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The thing about getting older is the injuries. You just get injured more often. You take time off, you come back, you get injured again and you never get in shape.

I find the older I get, the lower in weight I go. It's harder to recover. Living in New York City, working a job that is unpredictable and at times stressful, you're lifting way more than your max because you need to push some weight around. You put an extra plate on for the release, and then you're sore the next week. Its stress release.

As you grow older, it's harder to stay fit. Every day you wake up with pain, muscle aches which you don't know you had. I have to work harder on me than I used to when I was 18 years old. It takes me longer to recover now.

When you're young, you don't think very far ahead. You just think in terms of the next day, the next week, the next competition. You don't think about injuries that could threaten your long-term health.

That's the same in college. It's the same in high school. Kids are getting bigger, stronger, faster, more into the weightlifting, more into nutrition, more into size.

If you have less weight, you have less strength.

I always had a weight issue since I was a young kid.

When you're young, all the accidents, all the pain you take them, but at least you're very strong. In fact through time, it's just adding more and more pain, more and more loss and it makes you more fragile.

If you can lessen the chance of a bad injury by being strong, you have to do it.

Not many people know, but my joints are extremely hypermobile, and that's why I'm more prone to injuries. That's why most of my major injuries were with the joints. I had a career-threatening wrist injury where picking up a fork to feed myself was a problem, and the thought of playing tennis again was so far from my mind.