After carefully considering the 3 feet of the fitness tripod, I came to an unexpected and somewhat unsettling conclusion:there was nothing wrong: I was eating right and getting enough sleep. Moreover my exercise technique had probably further improved compared to 5 years earlier when I could bench-press my record 235 lbs.
The only explanation left was that I was 5 years older.
ACKNOWLEDGING ONE'S LIMITS
I must confess that it took me a while to recognize this very basic truth: as we age, even if we exercise on a very regular basis as I do, peak performance imperceptibly drops. This should sound like a common place not worth mentioning to most baby boomers: we are not as strong or fast as in our 20's or 30's. Yet for a surprisingly large number of mature athletes, particularly in their 40's and 50's, the fact that their physical abilities are bound to decline with age no matter how hard they train is a kind of taboo, or at least something they vehemently deny, no matter what the scientific evidence suggests.
