As we get older its gets harder to motivate ourselves, injuries seem to be a constant companion, and each day we seem a little less than we were the day before. So what to do? Most men unfortunately start to give up and use the excuse of injury to mask a fear of not being the strong and competent man they once were. It doesn’t have to be this way and it all starts with attitude……..

An inability to accept the physical realities of ageing, leads to a self-fulfilling cycle of injury and disappointment. For example, if at your age and level of physical ability you can consistently work out at an intensity level of 6 and a frequency of 3 days per week, yet you drive yourself to an intensity 8 and a frequency 5 days per week, eventually you will get injured as your rate of recovery reduces as you get older. Of course injury then leads to a lay off or a severe reduction in intensity and frequency. You then think you have to train harder on your return from injury to make up for lost time in training. This leads to further injury and the cycle starts to spiral out, leading to depression over your inability to maintain the fitness and body shape you used to have.

There are only two outcomes out of this spiral –

1. You accept your age and physical abilities and train to those abilities. This does not mean taking it easy. It still means continually pushing yourself, but in a smart way with different exercise and training regimes than you used to do.

OR

2. You decide it’s all too hard, give up, and live on the stories of how good you used to be.

So how should we train as we get older?

Firstly…….let your ego go!

If you watch yourself very closely, you will notice your subconscious is always striving to impress others. If you deny that emphatically and say you don’t care what others think…..you are still in the grip of your ego…you just don’t realise it. This is all part of our primal survival instinct. The old bull wants or needs to ensure its dominance over the younger bull for as long as possible.

Once you consciously begin to understand this and come to a level of acceptance, then your physical journey as an Old Boy really begins. You start to train smarter and you will be very surprised by the results.

Identify problem injury areas, we all have them. In my example my left shoulder and left knee are a constant source of annoyance. My knee is a simple case of worn down cartilage but my left shoulder is a rotator cuff problem. So for me bench press, shoulder presses and squats have become a problem. For several years I fought the pain and continued, convinced that no other exercise could take the place of a 5 set, 8 rep, bench press. But eventually I was forced to look for changes if I wanted to continue to train and improve. And when I finally accepted and adapted to lower weights and different exercises, my training frequency began to improve.

So listen to your body, work with it by changing exercise frequency, intensity, and type, and above all………..admit you’re an Old Boy and embrace it by continuing to be active long after the legends have given it all away and are sitting by the fire in their slippers telling the youngsters how good they used to be.

Training, Ageing and Acceptance...