There are 2 sides to every person (or more if you have MPD) and it's the same with fitness, you either teach health that lasts and conditioned bodies that last or you drive men and women to the brink of injuries to the point where whether they're 18 or 80, they won't be able to do what they're bodies were meant to have. I believe in the basic elements of old school style training where you can still manage a great ideal of exercise regardless of age, sure you may change it up a bit as you get older but the principles stay the same. It doesn't matter if you lift weights, do bodyweight training, Primal Movement or circuit training; if you can stay in enough shape and you keep your tendons, muscles and ligaments in tact even at an older age and practice the moderation of being leveled and challenged, you can live pretty damn long.
The main reason I love Animal Exercises is because, it involves everything and it takes you into a world where you can do it at any age even with modifications. Fitness is a universal entity where you don't know which program works best and you have a plethora of information so long it'll make your head spin. The truth is even you researched every single form info on exercise, diet, tempo, practices daily and anything, how much of it will you really need? The answer, only a fraction that makes the biggest difference. I can almost certain guarantee that if some 20-something crossfit maniac keeps up with his WOD's and tries to the same thing at 60, he'd be most likely dead.
Everybody is different and not everyone trains the same exact way but overall, if you can adapt and adjust to how your body reacts and feels, you can still go strong at 80 or older. You can condition your body to burn fat as you get older too and should because as you know, testosterone and other hormones tend to drop hard every year starting at minimum of 30. You don't have to be a Usain Bolt to be sprint good, you don't have to be a Paul Hamm to still be fit for gymnastics and you certainly don't need to have the extreme flexibility of a yogi to do Yoga, it's all about how you approach it with bing able to control how your body works and understand when to back off and when to go hard.
Conditioning is the basis for all sports and activity, it's to keep going even when fatigue sets in. Play your cards right, you can apply this to your lifestyle and be able to handle certain amounts of stress even later on in life. Mentally, it can be a great challenge because as we age, our brains tend to go haywire from time to time and we aren't as sharp as we used to be but it doesn't have to be that way. You play games that get your brain going, you exercise through compound movements and holds, you stay consistent on your flexibility. When it comes to looks, you can still look like a pretty boy or hot chick but still have no brains or any real valued attributes in terms of real strength, agility, endurance and flexibility.
Conditioning can take you far in life and that' figurative and literal. Yes I do believe in challenging yourself but I also believe in solid consistency and the ability to recover naturally. I don't try to do hour long workouts everyday because why would I want to, what's the purpose? For starters I get bored as hell after a while and two, I want to have great energy before, during and after training so when I spend time with the people I love and want to be around, I have that energy to have conversations, laugh, play, enjoying phenomenal moments. If you don't have great energy to do things because you pushed yourself so damn hard, you're losing out on things that make life worth living and for what? One glorious moment where everything is taken out of you?
Live the way you want but know that solid conditioning for life brings great treasures beyond the physical.
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