Move it: Or lose it:

Keep Moving: I’m Starting to Realise What We’re Actually Training For

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Happy Monday, everyone. Some more fantastic work going through the training calendar at the moment. We’ve got some big races coming up over the next few weeks, while plenty of you are quietly ticking off some really solid periods of consistency. As ever, it’s not always the standout sessions that make the biggest difference — it’s stacking up those weeks and months of good work.

For me, i played football this weekend, and afterwards it got me thinking about something.

I’m smack bang in the middle of my forties now. There are only five years until I hit the big 50, which seems absolutely fucking mental because I genuinely don’t feel like I’m approaching 50.

Playing football made me realise just how much I value being able to move. I can still run. I can ride my bike for a couple of hours. I can play football and racket sports. I can lift weights. I can do a couple of days of hard physical work. I can hike around with the kids. I can lift, carry, throw things around, get up off the floor and generally ask my body to do stuff.

I’m not saying that to show off.

 

Quite the opposite. I don’t think any of that should be particularly remarkable for someone in their forties.

I think a lot of people who know me probably look from the outside and think, “Yeah, but Si is always running or cycling or doing something. That’s just him.” And yes, I love sport. I love training. It’s been a huge part of my life.

But somewhere along the way, I think we’ve massively lowered our expectations of what a 40 or 50-year-old body should be capable of doing.

Why shouldn’t you be able to run for an hour? Why shouldn’t you be able to ride your bike for a couple of hours? Why shouldn’t you be able to pick something heavy up, spend the day doing physical work, hike up a mountain, kick a football around or chase your kids?

You don’t need to be brilliant at any of it. You just want to remain capable.

And that’s becoming increasingly important to me.

Nobody wakes up on their 45th birthday suddenly feeling old. You don’t wake up one morning having lost all your fitness. It’s much quieter than that.

You lose a little aerobic fitness. A little muscle. A little strength. A little power. You stop sprinting. You stop jumping. The hills get slightly harder. You put on a few kilos. Getting off the floor isn’t difficult exactly, it’s just not quite as effortless as it once was.

And because none of those individual changes feels particularly dramatic, it’s incredibly easy to ignore them.

That’s the bit that gets me. You can spend years slowly giving away physical capacity without really noticing what you’re losing.

And our forties and fifties seem to be perfect decades for it.

We’re busy. Careers, kids, mortgages, responsibilities. So we tell ourselves we’ll get back into it when work settles down, when the kids are older, when we’ve got a bit more time.

Or perhaps the most dangerous one: “I’m nearly 50. I don’t need to be doing that anymore.”

I think we’ve got that completely backwards.

I’m not trying to pretend ageing doesn’t happen. It does. Our physiology changes and eventually we are going to lose some physical capacity. Which is precisely why I want as much of it as possible in the bank beforehand.

I’m increasingly thinking about exercise less as training for what I want to do next month and more as training for what I want to be capable of doing decades from now.

Yes, I still want to run quickly. I still enjoy racing. I still want to challenge myself and see what I can do. But I don’t need to run my fastest-ever 5K. I don’t need to be the strongest bloke in the gym. I don’t need to run a half marathon every weekend.

Increasingly, I’m training for the 70 and 80-year-old version of me. 

I want enough aerobic capacity that climbing the stairs isn’t a workout. Enough strength to carry my own bags. Enough muscle to protect me as I get older. Enough balance and coordination to catch myself if I stumble. Enough power to get myself off the floor.

And enough general fitness that if someone says, “Fancy doing this?” my body doesn’t make the decision for me.

I want to keep doing the things that make my life my life.

Some of you in the group aren’t at that point yet. You’re in your twenties or thirties, and perhaps this all feels a long way off. But actually, you’re starting from a fantastic place.

The fitness you’re building now matters. The strength you’re developing matters. The habits you’re creating matter. You’re putting physical capacity in the bank long before you really need to start worrying about protecting it.

But for those of you knocking on the same door as me — in your forties, approaching 50, already there or beyond it — this stuff is becoming increasingly important.

Don’t accept becoming incapable simply because you’re getting older.

Don’t stop running because you’re “not a runner anymore”. Don’t stop lifting because you’re 50. Don’t stop jumping, sprinting, cycling, hiking, playing sport or doing physically difficult things because you’ve decided they’re for younger people.

Obviously what those things look like might change as we get older. But keep doing them.

I’ve started thinking of fitness a little like a pension. The earlier you invest, the better position you’re likely to be in later.

Except there’s one fairly major difference.

You can’t reach retirement and suddenly decide it’s time to start saving for your body.

So run. Ride your bike. Lift something heavy. Get out of breath. Jump. Sprint occasionally. Play football. Play sport. Go hiking. Do some hard physical work.

Keep reminding your body what it’s capable of doing.

Not because we’re desperately trying to stay young. We’re not.

Getting older is inevitable.

But I don’t want to reach 70 or 80 and simply be pleased that I’m still here.

I want to still be able to do shit.

Si