“Every night I lay in bed for an hour staring at the ceiling.”

“Why is that?”, I asked Mike during our initial client meeting.

“That’s how long it takes before the pain in my back stops enough to be able to fall asleep”.

Mike didn’t care about weight loss. He didn’t care about bench pressing 200 pounds. He didn’t care about anything other than simply feeling better.

Not glamorous enough for you?

Not sexy enough of a story because it doesn’t involve:

• losing 50 pounds
• doing 25 pull ups
• Six pack abs
• Bench press PRs

Fast forward three months.

“Jon, I have zero back pain when I lay down in bed.”

Look,

• Lowering body fat is great
• Putting on muscle is great
• Being faster is great
• Getting stronger is great

But above ALL else,

The ability to DO LIFE is the most important piece of fitness.

Let’s be clear

This topic is not a direct address to older individuals. In fact, its intentions lie with waking up the “younger” ones.

Hate to break it to you, but you aren’t going to wake up on your 70th birthday and all of the sudden feel like garbage.

No, no.

That garbage feeling is going to start right down there in your 30s.

Random potential things to enjoy:

1. Knee pain
2. Back pain
3. Hip pain
4. Mobility issues
5. Slow recovery
6. Postural decline
7. Loss of muscle
8. Ease of fat gain

Let’s keep this to eight things as to not be too pessimistic.

There is no magic potion to stop the aging process, but there is this thing called fitness that can absolutely mitigate it.

Might you still have some pains? Sure

Will you still have some mobility issues? Most likely

Will recovery still be slowed? Yeah

But get this:

Every person I coach in their 40s, 50s, and 60s have all said they are glad they didn’t start later.

35 is better than 40, 45 is better than 55, And 60 is better than 63.

No matter what age YOU get started in fitness, it will better than waiting.

We aren’t going to try to make you a professional athlete at 58 years old. But what we can do is focus on stopping the regression.

Progression is great, but stopping regression is the key.

 

Check it out

When you are on a weight loss eating plan and in a large calorie deficit you should have one goal as it relates to your muscles.

TRY NOT TO LOSE THEM.

Meaning, the body is at a big disadvantage to grow lean tissue when eating in a deficit. The main goal during this period is to do whatever you can to hold on to the lean tissue you had before the weight loss. In other words, prevent muscle regression.

Now, back to our progression versus regression discussion.

As you age, the ability to physically progress diminishes over the years. Although progression certainly is attainable well into senior years, you should look at it another way.

No matter what age you start at be it 32, 46, or 67, you must commit to a lack of regression.

Clearly if you squatted 415 in college I am not going to tell you that you should be able to in your 60s.

Nor will you have the energy at 66 that you did when playing badminton every night after school in your teenage years.

When viewing your body as a unit you must stop the regression of your mobility, posture, overall strength, energy etc. to whatever degree you can.

This ideally starts BEFORE you see a decline in these things.

So yes, Mr. “I am 27 and can do anything I want pain free and feel great tomorrow”, YOU too need to be setting yourself up physically for the future.

At the end of the day I love helping people with all kinds of goals.

But,

First and foremost, you need to be able to DO LIFE.

Need some help with this or have a question I can answer? I am super happy to help.

Email me at: jwalterspt@gmail.com