Why People Who Do CrossFit Age Better

Getting older is inevitable.

Getting useless isn't.

And before we go any further, when we're talking about people who do CrossFit, we don't just mean competitive CrossFit athletes.

That's an important distinction.

We're talking about everyone.

The person competing at the CrossFit Games.

The 45 year old training four times a week before work.

The 60 year old who started because their mate convinced them to give it a go.

Someone's mum who has absolutely no interest in calling herself an athlete but turns up to CrossFit several times a week because she enjoys it and wants to stay fit.

All of them do CrossFit.

You don't have to compete.

You don't have to care about your Fran time.

You don't have to wear knee sleeves everywhere you go.

You don't even have to consider yourself particularly athletic.

You just have to train.

Because there is a huge difference between accepting that ageing exists and voluntarily surrendering your physical capability because you've reached a certain number.

Yet somewhere along the way, we've normalised exactly that.

People stop running.

Stop lifting.

Stop jumping.

Stop challenging themselves.

Then they gradually lose the ability to do those things and point towards their age as the explanation.

Of course ageing changes us.

Recovery changes.

Muscle mass becomes harder to maintain.

Strength can decline.

Cardiovascular fitness can fall.

Balance and coordination can deteriorate.

Nobody gets to negotiate their way out of biology.

But there's another side to that conversation.

We can train.

And one of the things CrossFit does extraordinarily well is keep ordinary people practising many of the physical qualities that become increasingly important as we get older.

Strength.

Cardiovascular fitness.

Balance.

Coordination.

Mobility.

Power.

And perhaps most importantly, the confidence to actually use your body.

That's why we think CrossFit has such an interesting relationship with ageing.

It doesn't ask you to pretend you're still 21.

It asks you to remain capable at 40, 50, 60, 70 and beyond.

We're Not Talking About Looking Younger

Let's get this out of the way first.

When we say people who do CrossFit can age better, we're not talking about wrinkles.

We're not promising you'll look 25 when you're 60.

This isn't an advert for moisturiser.

We're talking about physical capability.

What can you actually do?

Can you get yourself off the floor?

Can you carry something heavy?

Can you walk up several flights of stairs without feeling destroyed?

Can you pick something up safely?

Can you react quickly if you stumble?

Can you play with your grandchildren?

Can you travel?

Can you live independently?

Can you continue doing the things you enjoy?

Those questions become increasingly important as we get older.

Because lifespan is only part of the equation.

Living longer is obviously desirable.

But being physically capable during those additional years matters enormously too.

Muscle Matters More As You Get Older

One of the most important things we can protect as we age is muscle.

Ageing is associated with a gradual loss of muscle mass and strength, particularly if we're inactive.

That matters for reasons far beyond appearance.

Muscle helps us move.

It helps us maintain strength.

It contributes to balance and stability.

It allows us to perform everyday physical tasks.

Lose enough of it and seemingly simple parts of life become harder.

CrossFit puts resistance training directly into people's lives.

Squats.

Deadlifts.

Presses.

Pulling.

Carrying.

Olympic lifting.

Bodyweight movements.

You are repeatedly asking your muscles to produce force.

That matters.

And you don't need to be deadlifting 250kg for it to matter.

A 65 year old progressively moving from a light kettlebell deadlift to a heavier one is still building capacity.

They might never enter a competition.

They might never describe themselves as an athlete.

It doesn't matter.

They're getting stronger.

That's the beauty of scaling.

The movement can remain relevant even when the load changes enormously.

Strength Is Never Just About the Gym

People sometimes dismiss strength training because they have no interest in being "strong".

That's missing the point.

Strength is capacity.

Carrying shopping is strength.

Lifting luggage is strength.

Moving furniture is strength.

Picking up your grandchildren is strength.

Standing up from a chair is strength.

Getting yourself off the floor is strength.

The stronger you are relative to the demands everyday life places on you, the easier those tasks become.

Imagine everyday life requires a certain amount of physical capacity.

If normal daily activities represent 90 percent of everything you're physically capable of doing, life is going to feel difficult.

If they represent 20 percent, you've got an enormous reserve.

That's one of the most compelling reasons to stay strong as you age.

You're building margin.

Cardiovascular Fitness Matters Too

CrossFit obviously isn't just strength training.

Anyone who has spent four minutes on an Echo Bike knows that.

Rowing.

Running.

Skiing.

Cycling.

Burpees.

Longer workouts.

Short violent workouts.

Intervals.

Mixed modal conditioning.

Your cardiovascular system gets challenged constantly.

Again, this isn't simply about becoming better at workouts.

Cardiorespiratory fitness matters to our overall health and physical capacity.

And unlike many traditional approaches to ageing, CrossFit doesn't automatically decide that intensity becomes forbidden once you reach a certain birthday.

Intensity is relative.

What's intense for a competitive CrossFit athlete and what's intense for a 65 year old member are completely different things.

Both can work hard.

They simply work at an intensity appropriate for themselves.

That's a distinction people outside CrossFit don't always understand.

They see the CrossFit Games and assume that's what everybody is doing in their local affiliate on Tuesday morning.

It isn't.

Power Matters As We Age

Strength matters.

But so does the ability to produce force quickly.

Power.

Think about catching yourself when you trip.

Getting out of the way of something.

Climbing stairs.

Jumping.

Reacting.

These aren't always slow, controlled movements.

Life occasionally asks you to move quickly.

CrossFit keeps elements of power in training through Olympic lifts, jumping, medicine ball work and other explosive movements.

Again, everything can be scaled.

Your mum doesn't need to start snatching 100kg because she read this blog.

That would be an unfortunate interpretation.

The principle matters more than the specific movement.

Continue asking the body to move with intent.

Balance and Coordination Are Trainable

One of CrossFit's strengths is the sheer variety of movements.

You don't sit on the same machine following the same fixed path every session.

You learn.

You adapt.

You coordinate your body.

You balance.

You move objects through space.

You change direction.

You develop skills.

A barbell clean requires coordination.

A box step up requires balance.

A farmer's carry requires stability.

A single leg movement challenges control.

Even getting onto the floor for a burpee and standing back up again requires a combination of physical qualities.

The body is being asked to solve problems.

That's useful whether you're 25 or 75.

CrossFit Makes Getting Off the Floor Normal

This one sounds almost laughably simple.

It isn't.

Watch a CrossFit class and people constantly move between standing and the floor.

Burpees.

Push ups.

Sit ups.

Mobility work.

Gymnastics.

People get down.

Then they get back up.

Nobody thinks anything of it.

As we get older, maintaining that ability becomes increasingly important.

You don't want the floor to become somewhere you're frightened of ending up because you're not confident you can get yourself back up again.

Training keeps ordinary movements ordinary.

That's something we probably don't appreciate enough when we're younger.

Bone Health Matters

Resistance training and weight bearing exercise also provide mechanical loading to the skeletal system.

That's important because maintaining bone health becomes increasingly relevant as we age.

Again, the answer isn't recklessness.

Nobody should be loading movements they can't perform safely simply because somebody told them lifting weights is good for them.

Progression matters.

Technique matters.

Appropriate loading matters.

Individual circumstances matter.

But getting older isn't automatically a reason to stop resistance training.

A good CrossFit coach understands the difference between challenging somebody appropriately and simply throwing weight on a bar.

Scaling Is What Makes CrossFit So Powerful

This is perhaps the biggest misunderstanding people outside CrossFit have.

They see elite competitors at the CrossFit Games and assume that's CrossFit.

It is CrossFit.

But it's one extreme end of it.

CrossFit is also your mum doing box squats to a target on a Wednesday morning.

It's someone doing their first assisted pull up at 58.

It's a 70 year old deadlifting a weight that's appropriate for them.

It's someone who has never competed in anything in their life trying to finish the workout before the time cap.

The methodology isn't dependent on everybody using identical loads or performing identical movements.

The session can be adapted to the individual while preserving its intended stimulus.

One person might be doing muscle ups.

Another ring rows.

One might deadlift 180kg.

Another 40kg.

One might run 400 metres.

Another might use a bike.

They're all doing CrossFit.

They're all training.

They're all developing capacity.

They're simply meeting themselves where they currently are.

That's why CrossFit can work across such an enormous age range.

The movement changes.

The load changes.

The intensity changes.

The objective remains.

Become more capable.

The CrossFit Masters Community Shows What's Possible

Then, of course, there are the people who do choose to compete.

The CrossFit Masters community is one of our favourite parts of the sport.

Not because every Masters competitor is some genetic freak chasing the CrossFit Games.

Most aren't.

They're people who kept training and decided they fancied testing themselves.

People in their forties.

Fifties.

Sixties.

Seventies.

People still learning skills.

Still competing.

Still setting PBs.

Still finding things they're bad at and working on them.

There's something incredibly powerful about that.

But competitive Masters athletes shouldn't become the benchmark that frightens ordinary older people away from CrossFit.

You don't have to compete.

You don't have to chase leaderboards.

You don't have to be an athlete.

The lesson is simply that physical development doesn't suddenly have to stop because you're getting older.

Traditional culture often presents ageing as a long process of subtraction.

Stop doing this.

Be careful with that.

You're too old for this.

CrossFit often approaches it from the opposite direction.

What can we maintain?

What can we improve?

What can we learn?

What can we still do?

That's a completely different mentality.

Training Gives You Reasons to Stay Engaged

There's also something beyond physiology.

CrossFit is social.

You train with people.

You have coaches.

You learn.

You have goals.

You notice progress.

You have somewhere to be.

That becomes valuable at every stage of life.

A great CrossFit affiliate can contain someone who's 22 training alongside someone who's 62.

One might consider themselves an athlete.

The other might laugh at you if you called them one.

Doesn't matter.

Different abilities.

Different objectives.

Same class.

Same community.

There aren't many environments where that happens naturally.

And there's something brilliant about watching somebody realise they can still improve at an age when society has started telling them improvement is supposed to be over.

Recovery Does Change

None of this means pretending age doesn't exist.

It does.

A 55 year old shouldn't necessarily train exactly like a 25 year old.

Recovery may take longer.

Training volume may need adjusting.

Injuries and individual health considerations matter.

Sleep matters.

Nutrition matters.

Exercise selection matters.

Being intelligent becomes increasingly important.

But intelligent training and easy training aren't the same thing.

You can train hard without training stupidly.

That's true at 25.

It's even more important at 65.

The goal isn't proving you can still destroy yourself.

The goal is maintaining and developing physical capacity for as long as possible.

Don't Train to Be Young

Train to be capable.

That's the distinction.

You aren't trying to freeze time.

You can't.

You're trying to influence what ageing looks like for you.

At 40, that might mean maintaining strength while still pushing yourself hard.

At 50, it might mean continuing to hit movements you learned ten years earlier.

At 60, it might mean still lifting meaningful weight and training several times a week.

At 70, it might mean maintaining the strength and balance that allow you to live independently.

At 80, the goals might change again.

There's no finish line where fitness suddenly stops mattering.

If anything, its value increases.

The Defiant Perspective

We've been around CrossFit long enough to see what this looks like in real life.

We've watched elite athletes compete.

We've watched Masters athletes compete.

But just as importantly, we've watched thousands of ordinary people train.

Parents.

Grandparents.

Business owners.

People with absolutely no interest in competing.

People who would never describe themselves as athletes.

People who simply do CrossFit because they enjoy it, enjoy the community and want to stay fit and capable.

That's who this article is really about.

CrossFit doesn't belong exclusively to the people standing on podiums.

It belongs to everybody who walks through the doors of an affiliate and trains at whatever level is appropriate for them.

That's what makes it so powerful.

We've watched people start later in life and discover abilities they assumed belonged to a younger version of themselves.

We've watched people refuse to allow a number to dictate what they're capable of.

That's Defiant.

Not denying reality.

Not pretending ageing doesn't happen.

Refusing to surrender unnecessarily to it.

You are going to get older.

So are we.

The question is what kind of older person you're trying to become.

One who gradually removes physical challenges from their life until almost everything becomes difficult?

Or one who continues lifting, moving, learning, adapting and building as much capacity as their circumstances allow?

We know which one we'd rather be.

CrossFit doesn't make you immortal.

It doesn't stop the clock.

And it certainly doesn't guarantee perfect health.

What it can do is give ordinary people a reason to keep using their bodies.

To keep challenging them.

To keep strengthening them.

To keep learning what they're capable of.

No podium required.

No competition required.

No need to call yourself an athlete.

Just keep moving.

Keep lifting.

Keep learning.

Keep showing up.

For as long as you fucking can.