Extreme sports are just that — extreme. At my age, every sport feels like an extreme sport, except maybe chess or racing to the bar before everyone else. When someone with gray hair decides to try a new sport, they risk looking exactly like what they are: someone trying a new sport. When a young person does it, it’s charming, and everyone empathizes with their efforts, overlooking their failures. But when an adult does it, everyone assumes they just got divorced and traded a 50-year-old spouse for two 25-year-olds. These tips will help you avoid making a complete fool of yourself and, with some luck, keep your clients from ditching you over your new sports hobby.
Why?
The big questions the ancient philosophers asked still matter. After 40, when your body suddenly urges you to learn surfing, canyoneering, or to buy a mountain bike and hurl yourself off a rocky cliff, you need to stare at yourself in the mirror and ask one simple question: Why?
I don’t know how many years you have left, but if you’ve made it 40 years without surfing, you might survive another 40 without it. However, if you start surfing, canyoneering, and mountain biking around 50, I can tell you how many years you have left — and “years” might be generous.
Cover Yourself
Around 50, no matter what extreme sport you’re trying or how far you escape civilization to practice in private, the moment you start learning, you’ll flash your butt within the first 15 minutes. And in 99 percent of cases, that accidental exposure will happen right when your best client spots you, asking their group, “Isn’t that Jim?” It’s happened to me. Twice. Once, while getting on a surfboard on a “deserted” beach that wasn’t so deserted. The second time was worse — learning to do poolside acrobatics. With the majestic enthusiasm of my first leap, my swimsuit stayed put while I soared, landing buck-naked in the pool with my trunks tangled around one foot. “Nice dive,” I heard from behind, the voice of a well-known businessman I was advising on corporate communications. “Nice gear!” his stunning wife added.
The Sports Outfit
One reason young people learning paddleboarding don’t raise eyebrows, but a 50-something does, is the outfit. When you take up new sports as an adult, you have the cash to buy top-notch gear, thinking it’ll preserve your dignity. Wrong. The difference between a newlywed family man and a freshly divorced guy trying a water sport is that the former looks like a happy seal having fun, while the latter looks like a Hollywood star obsessed with their image, unable to enjoy themselves, and trying to impress the Botoxed blonde tanning on the shore. To blend in while you repeatedly fall off your board, wear a 1980s-style swimsuit, some retro Adidas-logo flip-flops, and a freebie T-shirt from a now-defunct whisky brand.
Injuries
Prepare a list of alternative explanations for every possible injury before it happens. For sprains or twisted ankles, blame a stumble on the office stairs. For fingers or limbs lost to a shark bite, pin it on a paper shredder safety failure, and say your lawyers are handling it. For visible cuts on your face, hands, or legs, Halloween-style makeup in reverse works well. For serious breakages requiring a wheelchair, claim you swerved off the road while rushing to a meeting with your international partners. Never, under any circumstances, return to work saying you broke your leg learning to paddleboard. In companies with a certain code of values, that’s grounds for instant firing.
Social Media
Lastly, I confess that most of my friends who take up extreme sports late in life do it just to post about it on social media. It might take 5 or 6 months to learn something Instagram-reel-worthy, like riding a tiny wave, emerging from a dive with an octopus in hand, or scaling a climbing wall in seconds. Resist the urge to post a video on day one, when you’re clawing at the board like a cat, falling into the water — butt exposed — in under two seconds, with the board smacking your head. You might be an idiot (I am, too, probably more than you), but there’s no need to make it so easy for your enemies by broadcasting it.
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