest and Voyager Parkways, in the Victory Ridge development in Colorado Springs. Let us help you Live Better … Longer.
