Ask an orthopedic surgeon—doctors who specialize in the musculoskeletal system, including bones, joints, ligaments, and muscles—what they do to stay healthy, and the answers get strange fast. They do toe yoga at their desks. They hop around like pogo sticks at the bus stop. They brush their teeth in a lunge, stretching the Achilles tendon they know is often first to go. They sit on the floor with their legs crossed and try to stand back up without using their hands. (People who can do this, it’s been shown, have a five-times lower risk of dying in a given time frame than people who can’t.)
Here’s what six orthopedic surgeons do to stay strong, mobile, and upright as they age.
The case he makes is straightforward and a little jarring. “The single biggest driver of losing your independence as you age—it’s not your heart or even your memory,” he says. “It’s your legs.” Once you can’t stand from a chair without using your hands, or catch yourself when you stumble, the cascade starts. And by the time most people notice their legs have gotten smaller, the more important loss has already happened. Power—the explosive, fast-twitch capacity that catches you mid-fall—goes first. Then strength. Mass, the thing you can see in the mirror, is the last to go. “Most of us are training for mass,” Calendine says. “But by the time you’ve lost mass, you’ve already lost the power.”
Calendine uses two simple tests to track how he’s doing—both free, easy to do in your living room, and surprisingly predictive.
“The test is a mirror,” Calendine says. “The low score doesn’t kill you, but it’s a signal of the reserve you have left in your body.” In other words, it’s a measurement you can repeat over time to see whether you’re losing ground or holding it.
He likes both tests because they double as motivation. “Am I using more furniture to stand up than I used to? Is it taking me 14 seconds when it used to take 11?” he says. “It’s not a death sentence. It’s a light on the hill.”
They do speed work mid-week
Here’s exactly what Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon in Orlando, does to maintain and gain speed. Twice a week, she does four sprint intervals of 30 seconds each—going as hard as she can for half a minute, resting, then repeating—on a treadmill, bike, rower, or elliptical, whatever’s at hand. That’s a total of two minutes of movement. “Going as hard as you can for 30 seconds—it’s amazing for your mitochondria, your metabolism, for blood flow,” she says. “And frankly, it makes you feel like a badass.”
Recreational lifters often do 8 to 12 repetitions of an exercise before resting—a moderate-weight zone that builds muscle but stops short of true strength training. Wright lifts heavier than that on her main movements.
The implication, especially for women over 40, is significant. Bone loss accelerates around menopause; heavy lifting is one of the few interventions shown to slow or reverse it. Wright doesn’t lift heavy weights for aesthetic reasons. She thinks of it as osteoporosis prevention with a barbell.
They focus on muscle contraction during weightlifting
The weight on the bar actually matters less than the quality of the contraction, he says. Swinging a dumbbell with momentum recruits less muscle and risks more injury than lifting a lighter weight with deliberate, controlled tension. Shah’s advice is to start lighter than you think you need to, focus on full range of motion, and watch for swinging. If your form breaks down or you’re using momentum to move the weight, it’s too heavy.
“I find that if I don’t work hard enough, I don’t get enough sleep,” Shah says. “I almost earn the sleep that I get.”
They stretch every day—and treat flexibility as the gateway to everything else
Orthopedic surgeons will bend over backwards to defend daily stretching. Wright argues that flexibility is what keeps every other form of exercise possible. “The reason we become 90 years old hunched over and shuffling is because we’ve lost hip range of motion or knee range of motion,” she says. Wright is also a fan of an unusual tool: a 6-foot length of PVC pipe, which she recommends as a cheap home aid for keeping the upper and lower back supple. Hold it across your shoulders and twist; hold it overhead and lean—there are dozens of mobility drills online built around it.
Shau doesn’t carve out dedicated stretching time—he weaves it into his routine. He stretches his Achilles tendon while brushing his teeth, does calf raises and arm stretches in the shower, and flexes his fingers at stoplights. Between surgeries, he runs through thoracic and lumbar stretches, neck exercises (heavy surgical helmets are punishing on the cervical spine), and wrist and shoulder rotations. “Motion is lotion to your joints,” he says.
They train balance and foot speed at their desks
When she’s sitting at her desk, for example, she does quick sessions where she taps her toes as fast as she can. At bus stops, she does “pogos”—hopping in place. “You might get some looks,” she says, “but your health is worth it.” She also works in tree pose and single-leg standing throughout the day, treating balance as something to be practiced in seconds, not sessions.
Shah keeps his approach simpler: three or four meals a day, three or four main ingredients per meal. A typical breakfast might consist of oats, protein powder, berries, and nuts. The goal is to get enough protein to preserve muscle mass as the body ages, since muscle loss after 30 is the slow leak that drains everything else, he says.
They strengthen their core with weighted planks
For anyone without a willing child, he recommends wall sits as an alternative—backed against a wall in a seated position, ideally at 90 degrees, for as long as you can hold it. Both moves are body-weight exercises that require no equipment and minimal space.
They take rest as seriously as training
Menzer pays attention to early warning signs of overtraining: pain that gets progressively worse rather than better, fatigue that doesn’t lift, performance that flatlines. Her advice when those signals appear is to adjust the routine rather than try to “outwork the problem.”
They check the soles of their shoes regularly
Menzer’s most unusual habit takes about five seconds: Flip your shoes over and look at the tread. If you can’t see the pattern anymore, it’s time to replace them. “Like a mechanic would say about your tires,” she says—except people usually remember to check their tires.Worn shoes are a sneaky culprit behind foot pain and even pain that might seem unrelated to your feet. Knee, hip, and back pain can all trace back to shoes that have lost their support, she says. It’s part of a broader principle Menzer applies to her own body and her patients: Don’t assume the pain is always coming from where it hurts. The root cause is often somewhere you haven’t looked.
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