At a population level, grip strength is a surprisingly accurate predictor of all-cause mortality. That includes things like depression and diabetes, let alone bone breaks and heart disease. Some major studies even show grip strength is a more accurate predictor of heart disease than actual 'systolic blood pressure' tests.

Cognitive decline, overall quality of life, the whole hog.

Without fully understanding the mechanisms at play here, I always feared for my grip strength because I spent my whole life cracking my knuckles and my fingers do occasionally feel a bit feeble to me. I suppose I was being a bit hypochondriac-ey, as I have no daily troubles, issues playing guitar or anything close to arthritic behaviour.

Also, there's that one guy who cracked knuckles on one hand for 50 years and not the other to prove, correctly, there was no deleterious effects.

Either way, I saw a hand grip-o-meter that was reliably reviewed and super cheap, so I bought one.

Turns out not only was I wrong about my grip strength, but very wrong. My grip strength reaches within the top 10% of the population, far above average for my age as a male, at least, momentarily, maxing out at 134lb, or about 61kg of squeeze force:

This is by no far record breaking: Actual strongmen have insane grip strengths going up to 3x that of mine. But for comparison - and to check my device was reliable, I got my wife to try it, who only mustered up a pathetic 49lb or 22kg - the bottom 10% for her age female.

I must admit I feel somewhat proud of myself. I'm still overall a pretty weak guy, my bench presses are still peaking at 60kg (simply because I lack more weight at home to build on it), and I'm still an overweight, largely sedentary slob despite my huge changes in recent months.

So is this natural strength? I dunno. But it can't be all about working out. For a start I don't even focus on my forearms. And for another, a video of actual legit gym bros giving this a whirl ranged from only 90lb for the actual gym coach (this is below average for men!) and another exceeding 172lb. How can there be such a massive variation between slovenly folk like me, gym bros and gym coaches? I've no idea. Either way, I'm happy with the results.

Of course it doesn't mean I'm going to live forever. The prediction power is only at a population level, and likely associates grip strength with general lifestyle patterns and such. Pen pushers of 40 year careers are likely to die of strokes and heart attacks more than rock climbers or whatever.

Basically common sense.

Similarly, you can predict the same sort of things for the bottom half, too: Squats are a huge lifetime predictor. Quite scarily, physiotherapy folk can predict whether or not somebody in their 30's will be able to climb stairs in their 70's with incredible accuracy, simply by testing our leg strength, using just three or four exercises including squats.

If you can't do these in your 30's, you're in trouble and need to do something about it:

Chair-getty-uppy thing.

Completely sit down and stand up on a normal chair (not a sofa), as many times as you can in 30 seconds. Make sure to keep your arms crossed to avoid using them to push off or gain momentum with swings. Stand up fully and repeat.

Between the ages of 20-59, you should be able to do about 22-25 in 30 seconds to be average. Lower than that, and your future is gonna be rough.

Single Leg balancing

Basically, stand on one leg for up to 45 seconds without your raised foot touching the ground. Arms must be straight down at all times, or on hips. No arms used for balance.

There's a few others but these two are probably good enough to find any red flags to look into. I tried these and turns out I'm perfectly fine in this regard, too.

The thing is, what most people don't realise or think about is that our bones are just as alive as any other part of us. If you don't use them, you lose them. Literally. They start to hollow out and turn into like... hollow bird bones (also known as Osteoporosis). The more you use them, the more you break them up microscopically and force them to rebuild with fresh, stronger boneage.

The good news I've learnt is that it really is never too late. There are plenty of stories of elderly folk, previously hobbling around on a Zimmer frame, who take up strength training and suddenly find their constant life of pain and 20-minute trips to the bathroom were replaced with brisk walks around the park and a complete cessation of pain medication. (of course survivorship bias with stories like this mean it's not ALWAYS going to be the case, certain diseases or cognitive decline can't be reversed).

Osteoporosis can't be reversed. But muscle loss, to quite an extent, can. We lose about 8% every 10 years after 30 **without **training them, but you can still make what's left pretty strong and that helps your old bones get around with much more support.

Of course, the best time to start is now. If health experts can predict your future 30-40 years in advance, maybe we should also start paying attention that far ahead, too.