What Stops You From Being Strong?
I completely broke down at the end of 2024. I was training, losing weight, looking good — but mentally I was fried. So I broke. And then physically, for a few months, I lost everything. Down to 75 kg. Muscle mass gone. I felt it.
My gut went first, then my sleep. I didn't need research to know these things are connected — I felt it in my body long before I read it in a paper.
After a few months, someone who loved me pushed me to go back to the gym. Even 50 minutes of light weight training — I felt better. Like this machine, the body, was restarting. Slowly.
That's the irony nobody tells you: you lose it so quickly, but rebuilding takes so much time.
After 50, you lose 1-2% of muscle mass per year without intervention. After 60, it accelerates. They call it sarcopenia — the silent disappearance of the muscle you assumed would always be there. It is not a rare condition. It is the default trajectory.
I realised this around 2016, when I started working with a personal trainer and understood how important it is to work not just on strength but on mobility, flexibility — the full system. Your body is not forever, but your brain needs it to keep going.
We all die. The question is: how long before you die is the quality of your life gone?
I hope it's a few seconds.
Now I train three days a week. Weights. With every session I get stronger. I feel how the joints start moving, get that vital lubricant to do more and stay healthier. It's like recharging a battery.
Every lift is a pension investment. Not just money in the bank or in stocks — every rep is a deposit into the account that matters most.
Look at Nassim Taleb doing deadlifts — the intellectual who takes his body as seriously as his ideas. Look at Simone Biles, who walked away from the Olympic floor when her body told her something was wrong, and came back stronger than ever — because she listened. These are people who treat the body as a partner, not a servant.
Nobody else can do the work for you.
Sources
- Sarcopenia and age-related muscle loss (1–2% per year after 50): Alfonso J. Cruz-Jentoft et al., "Sarcopenia: revised European consensus on definition and diagnosis," Age and Ageing, Vol. 48, Issue 1 (2019).
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb — author of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Random House, 2012).
- Simone Biles — withdrew from multiple events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (2021) due to the "twisties," returned to win bronze on balance beam, then dominated the 2024 Paris Olympics.
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