Here are some thoughts on staying spry in the second half of your life:
We are physical beings.
I mean this in the literal sense of being biological organisms. It can be easy to forget that as we are swept up in work, politics, and whoever’s wrong on the internet. However, the care and feeding of your biological cycles – from nutrient intake and sleep to smartly-aimed physical stresses – is rooted in predictable cadences. Those are the big rocks of human health. No matter how far your thoughts fly into the stratosphere, these are your connections to material reality and/or staying alive. They wait for no one.
Everything is graded on an S-curve.
The effort you put into your own health or performance (after any startup costs) tends to pay off dramatically – with your early steps being your most powerful. Even as the curve starts to trend to the right, you’ll continue enjoying meaningful progress for quite a while. At some point, progress will start to flatten out and demand increasingly more for increasingly less. So, unless you’re trying to be the world’s greatest whatever, you’ll be best served by maintaining what you’ve developed AND THEN seeking juicy, low-hanging fruit in other dimensions. Most of us thrive as generalists, as opposed to specialists.
Here are some thoughts on staying spry in the second half of your life:
We are physical beings.
I mean this in the literal sense of being biological organisms. It can be easy to forget that as we are swept up in work, politics, and whoever’s wrong on the internet. However, the care and feeding of your biological cycles – from nutrient intake and sleep to smartly-aimed physical stresses – is rooted in predictable cadences. Those are the big rocks of human health. No matter how far your thoughts fly into the stratosphere, these are your connections to material reality and/or staying alive. They wait for no one.
Everything is graded on an S-curve.
The effort you put into your own health or performance (after any startup costs) tends to pay off dramatically – with your early steps being your most powerful. Even as the curve starts to trend to the right, you’ll continue enjoying meaningful progress for quite a while. At some point, progress will start to flatten out and demand increasingly more for increasingly less. So, unless you’re trying to be the world’s greatest
whatever,
you’ll be best served by maintaining what you’ve developed AND THEN seeking juicy, low-hanging fruit in other dimensions. Most of us thrive as generalists, as opposed to specialists.
Body composition comes and goes
. We get leaner, we get fatter. We add muscle, we lose it. Unless you work out for a living and manage to stop aging, experiencing stress, injuries, or other life demands (call me if you solve this, BTW), you will always be susceptible to some kind of flux. Movement skill, however, is incredibly sticky. Knowing how to interpret sensations and communicate with your own body will always serve you.
We like you as you are.
On the subject of body composition, I’ve met many people who feel like they have to put happiness with themselves on hold until they reach some kind of arbitrary standard. And that’s quite possibly because that’s how they expect other people to feel. But that’s an imaginary thing… a construct. A ghost. You’re terrific right now and you’ll also be terrific later. We see that and love sharing space with you without qualification. Right now. As you are.
There are people out there who have plenty of judgements. No question. But judgy people want to judge, not celebrate.
Physical sensation is a conduit to the present.
We can all get behind the idea of being mindful. Of being present. But thinking about is tricky because thinking is different from actually doing it. When is
right now
, anyway? Your mind will want to pipe up here but it’s physical sensation that gets you the closest.
Mindfulness is the absence of comparison.
That includes past or future versions of you.
Your ability to explore your current abilities with curiosity and skill is what makes movement come alive. Everything else is just a distraction.
There is nothing new under the sun.
There are things we’ve come up with at Bang that I’ve never seen elsewhere. I’m proud of those things but I don’t, for one second, pretend that some ancient dude else didn’t think of it – and perfect it first.
This is also a reminder that what feels like the newest equipment or most cutting edge idea is likely a marketing hack, a rebrand, or pale reflection of something lying in the rubble of physical culture history.
Your discomfort tolerance is important.
From hypertrophy and flexibility to sports performance, your ability to navigate difficult sensations is an essential skill. Physical training is an incredible place to practice this. Generally, consistently going to the edge of discomfort will create both progress and growth. Nothing dramatic is needed; you don't need to bleed from the eyes with effort to succeed. In fact, great is frequently the enemy of good and trying to do to much too soon gets a lot of people into trouble. That being said, if you’re horny for progress, you’ll need to learn how to dance a little closer to the edge.
Effort can’t be your north star.
This is a corollary to the above. While your ability to do hard things is incredibly important, it’s just one tool in your tool kit. It doesn’t mean you should dash yourself against the rocks arbitrarily just because it feels hard. Choose your hard things wisely.
Your gentleness is also incredibly important.
There are moments where the most important actions you can take will be gentle – with yourself and with others.
Health and fitness are not the same thing.
Health is the foundation that fitness is built upon. It’s dynamic and complex. It is sufficiency in every domain, from nutrition to stress management. Movement is required but not in extreme doses. Fitness, on the other hand, is adapting to the demands of a specific task – and that’s where we’ll sometimes see extremes, e.g. to compete as a bodybuilder or maximize your 400-metre run time, or form the offensive lineup of the 1985 Chicago Bears. Health and fitness share a great deal but it’s possible to push specific fitness to the point that it harms health.
When in doubt, keep your options open.
Not everyone we meet has a specific fitness goal. Many people just want to be healthy, at home in their bodies, and to age well. Here, we think in terms of adaptability. This is supported by working up to a cruising speed that allows you to jump into new and novel tasks as dictated by your interests and needs.
Take an experimental mindset.
There is no ultimate truth. No perfect program. If only. The next best thing is a combination of educated guesses, curiosity, and experimentation.
Consistency + a little bit of boundary pushing is magic.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: the mere act of showing up sometimes pushes your boundaries – and that counts. That’s an example of you doing a challenging thing. Once you acclimate, of course, you find new boundaries. And as long as you keep showing up and gently pushing, you make space for genuinely amazing things to happen.
One of the true gifts of getting older is the beautiful and progressive shedding of fucks. Like leaves from an autumn tree, your concerns about what you’re
supposed to do or who you’re supposed to be will tumble to the ground. There, they find their true and final form as nourishing mulch – useful only in death.
Community is formed through surplus. Not of money, but of energy. Time. Attention. Common values. A button in your junk drawer that would look good on someone’s cardigan. Advice from your old boss that someone in a new role could use. Pressing someone for details when they say, they’re “fine” in an off-key way. Parallel play. Bringing coffee. Speaking up. Asking to borrow something or insisting on lending something. Rephrasing what someone said so you can be sure that you understand. Supporting and being supported. And doing hard things together.
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