Catalyst View
Our reading of the numbers
Co-Founder and General Manager, Catalyst Performance
Two statistics arrived together this month that belong in the same sentence. The Department of Statistics' Population Trends 2025 report shows that 20.7% of Singapore citizens are now aged 65 or older, up from 13.1% a decade ago, with the proportion set to reach roughly 1 in 4 by 2030. In the same refresh, a 2024 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, synthesising 20.9 million observations across 199 cohort studies, confirmed that people in the highest cardiorespiratory fitness category have roughly 53% lower all-cause mortality than those in the lowest. A rapidly ageing population and the single strongest modifiable predictor of survival: these two facts point at exactly the same intervention.
The figures I keep returning to month after month are the ones that have not moved: Singaporeans still live to roughly 83.5, still stay in good health only to roughly 74, and global physical inactivity is still rising, now at 31.3% and on track for 34.7% by 2030. These numbers are not moving because the problem is unsolvable. They are not moving because the fitness industry has largely sold aesthetics while the relevant mechanism, progressive resistance and aerobic training that specifically preserves muscle and cardiovascular capacity, has remained a niche product.
This is what Catalyst was built for. The four pillars we measure, body composition, cardiorespiratory fitness, stability, and strength, are the systems the evidence consistently identifies as healthspan predictors. Training them is not a premium add-on for a small group of performance-minded people. For a country where 20.7% of citizens are already past 65, it is the most urgent public health lever we have.
The highest cardiorespiratory fitness category carries roughly 53% lower all-cause mortality than the lowest. That is a training effect size, not a pharmaceutical one.