Why I Quit Exercising
I did not quit exercising because it failed me. I quit exercising because I realized that I needed to progress to training. Exercise allowed me to maintain my career as a biologist/wildland firefighter. My fitness level made me a strong, reliable, and trustworthy front-line team member in life-threatening situations.
But as I advanced in career and age, things changed.
Moving into management meant I sat more. One day, I suddenly realized that putting on my boots or waders became an out of breath chore. I kept telling myself exercise was enough, but my body was telling me something else.
Aging changes our operating systems. Recovery slows; we lose muscle, lethargy sets in and we become more susceptible to chronic illness. The processes that once kept us spry and protected become less robust and dull with age.
What Happens to Muscle as We Age
The clinical evidence I researched revealed that what happens to our bodies as we age is nothing short of a new landscape. The most far-reaching is the loss of muscle. We lose muscle beginning around age 30, losing about 3% to 5% per decade. This process accelerates through our sixties and beyond. In addition, losing muscle is exacerbated by inactivity.
The Crossroads
Exercise helped me maintain health. Training would help me prepare for the decades ahead.
I witnessed this process in action when I participated in the Senior Olympics. One man I talked with said he had been in a bad car crash, and the months he spent in the hospital served as a gift of sorts. He had time to pause and think about his future. He said, “I took health, function and mobility for granted. A catastrophe opened my eyes. I now know that the capacity to remain independent is not a given. It is earned. That’s why I adopted a training lifestyle.”
Hoe Do We Arrive at the Crossroads Without Needing a Car Crash?
Exercise vs Training for Older Adults
Exercise is an activity that involves physical effort toward increasing one’s overall health and fitness. It can be tennis, pickleball, resistance training, running, swimming, walking—any effort that maintains or increases fitness. Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing wrong with exercise. It will create the biological stress necessary to awaken natural healing mechanisms that will keep you functional and healthy.
Training is more of a systematic, hyper-focused, and intentional approach to exercise. This effort aims to spur adaptations that develop specific capacities. Imagine an Olympic hopeful. They don’t exercise. They train. Everything they do aligns with their high-level performance plan. That is the model of training I need, not to be an Olympian, but to be functional and independent in my later decades.
How to Train for the Life You Want at 80
If you want to wade rivers at 80, train balance, leg strength, aerobic capacity, mobility, reaction time, recovery.
If you want to travel independently, train your carrying (Farmer’s carry), walking, stairs, getting up from the floor.
If you want to play with grandchildren, train for the floor, lifting, bending, getting back up.
Training is not simply strategic exercise or athletics; it is preparation for participation in life as it is presented.
This is Why I Quit Exercising–Aging is a New Beginning
Aging is not only a process of decline and shrinking capacity. It can also become a process of recognizing agency. We are naturally empowered to act. Our bodies change, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to participate in life and the things we love doing.
The new beginning comes when we ask: how much influence do I still have over my trajectory?
Consider: what do you still want to be capable of doing—and what must you train now to make that future more likely?
What would still be possible for you if you reconsidered the ever-changing landscape as you age?
About the author:
Brian Braudis is a biologist, certified older adult fitness trainer and senior athlete. He writes and speaks about a gap in how we think about aging. We readily see how getting older can shrink our lives, but we don’t as readily recognize how much capacity we still have to influence what happens next.
Brian aims to close that gap. Helping people become more active participants in how they age by aligning how they live now with what they want to still be capable of doing later. More about Brian…
Sources for Why I Quit Exercising:
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Skeletal Muscle Loss: Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Inactivity
https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)01788-4/fulltext
Highlights:
Loss of skeletal muscle with advancing age begins relatively early, and continues until the end of life. From twenty to eighty years of age, there is an ≈30% reduction in muscle mass that increases with age and leads to chronic fatigue.
Muscle loss is an important consideration in functional changes in the aging body.
Reduction in physical activity alters body composition in a number of ways. Muscle mass is decreased while fat mass is increased.
Prolonged inactivity will result in accelerated loss of skeletal muscle and functional capacity.
National Library of Medicine
Muscle Tissue Changes With Age
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2804956/
Highlights:
This involuntary loss of muscle mass, strength, and function is a fundamental cause of and contributor to disability in older people. It increases the risks of falls and vulnerability to injury and, consequently, can lead to functional dependence and disability.
Loss of muscle mass is also accompanied by a progressive increase in fat mass and consequently changes in body composition, and is associated with hormonal changes such as, an increased incidence of insulin resistance in the elderly.
With muscle loss, bone density decreases and joint stiffness increases. These changes have probable implications for several conditions, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and osteoporosis.
Fortunately, aged muscle is still very plastic and can respond to exercise and nutrition, increasing its mass and strength.
Journal of Sport and Health Science
Exercise Attenuates the Hallmarks of Aging: Novel perspectives
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095254625001164
Highlights:
Exercise is closely associated with a wide range of positive health-related outcomes in older adults.
Engaging in regular moderate-intensity physical activity mitigates multiple hallmarks of biological aging.
Exercise represents a promising non-pharmacological strategy to promote healthy aging and prevent the onset of age-related diseases in the elderly population.
Reducing sedentary behavior and increasing participation in regular physical activity should be universally encouraged across all age groups.
Categorized in: Art of Aging, Fly Fisher Fitness