# Athletic pain and performance after 50

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/aging-with-strength-7179340/athletic-pain-and-performance-after-50
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/aging-with-strength-7179340/athletic-pain-and-performance-after-50.md
Podcast: [AGING with STRENGTH®](https://stenobird.com/podcast/aging-with-strength-7179340)
Published: 2025-03-09T23:58:49+00:00
Episode link: https://www.agingwithstrength.com/p/athletic-pain-and-performance-after
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/158065485/0b763c9d331f6f87757459b121f20722.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/aging-with-strength-7179340/episodes/athletic-pain-and-performance-after-50
Duration seconds: 724

## Resource

Here's some strategies for dealing with midlife athletic injuries and the frustrating, sometimes demoralizing limitations they impose on us . One of the most challenging aspects of hitting my fifties (and maybe you can relate to this) is reconciling the inevitable decline in physical strength and performance with my expectations — unreasonable as they are — that I should be able to just keep doing pretty much what I did last week, last year or 15 years ago. Not to mention the particular personal psychology that whispers, convincingly, that physical strength and ability are standards that must be upheld. As if they were virtues that, like all actual virtues, don’t ever change. And the pernicious feeling that if I can’t maintain my athletic standards, well, then, who am I, really ? Of course, these thoughts and feelings are rarely overt; they’re more like emotional microplastics polluting my subconscious. But like all toxins, they tend to accumulate over time, to the point where they can influence my self-perception and, thus, my behavior. And here’s the problem with that: If you’re in a state of continual dissonance between what you want your body to be able to do and what it can actually pull off, you’re all but asking for an injury. Or, more to the point of this post, a nonstop series of injuries. Because athletes in their 50s are like the Tom Hanks character in, “ Cast Away .” Remember that movie, from 2000? A guy stranded on an island invisible to the outside world. He survives on pure improvisation, lives in a cave gnawing on fish bones, staring at the wall wondering WTF. And then he becomes emotionally dependent on a volleyball and cries when it goes away. Sound familiar, athletes? If “Cast Away” isn’t an analog to life after 50 I’m not sure what is. At least we h…

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## Transcript

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