I remember there was a time when I looked at the age of 35 as being ancient.  Now as a 41 year-old, I relish when anyone is shocked at my age and says, “I would have thought you were 35.”  Life’s little pleasures.

As someone who likes to stay physically active, I can tell you getting older isn’t exactly a b!tch, but it certainly makes life more challenging to do things.  Hence, why athletes retire.  I’m not even at an elite level, but let me first illustrate how my body’s been changing as the years go on.

Let me start off by saying when I was playing athletics in my formative years, through high school, and into college, I really didn’t have any major injuries.  A sprained ankle, a broken hand, but nothing that was as detrimental as a concussion or a blown ACL.  So I wasn’t damaged goods going into my twenties.

During the roaring twenties, I strutted my stuff.

As a young adult in my twenties, I started my life in the work force and then started playing intramural sports to keep myself active.  There was plenty of pick-up basketball games, racquetball, and towards the later part of my twenties flag football and a few years of softball entered my athletic achievements.

I was in my athletic prime.  I weighed my heaviest at 185 – 190 with single digit bodyfat.  My quickness, speed, and jumping ability was at its peak.  I could hold my own against anyone.

During this time, I experienced my first injury so to speak.  I played a lot of basketball on concrete which for a high-flyer such as myself is not good on the knees.  Combine that with some stupid strength building workout I saw, which consisted of high loads of squats three times a week and I developed some pain in the knees.

I took 6 months off of leg workouts to let them recuperate, but I’ve always had to manage my leg routines based on how my knees felt since then.

Other than that things were good.  Still could dunk.  A long flyball in softball, generally meant an inside the park homerun with my speed.

Some of the parts need some maintenance in the thirties.

As I fly into my thirties, the main sport is flag football with a splattering of basketball.  My speed in these flag football games makes up for my occasional drops of the ball.  This also left me wondering if I was really that fast or are the people I’m playing against older and a heck of a lot slower.  (For the sake of this post, we’ll go with the former).

I also experienced the first of my lower back issues.  I had a tight lower back for a few days going into one of my flag football games.  It had been a little bothersome for a few weeks, but picked up the intensity those last few days.  I lunged to grab someone’s flag and wrenched the back.

I was done for that game and the next few days, but it got better quickly and I felt good as new.  It would be bothersome several other times these years and going into my forties.  We’ll talk about this here in a moment.

I still had my skills, but for the most part I had to warm-up a little longer and take more consideration into cooling down and after activity care.  Also, if I hadn’t been working out efficiently, who knows how many more injuries I would have had .

But, by the end of my thirties, the lower back was becoming a little more bothersome, I had plantar fasciitis, the knees were becoming a little achier, and the body was showing more signs of aging.

Early forties and trying to recapture youth.

Now getting care from different alternative exercise specialists, we’ve discovered that through the years my pelvis has tilted slightly, thus causing some of my lower back issues and possibly the plantar and knees.  Work is being done to strengthen the muscles and get the pelvis back in place.

I need to take more care in planning any type of physical activities so my body can have the perfect acclimation.  I tried sprinting 100M the other day (after a morning of heavy leg work – stupid) and felt good.  So I pushed it to 200M and tweaked my hamstring.  I should have been smarter with my prep, when to run these runs, and the progression of my sprinting.

I’m going to continue to work on my body to eliminate these nagging injuries or keep them at bay.  I still feel I can at least move rapidly, although that total time might be a little slower than what I was in my twenties.  But, being able to feel like that is fast and smooth, is different than if I feel like I’m really struggling to move smooth.  Hope that makes sense.

I’ll keep you posted on how the body is changing throughout the years.  What I hope to be able to illustrate is that you can still do a lot of your athletic activities that you did when you were younger if you can train and prep the body accordingly.  And also lower the expectations just a tad.  I don’t think I’ll be dunking much anymore…except on a 7 foot rim.