I’m half joking. But as a 30-something who used to be very active, I recognize I’m over the hill and my joints sound like pop rocks
I’m in my 40s and I’m really glad I got into martial arts back in my 20s and kept up with it.
Military Service. I just don’t have to pay for pain meds and I still get to fall apart over time!
My 94yo friend is still going strong. His advice is to keep moving. Even just going for a short walk does more than you realise.
Look after your eyes, ears, and back, and always wear the recommended protective gear. People who say you look stupid using the correct technique or wearing protective gear will either die first, or regret their decision after it’s too late to do anything about it.
Most of all, learn from other peoples mistakes. You don’t have enough time or luck to make them all yourself.
How do you even get back into it… So hard
No joke, progressive resistance training (weightlifting) for older people can be better bc it has cardio built in but takes less time and is more precise so you can really manage exertion well. It signals the body to retain muscle so you can intermittent fast w/out losing ability while on a caloric deficit and w/out inflammation and other crap while on a surplus, making it easier to keep precancerous bodies swept up. I am not actually old yet, but I plan to be old.
Also, people may not realize poor sleep hygiene can reduce your physical strength by 30% (measured by resistance training) or maybe more due to coordination issues
I recognize I’m over the hill and my joints sound like pop rocks
I had that start when I was a teenager, maybe even earlier. It sounds gross, but so far it hasn’t done anything else.
I’m 45 and topfit. If you really feel like you’re declining at 30 you’ve never taken care of yourself. What makes you think you can do it now?
Preferably to remain steady: Eat a varied (mostly) plant based diet. Work up a sweat at least 3 times a week and do some light movement everyday for 30 minutes. You don’t need to do anything crazy, you don’t need to fucking start pumping iron, you don’t need to become a protein bro. Just find 30 minutes a day and stop eating food that you already know is bad for yourself. Especially not too much.
And fucking go to a doctor when your joints hurt or it takes you 5 time’s longer to heal. It’s not normal. Stop normalizeing being unhealthy.
Unless you’re a medical anamoly then it’s highly unlikely you ever competed at a high level in your 20s and think you are in better shape at 45. Unless it was boxing and your CTE is showing
There is no way that with proper care your joints should be creaking at 30. And its absolutely bullshit that at 45 you can’t be in good shape or even better shape than your twenties. High level competition is done at all age levels, it has never stopped at 30 or even 45. If you are competitive you can find competition. But that’s rhe problem, most people just stop competitive sport, they hit their limit and find it hard to continue to improve. So they take other direction in life. But then also stop taking care of themselves and never kept a regime up. No, most just fall into the trope of the body ending after your twenties. It doesn’t, your body is capable of being healthy, strong and supple. Through food and light exercise to keep it up and if you want high level workout regimes.
Was there a particular reason your response is in the tone of a condescending asshole?
Yes. I look down on people.
I’m 28 and my joints do funny things (knees and left elbow mainly, occasionally shoulders). Been a mechanic my whole life, been in a few car accidents, smashed u pa few dirt bikes, and shattered my arm into 4 peices a couple years ago on the road when somebody failed to yield turning left. Some days my body doesn’t agree with me but I don’t stop moving and I think that’s the biggest thing. Over winter break last year I slugged around the house for a couple days and by day 3 my left arm was sore. Wrist stiff knees popping. Got back after it and I felt fine you have to stay active even when it’s uncomfortable and you have to stay LIMBER nobody stretches enough lol
Go for a walk (outside) every day. I used to try different posture exercises, running, sprinting interval training, but as you get older, nothing is healthier and easier on your body than just daily walks.
We kinda are walking machines anyway:
Bonus points for mental health if you walk in nature, without any headphones or entertainments.
Also do strength training (you can get hand barbells very cheap if you don’t have a gym close by), starting very light at first, and working up to whatever feels comfortable.
Walk 5km a day during the week, and 8-10km a day on weekends. Weights three to four times a week, and a cardio session afterwards. I like using the ski machine, as it gives me a serious workout without any impact.
Weights has had a huge impact on my quality of life, as I am recovering (recovered?) from a serious head injury. I was not active for nearly 18 months and am feeling good about my body for the first time in years.
58m here for context.
Look at this badass over here. Im 32 and the idea of multi km walks everyday makes me knees hurt something fierce!
If you are 58 meters tall it’s a breeze to walk that much. Please relate to the rest of us!
I wish I had 3-4 hours a day for this kind of activity.
It wasn’t easy getting into that routine. I get up at 4:30 for my weekday walk, and it takes about an hour. Weekend walks start at 5:00am, and generally take 1.5-2 hours. Gym is two hours, once or twice during the week and both weekend days. Life still gets in the way sometimes, and I am lucky that my job is flexible. For example, I started work at 6:30 this morning and will knock off at 2:30 and go straight to the gym. I will be home before 5:00.
The alternative was living with the results of an injury and letting my health deteriorate further than it already had. Some days, motivation is still hard.
Age 57 here. We kind of blobbed up a bit during the pandemic. About a 18 months ago we started walking every day at lunch, about 2.5 miles. Not huge distance but just being consistent with it I think has helped us a lot. We did a few hikes this year that I don’t think we could have done (or not without more injury risk) without the consistent walking.
For me tendonitis has been a thing. Got my first case of it in my late 20s and have had several bouts of it since - achilles, hip flexors, wrist, etc. Learning to recognize that as a problem and what to do to recover is important, as repetitive stress injuries can keep you from doing a lot of things.
As a 54 year old who has just had two weeks of agony because he forgot his age and tried to deadlift a 225kg motorbike by himself, I’m going to skip this one because I clearly haven’t learned anything.
A for effort though
I’m 62 and had to be advised to get a few fit young people to assist with moving a piano.
Mustn’t’ve groaned enough.
Time to start paying attention to the protein content of your meals. Joint issues are often postural tho
Try not doing any stupid things that’ll harm the body more.
Walk, hike, calisthenics.
Mid 30s, I gym, i’ve gymed for years, but now i have prehab warm up exersizes for the big lifts to activate all the supporting muscles. I havent pulled anything in a while so i guess they are working.
I plateued, years ago, i dont need to get any bigger. Instead i do much more rounded workouts.
From what i’ve read, rowing is super low impact and very good for your health from a cardio perspective and a muscle workout perspective. I keep meaning to give it a try, but my routine works for me. Maybe as i get older.
Not sure your workout regimine but I’ve found compound lifts make for shorter workouts and provide the most benefit as we age, particularly squats, deadlifts and rows.
So many people think their back hurts because they’re old when really their back hurts because it’s weak. I started lifting at 47… that was 8+ years ago. I feel so much better and ache so much less in my 50s than I did in my 40s, and surprisingly you can really add muscle and strength even when you’re older, if you want to push yourself. I never anticipated such gains were possible but working hard combined with eating and sleeping well still pays off.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/382128
Yeah, you are spot on.
Those results are really impressive considering the average age was 90 yrs old. Thanks for sharing.
Dance dance revolution and weight training
DDR, Stepmania X, and Pump It Up are awesome and I very highly recommend! If you don’t have easy access to an arcade near you, you can download Stepmania and play on the PC. If you don’t have a pad to hook up to the PC, you can turn on Autoplay and just pretend that there’s a pad under you. You can also just pretend there’s a pad under you while you watch a youtube video (or whatever other platform if they’re there).
Highly agree, I play all of those games and they’re all quite fun. I have stepmaniax pads setup for home play with stepmania/outfox/itgmamia.
That is a dream for me. Thowe pads are the best from what I hear, but they’re so expensive! I haven’t tried itgmania, just mainly stepmania. Tried outfox a long time ago, though it might be different now and I should probably give that another shot.
Do you have any customization on your StepManiaX pads? You can do stuff with the patterns it shows when pressing a panel, yeah?
Oh absolutely true about smx pads being expensive. I got mine both 2nd hand from fb marketplace at a bit of a discount.
Outfox just released a new major update that fixes a lot of things but I would say they still have a good amount of work to do. They’re trying really hard to modernize stepmania and so far they have some impressive results. For me I like that they support much higher frame rates than stepmania which pairs well with my 144hz monitor.
For my smx pads I did make custom arrows that change when pressed. I didn’t do any of the fancy gif ones but they’re not hard to make/use. They have software that you can use to edit the pad’s LEDs and the underglow.
Probably the best feature of the smx pads is being able to set custom ranges for sensor sensitivity. I can basically control the definition of an arrow press which is pretty handy
