Dr. Jordan Metzl

09/12/2025

Dear Friends,

I am extremely pleased to announce that my newest book PUSH: Unlock the Science of Fitness Motivation to Embrace Health and Longevity, will launch on Feb 3, 2026 (pre-order link in bio). The book (and audio book) is my fifth in a series bridging the worlds of medicine and fitness to help people learn to live healthier and more active lives. It will be published by Penguin Random House.

PUSH is the result of several years of research, patient interviews, and analysis of the science of fitness motivation. It’s a murky topic that’s difficult to understand - what makes and keeps people motivated across their lifespan.

Having cared for many thousands of active patients over my career as a sports medicine physician, having led many thousands of people in fitness events in our IronStrength community, and having run, biked, swam and limped over many thousands of miles in my athletic career, I have written this book to try and answer the basic question WHY?

Why do some people keep moving to maximize healthy longevity while others struggle? What lessons can we learn to try and motivate and inspire others to continue moving? What tools can people use to analyze and improve their own fitness motivation?

Most importantly, why should you learn to PUSH yourself, both mentally and physically, to maximize your own musculoskeletal and physiological health?

I look forward to sharing this information in the months ahead and to the book launch events and lectures in 2026!

In the meantime, please feel free to join my mother and pre-order the book (if you’d like)! I look forward to seeing you on the road soon.

08/25/2025

It was an honor to present the Miles of Impact award this weekend on behalf of HSS the New York Road Runners Club at the conclusion of Gretta’s Gallup 10k race in Central Park.
The award is presented to a member of the community who is making an impact through a combination of innovation, integrity, and teamwork.
This year‘s winner, Julia Ancona, started a community running program in Brooklyn and regularly gets her community out and moving.
It is a pleasure to celebrate people who are making a difference. Now more than ever, community is a way to work together to uplift us all.

07/21/2025

After seven years away it was an honor to fire-up the tiger suit and participate in the in Lake Placid yesterday. The full Ironman distance, 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and then a 26.2 mile marathon tests every part of your physical and mental being.

I used to take for granted that I would finish one of these every year, but during torrential rains, baking heat, and all kinds of other difficulties along the way, I had to keep pushing the voices of “let’s stop right here” away.

For me, this day was especially emotional because my dearest dad was an Ironman super fan. He would sit outside on the corner in Lake Placid all day, from morning to night, just waiting to see his boys go by. I thought of him often and missed him yesterday.

I am especially grateful to the incredible volunteers of all ages, grandparents, parents, and kids, who manned aid stations in the worst possible conditions, pouring rain, baking heat, with smiles and enthusiasm and cheers Thank you! You help keep us going, even when we wanted to stop.

I’m also very appreciative of friends and family who tracked me throughout the day, watching my small dot on the map progress from place to place as I kept moving ahead. Thank you so much for your notes and texts and supportive comments, all of which I got at the end when I turned on my phone.!

Congratulations to all the participants who completed this somewhat crazy event yesterday, and special shout out to my race buddies and ! Great job!!

In life, it is important to give goals that are scary and push you outside of your comfort zone. It is what makes us all strive to reach new heights.

With a profound sense of gratitude, I’m off to eat a big hamburger.

05/30/2025

Do stronger glute muscles decrease the risk of injury for runners?

I’ve had a fifteen-year obsession with strength, and for runners in particular, the importance of gluteal strength. When we started with IronStrength 15r years ago, the goal was performance. Plyometrics meant stronger muscles, improved running economy, and improved power output. Over time, I began prescribing plyometric-based strength for my patients with similar results for them as well.

Over the years, the incorporation of strength into my sports medicine practice has evolved, initially from performance now to prevention.

As such, it was an honor to be part of a study published last week (link below) led by the amazing and our running medicine collaboration with and .

The study sought to ascertain if stronger glute muscles, assessed using a single-leg glute bridge, reduced the likelihood of running related injury.

The answer - YES IT DOES! By 49%!

In short, what I’ve been saying for years, = is scientifically valid.

Summary: Get out there, lunge, squat, deadlift, and build those glutes to stay on the road and out of the office.

Strength and Flexibility Self-Assessment and Subsequent Training Injuries Among Runners of the New York City Marathon - PubMed

05/29/2025

Get ready for FREE fitness events this summer! Let's move together!
https://conta.cc/43C4Ppc

Email from IronStrength NYC Spring IronStrength Classes are now open for registration     Are You Ready for Movement and Fun? It's time to get out and move with us! We've curated 16 unique fitness eve

03/08/2025

It was an honor to meet this morning with fitness/health icon and founder Nerio Alessandri. Starting in his garage with a concept of functional fitness in the 1980’s, he built Technogym one of the world’s most innovative fitness and wellness companies.

We discussed our mutual commitment to expanding the usage and messaging of exercise for preventive health and discussed ways to bring the domains of medicine and movement closer together for the benefit of all.

it is always such a pleasure to meet a kindred spirit who is equally committed to preventive health through movement. He is an inspirational human being.

02/26/2025

Doctors Lounge Circa 2025:

Last year embarked on a project to create one of the first wellness spaces for our health care professionals. The concept is that healthcare professionals spend their careers taking care of others, while sometimes neglecting their own physical and mental health.

The Halvorsen Wellness Center, a state of the art facility open to everyone at HSS, is designed to address these issues.

With spaces for mental health, physical health, and recovery, the goal is to provide a place where those who take care of others, nurses, physical therapists, physicians, medical staff, administrators, physician assistants, researchers, and everyone who helps make HSS exist, can work together to create a healthy community.

In this morning’s strength class we had a great group from across the institution, it’s like that every time. All classes are free, all you have to do is register and show up!

The hope is that our employees will continue to utilize this space, and that other institutions will see this as a model and create similar locations for their own staff.

In the old days, it was coffee and donuts in a doctor’s lounge. Today it’s working hard in a group fitness class to build fitness, muscle, and camaraderie. Great job everyone! Looking forward to seeing you in our next class 💪🏻💪🏻

02/11/2025

Saying special THANK YOU today to our amazing nurse who has been with us for 20 years this week!!
has been such an honor to work with her taking care of our patients. She always goes the extra mile, keeps us on track, and makes our office a special place for everyone, staff and patients alike.

We are so appreciative of you Stacy Ann. Here’s to 20 more years!! ❤️🙏🏻

01/22/2025

Fitness and Health Myths have increasingly become an issue in our world. In the old days. health and fitness information was vetted through media, editors, and fact checking. As the internet became a source of information, health and fitness information became one of the most searched topics. Unfortunately, Dr. Google only had a 30% accuracy rate when it came to health information, but he was still the most consulted physician worldwide.

Fast forward to today, social media has given rise to health and fitness influences who readily offer information, most of it unfiltered. Some of it is accurate, some of it is completely wrong. The burden of assessing accuracy has fallen on the consumer, it’s a rough state out there.

It was a pleasure to speak on (link in bio) yesterday about debunking common fitness myths. Yesterday we tackled 5 myths and in 3 minutes and 45 seconds. Our topics were:

1 - Is it healthier to be thin and inactive or moderately overweight and active?

2 - Is running bad for your knees?

3 -Is exercising in the cold bad for your health?

4 - Does stretching reduce injury risk?

5 - Should I exercise with arthritis?

Have a look and let me know your thoughts.

My take: the age of informational access is upon us, for better and for worse. The only way to counterbalance this is through providing accurate counter-programming.

01/06/2025

MUSCLES.

As we kick off 2025, I want to emphasize the importance of consistency with regard to skeletal muscle mass. This recent review of sarcopenia (muscle loss) from McKendry et al looks at the effects of disuse on muscle loss with aging.

Muscle is essential not only for locomotion and to protect our joints, it is also an important way to maintain glucose homeostasis and improve metabolic function. We need muscle in many ways, both metabolic and physical.

Unfortunately, it takes many months of hard work to build muscle and only a couple of weeks to lose it. this phenomena only gets worse with aging. As your mom used to say “use it or lose it.” That’s the basic point.

As you set your fitness intention for 2025, make sure to commit to 2-3 days of strength training to maximize and maintain skeletal muscle mass. I tell my patients of all ages to commit to working on their muscle mass, and I push myself to do the same. 💪🏻

12/12/2024

Our office team celebrated with our annual holiday outing last night. Instead of the usual dinner, we went for team building with rock climbing at Brooklyn Boulders(followed by dinner). The best part, seeing everyone cheer for each other, conquer fears, and celebrate each other’s accomplishments.
If you’re looking for ideas, team building activities are a great way to celebrate collaboration.
Special thanks to Chris for his A+ instruction!
Ready to climb!

11/14/2024

This is a look at young vs old muscle (Granic et al). In the young muscle on the left, we see a high distribution of muscle fibers and a balance of type II, fast twitch, and type I slow twitch fibers.
The photo on the right shows the aging process where we selectively lose far more fast twitch fibers and overall muscle mass decreases .
This process is known as age related sarcopenia.
What does it mean for our health and is it inevitable?
Although muscle loss from aging is inevitable, there is excellent data that it can be slowed and altered with consistent strength training. Muscle not only helps us move better, reduces pain around, achy, knees, backs, and hips, but is metabolically important. Muscle is the biggest storage site in the body for a glucose in the form of glycogen. When we have less muscle, we are less able to control our metabolism. Losing muscle has both functional and metabolic effects.
So…..
For reasons, movement and metabolic health, build and maintain your muscle throughout your life. It’s never too late to start! Strength training should be part of what you do two or three times a week. Build it, keep it, and even think about fast twitch activities such as jump squats, burpees, even sprints, to maintain type II muscle volume. Your future self will be glad you did! 💪🏻