ReThinking Exercise at Age 60

Same age, similar feelings. I still can run a little bit. But it's always good to eat a good pretzel.

It wasn't being sedentary, it was all the standing and walking that fixed you. As I recently brought up in an Achilles tendon thread, tendons strengthen under static loads and sustained low-level tension. If all you do is alternate between sitting where you have no tension on your tendons, and running where you put a lot of ballistic bursts of tension on them you're going to do damage that will eventually show up as chronic tendinopathy.

When you stand around or walk, you're keeping the tendons in your feet and ankles under a low degree of tension that you sustain for hours at a time. This strengthens the tendons and also stimulates repair. It sounds like switching up your habits for a few weeks was enough to stimulate that repair without the accompanying break down.

There's a lot of research on tendon rehabilitation and building that confirms what I'm saying. Just do a search and limit your reading to stuff in the last few years and you'll see what I'm talking about.

According to a study published in the journal Nature Aging, the two biggest aging years are 44 and 60.

This study found that these years are characterized by significant changes in molecular markers of aging, such as: Reduced immune function, Increased inflammation, and Reduced metabolism.

My experience has been the opposite of the OP and many posters here. When I stop running... due to injury, illness, or family issues... I get injured MORE. Old chronic injuries resurface. I feel bad.

The solution for me is to do 3-5 hard workouts every week... 3 running and 2 in the gym or vice versa.

However, I gave up marathon training 24 years ago and 5k training about 8 years ago. Now, I only 200-400-800m training and put in maybe 10-15 miles/week, but a third of those miles are at VO2Max pace or faster.

However, EVERY SINGLE TIME I have an injury, I ask, "What, specifically, caused that injury?" "What can I do to heal it or to manage it?" Too many runners take a diagnosis and a doctor saying "Nothing we can do" as gospel and accepting their fate. Doctors aren't gods and they sure as heck don't know how to optimize health for an aging senior. All of their training has been to take people from sick to not sick or from sick to reducing their sickness. They have no training in optimizing anti-aging or financial incentive to do so.

If you want to stay in optimal health and fitness to your 80s, you need to accept that you're going to have to do it mostly on your own. It will probably mean cutting back on volume and frequency due to the need to recover, but the intensity can still be there.

That's a landmark study that had researchers shocked. Big age spurts at 44 & 60.😯

I'm 65 & sure feel the 60 spurt. I can't run anymore because of post-traumatic OA from all kinds of joint trauma when I was younger & competing (I do non-weightbearing cardio & weight lifting these days). I walk with a noticeable limp most of the time & have difficulty bending down.

Despite eating a 100% organic whole foods diet, no alcohol, mild caffeine consumption, I struggle to work out & never really feel good afterwards in terms of joint pain & muscle soreness. There are days I don't feel like getting out of bed & facing the world.

Aging really sucks if you're trying to be physically active & work out regularly. I don't care if other old guys disagree - their delusional if they think working out in your 60s is all rainbows & marshmallows.😆

Here's that study - pretty sobering:

Do you use TRT, HRT, DHEA or anything like that?

Going to do some easy biking next summer. But once my current injury heals up going to go back to upper body building with the goal of bench pressing my body weight.

Keep thinking.

I'm 64 and there was a drastic change about two years ago. Soreness, knees hurt, hard to bend over etc. Im still fit at 5'9" 154lbs with resting hr of 48 but i cant sustain any real training the way i used to. Nowadays I run maybe 3 times a week (but only 4 or 5 miles), strides sometimes, mtb two or thee times a week, play recreational tennis two or three times a week. These things keep me happy and i seem to be able to sustain it for now. Up till I was 62 I ran 7 days a week with a 10-16 mile long run. Now thats a pipedream.

This right here. ^

You can do everything right, but... aging is a crap shoot. We want to think we have more control over it by doing all the workouts, and supplements, etc.. but, how you age appears to be pretty darned random. Some people slide through and can do a retched down version of what they always have done, others.. it's a full stop.

Hope you have good genes, and that you are lucky enough to avoid any other physical breakdowns or injuries. That's it.

Mid to late 60s here and there was definitely a change that occurred for me around 62. I've navigated my way through it and one thing in particular is really making a difference, so I will throw it out there.

For background, I work out twice a day at least 6 days per week, and one workout each day is a run. The other daily workout is either lifting at the gym or a bodywieght cross-training workout at home, and more often the latter.

The one thing that really seems to make a difference is the bodyweight workouts, and they rotate around quite a bit but include a fair amount of stretching, range of motion exercises, push-ups, core (leg lifts, crunches, bridges), pull-ups, calf raises, light lifting with dumbells, squats, light deadlifting, etc - you get the picture. But always a lot of this is the stretching, heels to butt, high knees, etc.

And I am finding that this stuff pays dividends in keeping mobility and recovery in a very good place. In fact, I very much believe that it delays the onset of shortened strides, stiffness, loss of range of motion, etc.

Maybe I just used to overtrain when I was younger, but I don't feel beat up all the time anymore.

If you really consider what might minimize all those age related aches and pains and tottering and an awful gait, you may reasonably turn to what I am proposing, and it has been a game changer for me.

WIth that said, it's boring as hell so I always do it while watching something on the tube. But I do it, it seems to help a lot, so maybe it might work for others...

Yea i think nobody is saying that. We just notice with a few days off you feel great. Not talking about no exercise at all long term. Its just eye opening when you get older that workouts and running and lifting keep you chronically inflammed. As they are supposed to do! Doing nothing is clearly worse. For me I dont feel pain at all when working out. Its the creaky 2 days following a lifting session or slight increase in running, rucking, 10 hours on your feet at a function.....

I think the question is revolving around functional training (boring) vs what many of us aging runners are doing. Cue Peter Attia, Huberman and all these guys looking at functional strength, CV risk reduction, and quality aging as all the rage. Very hot right now!

This frightens me to the core. Because Im late 50s and it hit me like 55-ish. Now im dreading 60 even more!

Your fifties is when your body says it doesn't like serious competitive sports any more. Your sixties is when you start getting joints replaced. Your seventies is when you're grateful for anything you can still do - no matter how badly. I can't speak for your eighties but probably it will mean being grateful just to be alive.

Avoid running steep downhills.

Stay at 19 BMI.

You shouldn’t be always sore. Not at any age, certainly not at 40. OP and you need to find a level of moderate exercise that provides beneficial adaptations, not chronic inflammation because of constantly pushing the limits of what your body can sustain.

I saw a study where people age in “spurts” at age 44 and 60. That being said, someone ran 2:04 for a new national record (Switzerland) at age 44 which impressed me a ton

The medical literature seems to agree that the key thing to aging well is MOVE. Doesn't matter so much what you do, doesn't even matter so much what the intensity is, just that you're using your body regularly.

I just turned 70 and have been running since 13, so I have a lot of miles on my body. I don't run as much, as fast, or as smoothly as I used to, and I acutely miss each one of those, but, as my wife frequently has to remind me, the important thing is that I'm still out there every day.

I bought Klaas Lok's "Easy Interval Method" a few years back and it has made running in my 60s so much better! Getting rid of plodding easy runs / Zone 2 stuff helps my knees greatly. I replaced that work with cycling and all running is now intervals. I try to run on softer surfaces as much as I can. The pounding is what gets me and since I don't run marathons, doing a boatload of slower miles makes absolutely no sense. I still run sub 20:00 as a 64 year old but my goal is now fitness over racing.