Why I stopped training to exhaustion and started training for longevity, building sustainable, functional fitness that transfers to real life.
The older I get, the less impressed I am by workouts that just make me tired.
That doesn’t mean I want easy training. I still love to work hard. I still like heavy dumbbells, sprints, jumps, intervals, and finishing a session knowing I actually did something. But I care more now about what the work is building.
The Why Behind the Why
Over the last few years, I have started zooming out and asking better questions. Why am I training like this? Why am I eating like this? Why am I chasing this goal? What is the why behind the why?
For a long time, I just trained because training was part of who I was.
Where My Training Came From
I played Division I golf in Texas, then kept competing after college in mini-tour events and state opens. Back then, training had a clear job. I needed more speed, more power, more mobility, more control, and a body that could hold up through practice, travel, pressure, and long rounds.
Golf may not look physically demanding from the outside, but if you care about doing it well, your body matters. A swing has to repeat on the first hole and late in a long round, when the body is tired and the pressure feels different. Rotation matters. Strength matters. Repeatability matters. Durability matters.
Then came the entertainment industry chapter in Los Angeles, where training was tied more to looking the part, staying lean, feeling athletic, and being ready when the next casting, fitting, shoot, or opportunity came up. Your body becomes part of the job in a different way.
That chapter taught me something too. How you feel in your body matters. How you carry yourself matters. Confidence is not everything, but it is not nothing either.
Then, around 2017, I moved to the Northeast from L.A. and started working with my brother in our family business, Amherst Coffee + Bar. We built the 4:15 gym class into our workday, then trained long on Saturdays.
It was high-intensity: lifting, running, jumping, sprinting, and learning Olympic lifts I was not very good at yet. I got humbled often, but that was part of what made it fun. There was always something to improve, and the progress felt earned.
How I Found NOBULL
That was also when I first started noticing NOBULL.
People at the gym were wearing the shoes, and they stood out because they looked different without trying too hard. I tried a pair, and they just made sense to me. I could lift in them, run in them, jump in them, move fast in them, and still wear them outside the gym.
They looked good, and pretty quickly, I had one pair I beat up in the gym and another pair I tried to keep clean for coffee runs, errands, and normal life.
That crossover has always been a big part of the appeal for me.
Choosing Simple Over Complicated
I like things that earn their place. Shoes, routines, habits, relationships, food, work. The older I get, the less interested I am in adding complexity just because I can.
I have spent plenty of time trying to do too much. More exercises. More ideas. More supplements. More tabs open in my brain. More options that somehow make life feel less clear, not more.
Now I am drawn to simple. Not easy. Simple.
There is a difference. Simple still requires work. Sometimes simple is harder because there is nowhere to hide. But simple removes some of the friction. It gives you a better chance to repeat the thing long enough for it to matter.
The 100+ Life
That is how I think about training now. It is not separate from the rest of my life. It is one part of a bigger system.
I think of that as The 100+ Life: asking whether the way I train, eat, work, recover, and live is helping me build a life I can actually sustain for the long haul.
Training is a big piece of that, but it is not the whole thing.
Why I Train Now
These days, I train for a lot of reasons.
I train because I want to have energy for my family and the businesses I am building. I train because I want to be strong enough to carry my son, chase him, play every sport with him, and one day keep up with my grandchildren.
I want him to watch superhero movies, see the superheroes, and think, “My dad looks like that.” I want to be his real-life superhero for as long as I can.
I train because I want to continue traveling the world, filming follow-along workouts, and still feel great when I get home. I train because I want to keep playing golf at a high level and, one day, shoot my age. I train because I want to age well.
And yes, I also train to feel good and look good, whether that is without a shirt or in the budgie smugglers my wife rolls her eyes at when I break them out on vacation.
Feeling good matters. Looking good matters. Being useful matters. Being capable matters. The more I zoom out, the more connected those things feel.
Training That Transfers
That has changed what I count as a good workout.
I still train hard. A lot of the workouts I do and also film now are built around intensity, explosive movement.
But I am less interested in random suffering now. I do not need every session to bury me. I want training that transfers.
Can I move better?
Can I recover and come back tomorrow?
Can I handle travel, filming, golf, work, and family life without feeling like my body is always two steps behind?
Can I keep doing a version of this for the rest of my life?
Those questions have become more important to me than whether a workout looks impressive on paper. They have also changed how I think about gear, especially shoes.
One Hour, One Shoe: Reducing Friction
Now I usually have just an hour to train. I do not want to spend ten minutes deciding what shoe matches the workout.
I might lift. I might sprint. I might do jumps. I might work on Olympic lifts. Usually, I do a bit of all of it. I want shoes that can handle different types of movement without making me think too much about them.
The Outwork Flex fits that lane for me. It feels secure when I am lifting, but flexible enough when the workout shifts into sprints, jumps, or faster movement.
That has always been the lane NOBULL made sense for me. Simple. Durable. Versatile. Uniquely good-looking without being a novelty.
They made sense in long Saturday training sessions. They make sense in my garage home gym. They make sense on set filming workouts. And they make sense on travel days, coffee runs, and in the parts of life that happen before and after training.
Honestly, that matters more to me now than it ever used to.
Consistency is not just about motivation. It is also about reducing friction.
The easier it is to start, the more likely you are to train. The less complicated the decision, the more energy you have for the actual work.
That might not sound exciting, but a lot of good things in life are built that way. Repeated. Unsexy. Useful. Done again tomorrow.
That is the future I am more interested in now.
Training for a Life That Holds Up
I am not trying to train like I am in my 20s forever. I am trying to build something better than that.
I want to be strong now, but I also want to be strong later. I want to be fit now, but I also want to be healthy, energized, injury-free, attractive, useful, and capable decades from now.
That does not happen by accident. It happens through decisions that are small enough to repeat and meaningful enough to compound.
So maybe the useful question is not, “What is the hardest workout I could do today?”
Maybe it is, “What is the version of this I can keep coming back to?”
Maybe that means a hard session. Maybe it means a walk. Maybe it means doing 20 minutes because 20 is what you actually have. Maybe it means removing one point of friction from your training so the work has a better chance of happening.
That is the simple test I keep coming back to: What can I remove, simplify, or make easier so I can show up more consistently for the life I say I want?
Some weeks, that means pushing hard. Some weeks, that means pulling back. Some weeks, the biggest win is not a personal record. It is staying in the game when life gets full.
That is the kind of training I believe in now.
Training that makes me more capable. Training that makes me harder to break. Training that helps me show up better for the people and work that matter.
Training for a life that holds up.
And that is why I keep reaching for gear that helps me do the work without making the work about the gear.
When people ask me what I do for training, I tell them this:
“Just put on your gym shoes.”
No expectations. No judgment about how much work gets done. Just put them on every day and see what happens.
Author Bio:
Ash Crawford is a new father, former Division I athlete, and entrepreneur. He is the creator of The 100+ Life, a lived operating system for building a stronger, clearer, more connected life that can hold up over time. His work explores training, fatherhood, energy, and real-life experiments in living better. You can find him @ashrcrawford on social media.
