Peak Fitness at Fifty and Still Having a Life Outside of Fitness. It’s doable but it’s a whole different ball game

Photo by Morgan Petroski on Unsplash

I want to be fit — really fit, actually — but don’t want my whole life to revolve around my fitness.. This was OK when I was 30 and even 40. But at 50 — it’s more of a challenge.

My 10 second story. My wife and I are both rock climbers and to keep up with the young kids (in rock climbing, they’re all young kids), you have to stay very lean and strong. So, we are atypical 50 year olds. wanting to keep up with much younger, super in shape, rock climbers. But at the same time, we are somewhat typical 50 year olds. We love nice meals and wine — lots of wine. We have busy jobs, kids that take a lot of our time, a pretty active social life.

To put it succinctly, we don’t want to live in a gym or be obsessed with our fitness regime. So, at 50, we’ve had to learn some things that have helped us:

Schedule Carefully

I’m not a ridiculously scheduled person in my day-to-day life, but I am pretty hardcore when it comes to planning workouts. At the start of each month, I will do a day-by-day plan for my workouts for the month. It will be a combination or resistance, cardio and yoga. While I don’t schedule the time of day I workout, I do know exactly what I need to do each day.

Make the absolute most of every workout

We tend to workout for about 45 minutes a day, and really only do longer when we are rock climbing or if we do a longer outdoor bike ride. But we’re really disciplined about how we work out. We go hard. We use workout programs that use compound movements, and that move at a quick pace to keep your heart rate up even as you do resistance moves. Some of the advanced programs on Beachbody.com are good, as are the Peleton strength classes.

You need to be careful, of course, when you go hard on most days. So, I should qualify that. When I do the planning a reference above, I always make sure I give those parts of my body, that have been pushed hard, enough rest. So, I tend to have a cycle of resistance, cardio, yoga, repeat.

Nutrition

This is a bit of a tough one for me. My wife and I like going out with friends and we like to be a little…