the retirement plan no one is making

If you’re a working adult reading this, you probably have some sort of retirement plan (I hope!).

A 401(k), or Roth IRA, or some such thing. Whether you’ve done all the math and have the plan calculated down to a T, or you just signed off on a certain percentage of your monthly paycheck being put into an account with employer match up to 3% for years to come (and haven’t looked at it since), it’s on your radar in some capacity.

And it should be! You’re working hard, towards some retirement date in the future. And on that date, you want to know that you have the financial resources to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Hang out with your spouse and grandkids, travel a bit, play some golf or tennis at the local club, and so on.

But what about your physical health?

When you get to that magical age of 50, or 65, or 70, or whenever you hope to retire by, are you going to have the physical capability to actually enjoy your hard-earned time and freedom?

It’s a question worth pondering. And I think it’s one that isn’t pondered enough. In fact, for most people it’s probably not even a consideration. Finances and the immediate problems of our WORK steal all our attention.

But man oh man, is physical health worth pondering. Essential, dare I say.

The data is clear: as time goes on, muscle mass and bone mineral density decrease. Quality of life declines while prevalence of chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes increase. Aging is a privilege, but it’s accompanied by lots of potential challenges to health—the bill comes due for how you spent your time and treated your body in your younger years.

That is, unless action is taken to prevent these declines in health and function.

I want to propose the idea of a physical health retirement plan. One that starts early, just the way your financial retirement plan did. One that is designed to prepare your body to do all the things you want to in the back half of your life.

In fact, it mirrors just about every aspect of a typical retirement plan or long-term investing strategy.

The physical health retirement plan:

• requires consistent investment and inputs

• won’t yield overnight results

• but will compound over time

My mantra for this physical retirement plan is the same as what they say for investing, or even starting a business: the best time to start was years ago. The second best time to start is now. So regardless of whether you’re 20, or 40, or 60 years old and fast-approaching that work retirement date, it’s time to start planning to ensure you can live life on your own terms on the backside of 65.

So what does this look like in practice?

Here are the central components:

Strength training

Eating a balanced diet

Cardiovascular exercise

That’s it.

These are your weekly investments into your health portfolio. The “basics” that are simple, but not easy. The “dollars” that will compound over decades and build the muscle mass, robust cardiovascular system, bone mineral density, and genuine confidence in your body and abilities, that will carry you through everything you plan to do in retirement.

Regardless of what social media influencers and biohackers might say, you can’t redlight therapy or cold plunge or sauna your way to the fountain of youth at 70. There’s always going to be some fancy trend or supplement or treatment that emerges promising some version of immortality (the new fad/get-rich-quick “IPOs” of the health and fitness space, if you will), but spending time and money on these things is majoring in the minors compared to the returns that will come from the 3 components listed above.

Strength training, eating well, and cardiovascular exercise…these things are going to get you as close as humanly possibe to that fountain of youth post-retirement. They’re going to be the reason you can get down on the floor and play with your grandkids. The reason you can cook it through a bustling airport on your way to Aruba without having to flag down an attendant with a wheelchair or worry about waking up the next day with foot pain. The things that support you playing golf and pickleball, that allow you to garden for hours at a time without your back getting angry at you, and that will literally give you free time in your later years that might otherwise be occupied by weekly doctor’s appointments.

Doing these things will not only increase your lifespan, they’ll also (more importantly) increase your healthspan, as described by Dr. Peter Attia in his book Outlive. Our medical system has done a great job of increasing lifespan (the number of years lived) with modern treatments and medicine, but not so great a job of increasing healthspan (the quality of life during those years, or how healthy and disease-free you remain). And that’s what these investments are targeting: improving your healthspan.

Before I started working as an online PT and coach, I worked in brick and mortar PT clinics for a few years. In several of them, a large percentage of my patient population was geriatric, which I absolutely loved. After seeing hundreds of these patients, I noticed distinct trends. While some of my patients in their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s were doing really well and highly functional in their retirement, the majority were limited in some capacity. They had covered the financial piece of their retirement plan, but they were now unable to fully enjoy the fruits of their labor because of pain or physical barriers. And in 100% of these cases, they were missing at least 1 of the central physical investments described above.

For some, the problems were small: these were people who had been active their whole lives and were relatively healthy, but had simply done too much too soon (e.g. going from working a desk job to playing pickleball 5 days a week, and developed knee or elbow pain as a result of being underprepared for the demands of the sport). In these cases, my task as their PT was to bridge the gap between their current level of function and the demands of the sport, and this involved essentially giving them an express version of the physical retirement plan (in the form of a program and physical activity guidelines) to carry forward post-PT.

For many others, though, the problem was much more systemic and serious. I saw patients who were severely limited in their ability to participate in social activities and even daily life due to chronic disease and pain. People who had grown aerobically deconditioned and weak without consistent exercise in their routine, and now were dealing with years of pain. Our focus in PT wasn’t to get back to sport, it was simply working on being able to get up from the ground or the toilet independently without significant pain or fall risk. My role as PT in these situations was often to simply introduce resistance training and aerobic activity, since these things weren’t currently part of my patients’ lives. The gap between where they were at and general daily function was much wider.

These declines are so commonplace today that we’ve come to synonymize aging with a loss of function. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

What’s great is that, as I said earlier, it’s never too late to start with these health investments, and anyone can make great improvements in their physical function and pain levels (through physical therapy/an exercise program, etc.). What’s even better, though, is starting decades earlier to minimize your chances of getting to a place where you have to take corrective action in the first place.

Regardless of where you’re at in your fitness or life journey, take a moment to think about your retirement plan. And then take a look at your life right now to examine: does it include a physical retirement plan that will allow you to live life on your own terms when you do retire?