I started working out at 66 this year for the first time since I stopped playing basketball 30 years ago. Even after 6 months I see a difference (I was never overweight 6'5" at 212 but now 10 pounds less). But because I had no experience with weight training or even cardio for so long, there is no way to expect I can do triathlons all of a sudden. I can tell who in the gym has been training most of their life and I have no expectations to suddenly look like Dwayne Johnson (he's 6'4").
I wish I had started and continued training at some level 30 years ago (or earlier) instead of waiting until now. I can only exhort people to not wait until they are old, and things start falling apart to start.
The author doesn't mention his experience before he turned 70, I think that would have been interesting.
I started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at 44. I was about 40-50lbs overweight and had never been athletic except for a few seasons of soccer and baseball as a young kid.
I was amazed at how my body responded. It helps that I immediately fell in love with the sport.
However, I found the most important change I made was in my nutrition, which I changed at the same time I started BJJ. Not only did my body really respond to that, I saw dramatic improvements in my mental and emotional health as well.
I'm 51 now and I've easily kept that 40lbs off the whole time.
I did keto but people don't need to do that if they eat good quality nutrient-dense foods. Preferably organic and locally-grown, and prioritizing healthy fats, proteins, and complex carbs and avoiding at all costs processed food. I can't stress enough how much modern food manufacturers are poisoning us.
I am not the op, but one should not complicate things. There are no secrets. People have been getting ripped since the dawn of time with chicken/tuna and rice and some vegetables.
Eating less (95 out of 100 people in the general population today are eating way too much)--in general, it means ingesting fewer calories, solid and liquid--and keeping protein intake between 100 and 150 g per day is an excellent starting point and likely a final one. What does it mean to eat less? Half of what you eat now is a good starting point. If you are losing weight, go on, if you are not, eat less.
Some disciplines, such as endurance sports, require special dietary modifications, but if you are fat (and most of us are), you already have bigger problems.
My main legacy, much more than my academic research and my work in tech, will be to have encouraged people to get in shape by telling them that they eat too much and are fat (without fat shaming of course, all to their advantage).
Personally, I find telling people to eat less doesn't work. In part because the food manufacturers are such masters at making people addicted to their garbage.
Eating healthy fats and protein is so satiating that one doesn't need to try to eat less, they just naturally do. Yes, there are exceptions to that but, for most people that is true.
It is not my experience at all, and at this point, I have been asked for nutritional advice for 25 years. Any specific recommendations for the general population will be interpreted as that food + all the others that have been eaten before.
And aside from extreme examples, such as people who eat only candy all day, any reduction in calories ingested will lead to some feelings of hunger. Yes, by eating protein and fiber at every meal, which by the way is included in my recommendations, you can reduce hunger by what, 5 or 10 percent? But hunger will kick in.
Should I be eating this food? Eat less. What about this supplement? Eat less. A cheat meal? Eat less. Charles Bronson was asked how he kept in excellent shape in his 50s. His answer? Small portions. Accept you need to eat less, food will be there tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after again (there is a reference there to the movie "The Eclipse" by Antonioni, with Alain Delon and Monica Vitti as protagonists). In a short time, a few weeks, you get used to ingesting fewer calories.
If you actually need to lose weight (which, statistically, most Americans do), in my experience you will be hungry at some point even with a pretty healthy diet. There’s just no way around the body’s response to a reasonable caloric deficit. The key is being able to actually have the willpower to ignore those pangs. Maybe you won’t be hungry immediately, but a 500cal deficit (which, is a pretty light deficit) is quite a lot.
Most folks are likely at a mild surplus of calories, so the swing to actually get you to lose weight is often as substantial as 700-1000cal to actually lose weight. Per day. It’s a lifestyle change, unfortunately.
I would say that this is one of the wrong ways of approaching the problem, which makes it more difficult to lose weight. People who are (severely) overweight who gorge on food have an unhappy lifestyle: they don't look good or feel good, they are prone to energy swings that make them irritable and bad company, and they are obsessed with food.
Fortunately, an all-too-simple lifestyle change would make their lives much better. The food not eaten today will be there tomorrow. No need to obsess over it.
What's your quibble here? The use of the word unfortunately?
My point is that it's not some quick fix, it requires dedication to unlearn bad habits and commit to changing for the better. It cannot be a one-and-done approach, as falling back to similar levels of consumption will just lead them right back to where they started.
"What's your quibble here? The use of the word unfortunately?"
Yes, that's the quibble. 'Unfortunately, you need to do resistance exercises if you want to grow substantial muscles'; 'Unfortunately, you need to stop watching porn like crazy if you want to have normal behavior with men/women'; 'Unfortunately, you need to stop stuffing yourself with food if you want to be in decent shape.'
For the first two examples, 'unfortunately' seems out of place. But for the third example, food, it seems reasonable. And it is because gorging on food until you lose your wits has been normalized, but there is nothing unpleasant about having a normal relationship with food.
I don't really see the issue with unfortunately in either example 1 or 3. 2 is a moral judgment which is unrelated.
If you could take a pill to make yourself grow muscles without downsides, it would be great. There's nothing 'fortunate' about having to spend hours of time on exercise which is otherwise meaningless.
Also, there definitely is something unpleasant about dieting to lose weight. It's not fun. Maintaining a healthy diet less so, but you are absolutely making sacrifices personally and socially if you cannot eat or drink whatever you want whenever you want.
I don't want to get into semantics because it usually leads nowhere. But maintaining a normal weight does not mean suffering hell on earth because you cannot gorge on Oreos. The vast majority of overweight people are not fond of delicacies, but they binge on foods that give them gas like a turbojet engine, are not as altogether capable as they could be, are tired, and experience intolerable mood swings.
But suppose all these negative consequences did not exist, would eating all day like a pig be heaven on earth? What sacrifices do you make when you don't eat ad lib to maintain a normal weight, nothing as extreme as preparing for a bodybuilding competition?
I like food, but I don't feel deprived by eating portions that allow me to maintain a normal weight. And I can eat or drink whatever I want, but not all the time. That hunger feeling may last as long as you pay attention to it, a couple of minutes.
If someone had a problem with alcohol, you wouldn't say to them, “I'm very sorry that you have to make this sacrifice of not drinking all day every day to have a normal life,” but for some reason eating smaller portions seems, because that's the narrative of these fat times, an unbearable sacrifice. And it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to yo-yo swings in weight.
If there was a pill that would make me grow muscles without exercising would I stop exercising? I would not, it is fun and engaging, makes me test my will and my intelligence.
There's a difference between your framing of "gorging and binging" on food and the fact being that portion sizes in American are just not sustainable for many people. If a meal at a restaurant is 1000 calories, and drinks are 200 each... is having a meal and two drinks gorging or binging? I would argue no, but 1400cal in a meal is almost certainly going to lead to excess if you have even somewhat normal food the rest of the day.
I'm not suggesting that having a pill that allows you to eat unlimited amounts of food without consequence would be "heaven on earth", I'm just saying that for most people's lifestyles you are placed into an environment that by default will lead to over consumption. That's the sacrifice. You cannot choose the default behavior anymore, and it requires foresight, thought, and planning to execute. All of that is unfortunate, because it is not easy especially if you're not used to it.
The time spent on exercise is hardly meaningless. It builds mental discipline, and the neurological pathways necessary to use the muscles effectively. Those attributes are as important as the muscle tissue itself.
As someone that exercises a lot, that’s just cope. Sure, it has side benefits, but the primary overwhelming benefit is improving health and improving aesthetics. You can build mental discipline in plenty of other ways. You can build grit in ways that don’t involve lifting weights. At a minimum of 3 hours a week (often much more for many people), it’s a pretty big cost to pay.
Regarding building pathways to use muscles, it’s effectively like riding a bike. You spend some initial time learning good technique, but year 2, 3, 4, and onwards isn’t really doing much in that department. It’s just grinding to get stronger/more muscular.
I don't think it's just coping, but it depends on the level of mastery you want to achieve in the specific discipline. For any skill, including weightlifting, the more you practice, the better the quality of the skill. And becoming competent at something is one of the pleasures of life.
For the amateur athlete, one has to take into account the opportunity cost of doing something else, and life is full of opportunities.
As for grit, I agree it is more about showing a personality trait than developing it, and grit appears to be mostly discipline-specific: many athletes show admirable grit when training and less than admirable grit in other areas of their lives.
That’s fine if you want it to be a hobby. Admirable even. But not everyone wants yet another hobby. If you could get the benefits then the vast majority of folks I don’t think would miss anything meaningful. You’ve got to enjoy the tertiary benefits to stay sane, but I’m not kidding myself that I wouldn’t enjoy ~5 hrs/week back to pursue other activities.
When I first started, I was rarely hungry in the classical sense. Instead, I knew I was hungry because I would suddenly get tired. When I ate, my energy almost immediately returned.
Also, sometimes when we think we're hungry, we're actually dehydrated.
So, I would argue that nobody needs to ignore hunger pangs. First, drink some water and wait a few minutes. Still hungry? Then eat something[1]. It's ok.
1: See my earlier post about what to eat. If you want to keep being hungry an hour after eating, eat food from the Standard American Diet.
It seems like you're taking a personal anecdote and generalizing it to everyone. Some people will need to ignore hunger pangs, because the alternative is eating too many calories. Also, it may be the compromise between eating the food you want (occasionally) and having less satiety. Expecting people to eat gruel (or, generally radically redefining their entire diet) is, in my opinion, less realistic than just admitting that if you eat that <insert unhealthy food here> then the downside is you might end up feeling hungry because you cannot eat more food and adhere to your caloric goal.
Also, we'll have to disagree on your opinion that food manufacturers are poisoning us, though. I don't subscribe to that hyperbole. Additionaly, organic and locally grown has essentially nothing to do with nutritional properties of the food we eat. It may be better for sustainability, but that has nothing to do with how healthy it is.
At the risk of anecdote extrapolation, I did a 1000 deficit to lose 1kg a week and never felt hungry to do it.
There are enough fruit and vegetables like celery, carrots, cucumbers, apples, pears etc that you can eat if you feel hungry, and you'll feel physically sick well before you've eaten too many calories.
While it's a diet change, it's far less intrusive than just having to put up with being hungry.
One caveat I would say is that dieting is a personal journey, so always pay attention your energy levels and weight as you try to different diets. Your ideal diet is going to be unique to you and it will change over time.
I tried restrictive diets a few times in my 20s and they always made me feel tired and messed with my stomach. Now in my late 30s reducing carbs and fats have been really helpful.
I think this is the attitude that makes it difficult to lose weight. Dieting is not a personal journey or a spiritual endeavor; you have to eat less and serve smaller portions. It should not be restrictive beyond what is reasonable (I assure you that no one has died in the past because Oreos were not available).
Interestingly, when a person gains weight they are not asked to do so under medical treatment, but when the same person wants to lose the fat and get down to a reasonable weight there are all these warnings, dangers and side effects. It's all autosuggestion. Eat less, and do that reasonably.
> there is no way to expect I can do triathlons all of a sudden
There is no way to expect anyone to do triathlons "all of a sudden", I'm sure this guy spent several years getting up to that level.
I tried to look for more info on him to see if he detailed when he started and the path he took but apparently he's a quack and I got sidetracked looking at the time he got investigated and ended up settling for $100k in a wrongful death case involving the church of Scientology, wow.
People who aren't familiar with (their) physiology think its all about muscle mass, when opposite is true. Muscles are by far easiest to build, but then you have whole world of various connective tissues in various joints (tendons, ligaments, fascias etc) that can make or break any competitive sportsman way before muscles come into play.
The problem with all this connective tissue is - training it takes much longer than building muscles or increasing cardio capacity. For 70 year old, that is easily a decade+ of careful preparation / training to get to such level from 0 (which seems wasn't the case for him).
Also, there are 2 basic body types when it comes to flexibility - either flexible people (like me), or rather rigid ones. Us flexible can do ie yoga stuff that takes a decade for more rigid folks to achieve. Drawback is, our joints, when under load, tends to move farther and experience connective tissue issues way more. If you don't respect which type you are, you don't utilize your (remaining) potential.
And so on, this can be discussed for a very long time, our bodies are unique and fascinating on so many levels. They are also very stupid and completely not built for our modern lifestyles. Ie I broke both of my feet in paragliding accident recently, so wheelchair-bound for a while. It takes only 2-3 weeks of not walking and your feet become completely unusable, you lose basic bending capabilities. I guess this comes from more animal times when broken leg meant almost always death sentence.
Yes, it doesn't explicitly say it in the article, but since he mentions he has run 40+ iron mans (iron men?), he has probably been doing it for at least 20-25 years. So he probably started in his 40s at least, and I'm going to guess he was fitness oriented even before that. Random 70 year olds shouldn't necessarily take his advice on how to get off the couch and complete an iron man, though most of it does seem good.
I'm 67. I joined a gym and started strength and cardio training when I was 51. I had no previous sports or exercise experience as an adult other than walking a lot, so I had a lot to learn: what all those machines and other exercise devices were for and how to use them, what exercises work which muscles, how people structure their workouts, how I should structure my workouts, what motivates people to work out, what motivates me to work out, etc.
Fortunately, and to my initial surprise, I found that I liked both the process and the results. Once I started, I never had to push myself to go to the gym or to exercise. I also enjoyed the third-placeness of the gym and getting to know people outside of work.
I quit the gym when COVID was bad, but I had some extra space at home and gradually assembled a good set of exercise equipment. I take a nerdy pleasure in buying and using various cable-machine attachments, grip exercisers, elastic bands, and, especially, swinging implements (maces, light and heavy clubs, Sandflails, cylindrical and hexagonal steel rods bought from metal suppliers, etc.). Ten years ago I went through a bodyweight period, and I include no-equipment exercises in my workouts, too.
YouTube and Instagram have been great resources for ideas about equipment and exercises. Many of the influencers can be a bit too dogmatic, but I can usually learn something even from them.
Like the author, I do feel my age more these days, and I also find myself needing more rest than I used to. Unlike him, I have never even considered doing marathons, triathlons, etc. Running hurts my knees, and I feel I can push myself hard enough without having quantitative targets. To each his own.
Working out at home is convenient and comfortable, but I do miss the gym sometimes. I have considered rejoining but haven’t yet, as I wouldn’t be able to do swinging-equipment exercises at the public gyms where I live.
You don't see a person who needs workout advice from HN, but in case anyone else reading this might,
> Running hurts my knees
I've been following ATG (from Ben Patrick, the "knees over toes guy", google/youtube it) for about 2 years and it has made a tremendous difference to my knee ability; I have a torn meniscus and the routines he suggest have allowed me to regain full functionality.
Applying both leangains and HST, I've managed to lose 2.5 kg of fat while gaining 4.5 kg of lean tissue in three month. I was 38 years old at the time (2009).
For that I am very, very grateful to HN.
Regarding knees' pain, please look into HST's principles and literature. 15+ repetitions incorporated there heals ligaments' and muscles' microinjuries.
Honestly I was afraid of this, but when I walked up to the front desk to quit, I was given a clipboard with a single piece of paper. It was pretty painless.
EXCEPT. There was no way to cancel online, so, may they go to hell. But like, the nice part of hell.
I've been debating setting up some equipment at home because going to a gym has too much activation energy. I'm looking for the least amount of equipment that can enable the most exercise coverage i.e. weight, cardio, muscle groups, etc. It seems that a rowing machine does pretty well, at least better than a treadmill, or one of those Chuck Norris bowflex machines but it's hard to choose from so many options.
I have a full weight bench in my garage...but I almost never use it since getting kettlebells. StrongFirst has some great information about utilizing kettlebells to achieve your goals.
Get a squat rack and a rolling bench! It unlocks many good lifts and is probably the sweet spot on the "exercises per unit of gym equipment" curve. A case for this approach to garage gyms is made in super-detail in [0].
rowing is good, you're right about that. So is sandbags/rucking (goruck is the premier brand). So is kettlebells, but I have no idea who is good for training that.
Key thing is to find something you like doing.
And I'm with you, reducing activation energy makes a big difference in success probability.
You don't need much. You can do a lot with some dumbbells (adjustable ones if you have money, or just the handles with spinlocks and some 1" weight plates if you want to start small) and a pull-up bar. Many dumbbells exercises are best learned lying on the floor so you don't mess up your shoulders/elbows. Later you can get a bench and a bar. I also like resistance bants (the heavy duty round ones with the carabiner clips, not the flat ones; you can get a set for ~$75). Combined with the pull-up bar you will able to do all sorts of useful back exercises.
I work out at home 6 days a week and the total cost of my equipment was under $200. You can find used gear very cheap on craiglist or your local equivalent, especially in the first quarter of the year and after summer, the two times when people tend to give up. Ending of the college term is also good as students dump equipment they don't want to take home. I found my dumbbells (with 100 lbs of plates) lying on the sidewalk a block from where I live the day after Christmas a few years ago, and nearly killed myself carrying them home :)
If you are older and prefer getting into it at home, you need extra patience and attention to safety. When I got those dumbbells I had absolutely no idea what to do, so I tried doing 10 bicep curls with 10 lb each - easy. Next day I did the same with 20lb each, a bit harder but still easy. Next day I did the same with 30lb and seriously messed up the tendons in my left wrist, and it took well over a year to recover and the weights gathered dust under my desk until I decided to give them another go.
You will get regular small injuries with any kind of serious exercise program so you have to pay a lot of attention to your body's signals. Muscle injuries can be quite painful but are also relatively easy to train around, and a stretch or small tear muscle heals in 4-6 weeks. Tendons and ligaments take much longer to heal and grow, and you'll have to get used to both dealing with pain and thinking about the mechanics of exercise so you understand what you did wrong and what you can do safely.
If you want to be able to lift heavy weights then you should use a gym, even if it's only once a week, to learn about safety racks and get advice/assistance. But you can get plenty fit by starting with light weight/resistance and focusing on repetition while you slowly increase the weight over time. One of the pluses of this sort of training is that as you get the hang of it you can vary your routine to work different muscle groups on different days and allow time for recovery while still moving your training forward. You must also take longer rest periods every few months where you give your body a break. If you need the daily routine such that you hate taking breaks, then just cut your weight or reps in half for a week and then ramp back up to your regular weight over another week or two.
You may already know this but Dwayne Johnson is pretty obviously on steroids or some other kind of anabolic agent.
In Hollywood anabolics are quite common, since preparing for a role can be a very short term thing, testosterone decreases with age, and very low body fat but large physiques are seen as normal.
Also, shorter people generally have it easier to have a muscular looking physique because of how the muscle mass limit scales with size.
> You may already know this but Dwayne Johnson is pretty obviously on steroids or some other kind of anabolic agent.
People typically know this, but the social script is to ignore and deflect because we're culturally invested in the story of transformation through personal virtue. It's like pointing out that Santa Claus isn't real.
You can still have transformation through personal virtue, just read the comments above. You just can't have the same magnitude of results without the steroids.
You can have that transformation, but the issue is a person who goes on steroids and barely works out will realize bigger gains than a natural lifter who structures their entire life around optimizing their gains. Obviously the dedicated lifter on steroids will have the biggest gains, but it is a situation where anyone can get jacked by merely injecting themselves with stuff and not having an ounce of dedication.
Sadly for the casual roid user, all that bulk will fall off within a couple of months of stopping the drugs (along with other issues like elevated estrogen which can have unwanted side effects, unless they planned out a drug cycle carefully).
It’s a shame that there is such a stigma around anabolics for training, or even as a medical intervention. If you want to transition to another gender doctors will hand steroids out no problem; I believe you can even get then from Planned Parenthood these days. But if you simply want to take steroids to address low testosterone (Which is a societal crisis), most physicians will treat you like a drug addict. They will say it’s normal if a healthy 30 year old male has the T levels of an 80 year old.
But aren't those anabolics with a very significant trade off and health implications?
I'm not sure if stigma should exist, but if something gives someone a huge advantage over a natural, but at the same time at the cost of life or health and other things, without telling they are doing it, it gives a false impression to everyone who may be comparing themselves to these people.
Not to mention the issues some young people get into when they work out a lot and compare themselves to those people and think they are never big enough, and then they get into this state of big, that is only appealing to the very same community, but not average person being misled by groups of celebrities, influencers and other people.
And also if you do go on TRT I think there's no good coming back, so usually it would be much better to try to achieve normal test with natural means first, because otherwise you are going a path with side effects and dependence for life.
Also young people wanting higher test don't understand life very well yet, they will tunnel vision on their single insecurity and think this is the golden path to solve it, while with a little perspective this understanding can change a whole lot.
In my limited understanding - as with many drugs - they're the best (or least worst) available option for people with a condition that's affecting their wellbeing. Untreated gender dysphoria can have terrible outcomes for mental health, and so therapies have been developed which are medicine's best solution so far.
And, as with T, this is where "normal for you", "normal for other people", "normal for the person you think you should be", "normal for the person society thinks you should be" overlap and interact with all sorts of potentially destructive interference patterns - especially if you're young.
Because "normal" varies from individual to individual by a factor of at least 2.
But there's no harm IMO in getting tested (2x) so you know where you stand, and have a baseline against which to measure if natural interventions are effective for you.
Though I've never heard of there being a stigma for treating low T, I agree that there shouldn't be. But that's not the point. Dwayne Johnson isn't taking anabolics to treat low T levels. You've built a straw-man by conflating the uses. Steroid abuse can cause long term damage.
There's no stigma for treating clinically low T. But as with most things in life, there's a spectrum. And strength / resistance exercise / ability to build & retain muscle will be impaired way before you hit the clinical threshold. There's a fairly solid correlation across the normal range.
Having said that, if there's no medical reason, what we're really talking about is people taking medication that they'd be, on balance, physically healthier without, in order to better fit in with society's expectations (endurance exercise, triathlons and so on, is associated with good long-term health outcomes, being jacked is not). And while I don't think artificially boosting T within the normal range is necessarily any worse for your body than, say, being on hormonal birth control long-term is for women, it's still pretty messed up that people feel like they have to.
This is the first I hear of this stigma. If people want to take steroids to bulk up they are free to do it, it's just not fair to do it in the context of competitive sports.
As I understand it there has been a noticeable dip (~25%) in the last few decades. I don't know if that's a crisis, but it's been theorized to be caused by any number of things, including a less active lifestyle, stress, and endocrine disruptors in the environment. Given the range of possible causes, "Just throw more Testosterone at it" seems like a poor initial solution.
Well when a 30-year old finds out that it's not that rare for a 70-year old to have "higher T" naturally compared to younger men on average, I guess that could trigger their own personal "crisis" ;)
Plenty who are 70 are not in the Viagra generation yet either.
It's worth googling around and reading about what the upsides/downsides to different cadence. It's pretty tough on ones legs/knees to be doing 1 hr of hard pushing every day. It may seem too high, but shooting for 80-90 rpm at lower gears is what pros tend to do, and if you try it you can feel the difference (limiting factor quickly becomes cardiovascular system as opposed to your leg muscles).
Did you mean aerobic range? It isn't physiologically possible to get most of your energy from anaerobic metabolism for efforts more than a few minutes long.
Bold red line is BPM. Green area is "burn fat", red area anaerobic, in between aerobic, above anaerobic the "warning" area. White line is speed, usually going to 0 when I make a photo. Black line is altitude.
The peak you see at 9pm is at 172 bpm, I think I have 180 set as bpm max.
No, you are misinterpreting the chart or you have the zones configured incorrectly. If you don't believe me then go get a metabolic test at a sports medicine lab with a breathing mask and stationary bike.
I have no idea what that code means but I assume it has something to do with maximum heart rate? The only way to know your actual maximum heart rate is to do a maximum effort test. This value will be activity specific: all else being equal, most people can hit a higher max HR when running than cycling because running recruits more muscles.
But knowing your max HR won't directly tell you the heart rate at which the majority of your power output is generated from anaerobic metabolism. There is only a loose relationship between those numbers, with significant variations between individuals. Again, if you want to actually know your numbers then you'll need to do a metabolic test in a real sports performance lab where they can measure inhaled and exhaled gasses while you pedal a stationary bike, along with data from power meter and HR sensors. Some consumer fitness trackers such as Garmin bike computers can also give you a rough estimate of heart rate zones based on your HRV response curve.
While I can't disagree with any of this... just riding at 80 RPM v 50-60 RPM (what a lot of amateur cyclists do) will make a difference on the legs and knees. You can feel it immediately, even at the exact same power output. There are various studies on it with all kinds of justifications involving oxygen usage and different muscles etc etc, but just try it and it's sort of obvious.
The man gets it. It’s a mental effort as much as it is a physical one. There’s a reason the longer the ultra, the faster women are compared to men. Having just done a 70.3 yesterday I can confirm the journey part, too. It’s a whole lot like life. Sometimes you go downwind really fast and sometimes it gets really tough. Sometimes there’s a stranger telling you the exact thing you need to keep going. And the hard bits always come to an end. All of my races have had some of these and I’ve always recovered. And if not, there’s the finish line and the knowledge I did not give up.
> It’s a mental effort as much as it is a physical one.
Like a lot in life to be honest. When I lived in CO I did a lot of hiking at the higher altitudes there. I almost always hiked alone and could have easily turned around when my breath got short, but I didn't. It was strictly mental exercise. Similar to when I power lifted for years. Obviously there's a physical part, but when the numbers got big for me, it became just as much mental.
Now I've been doing BJJ for a number of years. There is so much mental effort expended to not panic or give up simply because you're uncomfortable (different from being put in an actual finishing move). As I started with, the exercise of accepting discomfort, staying calm, and moving forward is skill that resonates all through life.
I don't think that's really correct. At least if you look at ultramarathon world records the male performance advantage remains fairly constant across all of the common times and distances.
Parent didn't say women were better at mental effort. They said it's as much mental as physical effort. Men's physical strength advantage decreases in significance as the distances increase.
They said "There’s a reason the longer the ultra, the faster women are compared to men", immediately after saying it is as much mental as physical effort.
It's pretty clear from observing almost every sport, including running distances shorter than 50 miles, that men dominate women physically. If men and women are similar at mental effort, and men are better physically at performing, then why would women start to take over on long distances but not shorter distances?
So, either women are better at mental effort than men, or something about biology lets women perform better than men at the ultra long distance stuff but not the shorter stuff. I say it is just biology. If OP thought it had no relation to mental effort skills difference between men and women, then why even bring it up?
You’re not thinking statistically. At shorter distances the tier 2 men dominate the women who happen to be mentally stronger but physically weaker
At longer distances the mental advantage for the top women start to matter more than their physical disadvantage when compared with the men who happen to be physically tougher but mentally weaker than them
Ok, but that is just asserting that mental toughness is what matters here. And it ignores the fact that there are far more men in the slightly less than ultra marathon world than women, so shouldn't there also be more men with a chance to win if mental toughness is equally distributed?
Maybe it's the fact that women have a higher percentage of type 1 muscle fibers than men, and it just takes until ultra marathon level distances that the increased proportion of type 1 fibers makes up for the relative higher percentage of type 2 fibers in men. Or maybe women are more efficient at burning fat than men are.
> It’s more productive to ask, “How can I?” than it is to ask, “Can I?” The latter is the question that comes to mind more readily, especially when faced with a new or unique challenge…I have learned how to ask, “How can I?” From there, a path of action inevitably reveals itself.
Also, last week on HN there was a post about how uniqueness bias holds us back by causing us to disregard learnings from the solution of similar problems. (While a problem may be unique to us, it is rarely unique to the world - though perhaps in a different costume.) It’s telling here that the author says he defaults to the less productive “Can I?” mindset when he sees his challenge as unique - and also that he opens the article with the realization that he is not unique.
There's a guy in his 50s doing ultra marathons named Kerry Ward who films some of his runs, he came in 11th during the Moab 240 miler which is 2-3 days of running https://youtube.com/@fulltiltward
My mom started a blog about her triathlon experiences after retirement, including being part of Team USA at world championships: https://triathlonatretirement.blogspot.com/
I started training for recreational long distance running in my late 40s. This is a good list for any age. What I would add in is - find training programs and follow them. The original article obliquely references this in #1 talking about "acknowledging reality is critical". At any age, people need to learn how to work, out and how to train. Failing to do so can cause short- or -long term injury, which can really set you back. My first attempt at a marathon lead to IT Band issues and severe plantar fasciitis. My second was much smoother, and I was able to complete the marathon at better than target time without injury.
The moral is - part of listening to your body is learning how to train within your age / ability band.
Older runner as well and have also had to take sporadic time off to deal with plantar fascitis, IT band, achilles, etc. Agree with listening to your body and what I'm hearing is slow down to stretch out my total running lifespan/days. I'd rather run 5K every other day on gravel/dirt paths indefinitely than risk some really long term injury running 26 miles on asphalt (seen others have to hang up their running shoes after doing the big races).
I kind of roll my eyes at these kinds of self-helpy cliche lists. But this one's pretty decent, probably because it's actually real.
> consigning yourself to the binary greatly limits what you can achieve
This is the good one here, IMO. I see people helplessly stuck in binary thinking all the time.
Now, breaking things down to a binary is a good technique for analysis. It's just that you can't stop there. You always need to be thinking "why not both?", "or neither?", "or some other thing?", "or some of one and at little of the other?", "is there a binary that more neatly slices the problem?"
No, it wasn't sarcastic at all. First, this article is written by a 71-year-old man who is actively competing in Ironman triathlons. That makes a significant difference compared to an article where someone merely discusses the topic in general terms. This man has actually done it, not just once, but many times.
The author also acknowledges the realities of aging: "Age is just a number? You’re only as old as you feel? Acknowledging reality is crucial." And did I mention that he's doing Ironmans at 71?
Additionally, there are more stuff, like "Rest days are non-negotiable." Many amateur and even professional athletes often overlook the importance of rest. You frequently see people training nonstop, not realizing how critical rest is to their overall performance.
Mid 40s here and having a hard time working out due to lack of energy/stamina. Pushing myself as much as I can but not always easy. If anyone went through this, what helped overcome it?
Been there. It really depends on what else is going on in your life and why you have low energy. Assuming you have the basics covered, like good sleep, good food and good water (if you don't, that's likely the problem), and your work-life balance is adequate (this is usually what knocks the rest out of whack for me), then starting super slowly and not pushing it even when you want. Perhaps set a goal that you know you can make, maybe 15 minutes a day?
If you see no improvement at all then definitely mention it to your doctor.
It could be vitamin deficiency. Vitamin D during low sunlight seasons really boosts my energy.
Does exercising too much sometimes lead to "crashes" that last for days such that it is impossible or very hard to even predict on what day the crash will end -- crashes severe enough that you cannot meet your work, social or family obligations sometimes? If so, you have a mild case of chronic-fatigue syndrome, and I can point you in the right direction.
Not my case, I'm simply lacking the stamina to exercise but push myself through cardio nonetheless. Maybe I need to do a blood test or something like that. I was hoping for some leads on what could cause this.
I wish I had started and continued training at some level 30 years ago (or earlier) instead of waiting until now. I can only exhort people to not wait until they are old, and things start falling apart to start.
The author doesn't mention his experience before he turned 70, I think that would have been interesting.