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Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

Kind of a tough read, I just turned 37 and this was the year when it really hit home that your body degrades and sometimes it never goes back to "normal". I was used to sports injuries being a pattern of injury -> recovery -> ramp back up to 100%, but have suffered some injuries recently and am coming to terms with realizing I will never return to 100%. They will be lingering things I deal with for the rest of my life.

It is terrifying transitioning from seeing health as innate to viewing it as something you need to carefully nurture or it will slip away.

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Hey you're me 15 years ago. I stopped the sports and switched to sustained low damage exercise like cycling, hiking, swimming etc. While you can't undo the damage done if you have a very high level of fitness, you can reduce the effects of the further progression of time. Better be as fit as a 50 year old with some damage when you're 70 than as fit as a 70 year old with some damage.

End game is not pretty. My ex wife didn't do any fitness stuff at all and she's walking with a stick while I'm doing 30km hikes at 3000m...

Same here. I had to switch from doing crazy stuff to just maintaining health. Hiking really fits the spot. I still get a lot of cardio (I have hiking trails with 1000m elevation gain within 10 minutes of driving) that way. But things like running or martial arts are out of the question. I am glad that I was able to adapt to a declining body. Some people my age still do high impact stuff and constantly get injured, take lots of painkillers and get surgeries.

Part of me really wants to pick up hockey - just for fun, recreationally - but at 40, I'm worried that I'll get injured to the point where I won't be able to do other things I enjoy, like cycling.

Hell, I fell off my bike from a stop a few weeks ago, and landed on my knee, and it took a week and a half before I felt like I could trust my leg to hold weight.

Don't do it. My sister took up hockey when she was 16 and lost 4 front teeth within 3 months. She's 45 now and just had the second set of replacements...

My teeth are already sufficiently bad that I'll likely need implants in the future anyway; I don't want to lose them, but it wouldn't impact my life as negatively as, say, a permanent back or knee injury would.

Of all the hockey injuries, this one rates pretty low for adult beer league if you just wear a cage. Wearing a full face cage reduces the risk of losing teeth to almost 0% chance of happening.

Hockey does have risks of course, but playing in a non checking league takes the risk down to manageable levels in my opinion.

I recommend it fully! I learned to play at 32 and I am having a blast. Still some risk, but my local league is very laid back and we run very safe games. Being kitted out in protective gear really does make a difference in preventing injuries.

Check and see if your local rink has an intro to hockey class and use that to get a feel for hockey.

I did MMA at 40. Problem is your reflexes just can't keep up with an 18 year old. My knee got blasted by a faint intended to just make me move back because I just couldn't move out of the way as fast as the kid's kick.

Whatever you do my advice is if it's high impact join the 'old man's league'. They better understand everyone's limits.

I did Krav Maga at ~40. I don't think reflexes or stamina were my issue. Mine was recovery.

It is a tough sport and one bad day grappling or boxing and I'm in pain for weeks which limits training. It's not a easy sport to do half-way.

I'm a fair bit older than you... What you're saying is true but it's also worth mentioning your body has capabilities you're probably far from reaching. Most people your age can still exceed any physical accomplishment they've had in their lifetime if they really want to. E.g. they can play sports better than they ever had and they can achieve personal bests in any physical ability. If you were a top level professional athlete that's probably not true (though even professional athletes have longer careers than they used to) or if you've been a top 10 GM in chess than that's probably behind you too, but otherwise you're young!

I don't know what specific injuries you're suffering from but I've suffered from back pain and really improved my situation a lot. I'm physically stronger than I've ever been in my life. I've worked through some knee injuries. I've even recently improved my gum health (in a way someone said wasn't possible). It takes more work and more focus but our bodies are amazing machines and 37 ain't old.

I’m in my late forties and sprained my back/hip pretty badly right at the start of COVID. A year later I was having trouble descending stairs and starting to develop knee pain on the same side of my body. So I began a fairly rigorous resistance training program about two years ago with hopes of regaining full mobility. The results have been fantastic. I still have a bit of pain from in both the knee and back, but it’s not disruptive. Most importantly, I have normal mobility and the injured areas have stabilized. With any luck it will continue to improve so long as I stick with it. That’s in addition to all the other benefits that come with being in better physical shape.

Nice! In my experience small issues can escalate if left unchecked because you start compensating and your body also "learns" to do things the wrong way.

I'm unsure your first point can be true. The pinnacle for a 37 year old is surely lower than for his 23 or 24 year old incarnation, if both life stages were given the same fitness programme. 37 is still very young, but there's already some trace of physical deterioration by then, most apparent in athletes who in almost all sports aside from golf, are off their peak by then.

They're saying that you can be the best shape of your life beyond your prime potential years because almost nobody reaches their potential in their prime, which is trivially true, not that you can perform better at 37 than a theoretical maximum in your 20s that you never achieved.

I think that's why they said "most people":

> Most people your age can still exceed any physical accomplishment they've had in their lifetime if they really want to. E.g. they can play sports better than they ever had and they can achieve personal bests in any physical ability.

So not people who were at the peak of their ability/potential in their 20s – most people, however, do not perform at their limits in their 20s, simply because that isn't their priority, they don't train for it, etc.

It might not be applicable for you, but just in case -- take a look at myofascial release, similar to trigger point therapy. Basically foam rolling on your legs, using a lacrosse ball and progressively smaller rubber balls across your back and shoulders and pecs, and a TheraCane on shoulders, neck, sides, etc. Also Alexander Technique lessons, which retrains you to use your muscles without the tension habits you've accumulated over your lifetime.

The two of them together have changed my life. A lot of acute injuries of mine had healed, but had left my muscles extremely tight and essentially kind of frozen, which then creates problems with movement and posture and which then generates other kinds of pain. I too thought I'd never get back to "normal", and then was shocked to discover that I basically could, after a couple of years of undoing all the muscular tightness and "frozenness" through myofascial release and Alexander Technique. (Basically, the myofascial release gets rid of it, while Alexander teaches you how to prevent immediately re-forming it.)

It's funny that myofascial release is only just starting to gain awareness among the medical community, while Alexander Technique still mainly only has awareness in the acting and musical performance communities.

This really resonates with me. I’m 30 now. I had a rotator cuff injury last year and lost some range of motion in my shoulder for about 6 months.

This year I got a personal trainer for the first time.

I’m really trying to fight to get in shape and stay in shape.

I spent my 20’s working and for the last 5 years I work remotely, largely ignoring my health.

Sitting in a home office all day is really bad for you.

Go on walks! The sun/allergen exposure and vitamin D will be good for you. Literally put walks on your calendar so it’s easier to remember.

Use the next several years to build as much muscle as you can without damaging your joints. It gets extraordinarily difficult to add new muscle as you enter your mid-30s, but fortunately you still have time. I work out 3-4 days per week for ~90 minutes each.

If you've never done strength training before, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn how much extra mass you can add, while remaining on a typical diet, with zero chemical assistance. Your trainer will be able to help you.

I started lifting weights at 37 after 10 years of being very sedentary, and within a few months people were mentioning that I had put on muscle. My impression was that sarcopenia doesn't start until the 60's and even then there are benefits to resistance training.

Reduced physical activity in old age will accelerate sarcopenia. If you're hospitalized, especially for long period of time, that will also accelerate muscle loss.

Those are called beginner gains, especially if you've never worked out before.

The beginner gains are great, but the plateau hits most of us.

In my case it was regaining strength from taking weight-lifting semi-seriously in my 20's. It was actually amazing at how fast muscle can come back even after a decade. But I continued lifting and am stronger now at 38 than I ever have been in my life. What I am saying is that mid-30's is hardly when sarcopenia sets in. I'm sure it's individualized, but I don't seem to have a harder time gaining muscle now than I did back then; for me it's always been joint/tendon issues that have been limiting anyway.

> It gets extraordinarily difficult to add new muscle as you enter your mid-30s

Only because it requires you to create a major new habit after 30 years on earth of not doing it, not because it's difficult physically. If you are putting in the time and especially the effort, it should be easy.

That said, the common mistake in the gym is when people just kinda do reps at some easy weight and then stop short with a bunch more reps left in reserve. Never really pushing themself. I guarantee that describes anyone finding it extraordinary difficult to build muscle.

Not everyone gets even that - I've had mobility issues since I was seven years old. It's been strange to realize that it probably shaped my personality somewhat; I always felt older than my peers in some way. The silver lining might be that while now they are starting to say how old they feel (I'm basically the same age as you), I'll often tell them that I don't feel any older.

> The silver lining might be that while now they are starting to say how old they feel (I'm basically the same age as you), I'll often tell them that I don't feel any older.

As someone with chronic back pain since my late teens, this is... a nice perspective. My friend group isn't old enough yet for it to come up very often but I feel like I can relate.

Sorry if I'm being nosey, but I'm curious about the chronic back pain. Is it something that developed over time, is it gwneti, is it an injury? How do you cope and manage it?

I hear you. I’m almost 50, and see it coming as well. I highly recommend the book Outlive by Peter Attia. Just found it recently, wish I had read it at 37. It has really good ideas on extending your “health span “.

your situation is probably not completely relevant to age, many injuries are not recoverable no matter how old you are. You accumulated risks of such injuries which produced result.

If you switch to safer kinds of sport/workout, you still can have a chance to be very active for many years until old age.

On the flip side changing diet and it's effects on what folks might have seen as something they can never fix/change without _____ drug, might be transformational.

With that said, my better half can't bend her arm past a certain part on her body, however, b.c of a really small/stupid collision/fall coming down a Tahoe MTN ski run. It always depends on the problem.

Same age, same realization - stuff that used to be just ‘tiring’ now knocks me out the next day too while I recover; and everything, bumps and bruises and blood etc, seems to take nearly 3x the time to heal now.

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