From Peter Chamberlin: For the 40+ crowd, do you have advice on how to think/rethink PRs?

I think this question actually applies to all age groups at the gym, and it is useful for everyone to reframe their perspectives every few years for the sake of their mental health. There is nothing more frustrating than banging your head against the wall when trying to match a personal record from years ago before full time job/having a partner/having kids/having bills/insertwhateverotherdailystressorsyouhave. It is important after a period of time to eventually start looking at your personal records in the context of your life and your training age.

We need to make a distinction between chronological age (the time that has elapsed from your birth to the present moment) and training age (the total time you have participated in physical activity over a lifetime). The reason you want to make this distinction is because irrespective of your chronological age, you can and will make progress picking up a sport or going to the gym. You can thank the fact that everyone is able to benefit from beginner gains within the first 12 months of training. For most, after your first year of training, progress will begin to slow down. Now instead of shaving off minutes from WOD and run times you are shaving off seconds. You are only adding weight to the barbell every several weeks or months rather than every single workout. You will have longer periods of time between personal records. This is normal and expected at any age, chronological or training.

The main difference between two chronological ages is that the 5 year old will have a much higher ceiling of potential picking up soccer than the 40 year old simply because being 5 years old you are: neurologically more plastic (can learn more easily and more quickly), lighter (running and jumping around weighing less than 50lbs is a lot less stressful on the body than ≥150lbs), recover and progress faster (their only concerns are play, food, sleep, and not bills and taking care of another human being), will most likely play through puberty (benefiting from the cascade of anabolic hormones our bodies release), and they are happily unaware of their own mortality (they will think nothing of headbutting a ball careening at them at 20-30+mph).

Now, what do you do when improvement starts slowing down or seems to have halted? Firstly, you should find something novel to train. You have avoided running or longer WODs? Start doing them more frequently. Your 1-5RM has stalled? Change things up with training for 8-12RM until you have exhausted those gains. You can tap into beginner gains simply through sheer novelty of a goal.

Secondly, look at your progress in terms of a new year or new decade. Perform a soft reset of your personal records after every year you age or every new (half) decade that you enter especially if you have a high training age (10+ years). Establish a comfortable baseline near the beginning of this period and make it your goal for improvements over the next year or longer before you perform another reset. This reduces a lot of the mental stress or burden of comparing yourself to the person you were years ago – the person in their physical prime, the person prior to an injury or surgery, the person prior to working 40-50 hours per week or in a more stressful position, the person who did not have a partner or a family, and so on. Frame your training in the now and the current context of your life.