Forbidden Fitness Knowledge

Why We Need Better Fitness Role Models

My mother’s epiphany didn’t come from me, or from a doctor, or from a YouTube video.

It came from a game of bridge.

She was in her late seventies then, sitting at a green felt table at the community center, shuffling cards and chatting about nothing in particular. When her partner arrived (her long-lost cousin, then in his late eighties) he moved with an ease that didn’t match his age: he laid down his cards with a snap of the wrist, got up to fetch tea, and took the stairs two at a time. My mother noticed how he moved before she noticed how he looked. He looked twenty years younger, but it was the way he climbed the stairs that really caught her eye.

That moment did what all my talking couldn’t. She decided, Damn, I’m younger than him. I want to move like that too. She found out his secret: he exercised every day. From then on, she was much more receptive, following the routines I gave her and adding her own.

My mother was lucky. She had someone to show her what was possible. Most people don’t.

We don’t have the right role models of what it means to grow older and stay fit. Truly fit, in both body and mind. And yes, physical fitness protects the brain; study after study confirms that. Yet our society has quietly accepted a different standard: the overweight, the stiff, the easily winded, with a series of chronic conditions. Even the rich and powerful aren’t immune. Most look more like the amorphous Warren Buffet than the Lex Luthoresque Jeff Bezos.

This has to change.

The tragedy is that the fitness industry has filled the space with nonsense. It sells us the idea that we need huge time commitments, specialized equipment, expensive memberships, and secret know-how that’s usually delivered by a twenty-year-old gym bro with perfect genetics and maybe a chemical boost or two.

None of this is true.

I covered the truth about exercise here: [link].

The real “forbidden fitness knowledge” is simple, accessible, and almost free. It’s something you can build into your life without sacrificing all that time and money. But it’s rarely talked about because there’s not much to sell you. You only find it through your own research, small experiments, and personal epiphanies, like my mother’s, or maybe soon, yours.

Most people don’t even know they have a choice. They assume decline is inevitable. But there’s another option: one that extends life, keeps you agile, and cuts down on the misery of the final years.

Ask yourself: which kind of grandmother (or grandfather) do you want to be? The one who plays with the grandkids, hikes with them, and attends their graduation, or the one they roll out in a wheelchair?

The choices are ours to make. The rest is up to the gods (or chance).

Aren’t you tired of being unfit and aching? Your body can gradually become your cage, tightening around you year by year. Or it can become its opposite: your greatest tool for exploration and being in the world.

If what I’m saying resonates with you and if you’d like to get fit without surrendering your life to the gym then I’m building a course to help you do exactly that. You can get early access and support my work by joining me on Buy Me a Coffee for $10 a month. It’s a small step toward something most people never discover: real, sustainable strength and flexibility that lasts.