Transformation coach Chief Brabon reveals the secrets to training smarter and living stronger and longer.
2 min
Chief Brabon, Australia’s original transformation coach and co-founder of The Sweat & Social Club, has spent more than two decades reshaping how people approach fitness and ageing.
Known for training everyone from elite athletes to busy executives, he champions a longevity-first approach, focussing on strength, mobility and stability to help clients not just live longer, but live better.
Kanebridge Quarterly Magazine sat down with Chief Brabon to talk about his longevity-based training philosophy, the mistakes people make as they age, and the daily habits that keep him sharp.
What are the core principles behind your longevity-based training?
Firstly, it is important to define what “longevity” really is. To some people, it is “to live as long as possible”. In my personal (and professional) opinion, longevity is “to live as well as possible, for as long as possible”. Who really wants to live to 100 if they weren’t physically able to enjoy their last 30 years?
It’s for this reason that our focus is on improving our clients’ current overall health & fitness, and laying the groundwork for maintaining it long term.
What do most people get wrong about ageing well?
They don’t adjust their fitness priorities as they age. In our 20s and 30s, it’s all about building muscle, staying lean, lifting heavy and moving fast – structure, strength and speed come first. But by our late 40s, that order should flip. Mobility and stability need to move to the top of the list, with strength and stamina still in the mix, but with a different approach.
How is functional training different from standard fitness routines?
Functional training attempts to combine three or more of the 6 Pillars of Fitness (listed above) into each exercise. For example, a standard fitness routine may see you performing a two-legged press on a machine where your body is entirely supported – the focus here is strength. A functional alternative might see you doing a single arm/single leg dead lift to target strength, mobility, and stability all at the same time.
What bad habits do you commonly see in high-achievers, and how do you fix them?
Most high achievers have often made their businesses/ careers and their families their priorities for years (if not decades), but have neglected their health and fitness. As they near 50, they often realise that without their health, they are not going to be able to truly appreciate, or enjoy everything that they have built, or at least not for as long as they would like.
What’s one daily habit you swear by for staying sharp, both physically and mentally?
Find one thing that you can do every single day, no matter what you’ve got on, or where you are. My personal suggestion is a quick 5-minute mobility flow that you can literally do beside your bed, in your pyjamas, before you do anything else for the day.
When not at the gym, how do you relax?
My wife and business partner, Emilie, and I are real foodies. As we work, train, and race together, we have made a pact to take one another out at least three times a week. This allows us to focus on each other while enjoying great food. It’s an added bonus that we train many of Australia’s best chefs and restaurateurs.
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At least for people who carry the APOE4 genetic variant, a juicy steak could keep the brain healthy.
3 min
Must even steak be politicised? The American Heart Association recently recommended eating more “plant-based” protein in a move to counter the Health and Human Services Department’s new guidelines calling for more red meat.
Few would argue that eating a Big Mac a day is good for you.
On the other hand, growing evidence, including a study last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that eating more meat—particularly unprocessed red meat—can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s in the quarter or so of people with a particular genetic predisposition.
The APOE4 gene variant is one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer’s.
You inherit one copy of the APOE gene from each parent. The most common variant is APOE3; the least is APOE2.
The latter carries a lower risk of Alzheimer’s, while the former is neutral. A quarter of people carry one copy of the APOE4 variant, and about 2% carry two.
APOE4 is more common among people with Northern European and African ancestry. In Europe the variant increases with latitude, and is present in as many as 27% of people in northern countries versus 4% in southern ones. God smiled on the Italians and Greeks.
For unknown reasons, the APOE4 variant increases the risk of Alzheimer’s far more for women than men.
Women’s risk multiplies roughly fourfold if they have one copy and tenfold if they have two. Men with a single copy show little if any higher risk, while those with two face four times the risk.
What makes APOE4 so pernicious? Scientists don’t know exactly, but the variant is also associated with higher cholesterol levels—even among thin people who eat healthily.
Scientists have found that cholesterol builds up in brain cells of APOE4 carriers, which can disrupt communications between neurons and generate amyloid plaque, an Alzheimer’s hallmark.
The Heart Association’s recommendation to eat less red meat may be sound advice for people with high cholesterol caused by indulgent diets.
But a diet high in red meat may be better for the brains of APOE4 carriers.
In the JAMA study, researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute examined how diet, particularly meat consumption, affects dementia risk among seniors with the different APOE variants.
Higher consumption of meat, especially unprocessed red meat, was associated with significantly lower dementia risk for APOE4 carriers.
APOE4 carriers who consumed the most meat—the equivalent of 4.5 ounces a day—were no more likely to develop dementia than noncarriers. (
The study controlled for other variables that are known to affect Alzheimer’s risk including sex, age, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and education.)
APOE4 carriers who ate the most unprocessed meat were at significantly lower risk of dying over the study’s 15-year period and had lower cholesterol than carriers who ate less. Go figure. Noncarriers, however, didn’tenjoy similar benefits from eating more red meat.
The study’s findings are consistent with two large U.K. studies.
One found that each additional 50 grams of red meat (equivalent to half a hamburger patty) that an APOE4 carrier consumed each day was associated with a 36% reduced risk of dementia.
The other found that older women who carried the APOE4 variant and consumed at least one serving a day of unprocessed red meat had a cognitive advantage over carriers who ate less than half a serving, and that this advantage was of roughly equal magnitude to the cognitive disadvantage observed among APOE4 carriers in general.
In all three studies, eating more red meat appeared to negate the increased genetic risk of APOE4.
Perhaps one reason men with the variant are at lower Alzheimer’s risk than women is that men eat more red meat.
These findings might cause chagrin to women who rag their husbands about ordering the rib-eye instead of the heart-healthy salmon.
But remember, the cognitive benefits of eating more red meat appear isolated to APOE4 carriers.
Nutrition is complicated, and categorical recommendations—other than perhaps to avoid nutritionally devoid foods—would best be avoided by governments and health bodies.
Readers can order an at-home test from any number of companies to screen for the APOE4 variant.
The Swedish researchers hypothesize that APOE4 carriers may be evolutionarily adapted to carnivorous diets, since the variant is believed to have emerged between one million and six million years ago during a “hypercarnivorous” period in human history.
The other two APOE variants originated more recently, during eras when humans ate more plants.
APOE4 carriers may absorb more nutrients from meat than plants, the researchers surmise. Vitamin B12—low levels have been associated with cognitive decline—isn’t naturally present in plant-based foods but is abundant in red meat.
Foods high in phytates (such as grains and beans) can interfere with absorption of zinc and iron (also high in red meat), which naturally declines with age. So maybe don’t chuck your steak yet.
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