You 2.0: Overcoming the Psychology of the Aging Athlete

Hey, this is Ben Greenfield. I thought you'd like this little clip of my latest podcast. What do you do about the people who are kind of like coming of age and having to deal with just slowing down as they age?

Yeah, you know, I really think that you have to get to the core of their passion. Why did they start the sport in the first place? What drove them into this, what excited them? And you know, that can sometimes be a complicated thing, especially if everything is about outcome goals in terms of performance related. But if we get to the essence of why do they like to get out there on the road and run that 10 mile time trial or whatever it might be, then you can kind of stay true to the motivation behind it. And then secondly, it's changing, you know, it's changing a bunch of those goals. So taking different things to focus on. So, you know, whether that's getting more into some trail races instead of some road stuff or races in different places, or basically just having some different goals attached to your sport. Also training in different environments, so having different groups that you train with, different people, different routes that you train on, so that that comparison isn't always there. All the time, all the time, all the time.

And that comparison, in fact, how we think, you know, we've got this hindsight bias, the human brain does that. We look at the passed with through rose tinted glasses. And so often we find that the life that we had then as we're remembering, when we were lean and fit and strong and young and we never got injured and it wasn't actually as great as it seemed at the time. Right, sorry, as great as it seems now. And so we often try and get athletes to think about developing not just rekindling an old identity, but building a new identity. We often talk about building version 2.0 of yourself. What would that look like? And all the habits that you really didn't have back then, and it might be that I was, I neglected the XYZ or I didn't really care much about stretching or my nutrition was terrible, but you were a hammerhead, whatever. So we try and get athletes to think about building a version of themselves, of thoughts and beliefs about this identity, this self schema that is actually far more improved or a bit more rock solid than where they've come from. So once you get athletes to see I'm not just trying to get back to where I was, I'm actually trying to become a better person inside about how I think about my sport and that resonates with them, then it's not just so much of a deficit model that they're trying to kind of.

And I've had to do that personally myself. I mean, I struggled with Lyme's disease and a lot of injuries from 2012 onwards. And hey, I won three world titles back to back and then absolutely tanked to the point where I couldn't get out of bed. So coming back from that time and time again, I've had to keep.

Redeveloping myself and changing things because I'll get on a start line and everyone expects me to win. And it's like, well, hey, I'm a different athlete now, my body in a different place. I've got to find reasons as to why this is still important for me. So previously when I was doing very well and winning all those races, I took so much for granted. I didn't enjoy those wins. I didn't look around and enjoy the experience and talk to all the people there. And so version 2.0 for me is really embracing the gratitude of what I'm able to do and get out there, speak to people, really be an advocate of the sport. So I personally have had to do it myself.

If you enjoyed this clip, you should check out the whole episode and a host of other topics over at bengreenfieldfitness. Com. Have an amazing day.