This may come as a bit of a shock to you, so brace yourselves for some cold hard facts. Getting into CrossFit and Olympic weight lifting in your mid-thirties can be challenging. Shocking, I know. Despite this jarringly harsh reality, I’m here to deliver some good news to all of my fellow older crowd athletes: despite some of the more obvious cons, there are some pros to starting CrossFit and/or an Olympic lifting program at an older age.

Allow me to take you on an abridged journey to when I began my now beloved sports just a short seven months ago. I was absolutely petrified. I had seen those CrossFit Games on TV, and I knew those athletes were complete freaks of nature. I was paranoid about what the other people at my “box” would think of my ability or lack there of. Jesus, what was I going to do if someone actually looked at me while I was working out? As the self-deprecating doubts tried to nestle their way into the corners of my brain, I had to actively shut them down. I may be older and a little out of my league, but with age comes wisdom, or so they say. Sure, I may not jump into a WOD with the vigor of someone 10 years younger than me, but I have something else to offer. Not necessarily something better, but something different.

Where the younger athletes have it on us 35+ folks is obvious. They will most likely have more energy than us, and they can definitely recover a lot more quickly. We 30-somethings will feel the aches and pains a bit more in our joints when we swing our legs over the side of the bed in the morning, and we may have to take a few ibuprofen to help quiet our angry inflammations; however, what we do have on those young pups is a little more patience. We are a lot more intimate with the inner workings of our body as we have spent more time getting to know it. Though our bodies have had more time to suffer through injuries and surgeries along the way, as a result, we are much more aware of our limits. Don’t get me wrong, I want to hit those big weight PRs just as much as the grunting 27-year-old next to me, but rather than sacrifice form and risk injury, we as a group are generally willing to wait, to build-up gradually.

Of course with any pro there is a con. What time has done for those of us mature athletes is engrain bad form or technique into our muscle memory. I’ve had swim coaches, run coaches, and my own CrossFit coach tell me that when learning a new technique, it takes several hundred reps to solidify that muscle memory, give or take, depending on the skill. That sounds like a lot until you consider what it takes to correct improper form. “Athletes who are older will take a little bit longer to break the bad habits,” says Cody Lockridge, Level 1 CrossFit Trainer and USAW certified coach at CTOWN CrossFit in Cleveland, Ohio. It can take up to 10 times the amount of reps (that’s anywhere from 10,000-50,000 reps) to reprogram that muscle memory. “People who have worked a 9 to 5 job for several years, slouched over their desk at their computer, that will lead to bad posture, which leads to bad form,” says Lockridge. All of this translates to muscle memory, and if my muscles could talk, they would blabber nonstop about my rounded shoulders and slouchy hip stance that were years in the making. It’s a process, and it will require a lot of that venerable patience of ours, but bad habits can be broken.

As an older athlete, lack of mobility in our joints, much like the bad form issue, also plays a significant roll when we begin the dynamic movements needed in CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting. It has certainly been the principal issue in my own lifting game. As a runner for 17 years and a triathlete for right, I have a solid engine. But after all of those years of repeated pounding in running, continual winding in swimming, and doing the same static strength training using mostly machines (insert horrified gasp here), my shoulders would simply not allow for me to get into a solid front rack position, and my ankles virtually collapsed the first time I attempted an overhead squat. “You have to be willing to tackle that issue,” Lockridge points out. Though we may have more natural joint stiffness due to age and a variety of other factors, if we are motivated to work on that aspect, it is 100 percent correctable. It may take us a little longer than the spry 23-year old doing 150-pound squat snatches with ankles that seemingly rotate out with the limber grace of a Cirque du Soleil acrobat, but we will get there.

As an age group, the 35 and older crowd most likely has their lives put together for the long haul. Most of us are probably in long-term relationships or are married, have families, and have well-established careers and retirement plans. Athletes over the age of 35 are going to be able to see the big picture a little more clearly, and as a result, have a little more follow-through. This is not a dig on the 34 and under age groups. On the contrary, we love working out with people younger than us. You keep us on our toes, you challenge us, and you remind us how much fun picking up the heavy things and putting them back down can truly be. We admire your impetuosity and pluck; we’ll take all of that, but with a healthy side of prudence and forethought.

But to all of you out there who are of a certain age and are new or newer to CrossFit and/or Olympic weightlifting, and who are possibly questioning their right to do so as well as their abilities, I leave you with this piece of advice: snap out of it! There’s at least some part of you that believes you can do it because you showed up. Listen to your coaches. They will guide you through the process, a process in which you will need to remain patient, work hard, and stay motivated, all of the qualities that make doing CrossFit and weightlifting at 35+ utterly badass.