9 Fitness Tips From Athletes in Their 90s (and Beyond!) Who Are Still Crushing It

When Flo Meiler lined up for the triple jump at the National Senior Games this summer, she was fired up. She usually makes the hop, skip, and jump into the sand-filled pit from a board that’s 10 feet away from the pit. But the official working the event said he couldn’t change the position of the current board, which was 13 feet away.

Meiler was upset that the conditions were different from what she was used to, making the event more challenging, but jumped anyway—and set a new world record for women age 90 to 94 in three of her four attempts. Her final, and longest, jump measured a whopping 4.55 meters, or 14 feet, 11 1/4 inches. “My friend said, ‘Well, you should get angry more often. You do better when you get mad,’” Meiler tells SELF, laughing.

Meiler’s fierce competitive spirit, even at the age of 91, is proof that fitness doesn’t have a shelf life. And she’s far from alone in proving that women can continue doing big things and chasing ambitious goals even decades into the masters category.

SELF spoke to six women who maintain regular workout schedules or competitive athletic careers into their 90s—and in one case, beyond them. Our goal: to find out what makes these athletes tick, and to see if there were insights that could apply even to exercisers decades younger.

One surprising fact? While many of them have been active in some way for most of their lives, several didn’t pick up their main sport or activity until their 40s, 50s, or later. “My motto, I want you to know, is ‘Never Too Late,’” Meiler says. Here’s more wisdom from her and other nonagenarians and centenarians that we guarantee will power you through your next workout.

1. Don’t be afraid to try new things—and keep moving in different ways even after you find your favorite.

Joyce Jones, 95, started playing badminton in high school, added tennis when she and her husband bought a tennis club when she was in her 40s, and then picked up pickleball about a decade later, after being introduced to it by one of the founders, former Congressman Joel Pritchard, a childhood friend of her late husband, Don.

More than 40 years later, Jones has racked up hundreds of titles in all of ’em. She’s also in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest female competitive pickleball player. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t continually expanded her horizons to include other racquet sports, she tells SELF.

Meiler had a similarly long history of different athletic pursuits, including basketball and competitive water skiing, before a friend recruited her into training for track-and-field events about 30 years ago. Now she competes in the decathlon—10 events that span sprinting, throwing, and jumping. That means versatility is huge, and moving her body in different ways is essential to success—kind of like built-in cross-training.

Now a typical week of training looks like this: She goes to the track on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for practice in sprints and field events, like throwing and jumping. Tuesday and Thursday is strength training and some social cardio; she does 25 minutes of weightlifting using machines, followed by playing tennis with friends. On Saturdays, she runs long—about three miles. And then Sunday is set aside for some sweet, sweet rest.

That multifaceted routine keeps her healthier than if she limited herself to a single sport or workout, she believes. “You really should have another outlet so you have other parts of your body that will be getting exercise,” she says. “Doing the same thing all the time is not good for your body.”

2. Break big goals down into smaller parts.

Ask Meiler her favorite events, and she’s quick to name the hardest ones: the hurdles and the pole vault. “The pole vault is very, very challenging, and it takes an awful lot of stamina,” Meiler says. “I really have to work hard for that.”

To practice, she goes to nearby South Burlington High School. First, she’ll take three or four runs with her pole, planting it in the ground in the designated spot. Then, she’ll set up a bungee cord to practice jumping over. “You can’t practice with the bar, because if you keep falling, you get black and blue” from the bar hitting you as you both tumble down, she says; the bungee cord is much softer and gentler.

It’s only on meet day that she puts it all together by planting her pole and sailing over a bar. The method clearly works: At the Masters Indoor World Championships in Gainesville, Florida, in March, she set a world record for women ages 90 to 94 when she cleared four feet, six inches. (And by the way, she also set world records in the 60-meter hurdles, high jump, and pentathlon in the same meet, bringing her total of world bests to more than 40, she says.)

3. Ramp up before a big event—and rest afterward.

In the weeks before a competition like the National Senior Games—a biennial event most recently held in Des Moines, Iowa, from July 24 to August 4—Meiler further dials in her preparation. “When you know you’re going to have a meet, you’re more intense in what you’re doing. You pay more attention,” she says. She focuses on nailing down details such as how many steps she’ll take before the high jump and that pesky board position for the triple jump.

But just as important as the preparation is the recovery that comes afterward. After competing in 10 events over five days, earning 11 gold medals and one silver, and breaking two world records, she was exhausted. “I was so tired when I came home, I didn’t even want to see the track,” she says.

So she took an entire week off training. Even when she picked things back up, she took cues from her body about how to proceed. The first morning she went back to practice, she planned on working on the long jump, but the 90-degree temperatures altered her strategy. “It was so hot that I said, ‘This is for the birds,’” she says. “I went walking for about 12 minutes in the woods because it was just too hot.”

4. Use consistency to build motivation (and results!).

Even as 93-year-old Elaina Gonzalez has moved around the country—from Los Angeles to Santa Fe to Lakeville, Minnesota—she has made sure to keep her body moving regularly too. Her routine has almost always included yoga, though the other components have shifted, moving away from running toward less high-impact forms of cardio like dance and walking.

“I’m not a fanatic about it, but I do what I feel is the amount that my body can handle,” she says. “If I have to be gone for a week, or I’m traveling or something, I can feel [the lack of movement] when I come back.”

It helps that she found a place she truly loves to exercise. Almost every weekday morning—Monday through Thursday, and often Friday too—she drives two miles to her local Life Time, where she’s been a member since 2017. There, she takes a 45-minute to one-hour chair or gentle yoga class. Sometimes she’ll stick around for another session, either dance-based cardio or full-body conditioning, where she either uses body weight or three-pound dumbbells to build strength. “The people are lovely. The instructors are very thorough; I’ve not found a bad one,” she says. “It’s more like a country club to me.”

She rarely lacks motivation, but when she does, she reflects on the benefits, which are far more functional than aesthetic. She doesn’t take any medications, does most of her own housework, and can easily walk her two small dogs, Theo and Lily, as well as play with her grandchildren.

Some of that may be genetic, she says—she also has a brother who’s 90 and healthy. But she also believes keeping her mind and body engaged plays a key role. “I know I can’t look like I did when I was 50 years younger; it just doesn’t work that way,” she says. “But I know that I’m in pretty decent shape, and I’m happy.”

5. Get in a good warm-up.

Lynne Hurrell started running road races when she was 44, then began competing in track meets when she was in her 60s. When she started, there were few others in her age group. “I think I won medals every time I ran,” she tells SELF. Now that she’s 91, she’s amassed thousands of them in distances from 50 meters to the marathon—so many that they overflow the racks she hangs them on.

For about a decade she’s been part of a team, Sierra Gold Track Club. On Saturdays or Sundays, she trains with her teammates at either Nevada Union High School or Bear River High School in Grass Valley for workouts that might involve fast 400-meter intervals, hurdles, or other challenges.

But before they get to those, they prep their bodies for all the hard work yet to come: They begin with at least 15 minutes of drills like butt kicks, high knees, and skipping. “We do all these different little things to warm up every muscle,” she says. “We spend more time warming up, I think, than actually running!” All this helps activate and prepare their bodies to avoid injury, she notes.

6. Surround yourself with support.

Mary Coroneos grew up in Pennsylvania with four younger brothers. From an early age, they did farm work and sports together. “We did compete, but they were kind to me,” she says.

Now, at age 100, Coroneos maintains a strong support system that enables her to keep active—both on the cardio and strength training fronts. Her daughter Athena, who’s 65, drives her to The Edge Fitness Club in Norwalk, Connecticut, nearly every day. Three days per week, trainers Stephanie DiNoi and Robert Drush guide her through weight training sessions that include moves like seated leg curls, sled pushes, and front raises with weights. On the other days, she rides the bike.

The people are a key reason she loves the gym, Coroneos says. Athena adds that her mom is known as the mayor there, and that she isn’t above flirting with men during rest breaks. When Coroneos turned 100 on June 11, the staff even threw her a party, complete with balloons, a cake, and a sash that read “100 & Fabulous.”

As for Hurrell, her track teammates don’t just help her train to smash records—last year, she set American records of 5:16.16 in the 800 meters and 2:26.00 in the 400 meters at the 25th World Masters Athletics Championships. They’ve also bonded by traveling to meets, often staying in shared Airbnbs. Together, they’ve gone to places like France, Spain, Finland, and Gothenburg, Sweden.

When she looks at her medals, she thinks of the sites they saw when they traveled—for instance, a flamenco dance in Spain—and the way the trips cemented their friendships. Especially because she lives alone in Grass Valley, California, and her relatives are elsewhere in the state, her teammates “are my family,” she says. “We eat out together and share each other’s birthdays, and we go to plays and do things like that, other things besides just running or throwing.”

7. Do it for the joy—but don’t be afraid to go big.

Carol Ruff, 91, comes from a long line of swimmers: Her grandmother swam, and her mother once won a race in the Mississippi River. As a child, Ruff would swim in the lake or at camp wherever she could. As she grew up, she turned toward other sports—high school basketball, then tennis and golf as an adult—and didn’t really return to her first love until later in life.

The feeling of gliding through the water, along with the sense of flow and focus, keeps her coming back to the lanes. “I don’t think of myself as ‘training’ or ‘working out,’” she tells SELF. “I swim because I love the pleasure of swimming.” In fact, when she was looking for senior living facilities several years ago, it factored heavily into her decision-making process: She chose Cambridge Village of Apex in Apex, North Carolina, in March of 2021 in large part because of the pool. “It’s not big or anything,” she says. “But if you don’t mind making turns, you can swim for an hour.” Thanks to her regular pool access, she now swims for 30 minutes to an hour most days of the week (or walks for 30 minutes if the pool is too busy).

As big a part of life as swimming was, Ruff had no plans of competing in it until her son David—who’s 65, lives nearby, and also swims three to four days per week—decided to sign up for a meet himself. “He said, ‘Mom, why don’t you go with me? We’ll have a good time,’” she says.

So they did, competing first in the local Wake County Senior Games, then the North Carolina Senior Games last year, before moving on to the National Senior Games this year. There, David competed in several events, placing as high as sixth in the 200-yard individual medley, while Carol claimed gold in the 50-yard breaststroke.

8. Modify your movements or activities as needed.

Though they take pride in defying age-related stereotypes, these athletes are the first to tell you age isn’t only a number—it’s a biological reality that has an impact on the way your body feels and functions. Rather than deny that, they’ve all taken steps to adjust their activities through the years so they can keep getting after it.

Meiler, for instance, began walking rather than jumping over hurdles five years ago after a collision with a barrier left her leg and ankle seriously injured. Ruff no longer swims the freestyle because it irritates her shoulder; instead, she focuses on the breaststroke. Hurrell stopped throwing the javelin, also due to shoulder pain, and will walk if she has to during the 30-minute runs she does on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Jones stopped competing in badminton in 2021 when a stiff neck prevented her from looking up, and she backed off from tennis in 2023 when arthritis in her hands made it too difficult to swing the heavy racquet the way she wanted to.

But none of this has dampened the their desires to train and compete. Jones is still able to play pickleball, but she’s also trying even more new things—this time, that go beyond the racquet or paddle. “I figure my arthritis is going to get worse, even though I do exercises for my hands,” she says. “So I looked through the things that I could compete in that I didn’t need my hands for, and I came up with the 50- and 100-meter runs.”

She began to lace up: In addition to the three gold medals she won in pickleball at the National Senior Games this year, she added a silver in both of those race distances, coming in behind Ethel Lehmann, 96, who’s competed in track for four decades.

9. Take joy in inspiring others—and being inspired.

Jones says she gets approached by dozens of other players at every tournament, asking for photos or selfies and saying things like, “I want to be like you when I grow up,” she says. “I just love the idea of inspiring other people and showing them that they can still play as long as they want to,” she says.

Meiler, too, revels in this type of attention. “There’s nothing more rewarding than to have at least a dozen or more people come up to me and say, ‘You are such an inspiration,’” Meiler says. “That is the most rewarding thing. It really pleases me that I can motivate other people to get healthy.”

Hurrell, meanwhile, says what she appreciates most is the talented athletes coming up in the sport behind her. Unlike the days when she was alone in the 50s or 60s age group, athletes at these ages now face stiff competition. She hopes that they’ll continue following in her footsteps, making an athletic career that lasts into the 90s—and beyond—less remarkable and more typical.

Related:

• How 4 Pro Athletes Balance Parenthood With Big Olympic and Paralympic Dreams
• 7 Basic, Essential Movements Your Workout Routine Should Include as You Get Older
• 5 Simple Tests That Can Tell You About Your Longevity

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