Podiatrist · Specialist in Biomechanics · Founder of VOLKAN
"The years change the body. But the way we live those years also changes the way we age."
"It's normal… I'm getting older"
There is a phrase I hear almost daily.
Someone comes in for a consultation, explains to me that they find it harder to walk than before, that they have lost balance or that their feet feel stiffer.
And, even before finishing the explanation, they add:
—Well… I guess it must be age.
I always understand why they say that.
It's an idea we have heard our whole lives.
With the years everything gets worse.
Every decade brings an inevitable loss.
Deterioration is the natural fate of the body.
However, the reality is much more complex.
Because the years have an influence.
But they do not explain the whole story.
The calendar does not tell the whole truth.
Imagine two seventy-year-olds.
Both were born in the same year.
They are both the same age.
But one continues to walk several kilometers every day, maintains good balance, and enjoys hiking.
The other avoids climbing stairs, is afraid of falling, and hardly leaves the house.
The calendar says they are the same.
Biology tells a very different story.
The years are important.
But the experiences accumulated during those years are important too.
Every step.
Every injury.
Every recovery.
Every period of inactivity.
Every habit.
Every night of sleep.
Every stage of stress.
Everything leaves a mark.
Aging also means accumulating adaptations.
The body summarizes its history.
I like to imagine the organism as a great book.
Every chapter represents a stage of life.
Childhood.
Adolescence.
Pregnancies.
Physical jobs.
Sports.
Diseases.
Injuries.
Periods of sedentarism.
Moments of well-being.
Nothing disappears completely.
Everything leaves some learning.
When I observe how a person walks, I don't just see their current state.
I see part of the history that their body has written over decades.
Biomechanics is, in a way, a moving autobiography.
Adapting throughout a lifetime.
Sometimes we think that adapting means improving.
But not always.
We also adapt when we stop moving.
When we spend years sitting.
When we avoid certain movements out of fear.
When we sleep poorly for a long time.
When stress becomes a permanent companion.
The organism always learns.
The question is never whether it adapts.
The question is what it is adapting to.
And that difference completely changes our way of understanding aging.
Age modifies the rules, it does not eliminate them.
It would be naive to claim that a twenty-year-old body responds the same as a seventy-year-old one.
It does not.
Tissues need more time to recover.
Muscle mass decreases if not stimulated.
The speed of some adaptations changes.
But the biological principle remains exactly the same.
The organism continues learning.
It continues reorganizing.
It continues responding to the stimuli it receives.
Perhaps with different rhythms.
With other priorities.
But with the same logic.
As long as there is life, there is adaptation.
What does this have to do with barefoot?
A lot.
There are people who tell me:
—If I had started twenty years ago…
And I always respond with something similar.
Perhaps it would have been different.
But the really important question is not that.
The question is:
What can your body learn from today?
A transition to barefoot in a sixty or seventy-year-old person does not seek to turn their foot into that of a teenager.
It seeks to expand their current possibilities.
Improve the perception of the ground.
Stimulate the muscles that can still be strengthened.
Promote the balance.
Preserve important functions for autonomy.
We do not pursue youth.
We pursue the ability.
What I see every day in consultation
The people who surprise me the most are rarely the youngest.
They are those who, after years of thinking it was too late, discover that they can still change.
I remember a patient who started working on something as simple as standing on one foot for a few seconds.
At first, she needed to support herself constantly.
Months later, she was able to do it calmly while we talked.
She had not stopped the passage of time.
She had improved her ability to respond to it.
And that difference is immense.
What you can do starting today
The next time you use age to explain a difficulty, add a second question.
Instead of saying:
"I can’t anymore because I’m too old."
Ask yourself:
"What part of this difficulty really depends on my age… and what part depends on abilities that I can still train?"
We will not always be able to change everything.
But we can almost always improve something.
And that "something" is often much more important than we imagine.
🔬 In a sentence
Aging means continuing to adapt to a life story, not stopping to adapt.
The most important idea
Age is part of our biology.
Denying it would be a mistake.
But reducing all aging to the calendar would also be.
Each organism reaches seventy, eighty, or ninety years with a different story.
With different habits.
With different movements.
With different experiences.
That’s why two people of the same age can show completely different abilities.
We don’t choose how many years we turn.
But we can influence, day by day, the quality of the adaptations that will accompany those years.
The goal is not to stop time.
It is to continue giving the organism reasons to preserve what it can still do.
A question to reflect on
Think of someone older whom you admire for how they move.
Do you think that ability depends solely on age… or also on the thousands of small decisions they have made throughout their life?
In the next article…
We have talked about adaptation, learning, recovery, and aging.
But there is still one idea that connects all those concepts.
What does it really mean to move well?
For decades, the perfect gesture, the perfect posture, or the perfect technique has been sought.
However, the more we learn about biomechanics, the more evident a conclusion becomes:
The best movements are not the most beautiful. They are the most adaptable.
In the next chapter we will discover why the true quality of movement does not depend on perfection, but on the ability to find different solutions when circumstances change.