The Millennial Midlife Crisis Manifests as Visible Abs

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Jessica Grose

Opinion

The Millennial Midlife Crisis Manifests as Visible Abs

April 25, 2026,

9:00 a.m. ET

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Roger Kisby for The New York Times

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By

Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

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Whenever I hit the leaderboard at Orangetheory, I post the triumph to Instagram stories with the same caption: “My midlife crisis is going great!” This is the most mortifying collection of words I have ever written, but it is my truth.

Midlife crises are

not the universal experience

that they are often made out to be; one needs a pretty high base line of financial and personal stability to have the luxury of a life-altering freakout or a new obsession. But I am now firmly in my mid-40s and have observed that my peers are greeting this decade of our existence in a few specific ways.

The varietals of the millennial midlife crisis according to social media are: spiritual (an ayahuasca journey, getting

into near-death experiences

or starting sentences with “As an Aquarius …”), relational (divorce or

polyamory

), material (throwback crisis and, inadvisable in this economy, fancy car or boat), and physical (running a marathon, getting into power lifting, bragging about your Orangetheory wins).

I can’t speak to the first three manifestations of discontent, but I can provide a couple of explanations for why many of us are choosing to spend our free time and precious expendable income battling it out at feats of athletic performance like

Hyrox

, a punishing fitness competition where the average athlete is a 35-year-old woman.

The biggest one is probably the pandemic hitting just as we were cresting into peak adulthood. Covid forced us to touch the hot stove of mortality. This most likely led some of us to adopt healthier habits. About

50 percent of Americans 35 to 49

met the C.D.C. guidelines for aerobic activity — think running, walking or swimming — in 2024. This is above the average for all generations, and greater than for older generations. The federal guideline is defined as at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise or some equivalent combination of the two per week.

It’s tough to make an apples-to-apples comparison with Gen X and boomers at the same age because of the broad age ranges the C.D.C. breaks groups into, and I couldn’t tell whether it used the same methodology over time, but there are other bits of data that suggest millennials are very into working out, including the popularity of different kinds of obstacle course competitions, like

Tough Mudder

and

Spartan Race

, and an

increased demand for marathons

. Millennials also

spend a greater proportion

of their money on wellness, compared with older generations.

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