Why I Train at 60

Some assume that older athletes are in the gym trying to hold onto something. To claw back a version of themselves they remember or always dreamed about. It's a common story we tell about aging.

The decline is real, but it's far smaller than the fear.

The Decline Is Real, But Smaller Than the Fear

For me, some things genuinely got harder. I recover slower than I used to. My top end isn't what it was. It takes longer to warm the body up and I listen to my body in ways the younger me thought were for other people. All of that is true and I won't pretend otherwise.

A Trident Athlete said something that made me pause and reorganize how I think about all of this. She said that she doesn't work out to look 29. She works out so the 29-year-old sees what 60+ can look like.

She isn't chasing her younger self. She's standing at her point on the timeline and showing the younger person what theirs can look like. She's telling the rest of us who are her age that we don't have to train like people with something to lose. We can train like people with something still to build.

The Line Is Continuous

Whatever your age, life is a single continuous line, and training is one of the few things that can run the entire length. The reps I did in my 40s are the reason I can do what I do at 60. That's not a theory. It's a receipt.

And the reps I do this morning are a message to the man I'll be at 75. He's real. He's already being built, today, by me, whether I'm paying attention or not.

Whatever Your Age

If you're 29, you can't use my strength. You can't borrow my numbers. But you can borrow the view. From here I can tell you plainly that the future you assume is coming is mostly negotiable, and that the version of you at my age is being decided right now by whether you keep drawing the line or let it go slack.

If you're my age, you already know the temptation to train defensively, to protect and preserve and hedge. I'm telling you the ceiling is higher than the defensive story admits. Not as high as it was at 29, but far higher than the polite retreat we get sold about our decade.

And if you're somewhere in the middle, standing where the road ahead and the road behind are both long, this is the moment it matters most. The line you draw now is the one you'll be standing on when you get here.

Worth Every Rep

So no, I'm not trying to look 29. I train at 60 because the line is continuous; because today's work is a letter to a man I haven't met yet; and because someone younger than me is watching what's possible and adjusting their sense of the road accordingly.

That's worth every rep.

Herm