If Age Has Ever Been Your Excuse, This Book Is for You

There is a book I want every person who has ever used age as a reason not to try something to read. Not "add it to the list." Not "sounds interesting." Actually read it, because it will light something up in you that the culture has been quietly trying to dim for years.

It's called Gnar Country: Growing Old, Staying Rad by Steven Kotler. I referenced it last week and how it connects to flow states and deliberate practice. What I didn't tell you is why it resonated immediately with me personally.

I grew up with someone who was already living this formula before Kotler ever wrote it down. Before anyone called it peak performance aging or ran it through a lab. I watched it every day growing up and assumed, for a long time, that it was what aging looked like for everyone. I soon learned that my Dad had taken the path less travelled with aging! At 78, now 79 he joined Chalk Dog CrossFit (many of you know my Dad, Ted, and my Mom, Bev, from the 6pm), so he could enjoy his main focus, riding motorcycles (picture above), longer.

Turns out it's also what the science says is possible for all of us, if we're willing to stop believing the story we've been told about getting older.

The man who never got the memo:

Nine weeks ago, my dad broke his tibia. It was very frustrating because he had been training hard for the grueling 3 day motorcycle event and was anxious to see what the addition of CrossFit would do for his performance. Unfortunately on day one of 3, his leg met an immovable object and that ended his weekend at the British America Cup.

This week, he did single-leg plyometric jumps.

He's back in the gym. He's not "taking it easy for a man his age." He's just training, and trying not to get beaten by my Mom!

The lie at the center of everything:

Kotler opens by dismantling what he calls the "long slow rot theory," the deeply embedded cultural belief that aging means inevitable, irreversible decline. It traces back to Sigmund Freud, who in 1907 wrote that people over fifty were "no longer educable." Too rigid. Too slow. Done learning.

Freud then spent the next two decades writing some of the most influential work of his career.

The irony would be funny if the idea hadn't done so much damage. Because we absorbed it. It shows up as well-meaning advice, as "realistic" expectations, as the quiet voice that says maybe this isn't for you anymore. And according to the research Kotler cites, that voice doesn't just feel limiting. It is measurably, physiologically shortening lives.

The Ohio Longitudinal Study on Aging found that people with a genuinely positive mindset toward aging lived an average of seven and a half years longer. More impact than losing weight. Equivalent to quitting smoking. From mindset alone.

"Aging is a mental event as much as a physical process. The wrong belief about what's possible doesn't just limit you. It takes years off your life."

What the brain actually does after 50:

Here is what most people never hear, because the rhetoric is so loud about what we lose that it drowns out what we gain.

The brain, properly trained and challenged, doesn't just decline in the second half of life. It develops. Genes that only activate through lived experience begin to fire, adding genuine depth and wisdom. The brain learns to recruit regions it underused in earlier decades, more than compensating for what does decline. And between ages sixty and eighty, both hemispheres finally sync at peak capacity, a level of whole-brain integration that simply isn't available to younger people.

Kotler leans heavily here on the work of psychiatrist Gene Cohen, who spent his career as the godfather of peak performance aging. Cohen's research showed that the skills most in demand right now: nuanced thinking, empathy, big-picture problem solving and creativity don't peak in your twenties. They come online fully in the second half of life. Not despite age. Because of it.

The catch is that none of this is automatic. These are use-it-or-lose-it capacities. Stop challenging your brain and body, and you lose them. Keep showing up, keep doing hard things, and you keep building them.

The formula that CrossFit already nails:

This is the part that made me want to drag every one I know into CrossFit!

Cohen's research identified two mechanisms that each produce measurably positive health outcomes in older adults: a sense of mastery, the feeling of getting better at something and meaningful social engagement with a group. Both matter independently. But when you combine them, the effect is compounded. Cohen built his entire Social Portfolio framework around making sure people have both, and have had both long before midlife.

Getting better at something, inside a group that shows up with you.

I don't know a better description of what happens at Chalk Dog every single day.

Kotler takes this further, pointing out that social, challenging activities are also the most powerful triggers for flow states, and that flow itself is one of the greatest defenses we have against cognitive decline. It generates feelings of mastery and control that literally boost immune function and build new neural pathways. It is not a side effect of training well together. It is a mechanism of staying healthy and sharp for decades longer than the culture thinks is possible.

If you have ever finished a hard workout and thought "I could not have done that by myself," that's not a small thing. That is exactly the formula working exactly as the science says it should.

Your version of gnar:

Kotler's experiment was park skiing at 53. My dad's is training for next year's British America Cup and The CrossFit Open. Yours might be your first rope climb at 55, or adding weight to the bar when staying comfortable would be so easy, or walking through our door at an age when everyone in your life thinks you should be winding down.

The book doesn't ask you to be reckless. It asks you to stop handing age more power than it has earned.

You are not too old. You are, at worst, undertrained for where you want to go. That's fixable. Let's fix it together.

Both books are in the Chalk Dog lending library

Gnar Country: Growing Old, Staying Rad · Steven Kotler

The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain · Gene Cohen

Grab one next time you're in. Read it. Come tell me what you think.

Key Takeaways:

The "too old" story is scientifically wrong and measurably harmful. Stop telling it to yourself.

The brain develops real new strengths after 50, but only if you keep challenging it.

A positive mindset toward aging adds 7.5 years to your life. That's a 20-year study, not a motivational poster.

Mastery plus community is the formula. Cohen proved it. CrossFit runs it every day.

Find your gnar. The hard thing you've been putting off because of your age? That one. Go get it.

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