Cut From Steel

He took up skateboarding at seventy-eight and broke his wrist

Fred Astaire was born in 1899 and died in 1987 at the age of 88. Most men know him as the one in the tails who made it look effortless.

Astaire made nothing look effortless by accident. He rehearsed a routine for weeks in a private studio before anyone filmed a frame of it, and then rehearsed it for a fortnight more once the music was recorded. Vincente Minnelli, who directed him, said he lacked confidence to the most enormous degree of anybody in the world.

Hollywood folklore has a screen-test report calling him bald and unable to act, sing or dance. Astaire's own version of the line was shorter. Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.

The part I want you to hold is the last stretch. Astaire took up skateboarding in his late seventies and was given life membership of the National Skateboard Society. He broke his left wrist doing it at 78.

He danced on camera one final time in 1979, at 80 years old, and he won an Emmy the year before that. Physical activity carried on well into his eighties.

Astaire spent sixty years standing on one leg in front of an audience. Balance is not a gift a man is issued at birth. It is a thing he practises or loses. He never stopped practising, and the wrist healed.

Stand on one leg and start counting

You either put your shoes on standing up or you sit on the edge of the bed to do it. By now you know which man you are, and you probably know roughly when that changed.

I want to give you a test that takes ten seconds and no equipment. Stand on one leg, place the front of your free foot against the back of your other calf, arms by your sides, eyes forward. Count to ten.

You get three attempts on either foot. That is the entire protocol.

It's not age. It's these three.

I will give you three things about that ten seconds, taken from a study of 1,702 people published in 2022.

01 / What The Study Found

Researchers tested 1,702 Brazilians aged 51 to 75, average age 61, and followed them for about seven years. Roughly one in five could not hold the position for ten seconds. Among those who failed, 17.5 percent died during the follow-up, against 4.5 percent of those who managed it.

02 / What That Number Does Not Mean

After adjusting for age, sex and existing conditions, failing the test was associated with an 84 percent higher risk of death from any cause within the following decade. That is an association and nothing more. Standing on one leg does not extend anybody's life, and none of the authors suggested it did.

03 / Why It Reads So Well Anyway

Balance draws on your inner ear, your eyes, the nerves in your feet, the strength in your hips and ankles, and a brain coordinating all of it in real time. A test that touches every one of those at once is a rough summary of a great deal of machinery. Failure climbed steeply with age in that study, from about 5 percent in the early fifties to more than half by the early seventies.

Take it back today

I owe you the caveats the authors put on their own work. Every participant was a white Brazilian, the study could not establish cause, and the researchers had no data on falls, physical activity, diet, smoking or medications that affect balance. Ten seconds is a prompt, not a prophecy.

You should treat it as a prompt worth acting on. Balance improves faster than almost anything else in the body when you ask it to, and training it costs nothing and needs no floor space. Standing on one leg while the kettle boils is a real intervention rather than a joke.

I want you to run the test tonight on both feet, standing near a worktop in case it goes badly. Then do thirty seconds a side while you brush your teeth, every day, and run the test again at the end of the month.

You have been getting steadily worse at something you have never once practised. Ten seconds a side tonight, then thirty a side every morning. It is the cheapest thing in this letter all week.

— Travis

Insider Member's Corner

6 free habits that keep you upright:

Friday money should buy something you use with your hands.

01 / Blade · Victorinox Pioneer

Victorinox has been supplying the Swiss army since 1891, and the Pioneer is the grown-up one... ribbed aluminium scales instead of red plastic, a proper blade, a reamer, a bottle opener that actually works as a screwdriver. It costs about the same as two rounds of drinks. In twenty years it will still be in your pocket, and still sharp if you have looked after it.

02 / Bike · BMW R nineT

An air-cooled boxer twin in a roadster frame, deliberately built to be taken apart and rebuilt to the owner's taste. The subframe unbolts, the seat unit changes, and BMW designed it that way on purpose. It is fast enough to be interesting and slow enough not to end your licence in a fortnight. A man of 55 who wants a motorcycle wants this one, not a superbike.

03 / Board · A soft-top longboard and three lessons

Balance you have to earn in front of witnesses. A nine-foot soft-top is forgiving, cheap secondhand, and impossible to hurt anybody with. Three lessons is the number that gets you standing rather than swimming. You will be humiliated on the first morning and hooked by the third.