What if Your Future Self is Relying on What You Do Now?
If you kept moving exactly the way you’re moving now, how would that look in ten years? Twenty?
When we’re thinking about training, we’re usually thinking about now, not the future because that’s how motivation works in the short term.
However, our body is always making longer-term decisions based on the information we give it, and it’s worth being mindful that the movement habits we build in our thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond shape what we’ll have available to us later.
Building longevity with movement doesn’t mean we have to become a different person or training like an athlete forever.
It’s about understanding that our body can adapt across time in both directions: We can build capability with how we train, but we also reduce movement ability where we don’t need or use it.
If we don’t move in a certain way, it gets harder to move that way. If we don’t maintain strength it gets harder to do things that need it and the balance and coordination we think will always be there turn out to need practice too.
This isn’t meant to stress you out, because the same adaptability that works against us also works for us.
It’s never too late to build something, and most of what matters for moving well in later life isn’t complicated.
It’s about keeping a wide enough range of movement, maintaining strength through full ranges, and staying curious about what our body can do rather than just repeating what we’re already good at.
What we’re really training for, underneath every other goal, is the ability to keep doing the things that matter to us, for as long as possible. The hikes, the lifting, the playing with grandchildren, the getting up off the floor without thinking about it.
Those aren’t outcomes that just happen, they’re things we protect through the choices we make now.
Here’s some points to think about:
- Are you moving in more than one direction? Is it mostly forwards and back? Do you include sideways or rotational movements?
- Does most of your training look the same every week?
- Are you working through full ranges, or just the comfortable ones?
- Do you regularly do things that challenge your balance and coordination?
This doesn’t have to be complicated, you just need enough variety to remind your body what it’s capable of.
