How to get fitter with age through training, diet, and recovery

Originally published on January 1, 2019

Getting fitter with age comes down to consistent training, sensible diet changes, honest recovery, and a long view of healthspan. In Episode 4 of the WHOOP Podcast, Strauss Zelnick, founder of Zelnick Media Capital, President and CEO of Take-Two Interactive, Chairman of CBS at the time of recording, and author of Becoming Ageless, explains how he built habits that helped him feel fitter at 61 than he did at 60. This conversation covers the weekly training structure he follows, the way he thinks about healthspan versus lifespan, the tradeoffs busy professionals have to make, and the recovery and nutrition habits he believes actually hold up over time.

To listen to Episode 4 of the WHOOP Podcast, Strauss Zelnick, media mogul and author of Becoming Ageless shares the secrets, in full, head to the WHOOP Podcast on Spotify.

How often should you train if your goal is to get fitter with age?

Getting fitter with age starts with consistency, variety, and a real rest day. Zelnick said he usually trains six days per week, lands at 7 to 10 total sessions, and changes the mode often enough to keep both motivation and athleticism moving forward.

His weekly mix can include strength work, high-intensity intervals, yoga, boxing, cycling, squash, and group sessions with friends. That variety matters because it spreads stress across movement patterns, keeps training engaging, and gives him more ways to measure progress than body weight alone. Zelnick also likes the social side of training, which turns exercise into a recurring appointment instead of a daily negotiation. That same long-view approach shows up in other WHOOP Podcast conversations, including Rich Roll on transforming his life after 40.

Zelnick told Will Ahmed that the point is not copying his exact schedule. The useful part is the structure, a weekly rhythm, different training inputs, and enough repetition to improve year over year.

"I typically will train somewhere between 7 and 10 times, including 1 full rest day."

What you should take away

• Training frequency works best when it has a weekly structure you can repeat.
• Variety can make long-term training easier to sustain and easier to enjoy.
• Social accountability can make early workouts more consistent.
• One full rest day can be part of a serious training plan.

If you want to hear Zelnick unpack his weekly training mix, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

What habits matter most if you want a longer healthspan?

Once the training rhythm is in place, Zelnick shifts the focus from lifespan to healthspan. His argument is simple: the bigger question is how you live in later decades, not only how many years you add.

He said the book Younger Next Year helped crystallize that idea for him early, and his own framework centers on four pillars, health, diet, fitness, and a life outside your own narrow routine. Zelnick also talks about "compounding health," which for him meant finally taking medical advice seriously instead of assuming visible fitness guaranteed internal health. In his case, that included addressing cholesterol and changing the way he ate. The same broad aging conversation appears in Dr. Bob Arnot on defying aging and Bryan Johnson on biological age.

He is equally direct about the habits that shorten healthy years. Smoking sits at the top of that list, and alcohol abuse follows close behind. For Zelnick, getting fitter with age is inseparable from removing behaviors that quietly work against recovery, cardiovascular health, and long-term function.

"You should move for 45 minutes or an hour 6 days a week. You should eat a healthy diet."

What you should take away

• Healthspan is a clearer target than lifespan for most people.
• Visible fitness does not replace medical screening or medical advice.
• Long-term health depends on repeated choices across health, diet, fitness, and purpose.
• Smoking and alcohol abuse can erase progress made in training.

If you want to hear Zelnick go deeper on healthspan and aging, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

How should busy professionals make time for fitness in their 30s and 40s?

From there, Zelnick gets practical about real constraints. Demanding jobs, young kids, and tight budgets can limit training time, so his advice starts with honest prioritization, not an ideal schedule.

He recommends keeping a time engagement diary, a record of where discretionary time actually goes. That exercise helps separate true constraints from habits that absorb time by default, such as television, drinking, or endless phone use. Zelnick also urges people to define the result they actually want. One person may care about performance, another about looking leaner, and another about preserving the ability to ski, ride horses, or stay upright and strong later in life. That framing is one reason his advice also lines up with Gary Player on fitness at age 85, where training is tied to function as much as appearance.

Even a small starting point counts. Zelnick said that if weekends are all you can protect, then two sessions per week still create momentum.

"Do a time engagement diary. How are you devoting your time?"

What you should take away

• Honest scheduling is a better starting point than an ambitious plan you cannot keep.
• Fitness goals should match what you actually want from your body and your life.
• Weekend training still has value when weekdays are constrained.
• Time tracking can reveal where small fitness windows already exist.

If you want to hear Zelnick go deeper on priorities and time use, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

What does recovery actually look like when you train hard?

Once time is protected for training, recovery has to be treated as real work. Zelnick draws a firm line here: a lighter hard day does not count as recovery, and intense exercisers often fool themselves on this point.

His version of recovery starts with a true day off. Beyond that, he keeps the approach simple. He likes foam rolling, sees some value in compression, enjoys massage because it helps him feel better, and is skeptical of modalities he thinks promise more than the evidence supports, especially cryotherapy and cupping. He also said a physician encouraged him to use sauna for 20 minutes, three times per week, although he usually manages it once per week.

Recovery for Zelnick also includes hydration, diet awareness, and sleep protection. He starts the day with about 16 ounces of water, watches hydration closely, and changed his eating habits after keeping a food diary for a week. On sleep, he is cautious with prescription aids because of how they can interfere with REM sleep. WHOOP Sleep and Recovery data can help people spot the same pattern when travel, late meals, alcohol, or sleep aids change the quality of a night, even when total time in bed looks acceptable.

"For me, recovery is a day off. No training. Movement, nothing."

What you should take away

• Recovery can require a full day without training.
• Simple habits, hydration, food logging, sauna, and sleep protection, can support hard training.
• Recovery tools that feel good are not all equally useful.
• Sleep quality matters alongside sleep duration, especially during travel or when sleep aids are involved.

For Zelnick's full take on recovery, hydration, and sleep aids, listen to the full episode on Spotify.

The bottom line

• Getting fitter with age can come from repeating a clear weekly structure for years, not from short bursts of extreme effort.
• A training plan that mixes strength, intervals, mobility, and sport can support progress while keeping boredom down.
• Healthspan is a practical goal because it focuses on how well you function as you age.
• Medical markers such as cholesterol still matter, even when you look fit from the outside.
• Busy professionals can make progress by auditing discretionary time and protecting even two weekly sessions.
• A real recovery day can be more useful than a lighter version of another hard workout.
• Hydration, diet awareness, and sleep quality can shape recovery as much as the workout itself.

Frequently asked questions about things discussed in this episode

How does WHOOP help you decide when to take a real rest day?

WHOOP helps you decide when to pull back by showing how your body responded overnight through Recovery, sleep, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability. When those signals stay suppressed, a full day off may fit the kind of recovery Zelnick described.

What does WHOOP do for sleep when travel disrupts your routine?

WHOOP shows how travel can change sleep duration, sleep consistency, and next-day Recovery. That makes it easier to see whether late arrivals, time zone shifts, or poor sleep habits are carrying into training.

How does WHOOP support people trying to get fitter with age?

WHOOP supports long-term progress by showing how training load, sleep, and recovery change over time. That record can help you see whether your weekly routine is building fitness or digging a recovery hole.

What does WHOOP track if you are changing diet or hydration habits?

WHOOP tracks the downstream effects of those habits through Sleep, Recovery, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability. Your data can make it easier to spot whether better hydration, fewer late meals, or less alcohol are improving how you recover.

How can WHOOP help balance training strain and recovery across a busy week?

WHOOP helps balance hard days and easy days by showing the relationship between daily Strain and next-day Recovery. That is useful when your calendar changes from week to week and you need to adjust training without guessing.

For anyone chasing Zelnick's idea of getting fitter with age, WHOOP can help show whether your training variety, hydration, sleep, and true rest are actually supporting recovery over time.