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AGING with STRENGTH: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Paul von Zielbauer
A no-bullshit look into aging with maximum physical, mental, nutritional, emotional and spiritual strength, from a former New York Times journalist. www.agingwithstrength.com
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- Today52 min
Avoiding (and recovering from) athletic injuries: Strategies, tips & stories from the trenches
Whether you’re a lifelong athlete or a newbie gym rat, adventure racer or alternative exercise aficionado, how we think about, prevent and deal with injuries makes a big difference in life satisfaction. Because, there’s no two ways about it: athletic injuries after 50 are harder to overcome. Sometimes they don’t go away; we just manage them. There’s a reason physically active people over 50 refer to Ibuprofen “Vitamin I.” Wendy & Paul: Different athletic experiences & injuriesMy conversation with Gwendolyn Bounds, recorded live Friday, June 5, presents two complementary case studies in preventing, managing and recovering from athletic injuries after 50. In one corner, there’s Wendy, 54, a helluva Spartan racer, nationally ranked in her age group. But by her own description, before 2018, she was a certified non-athlete. As you’ll hear in our conversation, she made some significant newbie mistakes as she began tuning up her body and mind to compete in timed ass-kicking adventure races after leading a life in which the hardest sprint was usually to the elevator or train platform. She’s negotiated several significant injuries, none needing surgery, thankfully. In the other corner, there’s me, a 59-year-old lifelong, multisport athlete (soccer, squash, surfing, cycling, triathlon, tennis, track, wrestling and, yes, rollerblading when it was cool in the early 90s) and 40-year gym rat. The two decades I spent lifting heavy produced large muscles back in the day but also set in motion the consequences: a broken collarbone, a torn biceps tendon and 7 orthopedic surgeries, the last four of which all occurred in the past 9 years—since turning 50. caveat athleta seniorIn summary, my advice is caveat athleta senior—"let the older athlete beware." By all means, start or continue your physical fitness journey, in whatever form it may take, for all the inarguable reasons you’re taking it. Travel ambitiously but aware that your body is in a different place than that 32-year-old who’s loudly stacking the pulldown machine next to you.I hope you’ll find this recorded conversation with Wendy useful and supportive. We enjoy making fun of one another in between offering our respective lessons learned from what is, collectively, more than 50 years of high-level athletic training and performance. If you just can’t stand listening to us, though, here’s a summary of takeaways. Paul’s takeaways * Avoid ego loading. Overriding your body’s little yellow flags to match the high-schooler deadlifting next to you is different from progressive overload, where you’re actually listening to your body and know it.* Stop the lifts that put you in a disadvantaged position. Eliminated barbell back squats and bench press—bar squats in particular cause damage that accrues invisibly until a back spasm puts you on the floor.* Train unilaterally. I switched from bilateral to single-leg work (Bulgarian split squats, single-leg RDLs, lunges) so weak muscles can’t hide behind strong ones. It’s not as fun or attention-grabbing as heavy barbell squats, but very effective.* Build from the ground up. Feet and ankles first—balance boards, retraining old injuries—because the ability to walk at speed later in life starts there.* Warm up—you can’t keep doing your 35-year-old’s cold open. Foam roll before (to get warm) and after. Best $24 you’ll spend; 80% of your body is fascia.* Move like it’s 1899. Multi-plane, multi-compound, asymmetric movements, not just up/down/forward/back.* Flexibility training before bed—it accrues over time…and helps you sleep better.* Bar hangs. Grip strength, plus letting gravity decompress your lower spine; helped my tennis elbow and shoulder. Work up with feet on a box, then one-arm hangs.* The post-operation mental struggle is real. Surgeons don’t warn you how hard the forced inactivity is when you rely on movement to clear your head.Wendy’s takeaways* Don’t try to climb Everest on day one. Her injuries—tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, a degenerated shoulder from too many burpees—all came from getting excited and diving in too fast and too heavy.* Check the ego at the door. Leave one to three reps in reserve instead of going to failure, and change only one variable at a time—weight, reps, or sets, never all at once.* Eat your spina
- 4 weeks ago1h 5m
"Strategically Tuning Out," with Gwendolyn Bounds
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.agingwithstrength.com/subscribe
- Feb 15, 20262 min
Unconventional strength workout #1: Rings
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.agingwithstrength.comMany AGING with STRENGTH subscribers asked for specific exercises that build functional strength and neuromuscular fitness (see the definition of both, below) across multiple planes of motion—which I consider an absolute necessity as we age because it develops coordination, balance and strong bodies ready for anything. Because Substack is increasingly l…
- Jan 24, 202634 min
Menopause for men with Dr. Annie Fenn
For men interested in learning more about menopause and perimenopause, or who just want to become better partners to women experiencing either, my candid and wide-ranging, no-b.s. conversation with Annie Fenn, MD is for you. We include clear, trustworthy information about sex, alcohol, nutrition, hormone treatments, fitness, sleep and other menopause-related topics that are so often marbled with misinformation.“Menopause for men” podcast timestamps01:27—Defining menopause and perimenopause in clinical terms. “It is a retrospective diagnosis,” Dr. Fenn says. “There’s also a lot of misunderstanding in the medical community.”04:15—Typical age ranges for perimenopause and the clues that it’s arriving.05:24—Estrogen, progesterone & the hypothalamus. “They rise and then they fall, and then they rise and then they fall….“07:00—The rise of the menopause/perimenopause conversation (and the subsequent industry) during the past few years. “On social media, there are many ‘menopause experts’ talking about it.” Baby Boomers started it; Millennials wanted to talk more about it; celebrities took it to the next level.08:25—The biggest male misconceptions about menopause. “You can’t just say, ‘Go to the doctor, get on hormones’ and you’ll be fine.”08:58—How the Women’s Health Initiative study of 2003 “scared off a generation of doctors.”10:05—The dearth of experienced menopause doctors. “There is a huge gap.” The “counterintuitive” choice for women.11:20—Male misconception #2 about menopause/perimenopause. “There’s a lot more things going on than what’s happening to a woman’s emotions.” The problem of poor sleep quality.12:30—“Zoom out a little bit” to understand a woman’s menopause experience: She’s taking care of work, kids, home, husband, etc., and then….”the bio-energetic crisis” hits.13:38—The “injured athlete” corollary to menopause: how a guy might, might be able to relate to the changes and challenges menopause may bring.14:41—The specific hormonal changes that occur during menopause. Estrogen, the master regulator, has receptors throughout a woman’s body—including hundreds in the brain. “Whatchamacallit Syndrome.” Brain fog, fatigue: “This can be very distressing.” Exercise becomes more difficult, through lack of sleep & food choices.17:10—Making the right food choices in menopause & perimenopause. “Women are constantly pushing against this pre-diabetic state.” Eating for stable blood sugar. The great harm of UPFs. “Muscle is mandatory” — and its “a glucose sink.”19:07—Being a good partner to women in menopause. “The last thing in the world a menopausal woman wants to hear is, ‘Oh, is it your hormones again?’” Being proactive and enabling (with some specific examples). Volunteering to take the kids out for a few hours or taking care of the damn groceries (or both).21:34—Foods to avoid during menopause.23:19—Alcohol’s role and caveats during menopause and perimenopause.24:55—Two books for men (or anyone) interested in learning more about menopause and perimenopause. The amygdala & The I Do Not Care Club. “Women don’t care about stuff that they used to.”(Also: check out Annie’s Brain Health Kitchen articles about menopause and perimenopause.)27:16—Sex and intimacy during menopause and perimenopause. “Most of the time, it’s not about she’s mad at you (although she might be).” Lack of estrogen in vaginal tissues = “an easy fix.” Work on sex communication beforehand, if possible.29:20—Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). Estrogen & progesterone; “testosterone could be included in the mix.” The new way to refer to this therapy: MHT. Tablets, creams, etc. Reducing colon-cancer risk and maybe risk of dementia. “Not every woman wants to be medicalized. But every woman deserves a discussion about the pros and cons.”34:42—Resources for further reading. ”Your questions were not stupid at all!”
- Jan 16, 20265 min
Physical strength and flexibility in 2026
Last January, I published an audio & text essay, Physical strength and flexibility in 2025. The thesis was that our bodies are meant to move and that, for healthy aging, some form of strength training—which need not be intense or include more than your own bodyweight—is non-negotiable.My goal, I wrote, was to “get both stronger and faster, and leaner and more flexible.” (Oh, is that all?) I also said I wasn’t after bigger muscles but greater neuromuscular efficiency. Looking back, my 2025 goals bring to mind a childhood admonishment from my grandpa, when I failed to eat what I’d put on my dinner plate: “Your eyes were bigger than your stomach.”In 2026, I’m organizing around a simple mantra:Move your body. Every day. With purpose.The simplicity of this 11-syllable mantra is intentional.A year ago, I wrote about jumping rope, bar squats and box jumps as means to achieve my personal physical strength and flexibility goals. The jumping rope habit stuck, thankfully, but bar squats—one of my oldest and most reliable weighted exercises—no longer work for me, I realized after one too many “uh-oh” setbacks. (If you’re interested in a fuller explanation of my break up with heavy bar-squat routines, drop a note in a comment, and maybe I’ll write a separate post about that.)On the other hand, moving with purpose for just 20 minutes a day is a goal that each of us can interpret and tailor to our 2026 physical strength and flexibility goals.What does “with purpose” mean?Moving with purpose simply means intentionally putting your body into motion and your muscles into positions of healthy stress. For some people, gardening or a brisk walk is sufficient for their goals and bodies. For others, moving with purpose means resistance training, practicing yoga or pilates, a short swim or bodyweight movements in the living room after lunch.In other words, purpose means doing more than only the minimum movement required to continue your existence and fulfill your daily obligations and needs. It means doing more than moving your body from bed→bathroom→kitchen→car →desk→car→kitchen→couch→fridge→couch→ bathroom→bed each day.Another way to think about moving with purpose is that it’s a want, not a need. And that suggests how much of physical strength and flexibility is really about desire. If you can figure out why you want to work your body for those 20 minutes a day, you’re much more likely to end up doing it.Why 20 minutes?For physical strength and fitness, small wins lead to bigger wins. We can’t all realistically get to the gym, pedal 10 miles or grind out a run three times a week. But we can all burn more calories being active in our own homes, 30 seconds or 2 minutes or 5 minutes at a time.My argument is that while 10 minutes a day is not enough to do much, and that 30 minutes can feel unrealistic to many people, 20 minutes a day of purposeful physical movement is enough to build gains in functional strength, flexibility, balance, proprioception, and neuromuscular fitness that you can feel and that gives your body and brain invaluable, habit-forming rewards for long-term strength into old age.If you’re like me and want to be able to walk briskly when you’re 80, think about moving your body with purpose now, for 20 minutes a day.An eminently achievable goal for 2026Twenty minutes represents roughly 2% of a 16-hour waking day. Can you carve out 2% of each day to build physical strength and flexibility in 2026? I think you can.In a subsequent post—if there is sufficient interest from all of you—I’ll stake out specific movements and exercises for building muscle (lean or large), cardiovascular endurance (VO2 max), greater balance and core strength (highly correlated to greater longevity) for 2026. All of which are the result of some hard lessons I’ve learned after 45 years of physical training…and some unexpected breakthroughs from last year.Until the…keep going. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.agingwithstrength.com/subscribe
- Dec 21, 20256 min
The question to ask your younger self
TRANSCRIPTIn this audiocast, I invite you to join me on a slightly provocative thought experiment: Imagine you could reach back through time to ask your younger self a simple question: What do you want for me?Not what did you want for me, but what do you want for me now. Because this conversation is happening in the present — and because that vision your younger self had remains alive — and actionable — in you today. That’s my argument….and here’s why.I came across this quote recently.“Discipline is remembering who you said you wanted to be.”There are four important parts to that idea:1 | You had a vision for yourselfOne is simply that you had a vision for who you wanted to become. It was specific, ambitious, thoughtful and achievable. And it came from you. Decades ago, for instance, I had dreams of becoming an oceanographer, a literary travel writer, a jazz bassist and a spy.2 | It was about who, not what, you wanted to becomeSecond, your vision is about who — not what — you wanted to be. We often default to defining ourselves by what we are, professionally. But for many of us, what we do for money is a superficial proxy for who we are, really, if or when our jobs disappear. When I left The New York Times, I began the uncomfortable exercise of figuring out who Paul von Zielbauer — no longer from The Times — actually was.3 | You spoke your visionThe third important part of this idea that “Discipline is remembering who you said you wanted to be” is that verb — said. You spoke this vision. You expressed it to family, friends. And speaking it put life into it, whether or not you knew it at the time. Back in 1993, I’d talked about traveling the world so much that, after a Chicago taxi smashed the front end of my trusty Mazda 626, I used the insurance money to instead buy a plane ticket to Hanoi and ride my mountain bike through Vietnam.4 | It starts with having the disciplineThe fourth important part of this idea is that it starts with discipline. It takes discipline and self-belief to move the idea of who you said you wanted to be from nostalgia and memory to the present and actionable.After I left The Times, which I did because its vision for me had become a pale shade of what I knew I could accomplish, I started a social enterprise, called Roadmonkey, that combined ass-kicking physical adventures in remote foreign lands with hands-on volunteer projects for local communities in need. I had no idea how to do it, and it didn’t make much money, but it was the purest expression of who I am and what I believe in as I could have imagined.What are the purest expressions of who you are?I suppose starting Roadmonkey, and building playgrounds and school rooms and chicken farms for struggling, disregarded communities in Vietnam, Peru, Tanzania and Nicaragua was my version of remembering who I said I wanted to be. (I just wish I’d been smart enough to figure out how to make a living wage from it.)It was me asking my younger self: what do you want for me? As fate would have it, I had to ask that question yet again in 2023, when my last salaried position — head of content for a Bay Area venture capital firm — was terminated with prejudice.“Hey, it’s me again. Yeah, I know. So, one more time: what do you want for me?”I’ve written about that experience in a different post, about aging with resilience, but I raise it here because many Gen X, young Boomers and even late Millennials are now going through a reckoning of forced reinvention thanks to a combination of old-school ageism and the corporate imperative to cut workforces to the bone, because…AI!What’s in your “radiantly imagined future”?I have a feeling it’s going to get much worse. If it doesn’t, I still encourage you to reach back through the years to ask your younger self what she or he wants for you. It’s not a question born of desperation but of determination: to live as fully and completely as possible with the years you still have. Or as we used to say at Roadmonkey, to live like you mean it.Speaking of which: Maybe my single favorite line in literature is from an obscure F. Scott Fitzgerald short story called “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”:“It is youth’s felicity as well as its insufficiency that it can never live in the present, but must always be measuring up the day against its own radiantly imagined future.”Encouraging you to pose this question
- Dec 16, 202557 min
Is print the new vinyl? Meet the editors of Geezer
Geezer magazine co-founders Laura LeBleu and Paul von Zielbauer went live Saturday on Jonathan Small’s Small Talk podcast to talk about why we launched a print-only magazine to explore the Gen X (and early Boomer; and, yeah, also the late-late Millennial) aging experience.Time-coded highlights:01:08: Laura’s background: theater, ad copywriting, tech; Geezer is her first personal creative project in her 50s02:09: Paul’s professional background: 11 years at The New York Times, including a Pulitzer nomination, then founded Roadmonkey, an “adventure philanthropy” company.04:30: Why start a magazine called Geezer?04:59: The “visceral rage” Laura felt when she got her first AARP subscription mailer, and how media generally approaches the aging experience in ways that are “patronizing and anodyne and not relevant to where I was personally.”06:58: How Geezer’s co-founders began working together.10:51: The many shades of “Geezer.”11:24: How the magazine’s name, Geezer, format, came to Laura “in the shower.”13:50: How personal experiences with ageism fueled the rise of Geezer.15:55: The shower epiphany — why Geezer works as a large-format, 11x15 print-only magazine, and the recent rise of print-only periodicals for niche audiences. (Mountain Gazette, Ori, etc.). “It feels tribal.”17:32: “We’re drowning in empty calories of digital content... none of it really sticks”19:37: The bands written on the blank cassette tapes shown on the cover of Geezer’s inaugural issue: XTC, 10,000 Maniacs, Till Tuesday, etc.22:30: Is print the new vinyl?24:06: “We’re craving authenticity in a world that is becoming complete. you know increasingly plasticized”25:05: “Analog is fire.”28:50: How the first issue of Geezer came to be, and finding the right kinds of stories.31:09: Geezer’s profile of Mark Pauline, “the last dangerous artist in America” who creates robots that hunt humans.33:19: The role of nostalgia in Geezer: not too much, but not an afterthought, either.33:58: The “Memory of a Goldfish” story about a sandwich-generation mom whose son is leaving the house for college and whose mom is moving in, because of dementia.35:15: Caring for parents with dementia is a Gen X issue.38:17: Paul’s ageism experience: from head of content at a Bay Area VC firm to zero job offers for two years. “I have 8 friends that are going through the exact same thing.”42:57: Geezer is a rejection of our culture’s rejection of career professionals once they hit 55.46:00: The Gen X childhood story swap: Tales of how we wandered off and our parents had no idea where we were until we showed up for dinner.48:45: Spaghetti Os & Steakums….53:48: “If we broadcast on a frequency that’s genuine to us, people attuned to that frequency will hear it and respond.”In the next AGING with STRENGTH post: An audiocast about an important exercise: Reaching back through time to ask your younger self a most important question. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.agingwithstrength.com/subscribe
- Nov 25, 202521 min
Herman Pontzer: DNA ≠ destiny; your parents' trauma in your genes; the "losing weight through exercise" myth
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.agingwithstrength.comHerman Pontzer, a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University, has influenced our collective understanding of human diet, exercise and metabolism — and the importance of moving our bodies.Dr. Pontzer’s latest book, “Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us,” explores how our bodies function and what we can do to help them work better for longer.Summary of this conversationHow much does your DNA dictate how tall, smart or athletic you are — or how long you’ll live? In this conversation, I ask Pontzer about not only DNA but also about the fascinating science of epigenetics — the study of how experiences our parents endured in their childhoods get passed down to us (and what we can do about it now). We also discuss the traits that are more and less likely to be inherited vs. influenced by how we live, grow up, eat, exercise and socialize.In the final 12 minutes, available exclusively to paying AGING with STRENGTH subscribers: Pontzer’s surprising discovery of the body’s relationship between physical activity and calorie burn, — which may change how you think about exercise and weight loss.“Every part of our body has a story that I bet are new stories to a lot of people.”Timestamps01:49 — The biggest misconception people have about their bodies. “I’m reminded every day how little people really know about their bodies.”02:45 — The many ways that online health “influencers” feed you bad information about diet. The myths about IQ and genetics.“The influencer sphere is full of wrong stories about how diet works.”03:42 — Anti-vaxxers who brag about being “mRNA free”: “If you’re body was mRNA free, you’d be dead.”04:13 — A dive into epigenetics, the science of how experiences (trauma) that shaped our parents and grandparents lives influence how our genes are expressed.04:30 — The plain-English description of epigentics, and how our DNA gets “marked”.06:40 — The human genome: Think of it like a thick book that gets filled with flags or Post-It Notes — marks from your epigenome, ie, your ancestors’ experiences.“We’re told that when you’re born your IQ is determined by your genes and there’s nothing you can do about that. There are people who really believe that.”07:47 — “A baby is born with a book that’s already marked” by mom and dad and even by grandma and grandpa.09:15 — How your epigenome is marked by your parents’ experiences as children vs. in their adulthoods.10:24 — What epigenetics implies for people whose parents experienced acute trauma as children, and the Dutch Hunger Winter example from the 20th century.12:25 — So your genes are “scarred” by what your parents went through as kids. What can you do about it now?14:50 — The epigenetic impact of chronic stress, poverty, racism, money, pollution, hunger, and other long-term negative influences. “These things are all cumulative.”15:56 — How much, or not, does your DNA dictate your destiny, and the art of aging differently than your parents.17:30 — Heritability: how much your genes predict, or not, your specific personal characteristics. Real-world examples of what’s more likely to be inherited from parents.21:00 — Heritability’s impact on longevity.21:37 — Pontzer’s discovery of the surprising relationship between physical exercise and calories burn based on his research on a Tanzanian hunter-gatherer community
About AGING with STRENGTH
A no-bullshit look into aging with maximum physical, mental, nutritional, emotional and spiritual strength, from a former New York Times journalist. www.agingwithstrength.com
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