#47 – Recovery Is For Old People
The Takeaway: Recovery is more important as we age, and it’s how these elite athletes played at the top of their game well beyond their years, and so can you.
Last October, two 40-something quarterbacks lined up on opposite sidelines. Aaron Rodgers, 41 at the time, against Joe Flacco, also 40. Two guys who were in preschool in the 80s, out there getting after it, taking hits from guys in a league where the average age is 27.
Nobody carted either of them off. They just played highlight-worthy football.
Strangely enough, the average age in pro sports like football, soccer, basketball, tennis, and Formula One racing is around 27. These athletes who played past their career expectancy all credit recovery as a major factor (mental performance is the other one):
- Aaron Rodgers, pro football at 42
- Joe Flacco, pro football at 41
- Novak Djokovic, pro tennis at 39
- Rafael Nadal, retired from pro tennis at 38
- LeBron James, pro basketball at 41
- Cristiano Ronaldo, pro soccer at 41
- Fernando Alonso, Formula 1 driver at 45
- Tom Brady, retired from pro football at 45
- Marta Vieira da Silva, pro soccer at 40
- Venus Williams, pro tennis at 45
- Serena Williams, pro tennis at 44
- Alysha Clark, pro basketball at 38
- Melissa Barbieri, pro soccer at 46
- Christie Rampone, retired from pro soccer at 41
- Nicole Barnhart, retired from pro soccer at 43
- Sara Hall, marathoner at 43
- Martina Navratilova, tennis, retired at 49 (2006)
- Diana Taurasi, retired from pro basketball at 42
- Allyson Felix, track and field at 40
- Lindsey Vonn, alpine skiing at 41
- and on the list goes…
Being a high performer at any age is central to Forever Athlete. The difference from about a decade of misconceptions about what your body is allowed to do after your 20s is your approach to training, specifically recovery.
What Is Recovery
Recovery is one of the 6 disciplines in the Forever Athlete system, and it covers:
- Sleep quality and consistency
- Active recovery such as mobility work and stretching
- Therapeutic techniques like massage and cold/heat exposure
- Managing training workloads like weights, volume, and intensity
- Managing stress, burnout, and anything affecting your nervous system
- Addressing injuries before they happen or get worse
- The quality, quantity, and timing of your nutrition
I ban chatter in my gym about being old or blaming age for our limitations. I’m not delusional about the effects of aging (I can only speak to being 46), but I see the athletes I work with all defy the stereotypes of aging by following the principles of my system. Some of my fittest members are in the 60s and 70s. A peer-reviewed clinical study (Fiatarone et al.) even showed that people starting strength training in their 90s can still build muscle and bone mineral density and improve their gait.
Recovery Is How They Do It
None of these elite athletes are playing on talent alone anymore. Genetic luck and hard work got them in the door. Discipline is what’s kept them in the game a decade or two past when everyone expected them to fade. Sleep, recovery, mobility, and consistency did the heavy lifting that raw athleticism used to.
You don’t need a hyperbaric chamber, million-dollar recovery room, or a medical team to practice the principles of recovery. You don’t even need to be an athlete. You need the same thing they have: a system you actually stick with.
It’s all included in the Forever Athlete Foundations course.