A FEW BENEFITS:
1] Boosts Metabolism
2] Burns Fat
3] Super-Charges Hormones
4] Increases Mass
5] Improves Posture
I dunno. It kinda sells itself. And yet I still hear grumblings from older men about the dangers of heavy weight-lifting.
“You’re going to throw out your back! You’ll have an aneurism any minute now! Those hips can only take so much!”
The one thing that stands out for me about older, deconditioned men is there self-loathing.
No matter how much money you have, somebody else has more…not to mention better looks, prettier [and younger] wives, bigger houses, more cars.
It never ends.
You can’t win.
One guy in Aspen, Colorado lamented the fact that his net worth of 200 million paled in comparison to all the billionaires around him.
A new definition of pathetic emerges.
It also bears noting that some of the world’s most famous “serial killers” were wealthy enough to buy Rome.
I assume that guy in Aspen knows them all by their first names.
While life is rich and full when there is a sense of accomplishment, it is a lot fuller when you add friends and loved ones who truly care about you.
The more you get wrapped up in achievement-as-drug, you farther you drift from everything else.
POSTSCRIPT
The REALLY dark side of the comparison game is evidenced in older men of low achievement who play the “beat down” game.
They criticize doers [including their “friends”], finding whatever morsel of perceived vulnerability they can, and then magnifying it a thousand times in blitzkriegs on social media.
I’ve seen this more times than I can count, which is why many experts in the field of human psychology refuse to do “bonding” workshops with older men.
Their fierce competitiveness with one another, coupled with a total inability to explore any degree of vulnerability, makes it an exercise in utter futility.
No wonder women outlive us.
I’ll leave you with this:
Now available on Amazon!
Ballsy, hardcore and bad ass real as it gets.
Print version to follow.
Knock yourselves out, and please review it should you feel so inclined!
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you’re a Baby Boomer, you know all about the ebb and flow of self-confidence.
You may consider yourself “extremely” confident on matters of financial achievement, but on a more personal note, find yourself less than enthused.
It’s all about how it balances out in the end, and believe me, we’re all running the numbers.
So what do men fear most about aging?
1] It’s been my personal experience that most of us fear being old and broke. Not Old. But old and broke. There’s a difference.
My advice to all young guys is to choose your careers wisely, because there will come a day when windfall will become necessary in order to live out your years in comfort, rather than under a bridge.
2] Irrelevance. Yea, irrelevance. And no, not everyone is relevant in their own minds, families notwithstanding.
Men are used to being useful, and when they are no longer working, they die one way or the other.
3] Balding, followed by greying. I know I know. It’s superficial, and besides lots of men shave their heads.
But balding remains on the very top of men’s concerns next to colon cancer.
There are many less than stellar work arounds for this problem, but no matter what you do, the emotional damage is indelible and life-changing.
Some men are blessed with perfect hair. They are the very, very fortunate few…like movie stars who made it to the top without the right last names.
Adding insult to injury, men with perfect hair don’t have to be the most handsome, or in possession of flawless physiques.
This is because the preternatural nature of their everlasting hairlines more than balances the scales.
There is no upside to hair loss unless you have a perfectly shaped “boxy-muscular” head like Jason Statham, which arguably enhances his appearance.
So there is an upside for Jason Statham.
4] The ubiquitous Potbelly, in my view, is far worse than any hairline recession, because a man can actually do something about it without a surgeon or wig manufacturer.
If you can afford to just not give a crap what people think, and live your life in the back woods of Tennessee, fine.
If not, you’ll be the punchline of every joke about aging men.
5] Impotence. When your penis ceases to perform, no amount of money [or hair] in the world will make you feel like a man.
Fortunately for older men, there are ED meds.
Lots of them.
6] Death. Men don’t necessarily fear what happens to them after they die as much as they do what happens to those they leave behind.
This is an irrational thought process, but I actually know men who wonder whether or not their wives are going to start sleeping with the neighbor the second the funeral ends.
Summary
We’re all screwed eventually.
The best we can do is plan ahead financially, work until the day we die, go to therapy to overcome issues with balding [since nobody cares if #1 is in proper order], workout like we did in college, take ED meds when necessary, and come to terms with the fact
that life goes on after we die.
Now you have something to live for.
What you’re looking at is a close-up of Sylvester Stallone’s left arm, wrapped in what appears to be distended tunneling, courtesy of steroids.
It was then shaven and bronzed to set off the highlights.
This is what aging gracefully looks like to many affluent urban men; the same men who berate older women for plastic surgery overkill, but I digress.
Taking testosterone in combination with Human Growth Hormone [HGH] usually starts when a man hits his mid to late 50’s and realizes his endurance isn’t what it used to be.
He may also notice that losing body-fat requires twice the effort and ten times the pain, not to mention the emotional pain of endless dieting.
So he turns to testosterone because on a certain level it works as advertised.
You bleed body-fat while building muscle on half the sleep and twice the energy.
Bingo.
It’s become so “mainstream” I’m sure Prada will soon design cases for all the syringes.
My trainer knows which of his older clients ” juice” and which don’t and then trains us all accordingly.
I happen to be in the minority of men who do not take testosterone, which means I can only train hard 3 days a week for one hour, instead of 6 days for 3 hours a session.
As a result, my arms also don’t look like Stallone’s in spite of the fact that they are still lean and muscular.
As for my abs, they are visible, but not distended and sunken around preternatural ravines.
Remember, steroids build muscle everywhere except for the sexual organs, where they tend to have the opposite effect.
The upside for me is as follows:
1] My body can still produce its own testosterone naturally
2] I don’t need regular blood-work to scan for high PSA levels
3] I don’t succumb to things like road rage in spite of my already passionate nature.
The downside for me is psychological: I am at a disadvantage around the men I train with who recover like teenagers on 4 hours of sleep.
It can be depressing, believe me. I’m walking wounded while they bounce off the walls like rabbits on methamphetamine.
Needless to say, the pressure to capitulate to the testosterone craze allure is constant.
I literally struggle every day to remain sober, this as the cacophony of radio and television ads and infomercials extol the virtues of the needle under the pretense of wellness.
With this as a backdrop, I have a power-lifting meet this July.
In order to exceed my previous records, I not only have to train brutally hard, but even more importantly, brutally smart given my mortal attributes.
At this writing, I’m still on the wagon. But it takes ever fiber of willpower not to indulge just once in the fountain if youth.
Fortunately, the USAPL drug tests, so there’s that.
But I know that time alone will tell whether or not I take the plunge because I certainly can’t guarantee it at this writing.
Stay tuned.
Pierce Brosnan, 61
“For many people, 70 is the new 50 and signifies the quiet revolution that has taken place in longevity”
…………….
Among the many trending narratives of the day is the one about Baby Boomers who refuse to age, as if that’s a bad thing.
Would you want to age “gracefully” if you didn’t have to?
Before you answer this question, allow me to put forth my definition of “graceful aging:”
“The process by which a middle-aged male agrees to accept natural physical attrition in exchange for a gated community in Florida.”
In my view [and I’m not alone] this is akin to suicide in slow motion, otherwise known among my circle as the dragging out of the end to eternity until you can’t remember where it all started.
So no.
I don’t know anyone willing to “let go” unless they’re in a psych ward for clinical depression or dying of colon cancer.
An average man who retired in 2012 can expect to live until the age of 86.2 years, while a woman who turned 65 last year would have 23.9 years still to live on average, the ONS estimates.
That’s a lot of time to “drift.”
In my socioeconomic demographic. men are often in the best shape of their adult lives, working out regularly, eating right, getting medical check-ups on an annual basis, and making damn sure their teeth look better than they did when they were in their 20’s, among other things. Believe me, I could go on.
I might also add to this [because it wouldn’t make sense if I didn’t], that most of the men to whom I’m referring are well-educated, urban folk of an upper income variety.
They tend to be ambitious, successful men who carry these traits with them throughout their lives, which are then shaped and molded by the pressures of big city life.
These are not frumpy men in cardigans and distended bellies.
They’re a lot like men half their age, only richer, wiser…and, in some cases, more mature.
They take their health seriously because they would rather go out in a blaze of glory than to fade into irrelevance and obscurity.
Examples in popular culture alone are legion.
Such men don’t lay down for the next generation not only because they’re not finished with their own, but because the generation behind them represents the lion’s share of the women they date and marry.
If this trend continues, and I see no reason it won’t, the next generation will consider a man of 50 “young” and his wife of 25 age-relevant.
LAUNCH DATE FOR DIGITAL VERSION ANNOUNCED ON MAY, 2015!
PRINT VERSION TO FOLLOW.
From Urban Dystrophy:
“You get back what others think you’re worth, not what you think you’re worth. And unless you can afford not to care, you better care. With practice, you’ll be able to determine your own relative value so you’re not disappointed by things you thought you deserved, but didn’t for reasons you may resent, but better get used to.”
“Most middle-aged men struggling to balance acquisition of wealth with fading relevance feel like characters in an apocalypse series with recurring story arcs.”
“I compete with popular culture every day, on every level, including in my love life where it’s particularly competitive.”
“I once knew a forty-two-year-old pharmaceutical rep that kept a list of mandatory line items prospective “boyfriends” had to meet. It sat on her iPad for easy reference. If I remember correctly, the last count was 22,328.”
“Eventually we all reach a point in life where we can no longer hit on young women without also being hit on by a bouncer.”
“In the old days, men had wives and mistresses. This was considered normal. It was understood that emotional intimacy in men was a sign of weakness, and therefore, if women wanted their men to remain strong and faithful to their marriages, mistresses were necessary.”
“At middle age, the situation becomes ten times worse. Although women are decades older than they were back in college, men still measure them against their 1980 yearbook picture, which is why most of the women they date were born about that time. This same pathology manifests in the perception that men and women age at different rates, even if they technically don’t.”
“Women say blessings are counted by the number of people who give you unconditional love. But, others contend that you still die alone, and that bouncing nickels off a flawless ass is worth the blind faith in miracles.”
We’ve also produced some limited edition t-shirts, should you be interested in brandishing the narrative!
The logo below:
Madonna Louise Ciccone [aka Madonna] was born in Bay City, Michigan on August 16, 1958, which makes her 56 years of age. Her career started in 1979 and since that time she has amassed a fortune exceeding $800 million dollars doing exactly what she wanted to do with her life, which is pretty much everything a human being could possibly hope to do in one lifetime, or 100 for that matter.
The tailwind from her career would be enough to propel most clinical narcissists into old age without the help of a therapist, but not Madonna. No. She demands the world see her the way that it did 30 years ago, in spite if the fact that it is 30 years later.
In light of this, it’s no surprise that she levels charges of “ageism” as if that’s going to somehow guilt-trip her fans into some sort of collective hallucination.
The poor woman just fell off the stage during a comeback performance, for god’s sake. That’s about as bad as it gets for a cultural icon that uses fame the way human beings use blood.
Youth is gone, Louise. I’m sorry. I feel it, too. So does everyone else our age. But we don’t do ourselves any favors trying to be something we’re not. If you want to believe the applause you receive from aging women and drag queens constitutes transcendence, I’m sorry.
I remember seeing Madonna at NYC nightclubs back in the late 70’s. She was unknown, striking, wildly creative, and always blitzing for attention. She leveraged the currency of youth to achieve her objectives when she had it in spades. Some people are fortunate that way. Personal conviction is something most of us have to earn over time.
Nonetheless, after many decades of Madonna being Madonna, her relevance is vanishing. And while in all likelihood she can still fill arenas, the reason has everything to do with nostalgia and nothing whatsoever to do with another successful reinvention.
If she wants to act, let her act. Meryl Streep still does it. If she wants to make a nightclub appearance here and there, maybe belt out an old jazz standard, go for it. Woody Allen has a regular gig at Café Carlyle in New York. It’s all good.
With these thoughts in mind, I regret to say that I can no longer rock my crimson Spandex in the gym, in spite of the fact that I haven’t aged a day since 1979.