The magic of maintenance

Who cares about going forwards--just don't go back!

Hey team—

Writing you from family vacation in Canada! There are a lot of maple leaf flags flying out here these days…

I wanted to send a quick note about maintenance—maintaining current levels of fitness without going backwards. That might sound boring, but I’ve come to see it as almost magical. Most of us would be thrilled to have our current level of health in our 80s or 90s. Since most of us were in reasonably good shape as kids, lifelong fitness is mostly just about not losing too much over time.

We’re all familiar with the yo‑yo: one year you trained for a marathon and had amazing cardio; another year you worked with a trainer and got strong; another you did yoga with a partner and got flexible. The challenge isn’t building endurance, strength, or mobility—it’s holding on to what you’ve already built.

And for the more competitive folks: maintenance is progress. Even if your times or lifts don’t improve, just maintaining them year to year puts you at more and more elite levels as you age. (For example, Boston Marathon qualifying times get slower with each age group—not faster.) And if you only get better and never get worse, you’ll be an elite athlete in no time.

So: how do you maintain fitness, especially on vacation when you’re trying to dial it back and recover? A few rules of thumb:

✅ Always do something. Doing nothing will leave you stiff and sore by the end of your break. Even five minutes of movement—spiderman warm‑up, toe touches, couch stretch, T‑stretch—goes a long way.

✅ If you’ve been struggling to train before vacation:

Do short, simple, higher‑intensity bodyweight workouts. You’ll maintain strength and endurance in one go. My favorite: burpees. I’ll do 100 broken into sets of 40–30–20–10. It takes ~15 minutes and really gets your heart rate up. No equipment, no excuses. If 100 is too much, do 50, 20, 10—whatever gets you moving.

✅ If you’ve been training hard and need recovery:

Look for signs of burnout: feeling wiped, stalled progress, your partner annoyed at how much you’re training, a high resting heart rate, or falling HRV. Overtraining is a waste of time. In that case, focus on stretching, some very easy steady‑state cardio, and just enjoy your downtime. By the end of vacation, you should feel eager to get back to work—that’s a good sign you’ve recovered. Ease back into things and in a few weeks you’ll be be back to pushing the envelope.

Alright, that’s it for me. Time to take my own advice—we’re heading up to Forillon National Park in Quebec. I’ll post some pictures on Instagram!

Happy training,

Ben