CrossFit empowers you to reject the notion that aging is a one-way street to physical decline. While changes from aging are inevitable, we refuse to accept the current narrative that you’re destined to lose strength, gain fat, and develop sore joints in your mid-30s, struggle with daily tasks in your mid-50s, and become dependent on others in your 60s or 70s. We believe there’s a better way, and it starts with and ends with CrossFit.
The Ideal Situation
In CrossFit, we define health as work capacity across broad time and modal domains throughout your life. Work capacity, in our context, refers to your ability to perform tasks, sports, workouts, hobbies, adventures, or challenges throughout your lifetime. It’s a measure of your physical fitness and endurance. Quite naturally, your work capacity is very low when you are born. It increases as you age, peaks in your mid-20s and early 30s, and then declines as you age.
Again, we realize the aging process cannot be halted. However, we can attenuate the effect of age-related changes and push them as far into the future as possible with effective, continuous training and proper diet. Put simply, CrossFit training delays the limiting effects of aging.
CrossFit training elevates health markers to well above average, and as we age, they decline at a slower rate, remaining above average at each point on the age continuum. Compared to their sedentary peers, older athletes display increased testosterone, lower blood pressure, increased cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, increased strength, greater muscle mass, greater bone density, better mobility and balance, better spinal function, and better brain function. This combination of health benefits creates what we call a “fountain-of-youth effect,” where older athletes display a level of youthfulness and vitality that does not match their age.
So, the ideal situation for the best aging outcome is to train CrossFit throughout your life. But what does this look like in practice? Let’s break it down.
From birth, we begin to develop essential movement patterns like rolling, crawling, standing, and walking. By the age of 2 or 3, whether in a CrossFit Kids class or just playing, we master fundamental motor skills such as running, jumping, throwing, catching, and balancing. Unstructured, playful activity is critical during these early years, so games are vital to the CrossFit Kids curriculum for young children.
Around ages 10 to 12, it’s an ideal time to introduce basic calisthenics like squats, lunges, push-ups, pull-ups, and rope climbs. The focus at this stage is mastering technique with a full range of motion while gradually increasing reps — think 10 pull-ups, 25 push-ups, or 50 air squats. This is also when we introduce Olympic lifts, squats, presses, and deadlifts using a PVC pipe to cement proper form. These movements build the strength and foundation for future training by enhancing muscles, tendons, and ligaments while boosting overall physical readiness.
As teenagers, once we’ve mastered form and consistency, we add intensity — using heavier loads and performing more work in less time. This careful progression of mastering technique first, followed by consistency, and then increasing intensity will be a guiding principle throughout life, scaled appropriately as we age. During the teenage years through our 30s or early 40s, we build the bulk of our fitness and capacity across all areas of movement.
In our late 40s and 50s, we must prioritize impeccable technique and recovery while still pushing intensity. It’s essential to evaluate how many intense days per week our bodies can handle and how much volume we can recover from. For example, three intense weekly workouts may be optimal compared to the five or six we managed in our younger years. Similarly, squatting heavy once a week, or even every two weeks, with fewer reps near maximal effort, may work better for us. At this stage, recovery practices like proper nutrition, sleep, and stress management become essential for maintaining our fitness.
The approach stays mostly the same as we reach our 60s, 70s, and beyond. The needs of the elderly and elite athletes differ by degree, not kind. As we become the “grandparents,” our training shifts from physical dominance to maintaining independence and functional competence. While we reduce the frequency of intense workouts and scale back volume, we continue to focus on preserving strength, muscle mass, flexibility, endurance, and overall physical fitness to maintain our quality of life. We may modify or eliminate movements no longer beneficial, but the goal remains the same: to stay strong, capable, and resilient.
The beautiful thing about CrossFit is that it can be part of this lifelong journey because it can be scaled, modified, and adapted to meet our fitness needs at every stage. A lifetime of CrossFit training affords the opportunity for tremendous fitness and health and, ultimately, quality of life into our later years.
It’s Never Too Late To Start
As a final note, we must emphasize that even for those who have been sedentary their entire life, prudently adopting high-intensity exercise and following CrossFit’s charter of mechanics, consistency, then intensity will improve health markers and work capacity substantially. Sedentary aging must be avoided at all costs to combat the adverse effects of inactivity. There are substantial benefits to living the life of an athlete, and this is especially true for older athletes who are fighting the aging process. Aging athletes must do everything possible to get started and then keep training to decrease the risks of severe illness and disability.
The aging process cannot be stopped. However, when we look past the effects of being sedentary and making poor lifestyle choices, we see significantly fewer effects of aging. How we age is a function of our choices and the degree to which we continue to develop work capacity. While the best approach is to be as fit as possible at every stage of life with continuous training throughout our lifetime, the next best is to start training now!
Want to learn more about the aging process and CrossFit? Our Coaching the Aging Athlete Online Course is a great resource for coaches and athletes.
About the Author
Stephane Rochet is a Senior Content Writer for CrossFit. He has worked as a Flowmaster on the CrossFit Seminar Staff and has over 15 years of experience as a collegiate/tactical strength and conditioning coach. He is a Certified CrossFit Trainer (CF-L3) and enjoys training athletes in his garage gym.
CrossFit: The Fountain of Youth