The Mindset that Separates Lifelong Vitality from Middle-Age Decline
By Tom Kagy | 05 Feb, 2025

Five attitude adjustments are key to staying 21 for 60 years — or more.

Let me confess to a distinct downside to lifelong fitness. 

A physique that stays unchanged decade after decade destroys any incentive to buy new clothes.  As a result my wardrobe contains more out-of-fashion jeans, shirts and jackets than my wife finds tolerable.  Fortunately, being out of fashion isn't a crime, but it is the one drawback to being exactly the same size I was nearly 50 years ago.  And I don't foresee that changing in the next decade.  Or two.

It isn't just my exterior form that remains unchanged.  It's also my internal fitness level.  My VO2 max (my body's capacity to process oxygen, a good proxy for one's metabolic capacity, or physical vitality) would put me in the 95th percentile if I were in my early 20s.

 As a kid I was on the scrawny side.  With the unwelcome bluntness one only gets from male friends, my best friend in grade school observed, "You have a sunken chest."

I began with a dozen pushups each day and worked up to several dozen.  One teen summer I added some weights and running.   By my junior year at UCLA I was sauntering around Westwood with my shirt off.  Bruce Lee was everywhere in American culture in those days.  Not even rabid racists dared toss snide remarks at a shirtless Asian guy with a cut torso and a square jaw.  By first year of law school I was deemed "Most Macho" by the women editing the dorm newspaper in recognition of "the way [my] jeans fit."

That's the body I've been carrying for a half century.

There's no secret, at least none I'm not delighted to share.  It's a mind thing, a collection of mental habits that naturally sustains the habits that hold off the physical decline associated with passing decades, especially as one leaves his 30s for middle age. 

You might call it mind over matter.  I call my mental habits the 5 Ps.

The first P is for Patience.  Impatience is Napoleon leading his invincible army deep into Russia only to emerge with it in tatters.  Patience is like Mr Miyagi putting Ralph Macchio through that whole wax-on-wax-off frustration before unleashing him. 

One's metabolic capacity — the foundation of all fitness — can only be grown through patience and diligence.  The peculiarly American adage "No pain, no gain" is one of the main reasons why so many Americans are semi-invalids by the time they reach middle age, before plunging into knee- and hip-replacement surgeries.  Patience is difficult to learn, I know.  I can't count how many injuries and illnesses I suffered because I wanted to go hard at ultimate fitness.  There's no such thing, unless you want to gamble on becoming that one-in-a-million guy who gets a pro sports contract straight out of school.

The second P is for Pleasure.  Only pleasure can support the level of motivation needed to sustain years of sustained effort.  To embrace the small amounts of pain involved in regular physical exertion make it the sole path to your pleasures, be it a post-workoout espresso and a slice of pie, the exhilaration of the downhill side of a trail run, or simply the post-workout endorphin rush combined with the satisfaction of having paid your day's dues.  Only by pairing pleasure with physical exertions can it be sustained long enough to achieve lifelong fitness.

The third P is for Perspective.  Nothing is easier than excusing yourself from a workout out of sheer nobility.  How can you spare a half hour for something as selfish as a workout when you're needed by the family, the office, the world?  I was cured of that particular excuse when I had a heart attack from overwork at the age of 31, alone in the skyscraper at some small hour of the morning.  If you really are needed, you're selfish to even dream up an excuse to deprive you of the workout that will keep you extant and available.

The fourth P is for Plexibility.  What the heck is plexibility?  It's the perfect way to remind our orthographically fixated minds of the value of flexibility.  Nothing could be goofier than excusing yourself from a regular workout because you simply don't have access to the shorts, running track, yoga mat, gym, pool, trainer or tennis partner.  If you're truly plexible you will get in a world-class workout while riding the subway to work.

The final P is for Pride.  Notice how I managed to get in some not so subtle bragging?  Why bother staying fit if you aren't deeply attached to yourself, both inside and out?  At the end of the day pride is what makes you do the right and necessary thing  because you're the only you you know!