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One year ago, I went out to lunch with one of my oldest friends, Kira, and found myself discussing figure skating. I had done the sport competitively throughout most of my childhood, but after one too many injuries, falls, losses, and weekends spent driving to a rink instead of hanging out with friends, I rage-quit our junior year of high school. I remember blurting through tears that I was never “going to go to the Olympics anyway,” so I no longer wanted any part of the sport. And that was that.
Kira asked if I had ever skated since—casually mentioning that she had started aerial hoop classes. Kira, a classically trained dancer, started ballet when she was five and went on to train at Amherst Ballet in Western Massachusetts and with the Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey. She later performed in areal shows, worked with Missy Elliott and Gloria Estefan back in the day, and eventually transitioned to teaching Pilates full time. But dance and aerial had been largely absent from her life when, at 52, she decided to conquer the hoop.
Other than helping my kids stay upright at occasional ice skating birthday parties, I had never gone back to the ice. In fact, I had never even missed the ice.
But a week later, after some encouragement from Kira, I marched over to Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers in New York City with my 1980s custom Klingbeil skates still in my 1980s L.L. Bean tote bag. It was my first skating session in about 35 years. And Kira was right, I liked it. I really liked it. In a way I never had before. It took all of about five minutes before it was all I wanted to do.
And for the past year, it’s basically all I’ve done. In short order: I got a coach; I bought fancy 21st-century skates, and I even performed in a skating show (to Coldplay’s “Adventure of a Lifetime,” fittingly enough). I’ve been reinvigorated, reinspired, reenergized, and completely reinfected by the skating bug.
I’ve also become fascinated by the idea of taking up a new sport—or at least a new old sport. And while the wipeouts may not be good for me, returning to a past hobby is actually scientifically proven to be incredibly good for you in many ways.
The Science of Learning
“Physical movement generates a massive amount of transmitter substances in the brain,” says Professor James Goodwin PhD, Director of Science at the Brain Health Network and author of Supercharge Your Brain. “The more challenging, the greater the surge of dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin, [the hormones and chemicals] that support you through injury and elate your mood.”
This may explain why, despite having developed tendinitis and bursitis in my right Achilles tendon and suffering a mild concussion over the past year due to skating, I’m still frolicking to my 6 a.m. sessions. Skating is “cognitively stimulating,” Goodwin adds, which may contribute to neuroplasticity, a trendy word for keeping your brain sharp and potentially avoiding mental decline.
While the concept of neuroplasticity has been around since the 1700s, it wasn’t until very recently that scientists started to believe that rejuvenation was possible at any age. Goodwin likens it to “having a full tank of gas at 25 and spending the rest of your life running it off.”
Learning a new skill can impact a person’s white matter—the bundles of nerve fibers that connect different parts of the brain and help with focusing and learning function. In a 2009 Oxford study, a group of young healthy adults, none of whom could juggle, was divided into two groups of 24 people each. One group was given weekly training sessions in juggling for six weeks and asked to practice 30 minutes every day. Both groups were given brain scans before and after the six-week period. While some of the people in the juggling group got better at the skill than others, everyone in the group showed changes in their white matter as a result of learning the new skill.
Outside of the mind, studies have also shown that taking on a new athletic pursuit improves flexibility, coordination and balance, increases overall fitness, and combats depression. I can personally attest to all of that. I can also tell you it’s exhilarating, a great excuse to buy cool merch, and a fun way to meet new people. (This isn’t just true of figure skating. One need look no further than the 158.6% increase in Pickleball participation over the last 3 years for more proof that trying new things is fun.)
Skating Lessons
One of the things I’ve found to be most astonishing about skating now versus skating in my childhood has been the discovery that although I’m objectively not as good as I was when I was young and competitive, I’m so much happier on the ice.
I’ve been comparing notes with Kira about our respective experiences and she echoed that sentiment. “One thing that’s liberating is that I’m not in it to get the gig,” she says. “This is all for my own pleasure. This is just me against me feeling little bits of progress that might not be visible to someone on the outside. I have more compassion for myself than I did when I was younger.”
I understand. I keep telling my coach, Weipeng Xie (“Wei” for short), that if my 16-year-old body had my 53-year-old brain attached to it, we’d really have something. But, alas, as George Bernard Shaw famously said, “Wisdom is wasted on the old, and youth is wasted on the young.”
So here I am, trying to package what’s best of both extremes into one middle-aged being.
One year in, I have recuperated all of my single jumps, my axel, and even the occasional double salchow. For the uninitiated, that’s no big deal. Olympians are routinely popping quads; even Wei, who hasn’t competed for several years, can manage a triple without much practice.
Whereas I used to prefer spinning to jumping, it’s the opposite now. Jumping is a thrill and spinning makes me want to vomit. From a physiological standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Studies show that older adults are more likely to have medical conditions that cause dizziness, especially a sense of imbalance.
As for my recently-returned jumping ability, Thomas C. Südhof, M.D., director of the Südhof Lab in the Department of Physiology at Stanford and Elysium Health Scientific Advisory Board member, chalks it up to “implicit memory,” or muscle memory, which I guess I had more of than I thought.
“Normally, when we refer to the remembrance of facts, the route to school, or how to ride a bike, we’re describing implicit memories. You can’t explain them,” he says. “The advantage of implicit memory is that it is something that lets your brain be free, to a certain extent. You can do implicitly learned tasks without thinking about them, which allows you to do other things. In that sense, actually doing something that uses the implicit memory can be very relaxing.”
Relaxing, indeed. When I was younger, if I had to take a day off from training because of an injury or, say, a family holiday, I was convinced I’d have to start at square one every time I got back on the ice. Now, my schedule often demands that I skip weeks at a time. This no longer causes extreme agita. If only I had known about implicit memory all those years ago.
And it turns out taking up an old sport might also have some of the same brain-building benefits as starting a brand new one. The concept of “cognitive reserve” suggests that individuals who continually challenge their brains through new or previously learned activities may build up a reserve that helps protect against cognitive decline later in life.
But what about the physical limits of aging?
“Short bursts are tough on the body,” says my physical therapist Joel Dinglasan, PT. “Our body is made of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. There’s a study that shows that the first thing that goes away when you’re a boxer is your speed. You won’t be as fast as you were. The fast twitch muscles are the first ones that shrink. So, when you’re older and get back to your usual activity, you won’t be as fast as you were.” This explains why you see 80-year-olds running marathons, but you don’t see them sprinting down the sidewalk to catch a bus. Or why Lester Wright, a 100-year-old World War II veteran, ran the fastest 100-meter dash ever for a centenarian, clocking in at 26.34 seconds, whereas Usain Bolt can run the same distance in less than 10 seconds. That’s fine. I have no problem being the Lester Wright of Chelsea Piers.
The Endgame
My wise-beyond-his-years coach, Wei, recently began medical school with the goal of becoming a neurosurgeon. He has been preternaturally good at knowing just how far to push me and when to tell me to rein it in. His strategy is to try each trick a maximum of five times; if it’s not happening by that point, it’s better to reset and try again another day. He’s also a big fan of finding new ways of embellishing moves I feel comfortable doing to keep things fresh and interesting for me (and probably for him, too). So instead of just doing an axel, for example, he’s encouraged me to do an axel with both arms over my head. That is something I never even attempted in my teens. If the methods Wei is using to train me are any indication, I have high hopes for the brain health of his future patients.
“If you’re constantly learning, it will change the structure of the brain,” Goodwin says. “The white matter will become more complex and grow. And the number of synapses will grow in number and complexity as long as you continue with the challenging elements of that activity.”
I’d like to get all of my double jumps back, and I’d like to enter adult competitions (these weren’t as big of a thing in the 80s, which is yet another reason why it’s better to be a figure skater now than it was then). But even if I never win another medal or master all of my double jumps, skating has been rewarding in more ways than I imagined it could be when I was a teenager.
As Kira says, “through repetition and that mind-body connection, you can do a lot more than you think you’re capable of. You don’t even know how dope you can be.” True, but I plan to go back to the rink tomorrow morning and find out.