The weather is warming up, days are getting longer, and activity levels are rising. Longer adventures, multiple sport days, and road trips can leave your body feeling less like it did at 18. You might notice it when you stand up after a long drive, take your first steps in the morning, or head out for a hike after sitting at work all week. While it’s easy to think, “I’m just getting old,” that isn’t necessarily the case. Stiffness and achiness aren’t always signs that something is wrong. More often, they’re signs that your body is asking for something to change.

Stiffness often develops because we’ve spent hours in the same position. Muscles haven’t been asked to work, tendons haven’t been exposed to load, and joints haven’t moved through their full range of motion. This is especially common for people who sit for long periods. The glutes become less active, the hip flexors stiffen, and the shoulder blades provide less support for the neck and shoulders. If you repeatedly go from sitting all day to performing at a high level, wear and tear can accumulate. Tendons need both bouncing and sustained loads to stay healthy, and while daily life keeps us moving mostly in straight lines, sports demand rotation. A simple 10-minute routine that activates muscles, loads tendons, and incorporates rotation can help prepare your body for the activities you enjoy.

Taking Notes:

While tendons and ligaments become less adaptable with age, that doesn’t mean you have to accept that fate. Professional athletes use travel routines to recover from long periods of sitting because even elite bodies respond to inactivity. Tendons are a little like rubber bands. They work best when they can shorten, lengthen, and spring back efficiently. Long periods of sitting can temporarily reduce that responsiveness. The good news is that tendons adapt remarkably well to training. With the right amount of movement and loading, they become stronger, more resilient, and better able to store and release force. However, just like professional athletes, you’ll still benefit from warming up before activity.

If you’d like to learn more about tendon health and athletic performance, check out the linked podcast. It explains much of the science that guides modern tendon rehabilitation and performance programs.

Outlook:

Finding a series of movements that addresses your deficits and makes you feel good can help build longevity. It also provides an opportunity to check in with your body and recognize when you’re having an off day. The goal isn’t to move like you’re 18 forever. The goal is to stay adaptable, resilient, and ready for the activities you enjoy. A few minutes of intentional movement each day can go a long way toward making that happen.

Stiffness isn’t always a sign that you’re getting old. More often, it’s feedback. Listen to it, respond to it, and your body will continue to reward you for years to come.

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As lifelong athletes, we build a lot of skills—reading wind, finding good snow, navigating terrain. One skill that doesn’t get talked about enough is the ability to listen to your body, also known as interoception.

Interoception is your awareness of how your body feels and functions—knowing when you’re ready to push and when you’d benefit more from a lower-intensity day. This is key to feeling good long-term. The body isn’t meant to operate at its limit every day. It can—but that’s more like survival mode, and it often leads to energy crashes and unnecessary wear and tear.

Your body isn’t the same every morning. Stress, sleep, illness, and even increased sitting all play a role. When you adjust your training to match your current state, you catch small issues early and prevent bigger problems. Exercise shouldn’t consistently feel painful—movement should generally make you feel better. Sometimes your body’s signals are obvious, like lingering soreness or poor sleep. Other times they’re subtle, like a small ache that comes and goes. Both matter.

Taking notes:

There are many ways to track workout intensity—heart rate, time, watts, or distance—but one of the most useful tools for building interoception is Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). This is a personal scale from 1–10, where 1 feels like little to no effort and 10 is maximum effort with nothing left to give. What makes RPE powerful is that it’s entirely your own and can’t be compared to anyone else.

Start by simply asking yourself, “How hard did that feel?” Then repeat the same workout on a different day and notice whether it feels the same or different. You might be surprised—one day a heavy back squat feels easy, and another day that same weight feels like a max effort. That’s interception in action. Training this awareness allows you to adjust in real time and build true longevity. This podcast does a great job of describing how you can train interoception and use it to guide program movements and intensities. While having a professional design a training program is the most efficient way to progress, you are the expert of your body and should be making the final decision. Most programs are written as if your body operates like a machine—but it doesn’t. If your plan calls for a PR day but your body feels off, it’s okay to adjust. Move the PR, shift the focus, and adapt. No program should be followed blindly.

Outlook:

Moving forward, challenge yourself to check in with your body more often and notice what signals it’s sending. Maybe your achy back needs five minutes of gentle mobility at the end of the day, or your sore shoulder needs more stability work to keep up with your lifting. Small actions matter—five to ten minutes of intentional self-care can make or break your month. You just have to listen to it.

Winter is moving forward and the days are getting longer again. While winter can sometimes bring a bit of hibernation, it can also be a great time to shift your workout focus toward complex movements and plyometrics. As we move out of that slower season, our goals can start shifting back toward building strength and endurance.

This means your workouts should begin to push your boundaries a little more. By the end of a session your muscles should feel worked and tired. Harder workouts, however, require intentional recovery. That might mean building in rest days or alternating the muscle groups you train. Muscles grow by being challenged during workouts and then given time to rebuild. Rest days can be difficult for people who like to stay active, but following a plan helps your body adapt to harder efforts.

Taking notes:

Many lifelong athletes already know how to work hard. At some point though, working harder alone stops producing the same results. To keep improving, you have to start working smarter. This is where my concept of purposeful movement comes in. You don’t always need the hardest or longest workout for it to be beneficial. Everyone has different needs, and every season brings different challenges. Longevity comes from recognizing those changes and adjusting accordingly. That requires self-awareness and the ability to look back and see what inputs led to your current results.

Katie Hardie speaks about this idea well in this podcast. Her specialty is nutrition, but she also has a fitness background. She focuses on helping people find the nutrients their body needs to thrive. I think about longevity in exercise the same way. Instead of nutrients, we’re identifying the movements your body needs guidance in so you can continue to feel strong long term. It’s about putting quality and intention behind your habits.

Outlook:

As we move forward, we will begin applying progressive overload to training. This means gradually adding 1–2 harder workouts per week.

That could look like:

• Adding an extra set

• Increasing weight slightly

• Adding a hill to a run

• Pushing your pace for short intervals

The goal is to ease into pushing our boundaries so the body adapts without unnecessary setbacks. By gradually increasing intensity now, we set ourselves up for the biggest strength gains in late spring and early summer, right when we want to be ready for long days outside.

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Two weeks into February and it should feel like deep winter, but this year feels a little different. Normally, I would be going to the gym less to make sure I have high energy for the mountain. Currently, I’m keeping my workouts consistent to maintain strength while I’m skiing less. I am prioritizing mobility and plyometrics so when I do get on skis, I don’t feel stiff and can keep up with the unpredictable snow and terrain. Because I built up my strength in the fall and early winter, it’s not necessary to keep increasing weight now. I need to sustain my strength and practice using it in multi-directional ways.

Taking notes:

Aches and pains can feel alarming, but not every alert means structural damage. Pain is more like your body’s alarm system. Sometimes it’s warning you about real tissue stress, and sometimes it’s just saying, “Hey, we weren’t ready for that.” Long days at a desk, a sudden jump in activity, or moving in ways your body hasn’t practiced lately can all set it off. The sensation is real, but the solution isn’t always complete rest. Often it’s gradual exposure, better movement options, and building capacity. Learning how to listen to your built-in warning system is the best way to decrease the chances of true damage in the future. I recommend this podcast if you want to learn more about pain science.

Outlook:

The main thing to focus on in the coming months is perfecting your snow dance. Maybe the snow gods will bless us with bountiful spring skiing. In the meantime, keep up with mobility, plyometrics, and sustaining strength so you’re ready for whatever Mother Nature throws our way. You can do this by keeping 2–3 mobility moves and 1–2 plyometric drills in your weekly routine so you’re ready when storms roll in.