What Stops You From Being Strong?
I completely broke down at the end of 2024. I was training, losing weight, looking good — but mentally I was fried. So I broke. And then physically, for a few months, I lost everything. Down to 75 kg. Muscle mass gone. I felt it.
My gut went first, then my sleep. I didn't need research to know these things are connected — I felt it in my body long before I read it in a paper.
After a few months, someone who loved me pushed me to go back to the gym. Even 50 minutes of light weight training — I felt better. Like this machine, the body, was restarting. Slowly.
That's the irony nobody tells you: you lose it so quickly, but rebuilding takes so much time.
My father is 83. Mind fully alive — still teaching, still writing, still on television. But the muscles are gone. His doctor told him: if he falls one more time and snaps something, there's not much to operate on. The muscle mass is gone.
He read so many books, but he could have lifted them too.
After 50, you lose 1-2% of muscle mass per year without intervention. After 60, it accelerates. They call it sarcopenia — the silent disappearance of the muscle you assumed would always be there. It is not a rare condition. It is the default trajectory.
My mother is losing her mind. Dementia. But when I take her walking outside — walking on uneven ground — the brain wakes up. It fights the dementia and says: not yet. Like that moment in the Tolkien films where the king is taken by the dark power and then the spell breaks and suddenly he looks normal again. Her eyes get lively and they see the world.
You see the human power in action.
And here's what nobody talks about: almost everything we know about preventing muscle loss and frailty was studied in men's bodies. Only 8.8% of resistance training studies focus exclusively on women. The guidelines for aging women are essentially men's guidelines, downsized to fit a body they never bothered to study. Dr. Stacy Sims, an exercise physiologist who has spent her career on this, puts it simply: "Women are not small men."
Women's bodies are more complex — just think about hormones that men don't have. The drop in estrogen at menopause isn't a slope, it's a cliff, and that's exactly where muscle loss accelerates fastest. Yet that is the least studied terrain in the entire field. We have optimised our understanding for one body — mostly male, mostly white — and applied it to everyone else. We should be doing the opposite: study the complex case first, and let what we learn improve everything.
The fitness industry has come a long way — more inclusive, more informed, more diverse than it was a decade ago. But the stereotypes still live in people's heads. Women who think lifting will make them bulky. Men who think yoga isn't for them. Years ago yoga was "a women's thing." Now it's clear it's for everyone. The same shift needs to happen with women and the weight room — and it's happening, but slowly, because the research hasn't caught up, and the default image of strength is still built on a male body.
Three bodies. Three stories. One family. The thread that connects them: nobody else can do the work for you.
I realised this around 2016, when I started working with a personal trainer and understood how important it is to work not just on strength but on mobility, flexibility — the full system. Your body is not forever, but your brain needs it to keep going.
We all die. The question is: how long before you die is the quality of your life gone?
I hope it's a few seconds.
Now I train three days a week. Weights. With every session I get stronger — not bigger, which matters, because many people think lifting makes you bulkier. It doesn't. I feel how the joints start moving, get that vital lubricant to do more and stay healthier. It's like recharging a battery.
Every lift is a pension investment. Not just money in the bank or in stocks — every rep is a deposit into the account that matters most.
Look at Nassim Taleb doing deadlifts — the intellectual who takes his body as seriously as his ideas. Look at Simone Biles, who walked away from the Olympic floor when her body told her something was wrong, and came back stronger than ever — because she listened. Look at Stacy Sims herself — not just a researcher but a triathlete who lives what she studies. These are people who treat the body as a partner, not a servant.
If I could sit across from someone — 55, successful, starting to feel their body slow down but too busy or too proud to do anything about it — I'd say this:
There is no easy way. And the exit is clear. But why not enjoy the journey and feel good? Happiness doesn't come from nothing, or from being idle. It comes from putting in the work and struggling. Every real artist who left something profound will tell you — struggle, striving, is what it takes to be a good artist.
Same for your body.
Taking care of yourself is the most profound work you will ever do. Nobody can do it for you. No one knows you like you do. No one feels what you feel. It's a conversation with yourself that might be uncomfortable to have — but it's the most important conversation you will ever have.
So love yourself. Speak to yourself. Build yourself. Grow.