Lessons from ‘Living 40FIED – Building mental and physical resilience for men over 40: Stories of practical wisdom.

By Tamas Finta

This is a perfect book for aging athletes, but the lessons are universal.

It is a set of ‘stories’, really extended narratives, from men who have had a big impact on the science and practice of fitness, who are now learning into the later part of their lives.

The book captures each of these stories in short chapters that are summaries of the wisdom that man has acquired.  That lifelong wisdom is then applied to the later seasons of life, providing a grab-bag of not only acquired wisdom but advice in the form of ‘what are the most important things to consider’ as we live forward.

My recommendation would be to make this book part of a daily routine.  I read a chapter each morning as part of my morning routine.  I found digesting the lessons this way to be incredibly valuable to my daily mindset.

I then went back at the end, before I spoke with Tamas, went through each chapter and took notes.  Actual notes on paper.  This allowed me to not only reinforce the more useful points but also to find where the universal overlaps were.

It is not something you are going to speed read straight through.  Each of these chapters, each of the narratives from these men could be its own standalone treatise.  Each of these men have built careers and lives around their philosophies and this is just a sampling.

Tamas’ area of focus and expertise is the ‘fitness industry’.  Meaning the people who populate gyms, lift heavy things and base their lifestyles around those pursuits.  But, I found the wisdom to be universal across athletic pursuits regardless of whether you’re out on the road or sweating in the workout room.

If you are an aging athlete, you could treat this as a workbook.  Read each chapter and then spend some time integrating the lessons into your own approach.

Hey, who knows, you might learn something.  You might learn something about yourself.

As we would expect, many of the lessons are universal, not just to aging athletes, but to living well.  They also provide metaphors and frameworks to help you remember and internalize the lessons.

So let’s talk about lessons from the book.

First, tricky as it sounds, resoundingly so, every one of these coaches and athletes starts with the mental game.  They don’t dive into techniques and workouts.  They start with the power of your mind.

It starts with the mental game.  How think about challenges is important.  Your ability to reframe adversity to curiosity and positive challenge will bring out the best in you.  This ability to release you’re your doubts and fears and preset assumptions  allows you to accomplish things that you never imagined possible.  It starts with the simple consideration that maybe, just maybe, you are capable of more.

Whether you are just starting or struggling to stay with it, you need to start with the basics.  Forget all the complex, tricky stuff.  Go back to basics.  Natural mvemnets,  core strength, balance, form.  Get the basics right and the rest will come.  Go slowly. Quality is more important than quantity.  Consistency is more important than intensity.  You can’t go from zero to one hundred anymore, you need a more measured approach.  You need to measure different things.  And this seems like common sense but it flies in the face of our cultural pressures.

1. Love your body, don’t fight with it. Become friends with your body.
2. Let go of things and thoughts and truths that are not serving you. It’s ok to change. It’s ok to kill sacred cows.  Stop grasping.  Stop gripping.  It is the grasping and the gripping that create suffering.
3. Embrace serendipity. Be open to what the universe brings you.  Be open to surprises and new things.  Let them in.  Many times we are gripping the wheel so hard in life we don’t notice beatitude knocking on the window.
4. Be mindful of the power of a journey. In our world this may be a big athletic event at the end of a training cycle that will test us.  Journeys and goals focus us.  They force us to live in the present and appreciate it.  But, the event itself, is neither good or bad, is innocent.  It is the meaning you place on it that gives it value and emotional charge.
5. Life is and always has been a three-legged-stool of Spiritual, Physical and Technical – in that order. Don’t start with the technical.  Don’t start with the physical.  Start with the meaning.
6. When confronted with a obstacle and challenge consider embracing it as the way. Dive into that obstacle because it is trying to teach you something.
7. Finally as you age, purpose becomes a bigger part of the equation. Who are you helping?  How are you modeling success in a healthy and positive way?  What will your legacy be?

All of our lives could use more wisdom, and certainly more serendipity.  I’ grateful that Tamas’ book found me when it did.  The universe is funny that way.  Let your questions and curiosity free and the teachers, the guides, the way-finders will appear in your life.

I don’t know why, but that’s how it works.