Whether you’re a lifelong athlete or a newbie gym rat, adventure racer or alternative exercise aficionado, how we think about, prevent and deal with injuries makes a big difference in life satisfaction.
Because, there’s no two ways about it: athletic injuries after 50 are harder to overcome. Sometimes they don’t go away; we just manage them. There’s a reason physically active people over 50 refer to Ibuprofen “Vitamin I.”
Wendy & Paul: Different athletic experiences & injuries
My conversation with Gwendolyn Bounds, recorded live Friday, June 5, presents two complementary case studies in preventing, managing and recovering from athletic injuries after 50.
In one corner, there’s Wendy, 54, a helluva Spartan racer, nationally ranked in her age group. But by her own description, before 2018, she was a certified non-athlete. As you’ll hear in our conversation, she made some significant newbie mistakes as she began tuning up her body and mind to compete in timed ass-kicking adventure races after leading a life in which the hardest sprint was usually to the elevator or train platform. She’s negotiated several significant injuries, none needing surgery, thankfully.
In the other corner, there’s me, a 59-year-old lifelong, multisport athlete (soccer, squash, surfing, cycling, triathlon, tennis, track, wrestling and, yes, rollerblading when it was cool in the early 90s) and 40-year gym rat. The two decades I spent lifting heavy produced large muscles back in the day but also set in motion the consequences: a broken collarbone, a torn biceps tendon and 7 orthopedic surgeries, the last four of which all occurred in the past 9 years—since turning 50.
caveat athleta senior
In summary, my advice is caveat athleta senior—"let the older athlete beware." By all means, start or continue your physical fitness journey, in whatever form it may take, for all the inarguable reasons you’re taking it. Travel ambitiously but aware that your body is in a different place than that 32-year-old who’s loudly stacking the pulldown machine next to you.
I hope you’ll find this recorded conversation with Wendy useful and supportive. We enjoy making fun of one another in between offering our respective lessons learned from what is, collectively, more than 50 years of high-level athletic training and performance.
If you just can’t stand listening to us, though, here’s a summary of takeaways.
Paul’s takeaways
Avoid ego loading. Overriding your body’s little yellow flags to match the high-schooler deadlifting next to you is different from progressive overload, where you’re actually listening to your body and know it.
Stop the lifts that put you in a disadvantaged position. Eliminated barbell back squats and bench press—bar squats in particular cause damage that accrues invisibly until a back spasm puts you on the floor.
Train unilaterally. I switched from bilateral to single-leg work (Bulgarian split squats, single-leg RDLs, lunges) so weak muscles can’t hide behind strong ones. It’s not as fun or attention-grabbing as heavy barbell squats, but very effective.
Build from the ground up. Feet and ankles first—balance boards, retraining old injuries—because the ability to walk at speed later in life starts there.
Warm up—you can’t keep doing your 35-year-old’s cold open. Foam roll before (to get warm) and after. Best $24 you’ll spend; 80% of your body is fascia.
Move like it’s 1899. Multi-plane, multi-compound, asymmetric movements, not just up/down/forward/back.
Flexibility training before bed—it accrues over time…and helps you sleep better.
Bar hangs. Grip strength, plus letting gravity decompress your lower spine; helped my tennis elbow and shoulder. Work up with feet on a box, then one-arm hangs.
The post-operation mental struggle is real. Surgeons don’t warn you how hard the forced inactivity is when you rely on movement to clear your head.
Wendy’s takeaways
Don’t try to climb Everest on day one. Her injuries—tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, a degenerated shoulder from too many burpees—all came from getting excited and diving in too fast and too heavy.
Check the ego at the door. Leave one to three reps in reserve instead of going to failure, and change only one variable at a time—weight, reps, or sets, never all at once.
Eat your spinach. Add the unglamorous, un-sexy work she’d neglected: yoga, Pilates, and small mobility movements.
Be dumb strong vs. smart strong aware (see below).
Take care of the unglamorous parts. She lives and dies by a small ball she rolls her feet on, morning and night — neglecting that is what got her plantar fasciitis.
Moderate the things you love. Hundreds of burpees is the problem, not burpees; use AI to gauge what a given volume will do to you.
Build in lateral movement — she’s religious about it now (lunges, BOSU work, side-to-side).
Retro walking. Walking backward, especially uphill, for proprioception, fall prevention, knee relief, hip-flexor range, and getting the brain off autopilot.
Treat your body like a book of matches. Keep them unlit (prevention), and when one strikes, be religious about paying attention to the niggle.
Be mindful before rushing into surgery. She dodged a shoulder replacement by easing back into hanging with her feet on a box.
Bar hangs for grip strength — a strong longevity predictor. No bar? Use a playground.
Dynamic warm-ups over static stretching.
Wendy on “dumb” strong vs. “smart” strong
Maybe the single best line in this recording came after Wendy got humbled in a “Better Backs and Balance” class, whimpering, she said, “like a child.” Her diagnosis of herself: she’s dumb strong, not smart strong. She can carry heavy things, climb a rope, haul weight across a field—the big, obvious, sexy stuff.
But all the little stabilizing muscles underneath, the ones that govern balance and mobility and keep the whole system honest, she’d been quietly ignoring for years. Being able to move a heavy object isn’t the same as being durable, and the gap between the two is exactly where injuries live. So she’s doubling down on the work that doesn’t look impressive — the yoga, the Pilates, the small mobility movements — precisely because it’s the strength that doesn’t show off but keeps you in the game.
Thanks for listening and reading! Let Wendy and me know what you think in a comment.
