Cut From Steel

He was 45 years old and losing on every card

George Foreman walked to the ring on 5 November 1994 in the same red trunks he had worn against Muhammad Ali in Zaire, twenty years earlier. He was 45 years and 360 days old. Michael Moorer was 26, undefeated, and the champion.

Moorer outboxed him for nine rounds. Two judges had it 88 to 83. The third had it 86 to 85. Angelo Dundee told Foreman in the corner before the tenth that a knockout was the only door still open to him.

Foreman went out and landed a short right hand on Moorer's chin. Moorer went down and stayed down. Foreman became the oldest heavyweight champion in the history of the sport, and nobody has taken that record from him since.

I want you to look at the ten years in front of that night rather than the twenty behind it. Foreman had walked away from boxing in 1977 and preached in Houston. He came back at 38 to a press corps that called him too heavy to move and too old to matter.

Foreman did not win in Las Vegas on what his body had in 1974. He won on what he was willing to find out about the body he had at 45. A second act runs on measurements, not memories. Yours starts the same way his did, with an honest look at what you are working with.

One number cannot tell you where the fault is

You had the test done. The number came back low, or low enough to talk about, and the conversation stopped there.

I want to tell you what that number leaves out. Total testosterone says how much is in the tank this morning. It says nothing about whether the factory stopped making it, or whether head office stopped sending the order.

You can settle that question with one more line on the same form.

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

I will give you three things to establish before anyone writes you a prescription. All three are cheap, and all three come out of blood you have already agreed to give.

01 / The Morning Rule

The Endocrine Society asks for at least two early morning blood tests, drawn between 7 and 10 AM, before anyone calls a man's testosterone low. Cleveland Clinic says the same thing in plainer words... the total testosterone test usually requires two separate morning samples. One draw on a Thursday afternoon is not a diagnosis. It is a rumour with a decimal point.

02 / The Second Line

LH stands for luteinising hormone. Cleveland Clinic describes the LH blood test as the one that can help find out whether low testosterone is down to an issue with your pituitary gland. Your pituitary sends the order and your testicles fill it. When LH runs high and testosterone runs low, the order went out and the factory failed to deliver. If both come back low, the order was never sent in the first place.

03 / The Two Names

Cleveland Clinic splits this into primary hypogonadism, which a testicular disorder causes, and secondary hypogonadism, which a problem with your pituitary gland or hypothalamus causes. The names matter because the roads out of them are different roads. One of them may point at something treatable that has nothing to do with your testicles at all.

Take it back today

I owe you the limits of this. LH does not settle every case, and plenty of men in their fifties sit in a grey zone where two good doctors would reasonably disagree about treatment. The Endocrine Society is careful about that zone, and I will be careful about it too.

You are still far better off holding three numbers than one. Total testosterone drawn twice before ten in the morning, with LH added to the same draw, is the shape of a real conversation instead of a one-word verdict handed across a desk.

I want one phone call out of you this week. Ask for a morning slot before ten, and ask for LH to be added to the total testosterone. Nobody will refuse you. Most doctors will not offer it either, so the word has to come out of your mouth.

You have been arguing with yourself about a single number for two years. Ask for the line that says where the fault is. Then you have something you can actually work on.

— Travis

Insider Member's Corner

6 free habits that protect what you still make:

Forty-five years of work bought you the right to want something.

01 / Watch · Rolex Explorer 36

Rolex lists the Explorer 36 at $7,900 in the United States, which makes it the least showy way into a steel Rolex sports watch. The case is 36mm, the calibre 3230 movement holds roughly 70 hours of reserve, and the name goes back to Rolex's association with the 1953 Everest expedition. No date window, no bezel, nothing to explain to anyone. A man who wants to be asked about his watch should buy a different watch.

02 / Iron · A 24kg kettlebell

One bell in the corner of the garage removes every excuse you have ever used about the gym being shut. Swings, goblet squats and carries cover most of what a man over 45 needs from a hard twenty minutes. A 24kg bell is the standard heavy starting point for a grown man, and it costs less than two months of a membership you are not using. Buy it once and it outlives you.

03 / Whiskey · Redbreast 12

Redbreast is single pot still Irish whiskey from Midleton in County Cork, made from malted and unmalted barley in a copper pot. The 12 Year is the bottle that dragged Irish whiskey back into serious company, and it generally sits under a hundred dollars. Drink it with a few drops of water and nothing else. Ice is for the bourbon.