Graceful ageing - why you’ve never felt like this before

A rambling explanation of what happens to the body as we age, why stuff is getting harder and how to manage it.

There are few certainties in life. Death. Taxes. And a slow progressive loss of function and muscle mass - unless you do something about it.

Are you catching yourself starting to say “but I never used to feel like this”? or maybe “I just woke up one day and it hurt”? Well I’m here to say to the first - duh, you’ve also never been this old, and you’ve also not done anything to prevent yourself getting to this position. To the second, I challenge that and say - it didn’t happen over one day. What feels like one day, has actually taken months, years and decades to get to, but it has been your body's amazing ability to adapt that has resisted the pain sensation and maintained function for so long.

The body will always look to achieve the task - regardless of actual capacity. If it needs to walk, the body will walk. Reach? It’ll figure out a way. Sit down for prolonged periods of time? Yep, it will be sat.

WILL IT THOUGH provide enough mid foot pronation, tibial internal rotation, relative femoral external rotation, hip internal rotation to allow for a supported mid stance position to then propel into toe off through a step? OR COULD IT MAYBE BE, that over the last 20, 30 or 40+ years that it has lost the ability to do one of many many things? Possibly. What if it loses the ability to lose a few of these things?

The body’s amazing ability to adapt will never cease to amaze me. So it will persevere. But, tissues and bodies can only tolerate so much fuckery. So it will eventually give you some pain to remind you of days past. Remind you that it is working really hard and doing it’s best to achieve the goals you have asked of it. It’s doing great sweety. But that pain is information that we need to listen to. IT IS NOT BAD, but it is information.

If all of a sudden you wake up one day with pain on walking, after having successfully gone for 30-40 minute walks everyday for the last decade, we must ask ourselves why?

Most likely, the body has said ‘oh well, walking is a pretty easy task, I don’t need this *insert muscle mass, function or range* - so it got forgot how to use it. Much like year 7 French. This could be because you’re walking at a slower speed, less incline, maybe you skipped a few days, maybe there’s a previous injury you neglected? Coupled with the unfortunate reality that we all age and lose muscle over time. And we know you’ve been neglecting your protein, carb and fat intake, so you would have naturally lost some muscle there too. Then presto - you’ve lost what you previously had and now have pain.

The big question - can we learn to speak French again?

Answer - sort of.

You will never be in year 7 again. Stop trying to chase that. In fact, let’s ditch the French analogy. Let’s learn Portuguese instead. Because your body will not be able do things in the same way. You have to literally learn new ways to do the same thing. It’s learning a new language. I used to be able to wear these shoes! I hear you cry. Well, now you might need to go barefoot for a period of time. I used to be able to squat down and weed the garden - I foresee a lunge strategy in your future. And then on top of that - you have to do these extra things, these ‘lessons’ to drill and learn new things. To break it down, and teach you this new normal. And it will be hard. It will be annoying. But it will be worth it. WHY MUST I DO THIS? I hear you protest.

Because you want it.

I can’t (and won’t) sit here and force you to do anything. But I can teach you to do everything you thought possible and more - IF that is what you want.

Until next time,

Coach Dyl.