Training at sixty
What the work actually looks like after a two-level lumbar spondylolisthesis. The training that took me from bed-ridden at 54 to racing at 60, and what keeps me on my feet now.
The four pillars
Exercise, physical therapy, diet, supplements. Pull any one of them out and the structure wobbles. They are not hacks; they are not optimization. They are the unglamorous daily minimums that make everything else possible at this age. Here is what each one actually looks like for me.
Exercise
The core of the week is strength work aimed at the muscles around my lumbar spine: glutes, deep core, hips, and the posterior chain. The routine is the same three days a week. Active side planks left and right, fifty fist thrusts under the ribs each side. Reverse plank with a left-to-right movement, counting one to one-sixty. Hanging knees to elbows, four sets of twenty. Hip thrusts both sides, three sets of ten. Thirty push-ups. A neck stretch to close. Nothing maximal. Nothing heroic. Everything done with a bias toward control, range of motion, and the ability to get up again tomorrow. I run on the other three days, a 5K each, mostly on trails. If I had to keep only one thing from this list, it would be the running.
Physical therapy
PT is the coach who reads the body. I saw mine in the beginning often enough that it informed my program to get stronger. The specific moves change. The principle does not: every exercise I do has a reason, and every reason traces back to the spine. PT is not a six-week event that ends. It is the beginning that keeps the whole system informed.
Diet
Mostly whole foods. Protein with every meal, enough to actually build muscle at this age, which is a lot more than most men my age eat. Plenty of vegetables, fruit, slow carbs around training. I still drink and enjoy desserts. This is not a diet in the capital-D sense; it is a default. When I travel or eat out, I come back to it. The goal is to keep inflammation down, keep body weight in a range the spine wants to carry, and show up to training fed enough to actually do the work.
Supplements
First, the disclaimer: not a doctor, not a nutritionist. This is what I take and why, not what you should take. The boring basics, every day. Creatine: five grams, for strength and for cognition. Vitamin D3 with K2: the dose that keeps my blood level in range, not a guess. Magnesium at night. Collagen in my coffee. Fish oil with dinner. Nothing exotic. Nothing that promises a miracle. These are the compounds the evidence actually supports for a man trying to build and hold muscle past sixty, and I treat them like brushing my teeth: they happen whether I feel like it or not.
The weekly rhythm
Three strength sessions a week, roughly forty-five minutes each. Three runs, a 5K each, around thirty-six miles in a strong month. Some weeks land at four sessions instead of six. Holidays, family, travel. I don’t make the missed ones up, I just pick the schedule back up the next week. I still enjoy life. Short stretching every day, without exception. The spine likes movement and hates stillness more than anything else. One full rest day. Breath work before bed or in the morning, even if it is only ten breaths. None of this is heroic. What makes it work is that I actually do it, week after week, year after year. That is the secret nobody likes: you cannot skip the reps.
What I would tell another sixty-year-old
Start where you are, not where you wish you were. Lift something heavy enough to matter, three times a week. Find a physical therapist who will actually put hands on you and think about your whole body, not just the part that hurts. Eat like you mean to live another thirty years. Walk every day. Take the unglamorous supplements. Most of all, stop negotiating with yourself about whether today is a training day. The body at this age does not forgive long pauses the way it did at thirty. But it rewards honest, steady work more than most people expect, and I am proof.
The routine: what I actually do at 60
People with the same diagnosis ask me what I do, so here it is, complete. First the frame: I am not a doctor or a PT. This routine is the result of physical therapy used as a teacher, years of my own study, and a lot of trial and error on my own body. It is what works for me, four years after a two-level spondylolisthesis diagnosis. It is not a program for you. If your back is the reason you are reading this, take this page to your doctor or PT, not the other way around.
The shape of the week
My core work runs three days a week. On the non-core days I run a 5k, three times a week, on trails. That is the whole structure. The 5k is not a warmup for something else. The 5k is the workout, and at 60, on trails, after rebuilding a back that put me in bed for eight weeks, it is enough.
The core days
I can do everything, but I focus on 360 degrees of the muscle groups around the spine.
Side planks with motion. Not held statically. The motion is the point for me. My PT started me on the static version and the moving version is where I ended up.
Reverse planks with motion. Hands behind me, hips up, a gentle back and forth sway, counting from 1 to 160. That is about two and a half minutes under tension. I do these because back extensions aggravated my back, and the reverse plank gets at those same muscles without the aggressive movement in my lower back. When I started, I did a minute. The count got longer a little at a time. No equipment at all.
Hanging crunches with rotation. The hang stretches the spine longer while the knee raise loads the deep core. Four sets of twenty. When I started I could not hang for five seconds. I built the hang first and added the knees later.
That hits the 360 degrees reliably. Then I add one-legged hip thrusts, push-ups, and hill sprints. Jog down easy, sprint back up. These all hit the lower back with motion.
One thing I noticed and did not expect: the side and reverse planks with motion activate the muscles around the lumbar spine, where my spondy is, and the activation keeps the pain away. If I skip those, I tend to get a bit of pain. As soon as I do them, any pain disappears.
Where it started
The first exercise in the whole rebuild was a deadbug, and I could not do one. That was 2022. Everything above got built from there, one exercise at a time, one rep at a time, over years. If you are at the deadbug stage right now, that is not the bottom. That is the start line. It was mine.
Running
I run wherever I am. Home in Bellevue, work trips, other countries. There is no week where it doesn't happen, so what's fun is going out and finding a beautiful place to run wherever you woke up. The full-length runs are on the YouTube channel if you want to see the trails themselves.
When I run I think about every foot strike. Land on the ball of the foot, roll to the flat, watch the roots, stay gentle. Gentle and efficient is what I repeat the whole way. That is how I keep the back I rebuilt.
Questions I get about the routine
Why reverse planks instead of back extensions?
Back extensions aggravated my back, so I stopped. The reverse plank works those muscles with a gentler movement, and the sway is gentle on purpose. That is my back's answer, not a rule about yours.
How long did it take before running stopped hurting?
I could run the whole time, even before the diagnosis. The cost was pain after every run. After the diagnosis it took about a year of PT plus my own program before the pain after running stopped. Pain-free walking came first, about a year after the eight weeks in bed.
How many days a week?
Core three times a week, a 5k three times a week. Some weeks life gets in the way and I get less. The routine serves the life, not the other way around.
What about diet and supplements?
They are the other two pillars, and they get their own pages as I write them up. The short version: I keep it to real food and a small, boring set of supplements. Not a doctor, and that goes double for anything you swallow.
Not medical advice. This is what I do, not what you should do. Talk to your own doctor or PT before any of it.