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Getting Fitter, Later

A Consideration of Age, Time, and Experience in the Pursuit of Fitness

One of the characteristics associated with aging is the idea that we can no longer do what we used to be able to do, or that we are slower, weaker, less fit. But what about those of us who get fitter later—who, nearing or passing middle-age, are striving to be faster, stronger, and learn new skills? What does age mean for us as we train our fitness?

Levelling Up to Masters

If sport, recreation, or general fitness is important to you, and if you are, let’s say, 35 or over, you may identify as a masters athlete. The athlete identity doesn’t belong solely to the younger crowd, nor to those who compete, whether recreationally or professionally. It doesn’t require a particular level or type of fitness. What matters is how you see yourself.

Those of us who identify as athletes, unless we have dropped out of sport or fitness altogether after our youth, will spend most of our athletic lives in the masters cohort. Though it varies by sport, the masters level, which is defined by age, typically starts between ages 30 and 40. The idea is that those who reach this age are no longer competitive with younger athletes and require an age group restriction to level the playing field in competitive settings. The masters level is often further broken down into five-year groupings extending from the starting age, reinforcing the idea that once we hit a certain age threshold our decline in physical capability speeds up, preventing fair comparison between athletes more than five years apart.

Some sports see athletes peak at very young ages—think of gymnastics or figure skating where teenage athletes often reign. Other sports, like soccer, football, track, and skiing, favour the twenty-somethings. At the competitive level (in open categories not bracketed by age) in nearly all sports (except, perhaps, strength sports), the 30-year-old athlete is somewhat uncommon, and the 40-year-old athlete is a rarity.

It might be the case that, as science and society get better at understanding aging and supporting longevity, athletes will have longer competitive careers. Perhaps we’re starting to see evidence of this now, with 46-year-old Jen Thompson, 39-year-old Venus Williams, 38-year-old Shalane Flanagan, 37-year-old Serena Williams and Samantha Briggs, and many more masters-age athletes competing against their juniors in open categories.  

The thing about competitive athletes, though, is that they typically start their training young. They get fit early and stay fit for the duration of their athletic career. Their peak is the result of many years of hard work, and their decline in sport is the result of many coalescing factors, not the least of which is bodily wear and tear. 

Most of us aren’t competitive athletes, though, and not all of us were especially fit in our younger years. In fact, many of us are just getting started by the time we reach masters status. It may even be the case that levelling up to masters is what has enabled us to finally pursue fitness in the way we want to, whether that means identifying as an athlete or not. 

For us, the training is becoming more intense—not less—relative to what we’ve done before. We may be learning the basics of how to move with good form, how to fuel, or how to work with a coach. Or we may have the basics and are now working on building specific skills and developing a healthy mindset to help us achieve our goals. We’re in the midst of a learning curve.

This might sound daunting, or it might sound exciting. In either case, the great benefit of getting fitter later is that we can draw on our experience gained from other aspects of our lives.

Have you ever made a plan to achieve a goal and seen it all the way through? Have you experienced adversity and come out the other side? Have you applied a skill set learned in one area of your life to another, such as one learned in your personal relationships to your career, or one learned in school to your health? Have you thought about what’s important to you and what you want your future to look like? Yes? Then you have what you need to excel at the masters level.

Age = Time = Progression

Is “masters level” a euphemism for old? Or could it be a recognition of achievement?

Every day, every month, every year, I’m older. This is supposedly an unfortunate thing; we’re told that aging is undesirable. We’ve come to expect that to get older is to get weaker and slower. We’re pressured to prevent aging at all costs (as if that were possible).

But it’s not age, really, that’s so maligned. “Age” is just a shorthand for bodily wear and tear, past injuries, increased recovery time, and the accumulation of years of poor posture, stress, and exposure. Age isn’t actually any these things. Age is simply a marker of time.

If we were to recognize age as the passage of time, and time as the factor that allows for change to occur, could we not see aging as the opportunity to progress and achieve our goals?

It takes time to build muscle and cardiovascular fitness. No matter when I start, if I train for these objectives I will see progress in time—and I will, simultaneously, get older. This is true whether I start training at 15 or 55. Gains can be made in these areas at any age, and if you are new to it but train consistently, you can expect to get fitter as you age. Not because you are aging, exactly, but because it takes time to make progress.

It takes time to establish a habit, such as doing regular training sessions. How long? Some say 21 days. Others, 66 days. In my experience, habits of all types tend to take longer than this, especially if the new habit is challenging. Of course, so much depends on the individual and their specific situation and desired habit. Regardless, new habits take time to form, which I think we can agree on if for no other reason than the definition of habit has time built in: a pattern of behaviour or an action done regularly. Developing fitness requires consistent effort, made easier when it becomes a habit, which takes time.  

It takes time to master a skill, such as the movements required for elite gymnastics or weightlifting. The 10,000-hours rule for success suggests that a master performance requires this amount of practice. Let’s put this into perspective and, for argument’s sake, let’s knock this down to 5,000 hours for a really good performance—not elite, perhaps, but better than most. Okay, so if I were to practice for one hour a day, three times a week, I’d reach 5,000 hours—and a really good showing—after 32 years. Increase this to one hour every day and we can knock the years back to 13.7. Two hours, five days a week, and that good showing comes at 9.6 years. I have no idea how long it will take you, or me, to get this good. This is just a theory, one of many, and neither of us may be striving for that level of proficiency anyway. The point is that whatever it is you’re learning, you will be better at it after many years, which means you will necessarily be that many years older. 

So how is aging an unfortunate thing? It’s the very thing that allows us to progress, facilitating our growth and success.

Drawing from Experience

In addition to being shorthand for the physical changes to our bodies, “age” is also shorthand for experience, which is acquired over time.

The pursuit of fitness at the masters level has a number of advantages, since our “mastery” extends to the many non-physical factors that play a role in our training. This is not to say that we have each achieved control over every area of our lives, but rather that those of us getting fitter later likely have some first-hand knowledge or privilege in one or more of these areas that may assist us in our pursuit of fitness.  

Motivation

With age comes experience, reflection, and, hopefully, a better understanding of our “why”—our reasons and motivations for working on our fitness. My reasons seem different now than they were 10 or 20 years ago, though it may be that they are simply more defined, more strongly attached to the impact they could have on my life. 

What does motivation look like now? I want more function out of an injured hip, and I want to strengthen a previously injured back, to the point where they no longer impede my activity. I want to build bone density. I want to develop the skills and strength needed to settle into a new sport. I want to feel good in my body, energized and capable. Once, I wanted to “get fit.” Now, I want the many benefits that go along with greater fitness because I understand how they will affect my quality of life.

What does your motivation look like? It may look very different from mine. You may want to be fitter to take care of others, to address disease or degeneration, to get after a spot on the provincial team, or qualify for a competition. Maybe fitness isn’t the goal but instead the result of what you need to do to care for your mental health. Whatever it is that motivates you, it’s likely more clear to you now than it’s ever been, and more potent.

Control Over Resources

At the masters level, we may have more control over how we spend our time and money. Formal education is likely complete. Our kids, if we had some, may be independent now, and our parents may not yet need our support. Careers are likely established, and businesses may be past major growing pains. 

We may have made choices, deliberately, to enable autonomy over how we spend our time and money and now, at masters-level age, the work of previous years is paying off. We may have the privilege of organizing our days with fitness as a major focus and may be able to invest in ourselves to a level we weren’t able to do previously. Budgeting these resources may be difficult or easy, but the trick of it is that we are in charge of how we spend them.

The Long Game

Health and nutrition, injury and recovery, skill-building and performance: these are elements of the fitness long game. The masters athlete has likely had experience with most of these, and through both practice and perspective is getting increasingly good at choosing the long-term plan over short-term improvisation as a path to success.

Self-regulation, or restraint, is a big part of playing the long game. Are you in it for today or for the next 40 years? The answer will determine how you approach your training and the decisions you make along the way. The masters athlete has likely made choices in the past that were hasty, or that overreached, and may have paid a price. These are hard-won lessons that can now be used to direct energy into a sustainable approach to training.

The key to applying self-regulation and sticking to a long-term plan is patience. It’s the meta-skill that enables everything else, and those of us pursuing fitness later have had time to practice it in all areas of our lives.

You Are Not Behind

As we get older, we become increasingly aware of that very fact. It’s hard not to. Separate from societal messages that with age comes physical decline and general irrelevance, we experience change in our bodies. Years of poor posture catch up to us in the form of chronic pain. Our mobility is less than it once was and we feel limited in our movement. It takes longer to recover from a workout or heal from an injury. 

This is useful awareness to acquire, because alongside the whiff of decline is the realization that we’ve got to do something about it if we want to maintain what we’ve got. And if we want more than that, if we want to achieve a higher level of fitness than we’ve had before, we need to get serious about making it happen. 

But getting fitter later is not a matter of coming from behind or making up for lost time. It’s simply a matter of working from where you are at. Increasing fitness at any age is time well spent, and if you’re diving in after clearing the masters-level threshold, you are not “too late” to enjoy the process and the benefits. You are also not alone. Look around—we’re everywhere.

The threat of physical decline is certainly not the only motivating factor possible (nor are we obligated to address it by working for higher levels of fitness). Instead, we may be drawn to a new activity that we want to participate in but require an increase in strength, skill, or speed to do it. In other words, rather than feeling pushed by the spectre of age, we might experience a pull toward something new, something exciting, something that requires greater fitness. 

Feeling pulled to an activity, or even to a lifestyle, is something that happens to all of us throughout our lives, repeatedly. If you feel drawn to explore something new, whether an activity that requires greater fitness, a sport, or a more physically rigorous lifestyle generally, you are not behind in your pursuit of it. Our interests change over time. Your new interests are simply pointing you in a new direction, and you are allowed to explore this without being pushed by fear, without a restriction on time, and without comparing yourself to others who started before you. 

. . .

>>Getting fitter, later is a non-obligatory concept. Choosing to pursue fitness, at any age, is not a requirement for worthiness, whether you’ve worked to build your fitness in the past or not. Nor is your fitness—its extent or its value—dependent on or comparable to anyone else’s. And the ability to work on your fitness—again, at any age—is something to be grateful for.<<

Looking Fit

What does a fit person look like?

You. A fit person looks like you. Because what you look like and what you can do are two separate things.

Consider a friend, perhaps one who is the same age as you—what’s something you can both do? Maybe together you’ve run a local race, or moved one of you into a new apartment, or snowshoed to a backcountry cabin. We’ve established that you’re both fit to do this. But do you look the same?

You can look different than the person next to you and yet be fit for the same activities. There’s more than one form possible for each function.

What I looked like at 20 is different from how I look at 40 and will be different from how I’ll look at 60 or 80. In all cases, my body was/is/will be able (I hope) to go for a hike, push furniture around, and lift the Thanksgiving turkey-for-twelve out of the oven. Four different looks, but capable of the same functions.

Now, not only is there more than one form possible that is fit for a function, there are also many functions—activities, sports, general life requirements. (And thank goodness for that, because it’s what makes life interesting.) Think of all the things you’re capable of doing, right now, in the body you inhabit. Maybe you take care of other people, or cart around pea gravel, or travel, or play hockey, or you are growing a human—while also doing all the other things!

If you’re doing it, you’re fit for it, which means a fit person looks like you.

Of course, it may be that you look different from your friend and you are each capable of different things. That’s good news. A diversified skill set is what will carry your team through to the next round. You need those people, and they need you.

We are fit for many things, and we look only like ourselves.

First published July 31, 2019, Instagram (@shanajstone) and Facebook.

Fitness Is Not a Competition: That Feeling

It’s okay if you see something that someone else has and want it for you, too.

Maybe you see a stranger climb a local pitch, or your friend completes a Gran Fondo with style, or someone at your gym has a two-pull rope climb.

You might feel…jealousy. It might be hard to admit, but there it is. It’s no surprise, really. We’re taught to compare ourselves to others. We expect to compete for limited resources. We learn that there are winners at the expense of losers and that the rewards go those at the top. But with fitness there is no competition. You can have it too.

Here’s the important bit: Your response to others’ achievements paves the way for your own. If you celebrate the success of others, you’re saying yes to that success for yourself, too, whether it be now or in the future. None of us exists in a vacuum. Your support of others matters—to them, to a future you, and to everyone else who wants to succeed. It creates an environment where we all can strive and where more is possible.

Likewise, if you put down the success of others, you’re saying that you’re not interested in that achievement for yourself. You are, in effect, saying that the achievement has no value—not for you or anyone else. This creates an environment of apathy.

If, by watching your peers increase their fitness, you discover a sharp desire to handstand, increase your bench, or row a lightning-fast 2k, channel that motivation into your training. Now you have a goal and the drive to make it happen. Go get it! Your achievement won’t supplant someone else’s. But do this first: Cheer on the person who is inspiring you.

First published June 5, 2019, Instagram (@shanajstone) and Facebook.

Fitness Is Not a Competition: Abundance

Sport is competitive, as are many other things—a game of chess, a spelling bee, a job opening, an audition, the last seat on your bus-ride commute. What do all of these have in common? There is a winner and there are those who…didn’t win. The reward is limited to one, sometimes to a few. The system is based on scarcity.

For many of us, the competitive mindset is in our blood. We feel driven to lift heavier and move faster than those around us. We want that personal best. We want to “catch up” to our friends who can do more than we can. We want to regain a skill, a speed, a body we once had because we think we used to be a better version of ourselves.

We’re comparing a past or an imagined future to where we are now and judging our current selves lacking, less worthy than before or not yet enough.

Your fitness doesn’t exist in a system of scarcity. It is available to you now, or later, whenever you decide to strive for it and regardless of who else is working on theirs. There’s no podium and no limitation on who can have it, how much you can have, when you can have it, or how long you can have it for. There is no competition—it just doesn’t exist.

Moreover, you don’t live in the past or the future. You live in the now. So how are you not enough? You are, literally, everything.

In the land of fitness there is infinite room, space for all, enough for everyone.

First published May 28, 2019, Instagram (@shanajstone) and Facebook.

Fitness Is Not a Competition: It’s All About You

Your situation is unique. Really, it is. Hear me out.

Your physical fitness and the mindset you bring to it are specific to you and your personal history. What you can do with your body, right now, is a manifestation of that lived experience.

The variables are infinite. Blow out your knee ten years ago? Recovering from a major illness? Not sleeping well or working eighteen-hour days? Your mental and emotional stressors are just as significant and combine with the physical to create the you of this moment.

This is the you that is capable of what you can do right now.

Does it make sense to compare your work-, family-, or injury-related stress to someone else’s? No? Then why would you compare your one-rep max of anything?

How about this: If you and I were to compare our fitness in a contest of shoe-tying, would it matter who wins? If it doesn’t then tell me why it matters that you lift more than me or I run faster than you. Each of us can do what we can do and it’s irrelevant to compare.

But there is a place where our unique situations are indeed relevant to others. We all experience challenges, sometimes small and niggling, sometimes devastating. And we all experience successes, be they fast and fleeting or sticky and triumphant. Though incomparable, our experiences are what allow us to relate to each other. Comparison is pointless, but empathy is gold.

First published May 22, 2019, Instagram (@shanajstone) and Facebook.

Fitness Is Not a Competition: Fit for What?

Can you identify the exact criteria for fitness? Few can agree on what to measure, never mind the thresholds required, so don’t be surprised if you find it difficult to pin down. Part of the issue is identifying the fitness objective—what is it being used for?

My fitness objectives are likely different from yours, and yours are likely different from your neighbour’s. For example, I’m currently fit to care for myself, do basic maintenance around my home, carry my groceries, walk around town or hike through the forest, go ocean paddleboarding, and learn new gymnastic skills. In other words, my fitness matches my objectives. I have other objectives that I’m also working towards, and my fitness is moving in that direction. Should my objectives change, I would likely work to alter my fitness accordingly.

But I’m a competitive athlete, you say. Well, do you want to run hurdles, or long-distance cycle, or execute a tumbling routine, or fence, or play rugby? Great! Are the fitness requirements the same for each sport? Are you working on fitness specific to your objectives?

There’s no bar for fitness, nor should there be. Fitness is not an absolute. There is only the ability to do the thing you want to do, at the level you want to do it at.

When you picture yourself as a fit person, what activities are you doing? If you’re already doing those activities, mission accomplished. If you’re on the path to making it happen, mission accomplished also. Everything—everything—is a progression.

First published May 14, 2019, Instagram (@shanajstone) and Facebook.

Fitness Is Not a Competition: An Introduction

A competition is a contest in which there are winners and losers. At its core, competition is a comparative exercise. Someone comes out on top.

Sport is competition. Fitness is not.

Let’s look closer.

In sport, we determine a winner or a ranking of the top few. Someone is identified, as objectively as possible, as the fastest, the strongest, or the most skilled. Validation comes from others; it is external to the self. The point is to win.

The pursuit of sport and the pursuit of fitness are fundamentally different. In fitness, there is no finish line, no award ceremony, and no gold star. Validation is found internally, from meeting your own needs. The point of fitness is to be able to participate.

This doesn’t mean that fitness is easy. In fact, it’s often harder than sport. Without the clear parameters of winning, how do we know when we achieve it? Without agreed-upon rules of engagement, how do we know we’re doing it right? And perhaps most confusing, without competition, what drives us?

In this series, we’ll explore fitness from a mindset perspective, because so much about the body is really about the mind.

First published May 7, 2019, Instagram (@shanajstone) and Facebook.