40+ers... how bad is it... really... if you are athletic? (Page 2)

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Well said, I noticed I needed to make diet changes somewhere after I turned 40-42 and exercise is no longer an option if I like wearing the clothes I have, and I have allot more stress from my career as it has a different priority than it did in my 20-30's, but as others have said you can still be as fit as you want to be.

I'll be 49 next month. I started losing weight in 2003, started tri training in '04.

I'm slower than I was 2-3 years ago even with  more consistent training. Am I falling apart? No...but have had some injury/medical stuff come up. Making gains and recovering seems to take longer.

When I was 35 I was friends with a bunch of women who were 5-10 years older than I was. They all made jokes and fun about how things change at such and such age. I didn't see what they were saying at the time, but understand it now.

I do feel in many ways better than when I was 10-20 years younger. I weigh same as I did 25 years ago when I got married but am a lot fitter. Women that are my age that don't excercise seem much older than I am or that is my perception in the way they look, carry their body and act.

Karen, look who was sharing their opinion with you. I think your lifestyle will help you feel good and younger than your peers for many years.

You could have left the men at 50 part out, you know ;-)

At Saturday's OLY, I was in fun group of three 50+ men and one 60 year old woman.  We were all going about 20mph and jockeying for position for the last 10 miles or so.  Since I don't think my wife reads this board, let me just say that the woman was not only fast, but she was hot too (and I mean that in the most complementary way)!  In the awards ceremony, she and her husband both won the 60 age group and they looked like the perfect picture of health and happiness.  It was great to see!

Saturday, I'm doing a 10K with my father-in-law, age 77 or 78.

Just keep doing what (I presume) you're doing... staying in shape, eating well, keeping your priorities right.  There are no guarantees, but it sure does improve your odds.

Stu

I just turned 40 a few months ago, and have never felt (or looked) better.  I am taking better care of myself fitness-wise.....ran a few HM, now did my 1st tri, and am training for more HM and tris. If I soon get some "pooch", even with all this exercise and eating right...well, so be it.  I am fit, and that's what counts.

ETA:  My step-mother is 58.  In the last few years she has run several HM, climbed Mt. Kilamajaro, hiked 1/2 the Colorado Trail (will finish the other half next summer), and biked the state of North Carolina.  She is amazingly fit.  Not a hard-body---yes, she has a small pooch, etc) but I only DREAM I can be as fit as her, even at age 40!

Edited by sugarmagnolia70 2010-10-06 9:52 AM

I've been athletic (doing something) my whole life (less a run where I put on several pounds).  I really don't care what the "experts" say.  I know what my body tells me.  It tells me recovery is tougher, now (I'll be 46, this month).  Aerobically, I'm in the best shape of my life.  I've been stronger.  I've been faster. 

When I was 20, I was a catcher in college.  I caught 50 games that year (not including practice and the fall season....where you could add another 30 games).  When I was 35, I played 250+ softball games in 7 states in a calendar year.  I couldn't do that, now....and I deteriorated, then.

One thing that I think is often overlooked is genetics.  My wife will be 45 yrs old this year.....and she looks like a $$M.  She goes to the gym 3-4 days a week.  But......the foundation was there.  She's got a leg up on many of her peers, for that reason.

At 41 I am in the best shape of my life. 20's and 30's I was on blood pressure medicine I no longer need. Also the mens 40-44 age group is pretty darn fast.

Great stuff! I am reading it all! Keep it coming!

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I turned 40 in February.  I started running in 2003 (I was 33), and had always been pretty active.  I was not worried about the # at all.  I even posted on Facebook on my bday that I was in a new age group.  One thing I have  noticed, and I have  been noticing this for a few years not just after my bday, is that I don't recover from hard efforts quite as quickly as I used too.  I used to feel somewhat invinceable, but now if I have a training plan, I really have to plan where I put hard efforts so I can have a day of rest in there.  As far as a pooch-well I think that is genetic.  When I graduated high school I was 115 and I'm 5'10, and I was very active, and I had a pooch.  And that pooch has stayed with me, no matter how much weight I lose or how many ab classes I take or how many crunches and leg lifts I do.  My mom has the same pooch. 

jami

I'm 28 and extremely athletic, and I feel like I've been falling apart since the day I turned 25. I'm terrified of 40.

Oh please.

This is a complete and utter cop out. Everything does not fall apart one day.

As others mentioned, with age, you don't heal and recover as fast, but that does not mean you cannot have fitness gains.

I started triathlon 5 years ago, and completed my first IM 1 year ago. I am now 48 (soon to be 49). My times have improved steadily every year I have been training.

Edited by Nipper 2010-10-06 10:47 AM

I'm 43, nearing 44, and feel better than I have in decades. While athletic in younger days, things slid until earlier this year. Yes, the matabolism slows a bit around 40-ish, no debate. But now, when I get up and something hurts, its because I was doing something good (S/B/R, etc) that caused it, not becuase of non-use!

I'm not sure why I'm in this thread...because I'm going to be 30 next year...but I just wanna say that 47 looks better on him than 27 looks on most of the population.  My 2 cents...

OK- I'll chime in.  I'm 46.  Always been semi-fit and never fat.

but I'm down 5lbs from where I was in college, and can run way further than ran in high school when I was on the cross country team.  I'm lean, healthy, and fitter than I've been in years.  My last couple of pants I bought had a 28" waist.  All my size 30 pants are baggy.  My 100yd free time is about 10seconds slower than when I was captain of my high school swim team, but it still feels pretty good.  But- I swim a lot less now than I did then.  Cycling- I'm not quite as strong as where I was when I was in my mid 20's, but I really just got a bicycle again after a 20 year hiatus.  I'm planning on beating those old times in a couple years.

So- my mid life crisis is going well.

No, 47 looks better on me because I have 29 at my side...

So- my mid life crisis is going well.

Hear! Hear!

At about 30 I went through the changes mentioned up front.  Gained weight, stopped exercising, got fat, etc.  But even at 40 I didn't feel bad as a fat, lazy, goat.  It wasn't until about 45 that I started to feel any deterioration.

At 46, with some health issues, I flipped a switch and got back into working out and playing sports. At 47 (last summer) I started tri training.  I was a hockey player through college, so I can't say I'm in the best shape of my life or feel better than I ever have.  Recovery is much harder than it was at 22, and I'm slower and weaker.  I will never be in the shape I was back then simply because I can't beat my body up at those levels and recover from it.

I feel great now at 48 and certainly better than I did at 40.  I expect my performance to improve for several more years.

41 here ...started all 3 sports (swim, run, bike) this year. Started running in January after getting back from vacation and noticing significant weight gain (6', 187+ lbs back then so I wasn't exactly big but I noticed).  Realized that my body can't tolerate all that running and a friend asked if I wanted to get into cycling -  so I started that around early March.  Then someone brought up triathlons and figured I should learn to swim...did that around late March/April.  It's now early October and I've done 3 sprint tris (finishing right around top 20% overall) and looking forward to my first Oly next weekend. 

I've been fairly athletic most of my life and there is a change in the body.  I was a volleyball player and trained more for anaerobic, sprint-type motions (jumping, quick movements, etc) and as I got older, I couldn't do the training required to maintain my jumping ability (not that tall so I relied on my vertical jump a lot for sports).  I'd get injured doing the plyometrics or heavy weight training (pulled hamstring/calves/groin, knee and ankle issues, etc.) which set me back some more and just slowly started to see a decrease in jumping performance.  In January, I decided it was time to turn my attention to endurance sports and I think it's a lot easier to get into than skill-based sports where you have to invest a lot of time learning some particular eye-hand coordination activity before you can even enjoy it (for example, timing a volleyball spike, or learning to dribble around people to drive to the hoop).  Swimming is the most technical of the three, but you can still get away with not having a perfect stroke to swim.

For most people in their 40's, it's a mental thing.  I have friends who are younger, who have never been athletic, knowingly ignore their health and think it's ok being 80-100 lbs overweight.  They just feel that they have other things to prioritize first (career, family, other hobbies like playing videogames, etc) and don't enjoy exercise.  While our numerical ages indicate that I'm older - I look and feel much younger than my age because of living a predominantly healthy lifestyle even before triathlons.

Right now, I'm 6', 170lbs - leaner and more 'cut' than I've been my whole life.  I wish I was in this shape when I was in college and playing collegiate/national level sports (I didn't carry as much muscle in my upper body then so I think that the 'aesthetics' are better now).  I'm not going to be a pro triathlete so I always balance the 'vanity' portion of working out to the 'performance' angle.  In other words, I'm not going to drop down to 160lbs just because it'll make me a faster runner...  However, as I train, I pay much more attention to recovery (get the right nutrients in, use roller/stick for massage, compression wear, rest) and I also try to stick with my workout plans (though I have a problem with turning down the intensity of my runs sometimes...which can result in injury).

There's no time like the present to start living a healthier lifestyle.  It's never too late so whether someone is 25, 45, or 65 - they can always do something that will be a step closer to being just a little bit healthier. It may not be training for an ironman but I think that almost any person in reasonable health can train for and complete a sprint tri in 4-6 months.

40, no...I've never seen anything--scientific or anecdotal--to support a contention that it all goes to he11 when you turn 40.

50 is a somewhat different matter.  There's still no magic number where a light switch gets thrown that's the same for every person, but there are big hormonal changes in both men and women in late 40s/early 50s as a general rule that make it at least more difficult to maintain physique and fitness.  I'm about as fast at 50 as I was at 48 (and obviously faster than when I was a couch-bound tub of goo at 43), but I have to pay more attention to recovery, I'm more likely to get minor injuries on efforts that never would have resulted in that 3 or 4 years ago, and maintaining a lean physique gets a little tougher with time.

49 here, and in better shape than I was on the college cycling team. I laid off athletic workouts due to a bad back for over 20 years, but am back to 100%. (The trick: swimming to toughen the core). Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn't mistake me for being in my 30's.

On midweek club rides, I'm with a lot of young-ish retirees and semi-retirees, like ex-firefighters and entrepreneurs, but some of the A riders are in their early 60s.

My best inspiration comes from a friend who just turned 80. He's his AG Senior Olympics champion, and rides and thinks like a 40 yo. Same with his wife. One of our most successful tri club members is in his 70's, and would probably podium in my AG.

If anything, my endurance has increased for me big time. 100 mi+ days used  to kick my in college, but I didn't even take a nap after last Sunday's century.

If anything, I've become a minor fitness snob. Every time I go out in public, I wonder why most heavy, out of shape people put themselves through the trouble, when they'd feel like a kid if they'd get off the couch for a few minutes a day.

I'm 42 and started my tri career a month after my 42nd birthday.  I've always been athletic though I have had periods of relatively poor fitness here and there.  When I turned 40, I was the heaviest I'd ever been in my life, actually.  No switch was thrown.  I was heavy because I ate more than I burned...simple enough.  When I changed that, I lost weight.  Turning 40 had no specific effect on what I looked like, how I felt or how my body performed.

My husband has found that he cannot eat the crap he used to as a younger man and still avoid weight gain...but it's been a gradual change in the past 5 - 8 years.  He just has to be a bit more dilligent than he used to...no big deal.

I will say that there IS real validity to what menopause can do to your body.  I was put into it synthetically at 36 for medical reasons and it really, really wrecked havoc on my body. I was super fit at the time, but even my low my bodyfat totally redistributed and I did get a pooch for the first time in my entire life (it's since gone away again now that I'm off all those crazy hormones).  My energy levels were unpredictable and all over the map.  I lost a ton of sleep due to hot flashes/night sweats and therefore had lousy recovery times.  I am praying that real menopause doesn't torture me quite like that but I've got a few years yet before I find out.

So no, while there is no reason to dread 40 (or 50 or 60!), your body will change with time.  All that is required is that you change with it.  No reason to 'give up' or resign yourself to pooches, sore joints or weight gain.  You are still in control and YES, your current active lifestyle will make the transition much easier.