Build Resilience, Not Fragility: The Science of Training CrossFit Safely Through Every Decade

You’ve been training for years, perhaps even decades. But does what worked at 30 still work at 50?

Aging is inevitable. Training for it isn’t.

Your body changes, but how quickly it declines depends entirely on what you do about it. Every workout you do today is an investment in your future self by building the strength, mobility, and capacity you’ll need at 60, 70, and beyond. The CrossFit methodology works across your entire lifespan, but your approach needs to evolve with you.

Age-related decline begins subtly and accelerates after the age of 50, intensifying further after 70. Your training, lifestyle, and daily choices compound over time, for better or worse.

Here’s what to expect as you age:

Cardiovascular System

As we age, our hearts and surrounding vessels change. Resting heart rate decreases, and the vessels stiffen, accumulating atherosclerotic plaque. The heart can lose efficiency and weaken, even as it grows larger.

While this may sound alarming, exercise, particularly high-intensity exercise, is a decisive mitigating factor. Active individuals in their 70s can have a VO2 max (a marker of cardiorespiratory fitness) comparable to that of an inactive 20-year-old!

Pulmonary System

Mobility changes to the trunk increase chest stiffness. Many older adults develop thoracic spine curvature, which limits deep breathing. Combined with weakened breathing muscles, this makes breathing more difficult at higher intensities.

Maintaining mobility and engaging in high-intensity exercise helps keep your breathing muscles strong, allowing you to feel your best as you age.

Musculoskeletal System

Muscle mass is a critical longevity factor. While muscle mass declines with age, continued strength training allows many older adults to maintain significant strength and mobility into their advanced decades.

Type II muscle fibers, our fast-twitch, quick-reacting fibers called upon under high loads, speeds, and fatigue, are particularly affected by aging. The common advice is often to slow down, do less, and avoid strain. But muscles work on a “use it or lose it” principle. Without challenging your muscles, you lose the physical capacity that keeps you safe and healthy. Carrying groceries, catching yourself from a fall, and lifting a suitcase all require strength. Effortful strength training helps maintain the muscles you need to move through life safely.

Particularly for women (though not exclusively), osteoporosis risk increases. Osteoporosis decreases bone mineral density to critical levels, making fractures from falls or injuries more likely. High-intensity strength training and impact training are both cornerstones of osteoporosis prevention and management. Strong bones are safe bones.

Hormone Changes: Testosterone and Estrogen

With age, sex hormones decline. For men, testosterone decreases gradually. For women, estrogen levels sharply decline during the menopausal transition (average age in the U.S. is 51), increasing risk for cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and pelvic floor dysfunction. These hormonal changes influence muscle building, reducing hypertrophy and muscle growth.

For women, exercise is a crucial component of menopause management, helping to protect bones and mitigate the severity of vasomotor symptoms, such as hot flashes and night sweats.

The Safest Thing You Can Do

Now that we’ve discussed age-related changes, you may notice a recurring theme: Many factors influence these changes, but there’s one we can control — exercise.

Exercise builds physical capacity. The greater your capacity, the greater your physical reserve. The greater your reserve, the greater your resilience to decline. This is why physical inactivity and sedentary behavior are considered “age accelerators”; they have hazardous and adverse consequences. Exercise, on the other hand, is an “age decelerator.” Exercise is one of the safest activities an aging athlete can engage in.

Here’s the paradox: The activity that feels risky — lifting heavy weights and training at high intensity — is actually what keeps you safe. A strong body doesn’t just perform better; it protects you. When you trip on a curb, your trained reflexes and leg strength help you catch yourself. When you lift a grandchild, your conditioned back protects your spine. When you shovel snow, your cardiovascular fitness prevents a cardiac event. Training isn’t just about fitness; it’s about building a body that can handle whatever life throws at it.

The CrossFit methodology increases physical capacity. The aging athlete is the ideal candidate for CrossFit. They stand to gain the most in terms of quality of life, prolonged function, and prolonged independence. The benefits are numerous and far outweigh the risks.

As many CrossFit athletes celebrate more birthdays, the methodology that served them in their younger years remains applicable, and the benefits may be even more valuable. Coach Glassman’s words from 2002 are increasingly relevant: “The needs of an Olympic athlete and Grandma differ by degree, not kind.”

Aging athletes still need to train strength, power, endurance, and mobility. The kind of training doesn’t change, but the degree does. In the CrossFit community, we call this “scaling.” Francielle Pinheiro, a Level 4 Certified CrossFit Coach, says: “Scaling isn’t about doing less; it’s about doing what’s appropriate without compromising training intent. This means maintaining intensity relative to your athlete’s current capacity across all domains: physical, mental, and emotional.”

Maintaining intensity relative to the athlete is the primary goal, and we can adjust variables within the CrossFit methodology to achieve it.

Non-Negotiables for the Aging Athlete

As we scale programming to our physical, mental, and emotional capacities, specific exercises are non-negotiable for aging on our terms. These movements not only build fitness but also foster independence and resilience against injury.

Deadlift

The deadlift strengthens the posterior chain, which is crucial for activities such as walking, navigating stairs, and crossing curbs. It’s particularly potent for improving bone mineral density and building confidence in lifting weight off the ground. More importantly, it trains the exact movement pattern you need to pick up dropped keys, lift a pet, or move furniture without injuring your back. Many associate the deadlift with a barbell, but we recommend deadlifting various implements (sandbags, odd objects, weighted boxes) that mimic real-world scenarios.

Squat

One of the most significant predictors of independence is lower-extremity strength. The squat provides an excellent stimulus to improve leg strength, ensuring people can get off chairs and toilets independently for as long as possible. One study found that older adults who take longer than 15 seconds to complete five consecutive chair stands are nearly three times more likely to die earlier, and 84% more likely to be hospitalized than those who complete the task faster. Training the squat isn’t just an exercise; it’s insurance for your independence.

Loaded Carries

Life demands that you carry heavy weight; groceries, laundry, a child, or a grandchild. Training your carrying ability contributes to independence in functional tasks while providing numerous physical benefits. Loaded carries also build the core stability and grip strength that prevent injury when you’re caught off-balance. We recommend performing carries at your side (suitcase or farmer), on your shoulder (racked), and overhead. Carries are also a great introductory exercise for individuals who don’t often engage in resistance training because they involve low-skilled movements and are approachable for many.

Clean and Press

As people age, they often live much of their life below their shoulders. The dishes that used to be in the cabinet now sit on the countertop. The hats that used to be at the top of the closet end up on the floor. The carry-on luggage that used to go in the overhead bin gets checked. Building capacity to lift heavy weight to your shoulders and overhead maintains your ability and confidence and prevents the shoulder injuries that come from weak, underused joints. Not to mention the physical benefits of training these power-based movements.

Practical Programming Considerations

While it’s critically important to participate in high-intensity exercise, it’s essential to acknowledge that how aging athletes feel may vary, and modifications may be necessary. Smart training keeps you engaged, and that’s what keeps you safe in the long term.

Here are practical programming considerations to help aging athletes maximize their gym time:

Put work into mobility: Our joints change with age. We can lose range of motion, particularly in the shoulders, hips, and ankles. Those changes alter overhead pressing and squatting mechanics. Maintaining range of motion is easier than losing it and trying to regain it. Use warm-up time to move joints through their full available range before getting under a barbell. Good mobility isn’t just about performance; it’s about injury prevention.

If you’re experiencing range-of-motion restrictions, work on it, but also respect it in class. Pushing into ranges you don’t yet control can create cranky joints.

Reduce volume as necessary: Recovery slows with age. We want to push hard and challenge our bodies, but if we do too much without adequate recovery, our bodies push back, and our performance declines. Overtraining can harm performance and increase the risk of injury. Determine the number of training days that enable you to recover and feel your best, both inside and outside the gym.

Consider adding lower-intensity days: When the clock counts down 3-2-1, we go into beast mode. However, having days with lower intensity helps the body feel good while still making fitness gains. We tend to think more intensity and more time are always the answer, but if you aren’t recovering from that effort, it becomes counterproductive. Strategic recovery is an integral part of safe and sustainable training.

Conclusion

As we all stack birthdays, our training must adapt to our physical, mental, and emotional capacities. What served us well years ago can still benefit us today, even more so. The question isn’t whether training is safe as you age. The question is: can you afford NOT to train? Every workout builds the physical reserve that protects you from injury, preserves your independence, and keeps you capable of living life on your terms. The safest thing you can do as you age is to keep moving, keep lifting, and continue to challenge yourself.

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About the AuthorS

Dr. Dustin Jones, PT, DPT, is a Physical Therapist and nationally renowned educator with the Institute of Clinical Excellence. He focuses on active aging and has extensive experience helping people aged 60 and above achieve what they once thought impossible. He has published peer-reviewed articles and contributed to textbooks in the areas of geriatrics, frailty, and health promotion. He is also the Co-Founder of Hyphen – Physical Therapy and Fitness for 60+.

 

Dr. Christina Prevett, PT, PhD, is a physical therapist and nationally renowned educator with the Institute of Clinical Excellence. She completed her PhD in geriatric rehabilitation at McMaster University, focusing on the use of high-load resistance training to prevent mobility disability and frailty in community-dwelling older adults. She is a national and international speaker in geriatrics and has published peer-reviewed research articles in the areas of geriatrics, frailty, and health promotion.