A longevity[lon-jev-i-tee]nounLiving a long life; influenced by genetics, environment, and lifestyle.Learn MoreClose wake-up call led Craig Cooper to change everything. Now he’s training for the Super Age Games.

Craig Cooper’s hands are torn up.

It’s from the ropes. In addition to his crack-of-dawn cardio and strength training[strength tray-ning]nounResistance-based exercise to build muscle and support healthy aging.Learn MoreClose, the 63-year old has been honing his grip strength[grip strength]nounA key marker of strength and predictor of longevity.Learn MoreClose, hanging from pullup bars, doing peg board training, and incorporating rope climbs into his pre-work routine. 

“I love doing it,” he says. “But it cuts the s*** out of my hands.”

Scuffed palms or not, all that hanging around means he will be ready for the grip strength test at November’s Super Age Games, where Cooper — a skateboarder-turned-surfer-turned-author-turned-mud runner-turned health company CEO — will be one of the inaugural event’s founding athletes.

“There has never been anything like the Super Age Games before, and I think it really forces us to look at those things that really matter as we age,” the silver-haired Kiwi says. “This is not a competition. It’s a personal test of how you can perform going forward. How could I say no to something like that?”

Low Bone Density: A Longevity Wake-Up Call

Even though he’s started incorporating new training elements to address the Games’ eight core aging biomarkers, Cooper isn’t new to longevity or cramming for the exam. Two decades ago, the then-40-year old learned that his bone density was dangerously low. It was a shock for the always-active Cooper: As a young man, he’d been a national skateboard champion in his native New Zealand, and surfed for the country’s national team. And as he’d become a successful businessman and investor — launching Boost Mobile, founding the largest independent power producer in the Asian Pacific region — he’d prided himself on being an athlete first, and a CEO second, training and competing year-round.

“To have this underlying weakness was just a massive blow for me,” he tells Super Age. “ If you look at everything that I was doing and saw me in the gym, I’m the last guy you’d expect” to be dealing with this issue, he adds.

With the help of doctors, a focus on strength training, and a yearly infusion, Cooper has been able to bring his bone health back up to levels considered safe from osteopenia. “The last 20 years, I’ve dedicated myself to being a passionate student about increasing my bone strength.”

Investing In Your New Prime

His passion for longevity has also extended beyond his personal life: Eight years ago, Cooper authored a bestselling book, Your New Prime: 30 Days to Better Sex, Eternal Strength, and a Kick-Ass Life After 40, and a year later, he became CEO of CONNEQT Health, a technology company focused on arterial health.

“We can’t really have this discussion about longevity and wellness and hacking and everything else unless we’re focusing on the number one thing that kills us, which is arterial disease,” which includes heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease, he says. CONNEQT offers an advanced blood pressure monitor that the company says can measure not just BP, but the stiffness of your arteries themselves, a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease risk. 

To keep up with his responsibilities as a CEO and father, and his ambitions as an athlete and angel investor, Cooper’s view of longevity fittingly boils down to one word: Performance.

“It’s about being able to perform at all levels as you age: Hormonally, sexually, emotionally, physically,” he says. That desire to perform has changed how he’s exercised over the decades. Where he used to train for obstacle races like Tough Mudder and Spartan, Cooper says he’s now laser-focused on how he’ll perform long-term. “It’s been a shift to really be much more focused on the movement patterns that are focused on avoiding frailty, and avoiding those movement patterns and exercises and protocols that really aren’t going to help me as I age.”

That’s meant more high-intensity cardio to improve his VO2 Max[vee-oh-too maks]nounA measurement of how much oxygen your body can use during exercise.Learn MoreClose, and a focus on single-leg training to help with his balance. Every day, Cooper says, he begins his morning with a hike or open-water swim, then hits the gym for strength work, all before ever checking his email.

Focus On Your Weakness: A Super Age Games Founding Athlete Strategy

Now that he’s signed up for the Super Age Games, he’s working on the longevity markers that will be tested at the event. He’s doing more single-leg squats, adding in the hanging, rope climbing, and some plate pinches for his grip, and building his endurance under load by starting and finishing each workout with farmer’s carries: The standard is 70 percent of one’s bodyweight, so Cooper’s going for 75 percent of the 190 pounds he carries on his 6-foot-2 frame.

“I’m focusing on my weaknesses, and putting them under a microscope,” he says.

The end goal, he says, isn’t just to perform well at the Games.

“Unlike everything else that I’ve gone into in the past where it’s been getting from point A to point B… this is really about how I can perform personally, how I can incorporate it all as I move forward,” he says. “I’m not training for an event. It’s not like in a marathon where there’s that end goal. This is training for life.”

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