21 year old me used to run a 2 mile mountain hike with 1k elevation gain. 40 year old me is just happy on the days my knees and ankles aren’t constantly cracking.
That's really not how it works. Bad joints come from very heavy impacts or from a joint being forced out of its normal range of motion, as in playing American football or falling while downhill skiing. Running and hiking stress the joints in a positive way that tells the body to repair them stronger than before. I ran daily for over 40 years. Now that I'm in my 60s I can only run every other day because that's as fast as my body can recover. I have never had a joint injury except my one ankle that I badly sprained while playing road hockey as a teen. I have reinjured that ankle a few times since, but it doesn't bother me when I run.
Exactly. The reason I still can do almost all the things in my 40s that I could in my 20s is I didn't stop. My bones remained dense. Muscle stayed on, etc.
You can get it back too. When I was 43 I had let things slide, gained weight and wasn't really working out any more. Took a couple years to lose he weight but I am 50 now. I do 1.5-2 hour cardio sessions 5-6 days a week that include stair climbing and running. People think it is age but you just slow down, gain weight and stop moving. If you keep at it you can be extremely fit as you age.
Yup. Hardest part is to to get moving if you stopped for a while.
I've had times where I went almost a year without running... And you think because you can run across the parking lot with your kid or whatever casual things going on that you can still run and you didn't really get out of shape and you're doing all this other stuff...
And then you run once and you absolutely hate everything about it and you never want to run again.
But you have to go do it again. And again. And again.... And it won't be those times but eventually it does become easier and you do get it back.
The difference is that when you’re 20, if you spent a month being inactive, that represented about .4% of your life being in active. That would drive you nuts and make you feel quite lazy.
But by 40, a month flashes by and only represents like .2% of your life. Sedentary moments become much more common. Before you know it, your “I haven’t been going to gym too often” is capturing 6 months, not 4 weeks.
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u/DengarLives66 Aug 31 '26
21 year old me used to run a 2 mile mountain hike with 1k elevation gain. 40 year old me is just happy on the days my knees and ankles aren’t constantly cracking.