How to look as fit as Paul McCartney at 80
A marathon set at Glastonbury has people marvelling at the octogenarian Beatle’s longevity. The secret to his stamina is as simple as standing on your head.
Paul McCartney’s epic near three-hour set at Glastonbury was all the more remarkable given that he turned 80 this month. Performing amid dramatic pyrotechnic displays and leading energetic singalongs to Hey Jude and Let It Be, he appeared to have the stamina, energy levels and posture of someone several decades younger. How does he do it?
Famously vegetarian, he has said his diet is one way he stays in shape. But it is his approach to working out that has most probably helped him to defy the ageing process so impressively. “I have a very definite routine,” he said on a 2020 episode of the SmartLess podcast, hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.
“I don’t have a trainer — it’s just me.” He describes spending only about five or ten minutes on each segment of his workout. “It’s not a huge workout,” he says. “But it’s good. I like it.” Here’s how to exercise like an octogenarian Beatle:
1. Daily eye yoga
McCartney began doing eye yoga after “some yogi” taught it to him on a trip to India in the early 2000s. “He explained [that] your eyes are muscles whereas your ears aren’t,” McCartney told the Table Manners podcast last year. “So you can’t exercise your ears, but your eyes you can.”
He still does them daily — he posted a YouTube video on how in 2010 — suggesting it could be the reason for his excellent vision. “I don’t know if it’s why I don’t need glasses when reading a newspaper,” he said. “But it makes sense.”
His routine starts with the head kept still, then looking up as far as you can for the count of three, eyes back to the middle, then look down as far as you can for the count of three. Repeat sideways, then on a diagonal “like the Union Jack”, he says, then cross the eyes to look at the end of your nose and roll them in a circle in both directions. Finish by focusing on a distant object for a count of three and then at the lines on your hand. “It can look a bit weird,” he says. “But it’s pretty good stuff.”
2. Warm up with stretches and a foam roller
First, “I get on the mat, and I do a bunch of stuff there,” McCartney says. “I do a bit of [foam] roller.” His warm-up includes leg stretches on the mat to prepare his muscles for what’s to follow and he uses a foam roller “probably just to stay relaxed and loose”, says Dalton Wong, founder of Twenty Two Training.
Researchers have shown that foam rolling will help to improve flexibility to a similar extent as stretching, but works better if combined with stretching before you get down to the harder parts of an exercise program, just as McCartney does in his workouts. “The idea is to do it regularly for real benefits,” Wong says. “It can help you to feel more prepared for what’s to come.”
3. Cross-training
After warming up with some stretches and exercises using the foam roller, McCartney says he moves on to “do a bit of the cross-trainer, a bit of running, a bit of cardio”. Probably using an elliptical trainer and a treadmill, this will form his cardio base. “He needs this for cardiovascular health and general endurance,” Wong says. “I suspect he might increase the duration when he is preparing to perform so that he has plenty of stamina.” Neither will be risky to his joints. “An elliptical is very low impact and as McCartney is not very heavy, running won’t be jarring his knees and hips,” Wong says. “They are great activities to include.”
4. Core work on a ball and weights
“I do some weights, some abs on the Swiss ball, before ending up on the mat doing a few stretches,” McCartney says. Strengthening the core muscles that wrap around the trunk will help to improve posture and stability. “They will ensure he has a more efficient workout overall,” Wong says.
“And doing exercises on an unstable surface such as a Swiss ball ensures greater recruitment of the abdominal muscles than if you did them on the floor.” Weights are essential too. “As you get older, working against a resistance becomes more important to prevent the decline in muscle mass that occurs with age,” Wong says.
5. Headstands
Impressively, McCartney says he always finishes any workout by standing on his head. “If I’m in a gym and all the big guys have got big weights and they’re doing all the big stuff, at the end I do a headstand,” he told the Smartless podcast.
“And they come over to me [and say], ‘That’s pretty impressive, man’.”
It’s often called “the king of yoga poses” and yogis believe that inversion postures — defined as putting your head below your heart or hips — such as headstands improve circulation with a rush of oxygen-rich blood to the upper body and brain. They are said to enhance concentration and digestion.
“I actually learnt it in the 1960s, it was a yoga thing, and my argument is I need flexibility, not strength,” McCartney said. But they are not easy even if you are in your twenties. “Headstands engage muscles in the shoulders, back and arms, and demand excellent core strength as well as flexibility and balance, all of which typically diminish as you age without a lot of hard work,” Wong says. “I’m not sure I could do one as well as him.”
6. Boys’ yoga club
Yoga has been part of McCartney’s routine since his Beatles days and he still practises regularly with a group of friends he calls the “Yoga Boys”, who include the actor Alec Baldwin. “We do yoga together,” he says. “We’re terrible.” Even so, Wong says the activity is invaluable. “Yoga will improve flexibility, strength, co-ordination and balance.”
Over ten years a 12-minute daily yoga routine was also shown to improve bone strength in the spine, hips and femurs of a group of 741 volunteers, reducing the risk of osteoporosis. “Doing yoga as part of a group makes it sociable and more fun,” Wong says. “Group exercise has been shown to improve adherence and reduce stress.”
7. Transcendental Meditation
The Beatles famously helped to popularise Transcendental Meditation (TM) in the 1960s and McCartney has kept up the practice, meditating whenever he gets the chance. “It’s a good thing,” he wrote in a blog post. “I do the TM and I was lucky because I was taught personally by Maharishi.”
TM typically involves sitting still for about 20 minutes twice a day, silently repeating a mantra, and McCartney says it works because “it’s always very good to get a sort of still moment in your day”. It has been shown to lower blood pressure and to reduce stress and anxiety by altering connectivity in the brain.
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