• Jason Smith didn’t exercise for years and got fit when he was 49.
• Smith is now a personal trainer who regularly strength trains and runs.
• He started by committing to an hour of daily movement and going slow.

A man who got fit at 49 and ran his first marathon at 52 shared the three things that helped him get in shape.

Jason Smith, 55, a personal trainer based in the UK, strength trains five times a week, and goes on four runs. Six years ago, his life looked very different. He worked a corporate job, did little to no exercise, and mainly ate ultra-processed microwave meals — and his health suffered.

In his 40s, Smith started to feel more lethargic and had less energy, he told Business Insider.

“I was overweight to the point of obesity, unwell, and in a pretty bad way physically and mentally,” he said.

In January 2019, a friend posted online about “an adventure” he was going on, which included cycling up hills and running through fields.

Smith thought: “That’s how I want to feel. That’s how I want to live.” It “flicked a switch” in his brain and he committed to changing his lifestyle then and there.

“I started to do a lot more research into nutrition. I decided I wasn’t going to drink alcohol anymore, and I also decided that I was going to get fit and that I would take that seriously,” he said.

After two weeks of moving more and eating a more nutritious diet he noticed a difference in himself, and he kept progressing.

“I felt so liberated, so different. I was enjoying it and I was loving life. It was a massive mental shift in me as well as a physical shift in me,” he said.

Two years later, he decided he wanted to help others feel the same way. For his 50th birthday in January 2019, Smith’s family bought him a personal training qualification course, and by the end of 2020, he was working with his first clients.

Smith shared how he approached getting fit at 49.

1) Have a clear goal

In the past, there were several instances where Smith had started working out, stuck to it for a week or so, and stopped when life got in the way. Having a clear goal helped make exercising regularly a sustainable goal.

Before hitting the gym or loading up his plate with veggies, Smith visualized his ideal self and wrote two lists: one detailed the things his future self would do, and the other the things he would stop doing. “The first thing that I did was get my mind in the right place,” he said.

This helped him create a plan and motivated him to follow it. “Having that vision in my head and almost this plan of what I would and wouldn’t do really, really helped,” he said.

Visualization is a technique that successful people including Steve Jobs and Michael Phelps have used, and has been linked to improved decision-making and emotional regulation.

2) Find something you enjoy

Finding a form of exercise you enjoy is key to making being active a habit, Smith said.

“You’re not going to do anything that you don’t enjoy,” he said.

He recommended thinking back to what you loved doing as a child. “I used to enjoy running through the woods, so funnily enough I went running through the woods and that made it a lot easier,” he said.

Because Smith enjoyed what he was doing, he looked forward to his runs and in April 2022 he ran his first marathon in three hours and 55 minutes.

3) Start slow and build up

When he first decided to get into fitness, Smith committed to doing an hour of movement everyday, but he started slow.

“Certainly, for the first couple of weeks or more, running was really walking with an occasional running spurt in between,” he said.

He joined his local gym and started with simple movements like lunges and squats, adding more as his fitness improved. He also had an introductory session with a personal trainer who showed him the correct form to avoid injury, which he said was helpful.

“It’s not how hard you work in the hour or the 45 minutes that you might be doing a workout that really counts. It’s how many times you do that,” he said.