Your Lack of Fitness Isn’t What Kills You
I get it: fitness is the key to longevity. I’ve heard that since I was in school. I spent the majority of my career helping people achieve fitness so that they could live better for longer. Everyone’s intentions were good: my clients and I wanted to get fitter and look better. We were 25 years younger. So we trained. We trained hard. We got results, so we trained more. Eventually everybody got hurt, including me.
There’s so much pressure to over-train. The longevity industry advises us to chase a higher V02 Max and a more muscular DEXA Scan. Why? – because fitness and strength are directly correlated with living longer. But what happens to your V02 and your muscle mass when you have to get a knee replacement at 60 or a spinal fusion at 42? It ain’t pretty. What good is all that performance-based fitness if we are too injured to enjoy the benefits?
So I stopped. I stopped chasing performance with my clients. I didn’t care what their V02 Max was, or what their DEXA said. I didn’t even want to know what they weighed (although they did:-). I started focusing on only one thing: does my client have to give up the fun shit that they love to do as they age? That’s it. I started focusing on making my clients more durable, resilient, and less likely to break. Exercise is paramount to aging well, but it has to be dosed correctly for each person. My clients are normal people with kids and jobs, they aren’t running marathons or entering weightlifting competitions. They want to be able to stay independent, travel, play tennis/golf, and chase their dogs, kids, or grandkids around.
I’d found the right formula for aging clients. I felt really good about myself. Come to find out, I was still missing the mark.
Loneliness Is Your Biggest Risk Factor
I thought for so long that my clients’ success was due to the brilliance of my programming…nope. Keeping clients strong and injury-free definitely helped, but our relationship was actually making them even healthier. We became friends, we had camaraderie, and we cared for each other. That’s what really mattered.
Jim and I have worked out together forever, and we stopped being a trainer-client couple a long time ago. We are a much better fit as friends. Jim is 86, and doesn’t do a damn thing I tell him to do outside of the clinic. But we exercise together every week. He mentors me (there’s nothing that an 86 year-old hasn’t already seen…multiple times) and I keep him upright. We are in a very exclusive 2-person book club so that Jim can meet his goal of reading all the great works of classic literature. I promise you won’t finish Ulysses or Wuthering Heights unless your buddy is shaming you to do so.
Marci here: yes, everyone in the clinic gets to hear about what they are reading in their ‘exclusive book club’. We are all thrilled about it! ;o)
Jim’s primary fitness goal?: keep working, be able to jog to the hospital in an emergency, and never lose the ability to get out of his obnoxious car (pictured) so that his wife doesn’t make him get rid of it. Jim isn’t interested in performance, biohacking, or even trying to live a long time. He wants to enjoy this life that he’s built, and his perspective has dramatically shifted my own priorities as I age. Jim just laughs at how seriously I take the small things, things he learned to let go of a long time ago. Our friendship has been more integral to his longevity than anything else I can do for him. So, if our friendship was the most important factor all along, then that’s all the more reason not to overtrain him physically.
*Note: if you want to see the actual data proving that relationships matter more than exercise when it comes to longevity and vitality, read Becca Levy’s book…
Or, just look for the Blue Zones…they don’t pound Orange Theory…they celebrate community.
Want Consistency?…Good Luck
I always viewed life as linear. You go through various periods but you are always moving from one starting point to one distant finish line. It’s not that way at all. Very little in life is consistent. Life is a series of phases: college phase, marriage phase, kids phase, pre-Cancer phase, post-surgery phase, post-menopause phase, divorce phase, retirement phase. Exercise and lifestyle have to adapt to each one of these phases as we age. The only real constant we all have is our relationships. The people in our lives who get us through all of these phases, good or bad. Not exercise. People.
Diana made me part of her family over the years. I’ve worked with her, her husband, and both of her kids. Now she’s widowed, a grandmother, and in a brand new relationship in a new city. Life’s phases. Our consistency?…the relationship we’ve built. I’ve helped to keep Diana healthy for 25 years, and I’m looking forward to her next phase.
Now, I get to cheat because I build relationships through exercise. It doesn’t matter which one is better for people, I don’t have to choose. But if you think the exercise is more important, talk to any athlete in a self-isolating sport (cycling, bodybuilding, distance running) and see if you think they are happy people. My pickle ball players and golfers are far happier (forget about the fact that the outfits are so much better).
George raised me into my career. I was 23 when we met (he was 60). Now, at 48 and 86, we both look a bit different. George thinks I’m too old to be his trainer because he’s already taught me everything he knows. He’s busy molding GenZ into an improved version of me:-) But our friendship continues, and I finally understand so many of the adult issues he faced years ago. I’m more prepared for my own life phases having watched him navigate his. George is a steady companion I can turn to when life freaks me out.
The Next Phase
These long standing client relationships fulfill my life, and I’ve seen first hand how much happier people are when they surround themselves with this intimacy. It saddens me to know I’ll end up losing all of them at some point, no matter how much longevity they can achieve. But I’m not going to remember how many pushups they did, what they weighed, or what their mile time was. I’ll remember the big wins, the heartaches, and the friendships, right up until the end.
Stay in the game.