Working Out As You Get Older

One of the hardest things to accept is getting older. That is, losing strength, stamina, nagging injuries, lower energy levels, etc…. But until recently, I wouldn’t adjust my workout routine. I continued to try and workout like I was still in my twenties. And that was a big mistake. Inevitably, it led to injuries, illnesses, burnout, etc.. precluding the consistency necessary for sustained progress. Finally, the ups and downs, the crashes, got to me and I realized I needed to do something different.

The venture capitalist Paul Kedrosky once tweeted that working out after 40 should mainly be about maintenance. I don’t necesarily agree with that but the general point is correct: As we age, we must make adjustments to the way we workout. Trying to continue to workout like you’re still in your twenties is a recipe for disaster.

One of the most important things you can do is incorporate easy days and rest days in your routine. When I was younger – and in fact until quite recently – I thought that I should be able to go hard everyday. But nobody can do that. I once watched a YouTube with Renaissance Periodization in which bodybuilder Dr. Mike Israetel said: “7 days a week is not a serious training program”.

You need easy days and rest days to recover so that your hard days can be high quality. If you try to go hard everyday, inevitably you are always going to be exhausted and burned out and the quality of your workouts will frequently suffer. In addition, you’re not giving your body enough rest to recover and grow. As in many things in life less is more.

For example, I just did an easy day. I was in and out of the gym in an hour, including a shower. I did 12 minutes in the pool, showered and got dressed, did stretching, calisthenics and light weights for 20 minutes and rode the stationary bike for 4 minutes / 1 mile. I still felt good when I was done and I was tempted to do more. In my younger days I would have, but I know better now. I did harder days on Thursday and Saturday and I have Day 2 of the World Series of Poker $250k Guarantee at Graton Casino today at 12pm. A hard workout today made no sense.

And I took Friday completely off from the gym as I did a late night workout on Thursday night, slept only a few hours and was driving up to Rohnert Park for Day 1 of the poker tournament Friday morning. In the event, I drove from 7:10-8:47am incuding a pit stop, started playing a satellite at 9am, won my seat at 11:50am, jumped into the 11am Flight B at 11:55am and played poker until after 7:30pm when we bagged up for Day 2. By the time I got something to eat, checked in to my hotel and got to my room I was completely exhausted. Had I went to the gym, it would have been even worse.

Which leads into the second point I want to make: taking into consideration your overall life activity. Friday was an exhausting day. In the past, I would separate my actual life from my workout life and try to stick to my workout routine no matter what I was doing in my life. If I had a really hard day in my life, I didn’t take that into account in for my workouts. But that doesn’t make sense.

For example, Friday obviously took a lot out of me physically. To pretend like that doesn’t have implications for what I do in the gym makes no sense. Obviously it does. And so while I did workout on Saturday, I was conscious that I was still run down from Friday which – while it was an off day from the gym – was still an exhausting day physically.

And – like I said earlier – I was conscious during today’s workout that I don’t want to be run down for Day 2 of today’s poker tournament where I could potentially be playing for a long time and for a significant amount of money. It took me a long time to consider the overall context of my life activity when planning my workouts instead of pretending like what I do in real life has no implications for what I should do in the gym.

The last point I want to make is about periodization which has been one of the hardest for me to understand. There have been many times in my life when I’m crushing it in the gym. I’m on a roll, everyday feels good; I’m getting stronger, faster, leaner, etc… What do I do? I keep amping up the intensity until something goes wrong: I get sick, injured or simply burned out. Which results in a setback as it takes a lot of time to recover from those types of things and get back to where I was previously.

What I now understand is that even when things are going well, at a certain point you need to take at least a few days to slow down, rest and recover in order to consolidate your gains. Inevitably, if you keep trying to amp up the intensity you’re going to hit some sort of a wall. Most of have some sort of a weekly routine: Push/Pull/Legs, Upper Body/Lower Body, Weights/Cardio, etc….; things that we do on each day of the week or in some sort of sequence. But very little is said about the fact that there are times when you need to take a break from your routine – even or especially when things are going really well – to refresh and consolidate.