Be the Fittest Man on Earth (inYour Age Group)
Ron Mathews 51 CrossFit athlete and A-List coach
Mathews, who co-owns Reebok CrossFit Lab in LA, wasn’t involved in the sport of fitness until he was 41. In five CrossFit Games, the Masters athlete has finished no lower than 11th, winning the 45-49 division in 2016. One of his clients, actor Joe Manganiello, told MH that if there’s a fountain of youth, “That guy’s got it.”
When you’re an athlete in your forties, you start to have issues that you didn’t have in your twenties. Now, I have arthritis, scar tissue and bone spurs. It’s normal wear and tear, but it does make getting in shape – gaining mobility, especially – a lot harder. Developing my stamina took years. I was always a short-burst athlete – football, track – working intensely for short periods, with rest afterwards. That’s not CrossFit. You have to be able to work at about 70% for a long period. It took years to develop that. You have to get over the mental hurdles. It’s not that you can’t do it; it’s that you don’t really want to. Two or three days a week, I do old-school bodybuilding. Lateral raises, chest flies, curls – all the movements I fell in love with, and that I got away from when I was competing. It’s kind of what I do for my clients: give them enough dabs of CrossFit to keep their metabolism fast. But for most of them, the end goal is: “To take off my shirt and look good.”
If you don’t lift correctly, you’ll hurt yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing CrossFit or yoga. If you don’t have good posture, something will take too much load. Those issues tend to show up quickly in CrossFit, so people spend more time working on mobility and movement patterns. It’s what I’m getting more into as I get older.
I’m finding there’s not much of a drop-off as I get older. It’s more that
I’m just too busy to find the time to train. It’s not easier when you own a gym – it’s way harder. Do you want to stay at your job for an extra two hours a day?
I look better now than I did when I won the Games, and better than I have in a long time. I’m crazy ripped.
“I find there’s not much of a drop-off as I get older”