I almost called this Growing Pains, but thats not really what this is about.
So, here it is, I haven't had any major crashes that have injured my body,(other than the bike crash with broken ribs 6 years ago) but I've had a few tweaky things happen, like a double eject in a powder pile with a little extra streaaaaaach of my calf muscle. I've also extended my arm a bit too much during a "save" and feel an extra pain in my elbow.
I'm finding a twinge in my knee from time to time and my hip aches, (which I relate to the LLD and lack of lift in many of my shoes)
Is this all a compilation of aging and stuff you just have to deal with, or is there a way to eliminate these aging pains? 
I can only imagine how much the young guns who've had serious injuries are going to be feeling it when they're my age, considering that I haven't really beaten my body up like they have.
Tricia,
I read you post, glanced at a few others and decided too much to read so I apologize if this has been stated already. Sorry this is so long.
To the part in bold. Yes, yes and yes.
I will preface the following with I suck at following my own advice as well as I should, but I try to follow it. Like most, life keeps getting in the way. This is what I have figured out, much of it the hard way and almost all of it I wish I knew 20 years earlier.
As far as aging, I think we do start feeling it more but for most of us, it means, or at least could mean, a few more stretching exercises and a longer warm up and it takes a bit more time to get up from sitting on the floor for some reason. I can swim a mile, lift weights, do yoga, alpine race, do a 45 minute workout at Title Boxing (8 rounds of hitting the heavy bag) and still when I go to get up from the floor, all I can think is "You old f***. Get up already!" It doesn't hurt. Just takes a couple extra moves and a little more time to achieve it. Maybe this is my comeuppance for the life I've lead and impolite things I said to older people when I was younger.
Like anything in life, it isn't what happens that defines you but how you deal with it. You can go down quietly or fighting. I've chosen to fight. The strategy for this fight is to stay in front of it. Eat right, take care of your entire body all the time (not just when something hurts) and get your mind right. I suck at all three of them. Dream about having Oprah money so I can just workout and meditate all day and have a personal chef that only serves me healthy food and always pairs the wine right
I'm guessing the "Younger Next Year" book has been brought up. If not, give it a look. Some folks don't like it. Mostly it seems to be the woman I've talked to about it that don't care for it. Could be that the first one was written for men and they then modified a version for women, but it was still written by men. Not sure. I could also be that it's the same phenomenon when people want to quit smoking but they aren't ready to. They don't want to smoke but their desire to have a cigarette is stronger than their desire to quit, so no matter what they do, they go back to smoking. If someone wants to be healthy, but isn't ready or willing to spend time everyday working at it and not eating crap, they won't improve their health.
Anyway, I think the way to "deal" with it is to not accept aging at face value. Strive to be the exception. Strive to be the person that people look at in the future and say, "I hope I can still do that when I'm (insert age)". You have to temper this with yes you can do this, but you have to be reasonable. If you aren't 20, you shouldn't think you can perform or recover like you could at 20. There is a reason in the WC mid 30s is considered old. Even in the military, I think it was at 46 y/o you became a non-combatant. Too old and slow to endure the rigors of combat. I retired at 38 y/o and they called me "pops" and "grampa" and I was struggling to keep up even though I was in great shape. One day it hit me that as I was struggling to keep up after a good nights sleep that most of the Marines I was trying to keep up with had been out partying the night before and were hungover. Ouch! 6 months later I was retired.
My mistake was accepting this. I didn't quit on myself and stayed in fairly good shape, but I accepted being over the hill and moved on. What I could have done was come up with a new strategy. There were a few other reasons to get out that would have driven me to retire even if the physical aspects weren't getting to me, so the outcome of retiring would have been the same, but my mental outlook had shifted. In my head (at the time), I was officially old. Don't do that.
I say don't do that because once I retired, which really means go get another job so you can afford to feed your family, I joined the civilian work force and enjoyed aging. I kind of sort of worked out, but learned to love all the free pastries and donuts that corporate life brought. Since I was no longer being graded on my physical abilities but only mental, and many of the people I worked with were in waaaaayyyy worse shape than me, I felt I was still ahead of the curve. As things got harder to do and I became chubby, I kept telling myself, "that's part of aging - stay the course." I couldn't have been more wrong. Injuries aside, how you feel is directly related to how much effort you are willing to put into feeling well. This goes for your mind as well as body.
As far as dealing with the aches and pains, I found that medicine should only be used temporarily. I take motrin when I have to because of an injury or for some reason, I just don't want to deal with whatever ache or pain that day. Usually it's because I'm doing a clinic or an exam and need to perform well. For the rest, as long as I do my daily yoga and now and again through the day take a moment or two to address something, I don't usually need meds. When I first retired, I was getting two to three migraines per week. I was living on some pretty strong medicines. Taking care of my body has kept me migraine free for over two years and the five years before that I probably only had one or two per year. Yoga and meditating are the biggest contributors to that. I side dose of wine seems to be beneficial too. I had spent years on some pretty strong drugs and were times my wife couldn't wake me in the night because I was so out of it from the meds. Not the way to live.
I can't say enough about PT. I've been in this body for 58 years and every now and again I'll be at PT and they'll tell me my movement pattern is wrong. WTF! How can I not know how to use my shoulders after having them for so long? Or as I've found out the hard way, things I thought were normal aging aren't and was told "No. At your age, you should still be able to do this."
That is also why I say to not accept aches in pains as part of aging. Those oddball aches and pains creep in slowing but surely. Next thing you know a certain movement hurts and you don't know why. Must be aging, right? In some ways it is, because they seem to only happen as we age, but that doesn't mean we should accept them. I would recommend a functional movement test by a PT certified to do one. You have to peel back the onion a few layers and get to the root cause. Then you can build it back to (hopefully) being pain free. This by the way is no easy task, or at least hasn't been for me. I have to work at it daily.
One thing is for sure; aging is high maintenance. Even though, still beats the alternative
Art Linkletter was right. He wrote a book called "Old Age Is Not For Sissies". Granted it doesn't talk much about the physical aspects of aging, but the title is still correct.
Then there is dealing with old injuries and abnormalities. Those seem to require special attention. They can limit us, or cause us to compensate, shift direction or maybe even pick a different sport, but they should never ever stop us.
Sorry this is so long. It has actually been therapeutic for me and you'll find out why in my next thread.
Ken
