Micheal Snyder - Fit After 60

About 15 years ago, during a really rough time in my life and career, I started doing CrossFit. It was the antidote to my marathon training and my developing dad-bod, despite epic mileage being run. Something had to change. It was just what I needed. 

I got strangely fit and through my late 40s and 50s it kept my body and my brain pretty functional. 5-6 days per week. Religiously. Really transformational and in my aging cohort I was winning by effort… and attrition. 

Then something happened almost exactly on the day of my 60th birthday. 12/2023. I think I forgot to pay the latest installment on my “body warranty?!” The day after a fast deadlift/row/box jump WOD, my right butt cheek was killing me. It hurt to get out of bed. I tried to muscle through. But, I couldn’t squat clean worth a damn. Kettle bell swings were searingly painful. I got a spine series and an MRI. The studies were pulled up on my doctor’s viewer and I looked at them and said “Those look like hell. Glad they’re not mine.” Clearly, I was mistaken. (See X-rays, attached.) I had an alphabet soup of issues and was told “This is what happens when you do years on end of heavy weights, moved fast, and with bad form.” 

And, yet again, something had to change. Here I was, “just 60", with well over a decade of hardcore fitness and strength as cornerstones of my physical and mental health. And now I had to give up the one thing that was mine alone and that was helping me hold it all together. 

My most awesome wife and phenomenal son had an intervention as I was none-too-subtly wallowing in my transition to a sedentary life of boredom and depression. They said “You cannot define yourself by the way you look and your workouts. You’ve got to listen to the spine guys.” You would think, as a doctor and surgeon, that I would have known this without their input. Not likely. 

I literally was brought to tears and scared that this meant the end of my fitness and (sadly) looking like I am fit. So much of my life with my wife has been defined by the ability to do whatever we want in our adventures. Now, she was gonna be saddled with the raw deal of a broken husband.

My son super-fit son then said, “I have an idea, you need to do ThundrBro". I thought he was kidding and had made up the name. He is distressingly strong and has joined me through much of my fitness journey. He used the word “hypertrophy” and I was intrigued. I figured that I am way outside of the demographic that the program was trying to reach, and I had neither a Mohawk nor cut-off jeans to work out in, but I would make a go of it. I also figured I would have to maximally scale everything because of my new spine dealio. Despite all that, I had enough equipment jammed into my garage that I thought I could probably make things work. 

Fast forward to today, six months later. I owe you guys a huge “thank you.” You sent my training in the right direction in such a remarkable way. The videos are phenomenal and I learn more from them than I learned from doing CrossFit for 15 years with any number of coaches. 35 seconds of instruction from Dave and Company is more effective than years of WOD training.

The adaptations that are offered work for me seamlessly when needed. The well-planned integration of efficient and movement-specific warm-ups set the stage for success every time. The lifting process for every programmed work out fits together to maximize time, efficiency, and effort. And, I haven’t lost the fitness that I spent so long training and developing, despite my new injuries (that I was sure would sideline me for the rest of my life). And, my hot wife still thinks I look good on the beach and on the trail!

With your help, it looks like I’m gonna keep this train running. Thanks for the care, respect, motivation, and expertise that you guys show up with every day. I owe you one. (I guess my wife does also!)

I have included a number of pictures to hopefully show that even someone like me can get my act together with the right support from my ThunderBro team. Thanks for all. Let me know how I can support you. It’d be an honor and a privilege. 

-Michael A. Snyder, MD, FACS, FASMBS (Denver, CO) 6/6/2024