Midlife athletes: How far should you push it?
In search of the line between tolerating less physicality and pretending you're still 35.
“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing; moderation is for Canadians.”
For most of my adult life, I pledged allegiance to the above, semi-obnoxious mantra. Fatherhood and Father Time1 induced me to change, although the anti-moderation zealot in me sometimes still emerges — usually at the gym, in the water or on the tennis court. Only now, in my 50s, the cost of my immoderation is measured in ice bags, Aleve and MRIs.
Which got me thinking about aging with tolerances vs. aging with consequences.
By tolerances, I mean accepting the narrowing boundaries of what you’re aging self is able to physically accomplish, so that you’re not risking spending more time in Aleve-MRI-istan. In short: heeding your body when it’s telling you to stop hurting it.
By consequences, I mean what happens when you don’t acknowledge that you can’t just keep going at the same athletic level from your 30s or 40s — either because your habitual response to chronic inflammation is to ignore and override, or because your identity is so deeply connected to physical achievement that the idea of slowing down is more painful than dealing with your nagging osteoarthritis or tendinopathy.
I’ve been a committed resident of the consequences end of this spectrum and, to be honest, before a few weeks ago I didn’t know there was a spectrum. I assumed anyone who places a high value on physical performance just keeps going regardless of age and of consequences. Because otherwise, you’re basically admitting you’re old and off-peak. No thank you.
But two recent conversations started to change my thinking.
One was with my childhood friend, John, 58, in northern Michigan; the other with Emily, in New York City who is about to turn 60. Both of them are committed athletes with high pain thresholds. And, to my surprise, both organically mentioned to me their decisions to eliminate certain elements of their athletic lives.
Tolerances.
When I spoke to John, last month, he’d recently completed a sprint triathlon and, one day before our conversation, an 80-mile bike ride over hilly Michigan terrain. Doesn’t really ever stretch or foam roll, though. Classic John. But what caught my ear was his admission that he had given up playing basketball, a sport he’s played for decades. Playing, he said, hurt his achilles tendons so much that he was hardly able to walk afterward. So John casually mentioned he’d put his basketball days behind him.
You just stopped? I asked him.
Yeah, he said.
Then there’s Emily, a proud New Yorker who learned to surf (rather well) in Nicaragua 10 years ago and prides herself on staying fit and ready for anything. She told me she’d recently stopped running due to creeping tendinosis in her posterior, which made moving at speed over pavement too difficult. “I stopped because it was a pain in the butt,” was how Emily put it, evidently amused by her pun.
Here’s the text message I’d sent Emily afterward, asking to use her as an example for this article, and my reason for writing it:
Emily’s response was, “Make sure you mention my pain in the butt joke. And that I’m still kicking ass.”
Hearing John and Emily’s stories of athletic abstinence, each with an implicit acknowledgement that ending a long-established habit was the right thing to do, gave me a new perspective into aging with strength — something healthier than Bryan Johnson’s obsession with eternal life. Namely, that living within some physical tolerances I establish for myself, as an ambitious athlete still, isn’t capitulation and may be the smarter play.
But, damn, it’s hard to stop pushing. And so I still regularly spend days or sleep-deprived nights in Aleve-MRI-istan, waking up with pain in my shoulder or ankle, wondering how long this will go on.
Consequences.
How do you think about your midlife athleticism? I encourage you to put your thoughts in a comment below.
I use a patriarchal pronoun for Time. I also use a matriarchal pronoun for the Ocean, aka, Mother Ocean. They don’t mind.
Paul, have you thought of switching handedness for tennis, serve and swing with the other arm? I tried that for awhile during a convalescence. I totally sucked but could see improvement. And many people make incredible use of other body parts to get or gain functionality; e.g. the armless using feet to paint pictures.
Why push again, Paul? Why not? I have enjoyed sports and being active for decades, life is too slow and unexciting without being physically active and enjoying the activities with others.
I do believe in the tolerances on a spectrum. I was lucky to be born a ginger; I have read studies that say they have higher pain tolerance. Either that or I'm a tad slow about noticing the calls.