What makes a gym?

Is it the size of the facility and the amenities offered? Is it the group fitness instructors and the demographics of the members?

It is simply the price point and location?

In February of 2018, my longtime gym closed. It had been an LA Fitness for six years and a Lifestyle Family Fitness for a decade before that. The closing was long rumored. Supposedly a Cheesecake Factory, of all things, was assuming the lease. Or perhaps it would be the car dealership that was using our sprawling parking lot for overflow inventory.

Many of my fellow members, figuring the building’s days as a gym were over, scattered to other facilities, including a new LA Fitness 10 minutes away.

That was too far for me. So for the next six months I worked out at home. I did more standup paddleboarding and took yoga classes.

Then, much to everyone’s surprise, Crunch Fitness put up “coming soon” signs. The gym was gutted and remodeled and Crunch reopened in October offering memberships for as little as $10 a month.

So like a drunk that returns to the same bar through name and ownership changes, I came back to the gym, which had a totally different vibe. It had the usual assortment of weights and machines, many placed in the same spots as the LA Fitness configuration. Gone was the group cycling classroom where I had taken classes for more than a decade, the walls blown out to open up the room. The same was true of the “kid’s club” area where my sons, now teenagers, once spent many hours as toddlers.

Another part of the gym, clearly inspired by CrossFit, features weighted sleds and tires for flipping. There are heavy bags and MMA training tools. A lower level workout space was enclosed for tanning beds.

Though I’m told the women’s locker room received a major overhaul, the men’s room only received a new floor. The lockers missing doors from the LA Fitness era still were missing doors.

The biggest change was in the demographics. It seemed like I’d aged 15 years in just 9 months, going from slightly older than the median age at LA Fitness to one of the oldest in the room. Credit that to the Crunch vibe or the lower price point.

I’m not bothered by being the old man, though it seems there are more people walking around staring at their phones. They get in the way at times.

A handful of my LA Fitness brethren have returned. They live close to the building, too. Maybe we’re just creatures of habit.

Or maybe it’s all about real estate: location, location, location.

It’s been said that an athlete dies two deaths. The second is the inevitable. The first is the end of a competitive playing career.

I sold my triathlon bike recently and had mixed emotions as this gently used Cervelo P2 drove away on the back of someone’s Jeep Wrangler.

On one hand, I had barely ridden the Cervelo in four years and recouped nearly 50 percent of what I paid for it, a score by Craigslist standards. On the other hand, I was parting with it because of neck injuries sustained in a 2014 automobile accident (in a car) that make it tough to ride in the aero position, to say nothing of keep pounding the ground running.

It just took four years to accept that.

We see this in professional sports when “old” players calls it quits because they no longer can compete at the highest level because of injury or age. Ideally, they go out on top as Peyton Manning did winning the Super Bowl at the age of 39.

It can be more challenging, however, to accept a body that no longer performs the way it once did. That’s because with modern medicine it’s possible to extend an athletic career whether you’re a pro or weekend warrior.

Got a bad knee or hip? That’s nothing an artificial replacement can’t fix.

Have a herniated disc in your neck or back? A fusion or disc replacement can get you back in the game. If not, there’s cortisone, stem cells, dry needling, epidurals, acupuncture, massage, chiropractic care or bariatric oxygen.

Too often, though, people continue to pound their bodies past the breaking point. I was a basketball and baseball player through high school. And while I could play those sports today, my joints would take a pounding on the basketball court. My reflexes aren’t what they once were for baseball – and they weren’t great as a teenager.

I competed in running, obstacle racing and triathlon events through my early forties. I could continue to slog it out there too, even with a bad neck, but the stress from running would be too much. When it comes to running, we only have so many miles on the odometer.

Thankfully, there are always alternatives. There’s perhaps no better sport or exercise regimen than swimming, which is easy on the joints. Open-water swim events have soared in popularity in recent years, in part because former runners are looking for a more low-impact activity.

Ex-runners also turn to biking since that also is easier on the joints. “Biking” is thought of differently from “cycling,” where you clip into the pedals, wear tight spandex, and risk life and limb on the roads, where smart phone-wielding drivers often are not paying attention. But a more leisurely bike ride still can provide a workout. Some runners turn to hiking or race walking.

I miss the competition and camaraderie of triathlon, but I might have given it up anyway because I never liked cycling. I started group rides in 2006, the year the iPhone was released and things got progressively more dangerous. I shudder to think of what might have occurred had the distracted woman who ran through a stop sign and struck my mini-van had, instead, plowed into a peloton.

I don’t mourn the loss of triathlon. It helps that I had my third athletic act lined up before the car accident, shifting more toward stand-up paddleboarding, hiking, swimming, strength training and yoga. I’m in or on the water most every day.

Like life itself, it’s never too late to reinvent yourself as an athlete. I once swam with a group of mostly senior women as part of a masters swim program. One particularly fit woman told me she once did triathlons but had given that up and focused on swimming and weight training. I thought she was in her early fifties, but she was 66.

Several women from that group still compete, setting national age group swim records in their nineties, again proving that while you might have to accept that your body has fewer options to compete and train as you age, there’s always something available.

 It was June 12, 2013. The lawnmower slogged through our front yard, a once-proud self-propelled machine now a heavy burden. As I turned the first corner the handle broke off and I walked into our neighbor’s driveway with only the handle. I flung it down and made the long walk to the garage, cursing once again.

Our property is long and rectangular, nearly an acre, and as I walked I took stock of all the time and money I had spent on the place in the previous 14 years. Fourteen years, including my entire thirties, of year-round mowing, trimming, edging, weeding and dealing with our typical Florida landscape impossible to tame. Fourteen years of oak tree trimming, palm tree pruning, driveway resurfacing, painting, power washing, mulching, leaf blowing, swimming pool maintenance, pool cage re-screening, fence repairing, outdoor lighting installing, insect baiting, and lawn-chemical treating.

That was just the outside. Inside we had replaced every appliance at least once and one of the two – yes two – water heaters twice. We allowed ourselves to be bitten by the mid-2000s remodeling craze and managed to take what was a 3-year-old house when we bought it and remodeled the entire interior. We had replaced both – yes both – HVAC systems, though only after enduring extensive repairs on both. We had resurfaced the pool, remodeled the deck, and painted and re-floored every room in the house, some twice.

It sickened me to think how much money we had spent on this house. But it horrified me to think of how much time we had spent between the home, yard, and pool maintenance – which I also did myself – in order to….what, exactly? In order to have a showplace for parties we rarely hosted? To welcome friends and family from up north who seldom visited? To not swim in a pool? To be the house all the neighborhood kids hung out at – even though we live on a main road and not a neighborhood and our kids, like most, are so overscheduled they don’t hang out anyway?

My wife and I pride ourselves, or so we thought, on being sensible, frugal people who live below our means. But why had we willingly sacrificed so much precious time and money to maintain and cool a Florida home that, while (mostly) affordable, was far more than we needed?

It was time for massive change and this wasn’t just about hiring a lawn service, which I did for a price far below what I would have expected. No, this was about claiming the life we always aspired to, discarding all of the clutter of the past and living lean. It meant shedding extra pounds, at least half our belongings, dead-weight relationships, commitments that provided little value, and digital distraction that in the 14 years we lived in this house had gone from exciting new technology to a smothering, all-consuming, time-sucking matrix of email, social media, texts, tweets, videos, games, instant messages, Internet rabbit holes, and 24/7 nonsense that threatened to engulf all four of us, especially the kids.

It meant striving to downsize and find a smaller home. Yes, downsizing, In our forties. With kids still at home. We’re not there yet. But we’re looking.

We decided to go back to the future, to a place of real-world experiences, eschewing prepackaged theme park visits and entertainment and embracing the outdoors, traveling to places of historical significance and natural beauty, and using technology as a tool, not a freakin’ lifestyle. With rare exceptions, we’d keep the TV off. We’d put down the phone, though go old school and actually use it to call and speak to people. Entertainment would be biking, hiking, paddling, swimming, and running, preferably with friends who preferred such things above getting together to eat and drink.

No longer would we buy anything unless it served these goals. We would not collect. Anything important in paper form would be digitized. We would not buy in to America’s consumer calendar on steroids unless it served our goals.

We committed to shedding clutter in all aspects of our lives – physical, mental, digital, possessions, relationships, commitments – and by doing so framing a life of rich experiences.

This is our ongoing journey To Live Lean. Any input is welcome.