Shorts With Liz Clark

Still going strong at the age of 94, Dr. Kenneth Cooper appeared on Shorts With Liz Clark to once again share his formula for healthy living and discuss his legacy as one of the most influential figures in the history of global health and fitness.

Not that he’s slowing down. The man who coined the term “aerobics” and launched a global fitness revolution with his 1968 book of that title has just released his 20th publication, Grow Healthier as You Grow Older.

He’s living proof of the effectiveness of his approach to longevity. Recently inducted in the inaugural HFA Hall of Fame Class of 2025, Cooper continues to keep an active work and travel schedule as founder and chairman of Cooper Athletics in Dallas, TX.

In the Shorts With Liz Clark episode released on July 24, Cooper told Clark that when he first published Aerobics on a manual typewriter, he couldn’t have predicted its global impact.

“If you’d asked me to predict in 1968 the effect that book would have on the world, I’d have missed a thousand-fold,” Cooper said.

Squaring Off the Curve

Cooper’s research spans more than 50 years and involves more than 2.2 million person-years of data. Patients who follow his recommendations live an average of 10 years longer than the national average—women reaching 90.4 years and men 86.5 years—while maintaining quality of life until the end.

At the heart of his method is Cooper’s concept of “squaring off the curve.” This is how he describes compressing the period of senility and decline into a brief time immediately before death. His longitudinal study of 100,000 patients over 45 years demonstrates that people can maintain vibrant, productive lives well into their 90s with proper lifestyle choices.

The data on fitness is particularly convincing. Engaging in moderate exercise—30 minutes most days per week—can increase life expectancy by six years and decrease mortality risk by 58%.

Building on His Legacy

At 94, Cooper maintains his own fitness routine, recently transitioning from jogging (after logging 38,000 miles over 40 years) to a recumbent bicycle and exploring muscle activation technology to build new muscle mass—proving that it’s never too late to improve.

Cooper ensured the continuity of his work by transferring his research to Texas Tech University. On November 4, 2024, the Kenneth H. Cooper Institute at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center was established at the prestigious school.

Clark stressed to podcast listeners just how ahead of his time Cooper was with his theories about exercise (sometimes at a professional and personal cost to him) and how his valuable contributions have helped lay the groundwork for the HFA’s mission.