I have enjoyed running as a form of fitness over the years. Some years ago, I signed up for some events to serve as goals and committed to pursuing programs to give myself a chance at success. I ran a few half marathons and a marathon. It has been almost a decade since those days, and I continue to run but more so as a fair weather fan. I run a few days a week during the late Spring to early Fall. I don’t run during the winter. I enjoy running when holidaying somewhere warm. I run mostly for some exercise with no formal plan in mind. I hadn’t run in an event for ten years. Our community hosts an annual running event and was celebrating its 25th anniversary after cancelling two consecutive years because of COVID. One of my sons and I decided last minute to participate. I gave the half marathon a go and was surprised with a positive result. I finished first in my age category, fifth overall, set a personal best, and ran the second half faster than the first half. All positives that I walked away from feeling pretty good about.
It dawned on me that I may have a little gas left in the tank and there were improvements still that could be made. Reflecting on the run afterwards I figured there was a minute or so I could have saved by pushing a bit harder during the first half, ten to fifteen seconds I spent slowing down and having a drink at the turnaround point midway and another thirty plus seconds that could likely have been earned by exerting at a higher level over the last kilometer or two to the finish. I also thought that further improvements were possible if I pursued a specific training program to prepare for a future event. In other words, I was motivated to get better and work harder to see what capabilities I could still develop.
I’m sure we’ve all seen the curve charting the steady deterioration of our physical capabilities with age. After spiking during puberty and peaking in our early twenties, we begin the steady decline over time. Our physical capabilities typically trend down by several percent a year accelerating as we approach our 70s and beyond. What starts as a drift sadly shifts to a sharp drop. We’re encouraged to exercise in order to slow this decline with the full knowledge that the decline is inescapable. I wrote in Earn Everything, “Measures such as our V02 max which reflects our cardiovascular capacity start dropping off 3% to 6% per decade from our 20s to 70s and decline at even steeper rates in our 70s and later decades. Our ability to generate muscle offers a similar trajectory. We are able through puberty and into our 30s to make strength gains while our body is primed for building muscle. However, as we age, our body starts to shed muscle mass. This age-related muscle decrease is known as Sarcopenia. This deterioration produces a similar loss as does our VO2. We can lose 3% to 5% of our muscle mass in each decade of our lives from our 30s forward.” This all sounds less than inspiring and sets us up to see dismal decline as our destination.
Yet, after that half marathon, I was faced with trying to hold two seemingly inconsistent ideas at the same time. I knew I wasn’t immune to escaping the ravages of age. I accept that our capabilities decline with time. Nonetheless, I believe that we can improve. We can perform better tomorrow than we have in the past in certain areas. This isn’t hubris or delusional thinking. It’s recognizing that the graph of our decline reflects the trending of our maximum performance capabilities. Most of us aren’t operating anywhere near our maximum capabilities so we can continue to show individual improvements. What my 100% capability may be at 30 is less than that of 20. Yes, my absolute best at 40 was likely to be lower than what my absolute best would have been at 30. However, if I was only working at 70% of my capacity at 30, I can, at 40, 50, and, conceivably, 60 and beyond, outperform what I did at 30. That is, decline isn’t guaranteed. Improvements can still be made. Unfortunately, too many give in and accept the deterioration of our physical capabilities as a given with age. We create a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein we accept defeat, retreat, and, therefore, deplete. This doesn’t have to be the case. There’s growing support suggesting that much of the decline that has typically been considered natural is the result of reduced activity levels. That is, decline isn’t defined destiny. It’s the result of giving up and giving in. We slow down because we slow down. We lose muscle mass and aerobic capacity because we stop trying to develop them or even maintain them. Too many of us acquiesce and rust out from idleness. Instead, we can embrace our agency and fight. We can seek to continue to work hard or, better yet, to work harder than we have in the past. Our goal should be to wear out and not rust out.
We’ve all heard and seen the symptoms that show aging on top of those we’ve noted related to muscle and aerobic capacity loss. There seems to be obvious consensus that we can look forward to the need for reading glasses, bones becoming less dense, skin wrinkling, greying and thinning hair, hearing loss, and even some height being lost as joints compress. Yes, we see these changes with our own vision impaired eyes. We may even be experiencing some of these firsthand. And, yes, there’s plenty of studies that suggest these are symptoms of getting older. However, most of these studies are conducted, as Joe Friel points out in Fast After 50, on normal people. Friel writes, “By ‘normal’ I mean people who are generally representative of our society—many of whom are sedentary, overweight, and unmotivated.” Many of us give up in the face of age and accept decline as natural. We think our life expectancy is much higher than that of our ancestors because we’re somehow healthier. We’re not.
Our ancestors didn’t have the luxury of becoming couch potatoes. They had to continuously push themselves physically to survive. Lower life expectancy of the past was largely the result of the amounts of deaths that resulted during childbirth and the early years of life. These are things that modern medicine and the safety of civilized society have done which has raised our life expectancy. Here’s Friel offering encouragement, “Most of what science ‘knows’ about the indicators of aging probably doesn’t apply to you. … You aren’t normal—and that’s good. You are continuing the active and vigorous lifestyle of our ancestors. You’re an athlete.” Yes, some physical changes are inherent to getting older. However, performance doesn’t have to drop off so rapidly, so early in life. We can defer decline and improve performance well into our deeper decades. It starts with raising our sights to standards set by those living the life towards which we aspire not the average.
As Friel writes, “By looking instead at the race results of world- and national-class age-group athletes, we can get a much better indicator of the limits of human performance and how rapidly the decline in performance occurs with aging.” The data across endurance sports is rich with information. It suggests that both men and women peak performances can be held from their peaks in the twenties well into the forties. Top performance then starts to recede by about three percent a year from 50 to 75 with the decrease accelerating after. Yes, the topline of maximum potential performance does deplete with time. Yet, there are plenty of people deep into their years that are performing physically at levels many of us have never touched. For example, the world record for 70-year-old people in the half marathon (and any other distance) is substantially faster than anything I’ve been able to do while two decades younger or at any point in my life. The bar for potential is much higher for those of us that have yet to come close to maximizing our potential.
The life of Canadian Ed Whitlock offers a great example of how physical excellence can be achieved well into life. Born and raised in England, Whitlock took to running as an athlete during his school years. He moved to Canada working as an Engineer and gave up running for the most part of several decades to take it up again in his 40s. He connected with his childhood competence and raced to success the several subsequent decades becoming a master of Master’s events earning over 36 age-based world records. He ran sub three hour marathons multiple times well into his 70s. Whitlock, at age 82, ran a half marathon under an hour and forty minutes. At 84, he was not only still running marathons but doing so in under four hours. His feats are nothing short of legendary earning him both accolades and awards.
The idea of Entropy is part of Thermodynamics. It suggests that all systems tend to slide towards chaos and deterioration unless active energy is exerted to keep them going. Entropy is considered inescapable. Aging is a form of entropy. Entropy is the consequence of not adhering to the Rent Axiom. If we don’t work to at least maintain our abilities in any area of our life or business, things deteriorate. Leaving things alone doesn’t keep things as they are. Do you have any leather furniture in your home that sits near a window that receives a lot of bright sunlight? If so, has the color of the leather changed over the years? How about the color of your hardwood floor exposed to sunlight? Do you have wood surfaces on the exterior of your home? If so, do these need to be stained every few years to protect and preserve the wood or its coloring? However, as G.K. Chesterton observed, writing in Orthodoxy, “Conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of changes. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must always be painting it again; that is, you may be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.” In other words, to truly maintain the status quo implies effort. Coasting leads to crumbling.
Folk like the late Whitlock aren’t content with letting things slide without a fight. They’re willing to do their part. The well-worn poem of Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” acts as an anthem for many seeking to stave off inevitable decline. The poem was lionized in Oil of Olay ads years ago. The message met the purpose of Oil of Olay’s skin cream in that both were intended as active acts to deny, decry, and defy aging. The first verse of Thomas’s poem offers:
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Entropy isn’t the enemy. It’s good to know that we need to use our abilities or that we’ll lose them. It empowers us to own responsibility for our results. As the Roman poet Horace noted more than two thousand years ago, “Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor.” Decline isn’t destiny. It is largely the result of a choice. If we quit and choose to sit, our status can’t help but slip. One way we defer when we expire is to continue to aspire. We’re either growing or dying. Without effort, entropy wins.
There’s a biblical verse that’s the source for what’s widely come to be known as the “Matthew principle.” Matthew 25.29 reads, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that which he hath.” The Matthew principle is used by economists to offer support for how resources are unequally distributed. Those with resources seem to be able to grow further, faster while those with little, starve and stagnate. It can be viewed either optimistically or pessimistically. If we’re looking at things from the dark side, then where we let things slip, they will slip further according to this principle. That’s entropy. That’s the cost of idling. When we let things leak, the future becomes bleak. However, if we see the Matthew principle from a productive perspective, we can see that where we work to improve, we increase the likelihood of things falling into place. Progress begets more progress. If we start by doing a little, in time we can do a little more. Where we persist our skills and resources accrue.
This is the case independent of age. Moreover, this is the case not just physically but in other areas of our lives. We can get smarter, develop skills, learn, and improve at every stage a long the way. This idea also applies to businesses. No matter how long we’ve been around or how established our industry may be, we’ve got to continue to work to maintain our place. Too many of us allow things like age or resource constraints to serve as excuses which limit us. We set our ceilings that then block our growth. David Robson encourages us, writing in The Expectation Effect, that “The truth is that most of us are tapping only a small part of our potential while a huge reservoir is just waiting to be released.” There’s more we can do. Escape entropy by embracing effort. Work to expand your expectations of what’s possible for you and others.
