Fitness For Life

Fatherly’s Guide to Fitness

Even for the most dedicatedly athletic among us, the ones who never waver, who don’t have cheat days, who think nothing of sacrificing fun to get stronger or go faster, there comes a day where we just can’t improve our time or add more weights. Personal bests and competition are motivational — when you’re kid-free and fit. But when you don’t have the time or drive to be at your physical peak, what then?

It’s time to reframe the idea and purpose of fitness. It’s not a hellbent dedication to one routine or a set of metrics or to beating the competition. It’s about embracing maintenance and the mental game. Pushing yourself to take good care of yourself, to forget training punishingly hard and find your forever fitness instead.

To get you started, we have dozens of workouts to try, many of which can be knocked out quickly and at home, and we have hundreds of moves to perfect over time. We have what you need to physically maintain – but we also have tons of inspiration to help you move forward into the mental game, to guide that journey, from the purely physical, to the longer, more interesting game, from merely awesomely ripped to strong, resilient, and happy: forever fit.

“I want to surf better tomorrow. I want to surf better in 10 years. When I’m 50 I want to be a better surfer than I am now — for me it’s a lifelong journey.”

— Kelly Slater

Tracking
The Strava Strain

The hugely popular, addictive fitness app that turns every run into a race is great fun — until you get hurt.

by Emilia Benton
Ariela Basson/Fatherly; Strava, Getty Images, Shutterstock
Fit After 40
Finding My Forever Fitness

Personal bests and competition are motivational — when you’re kid-free and fit. At a certain point, it’s time to give up the fighting spirit. What then?

Ariela Basson/Fatherly; Getty Images, Shutterstock

“I don’t know why but the older you get, the busier you become.”

— Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

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