Super Age Games Founding Athlete Richard Graham traded fixing an old car for fixing up his body. And he just keeps tinkering.

Richard Graham can hang from a bar for 90 seconds. He can do burpees, single-leg squats, and intricate Olympic moves like barbell cleans. He trains seven days per week, and in April, he placed third in the world in a CrossFit Open for his age group: 70 and over.

But he’s not 70; in July, he’ll be 80. And a few months after that, the Santa Barbara-based  great-grandfather will be a Founding Athlete at the first-ever Super Age Games.

How a Car Salesman With a Sweet Tooth Became a CrossFit Crusher

Graham wasn’t always a fitness fanatic. For decades, he was a hustling car salesman with a decidedly un-longevity-focused lunch: Bags and bags of M&Ms.

“I didn’t have time for lunch. I’d take another dime or 25 cents, and have another bag of M&Ms,” he says. He’s not complaining, though. “I had a wonderful family. I had a wonderful life. I enjoyed accomplishing goals. The only thing I left out was my body.”

That body, built on stress and chocolates with a thin candy shell, was constantly in pain. Graham had nagging knee injuries from his time as a football player at the University of California Santa Barbara. When he retired at 60, he says, he was overweight and low on energy.

“I said to my wife, ‘I think I’ll get an old car. I’ve never taken the time by myself to just fix something up that was old and needed recovery,’” he says. His late wife, Nancy, had a better idea. “She said, ‘why don’t you take an old human body, and recover that?’”

Like any wise husband, Graham took his wife’s advice. He’s rebuilt his body and more: For a decade, he worked out in his garage, too embarrassed to take his “big belly” into the gym. In his early 70s, he started reading about nutrition, and lost 50 pounds. Five years later, his son encouraged the then-75 year old to try a new workout: CrossFit.

“I thought, ‘you’re nuts,’” he says. But he tried it, and surprised himself. “I’m stronger than I was when I was a college athlete. I’m fitter and I’m happier, and I’m just so energized by all the science.”

He’s not kidding: In addition to embracing new styles of exercise, Graham dove headlong into the world of emerging longevity technologies and ideas. He started doing functional movements like jumping at The Lab, alleviating his knee pain at the training and physical therapy center in Santa Barbara. He began analyzing his readiness for training with a WHOOP band and invested in a cooling mattress topper, improving his nightly REM and deep sleep[deep sleep]nounThe most restorative sleep stage where the body repairs and grows.Learn MoreClose by 4.5 hours per night. He’s devoted time each morning to meditation to improve his cognition, and invested in cooking classes to boost his nutrition. And he’s begun measuring aging biomarkers through a membership in Fountain Life, the Tony Robbins-led longevity clinic and AI app. 

“They said you’ve got Alzheimer’s a little bit. You’re in stage one… I had osteoporosis and atrial fibrillation,” he says. “If you put in the effort, you can reverse all those to stage zero. I’ve done that now.”

I’ve become an expert on my own health, and I vow that I will know more about me in two years than any other doctor ever could.”

How He’s Building Future Generations of Centenarians

All that tracking is part of what drew Graham to the Super Age Games when a fellow octogenarian athlete sent a link his way. But it was the Games’ partnership with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the world’s first and leading research institute on the biology of aging, that made him jump at the chance to be a Founding Athlete.

“When I saw they were sponsoring this, I said yes… they’re just amazing,” he says. He’s done some smaller trials with the Buck Institute but says, “whenever I get into a trial for them, they say, ‘we can’t use you. You’re too healthy!’”

That won’t be the case at the Super Age Games: the Institute will use data from Super Agers like Graham to advance longevity science. Nathan Price, PhD,  the co-director of the Center for Human Healthspan[helth-span]nounThe number of years you live in good health, free from chronic illness or disability.Learn MoreClose at the Buck Institute, says it’s one of the things that excites him most about the event.

For Graham, the Games’ eight biomarkers align neatly with a ten-pack of aging interventions and biomarkers and ideas he’s been focused on to live to 100: strength exercise, grip strength[grip strength]nounA key marker of strength and predictor of longevity.Learn MoreClose, balance, VO2 Max[vee-oh-too maks]nounA measurement of how much oxygen your body can use during exercise.Learn MoreClose, and more. He calls these the “Centenarian Decathlon.” And like the Super Age Games’ focus on mental and social markers, Graham’s 10-pack includes meditation, being with others, and tending to your passions in life.

That search for passion has led him to try new things, like cooking classes, and helped him hone his own definition of healthy longevity: For Graham, it means living longer and healthier for his family, but also passing those habits on to the next generation (and the ones after that). He’s begun making videos about his decathlon to share with other hopeful centenarians, and built his home and family life around sharing healthy living.

“In my backyard, my grandkids come over. What are they going to do with a grandpa who’s sitting and watching Netflix? So I built a gym. It’s got ropes in the trees, it’s got pullup bars. We jump off boxes… it rubs off. It passes generations,” he says. “My goal, the reason I’m going to live to 100, is that my great-granddaughter will be 20 years old then. And I want her in the CrossFit gym climbing ropes with me.”

Until then, Graham says, he’ll keep trying every new technology, approaching every training session with gusto, and chasing every aging biomarker he can impact.

“I’m trying to be in that top 25 or 10 percent in every category for my age group. You never can be, but you can always try,” he says. “And I’ve got a long life ahead of me. I have time.”

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