When you’re in your twenties, you can be fit kind of by accident, can’t you?

Your metabolism is fire. You have no real demands on your time since you don’t have kids. If you eat decently and move around once in a while, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be at a passable level of physical fitness.

I always find advice from young fitness influencers to be so funny. It’s like, of course you’re in shape… you’re in college where you live 15 feet from a gym and have all your meals cooked for you. Finding the time to workout while you get your art history degree must be a real struggle!

Once you start to enter middle-age is where life gets real. Not only are you married and have kids at this point, but your job is much more demanding. You might be working on a side hustle. You have a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed. Add in a body with a bit of mileage and you have a situation where it’s MUCH harder to keep in shape.

Throughout my early adulthood, I always fell into the “fit by accident” group. I was always actually self-conscious of being too skinny for most of my life. That all seemed to change rather quickly. It seemed like I woke up one day around the age of 25 and realized I had to put effort into keeping my weight and strength at a healthy level.

Luckily for me, physical activity was always something I enjoyed and was fairly good at. In my twenties and early thirties, I dabbled in lots of different workouts including Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts, rock climbing, running, HIIT, and weight-lifting.

My fitness level peaked and dipped over the years depending on how seriously I took my routines.

I laugh to myself now, thinking back on the excuses I made for NOT working out then. Excuses like… “I don’t feel like it.”

How young and foolish I was!

Now I am in my forties. And working out and staying in shape is a much different beast!

As most of you guys know, for the past few years my workout of choice has been chopping wood. It’s pretty much the best workout I have ever done and is perfect for a middle-aged body (low impact, no crazy flexibility demands, combines weight with cardio).

In addition to chopping wood, I have also gotten back into weight-lifting over the past few months. This is where I really see the difference in how my body reacts to training now versus when I was younger.

Here are some tips on getting fit and staying fit in your 40s…

#1 – Go slow!

Leave your ego at the door! This is the most important tip of all. When I began weight-training again a few months ago, I was eager to get back to lifting what I was able to lift more than a decade ago.

I went in hot. As many days a week as I could manage. Heavy sets. Progressive overload. I knew that my early progress was “noob gains” but I was happy I was getting back into it. I started very low on all my lifts and was adding weight every workout or every week.

Then things began to slow down. The weight felt really heavy, which was annoying since I knew I was still SO FAR away from where I had been so many years ago. I wanted to jump back to those weights as quickly as I could.

I started to think “This is ridiculous! What’s wrong with me?! Why am I slowing down when I am so far from where I used to be?”

I felt tired. My shoulder was constantly on fire from an old injury. I felt like I was this close to missing reps on sets I could do easily a few weeks prior.

I thought that I needed to train more. Turns out, I needed to train less. Yes, going all-out in the beginning got me to a relatively good place quickly, but that was clearly unsustainable over the long-term. I knew that, but what I was struggling with was the fact that I wasn’t getting to where I USED to be quickly enough.

Silly, I know. “Where I used to be” was after weight-lifting for years. Of course I wasn’t going to just jump right back into it in a couple of months.

But that’s ego for ya. I didn’t want to go slow, but that’s what my over-40 body needed. I needed to back off a few of the lifts and only do them once or twice a week. Yes, progress would be slower than I wanted.

But that’s what training looks like now. For you, don’t get bogged down in thinking about your glory days. That will only make you feel bad. Work out with consistency and intensity, but don’t overdo it, which brings me to my next point…

#2 – Recovery is VERY important.

To get fit at any age, you basically need the stimulus (the workout), fuel (food), and sleep. You’re already doing the workout, so make sure the other two items on that list are dialed in.

For food, make sure you’re getting enough protein even on the days you’re not exercising. I never used to do protein shakes, but I started doing those plant-based, pre-made ones. Honestly, they aren’t bad. Yes, the whey powder is great, but I find it’s so much easier to grab and travel with the pre-made shakes, since I am always on the go, driving the kids to and from school and stuff like that. Two of those shakes a day means an extra 65 grams of protein.

I have always been pretty good about getting enough sleep and that hasn’t changed.

But recovery also means days off. If you’re doing something like heavy weight-lifting, your body needs time to heal in between sessions.

I recently scaled back my volume on several lifts and have found that my progress has actually improved.

Recovery is going to look different depending on your workout.

I can chop wood every single day without any problems, but I need to eat and sleep comparatively more than when I am weight-lifting. On the other hand, I need to be really intentional about warming up and cooling down when I am weight-lifting, which is something I don’t need to worry about with chopping wood.

Basically, you don’t want to see your effort in the gym negated by poor recovery. You’re not in your twenties anymore. You can’t neglect sleep and nutrition and still expect to reap all the rewards from your workouts. At our age, it takes us longer to replenish the tank.

#3 – Listen to your body, but still push yourself.

This is a hard one to get right.

Listening to your body is INCREDIBLY important, as I have outlined in points 1 and 2. You definitely need to be in tune with how you are feeling because your body cannot recover as easily from little tweaks or injuries compared to when you were younger.

If you have pain or something doesn’t feel exactly right, don’t push it.

That being said, don’t be SO ginger with your body that you don’t progress. The only way to get stronger and fitter is to push ourselves outside our comfort zones. Working out is, by nature, uncomfortable.

But there’s a difference between the discomfort of a hard workout and “Hmm.. something’s wrong.”

That distinction can be hard to see. Which is why you need to reread point number one.

#4 – It will probably feel like crap most days.

When was the last time you woke up and felt good? Probably a long time ago!

Does ANYONE actually feel good in the morning? I wake up at the crack of dawn to make breakfast for the family and ferry children to school before jumping into another crazy workday.

I usually go into a workout kind of feeling like crap and thinking that my workout is going to be crap.

But it never is. It FEELS like it will be. And it often feels like crap during. But the workout on the whole is never crap. I am always happy I did it.

But even if I am on point with my recovery, the workout always feels hard. And that’s ok. The fact that it will always be hard brings me to my next point…

#5 – Don’t rely on motivation.

If you only work out when you’re motivated, you’re not going to do it as much as you should.

Back in my young and foolish days, I relied mostly on motivation to work out. Honestly, I felt motivated most days because I didn’t have too many obligations or demands on my time as I do now.

Get this… there was a weight room IN MY OFFICE but there were still some days when I went “Nah, not feeling it today.”

If I could slap my former self, I would.

Getting and staying fit requires consistency. It means doing it over and over and over and over again without fail. It’s not going to feel good most days. You’re going to be tired and busy. Those things are never going to go away. You can’t wait for this perfect, unicorn time when you magically feel like doing ANOTHER hard thing during your day.

So, just put it on the calendar… and do it.

My wife (who made me promise to include in this article the fact that she is not yet 40) has worked out every day for almost two years.

Every… single… day.

Nothing has stopped her. Not work trips. Not vacations. Not illness.

Nothing.

Do you think she is “motivated” every single day? Hardly. But she just does it. She has made it a part of her day. Every day. She doesn’t treat it as something negotiable. It doesn’t rely on her feelings or her mood. There is nothing conditional about it.

That’s why she’s in great shape.

That brings me to my next point…

#6 – Find a way to fit it in.

On the days I would drive my oldest son to school, I had about an hour between when I dropped him off and when I needed to start work. Sometimes I would take a walk in the park or drink coffee and read the news or even sign on early to get some work done. Basically, it was a solid chunk of time where I didn’t have anything specific to do.

That sliver of time is now when I hit the gym.

If I drive my youngest son to school, I use a similar amount of time to chop wood.

Like I said in my previous point, my wife MAKES time to work out every day.

And that’s what you need to do. You need to find a way to fit your workout into your day. It won’t happen by accident. You’re not going to “find” any time in your day unless you scrap other things.

I scrapped my morning internet browsing.

Do me a favor… check your phone’s screen time. What is your weekly average? Probably hovering around 3 hours I bet.

There you go.

Don’t tell me you don’t have time to work out if you are spending hours and hours staring into a little plastic toy.

Your daily obligations and all the demands on your time will never go away. You are never going to be less busy. You just have to make it enough of a priority to carve out the necessary amount of time in your day to make it happen.

Schedule it and then do it each time it pops up on the calendar.

#7 – Find something you like.

When you’re young, you think you need to do certain kinds of exercises in order to be fit. Maybe you feel like you need to be able to run 10 miles or bench 225 pounds or something.

But then you get to be in your 40s and you realize that no one else’s standards for fitness matter, except yours.

Do you hate running? Then don’t run.

Do you hate yoga? Then don’t do yoga.

Are there certain lifts you hate doing? Then don’t do them.

Workouts are more effective when you like them because you’re more likely to do them more and with more enthusiasm.

You’re 40 years old now. You’re a busy man and you don’t have to waste your time doing anything you don’t want to do.

I love chopping wood. So I do it a lot. It has improved my fitness tremendously. Does it make me more capable if I need to do something like run a long distance? Sure. But it doesn’t make me a good runner, necessarily.

And that’s ok. I don’t like running, so I don’t do it. I don’t use running as a benchmark for my own physical well-being. Some people do, and that’s fine. It’s just not for me.

At my age, I do the stuff I like. The stuff that’s fun.

#8 – Let your kids see you do it.

You guys have heard me say a million times that it’s important for dads to be strong and fit. Your kids’ health is largely dependent on YOUR health. If they see Dad exercising… more importantly, if they see Dad ENJOYING and PRIORITIZING exercise… then they will be much healthier throughout their own lives.

If you don’t prioritize moving your body then exercise will seem like a foreign concept to your kids. A kid’s default should be to run around. If they always see Dad just loafing on the couch then THAT will become their default.

Also, fitness helps your style.

I have written before about how fitness is the ultimate timelessness. Whether we like it or not, we look better in our clothes when we have a fit body. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to adhere to any particular body type. It means that there are myriad benefits to exercise, both physical and mental, that enhance how we look and feel in our clothing.

Those benefits are even more important now that you’re in your 40s! At this age, good fitness is not common. Look around. Most people our age are starting their decline into old age. Isn’t that frightening? This is the age where people let their grip on their health slip. And it becomes harder and harder to get it back as the years pass.

You think it sucks now trying to get back into a workout routine? Try doing it when you’re 50 or 60. You’re going to feel a lot better at those ages if you put in the work now.

Getting and staying fit in your 40s isn’t rocket science. It’s just the boring, day-in-day-out grind that pays off slowly but surely. But that shouldn’t turn you off to it because, by now, you’ve realized that that’s how ALL the really special things develop in our lives.

The beauty of working out in your 40s is that you have PERSPECTIVE. You have patience. You have the grit to see things through when a younger man might get more easily discouraged or distracted. So, if you need some motivation to get going on a fitness routine, just know that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just… begin.

Anything is better than nothing.