Beyoncé the Athlete Is Adjusting to Midlife

In “Renaissance," the rousing new documentary about her most recent concert tour, Beyoncé says that while she’s excited for people to see her show, she’s more fascinated to show them her process, which is formidable. She trains to sing while running in sweltering heat and dances in heels until her feet are bloody and blistered. When she performed in Atlantic City in 2012, less than five months after giving birth to her daughter, she said she’d lost 60 pounds by running on a treadmill and eating lettuce. In “Homecoming," the film about her 2018 performances at Coachella, she said that after giving birth to twins, she rebuilt her body with a training regimen that meant "no bread, no carbs, no sugar, no dairy, no meat, no fish, no alcohol."

Like a professional athlete, too, Beyoncé has had to overcome injuries. In the documentary, she reveals why she danced noticeably less on this tour: One month before she began rehearsals, she underwent knee surgery. “I believe I’ve been dancing and fighting through injuries for the past 15 years," she says. “The first time I was flown in a harness, they crashed me into metal stairs." The film shows a painful-looking collision during a rehearsal for her 2009 I Am World Tour. “Maybe 15 years later, I just got surgery on that knee. It just said, ‘no more.’" Michael Jordan faced problems with his knees, too, notes Dr. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “It’s just that it’s a different sport, so to speak," he said.

Dr. Shayna Kaufmann, a clinical psychologist, conducted a survey about the challenges facing women at midlife and found that physical decline was the most notable. Women have to deal with the perception that they should be able to do the same things in their 40s and 50s that they could in their 20s. “Somehow, we think [Beyoncé] has this superhuman capacity to defy aging," Kaufmann said, noting that for some, the public image of the singer might be frozen in the 2000s, when she released hits such as “Naughty Girl" and “Single Ladies."

In the new film, Beyoncé avows the contrary: “I’m a human," she says, “not a machine." And humans age. All athletes must eventually grapple with time’s sly creep, and when they bow out of the game, we tend not to click our tongues but to throw roses their way. Michael Jordan retired at age 40, David Beckham hung up his cleats at 38, and Tom Brady, who set many “oldest" records as a quarterback, left the NFL at 45.

Beyoncé is now a 42-year-old mother of three, and in the wake of her knee surgery, she altered her approach: “When a person is really trying to get their point across, there’s a lot of power that comes with restraint," she says in the film’s most revealing lines. “So I don’t feel the need to move around so much to give my best performance. My voice is my instrument."

Her voice is indeed as intoxicating as it’s ever been. Yet restraint has never been Beyoncé’s creed; her career is a master class in maximalism. So how can a pop star come to terms with growing older and confronting physical limitations?

“Look at people like Dolly Parton," said Dr. Ken Druck, author of the book “Courageous Aging." “Look at people like Cher!" Druck recently saw Cher perform in Las Vegas and said the show “really humanized who she is, how she has morphed, how she’s turned the pages…There was context there, rather than freeze-framing her in some era." Unlike more traditional athletes, divas keep going. They adapt. They transmute routine into intuition, soprano into something huskier. Cher’s latest tour was cut short by the pandemic days before her 74th birthday. Madonna launched her ongoing Celebration Tour at age 65.

All the same, when Madonna accepted Billboard’s Woman of the Year Award in 2016, she warned, “Do not age. To age is a sin. You will be criticized, you will be vilified, and you will definitely not be played on the radio." Age does seem to be a crueler arena for female pop stars than male rock stars. Male performers don’t seem to be as eyeballed for wrinkles. They certainly don’t put their bodies through childbirth. Even Prince, who died of a painkiller overdose that some traced back to performance-related hip injuries, rocked the stage in a way that was more improvised than choreographed.

Beyoncé’s career is far from over. Her music, if anything, is getting better, wiser, richer. Olshansky thinks she may even dance mightily once again, given what medical technology can do. But even if her most aerobic performances are behind her, a 27-year career is nothing to laugh at. Maybe it is fans’ surprise at how quickly those years pass that compels a sense of loss, rather than poignant gratitude, when stars age. Fans, after all, age alongside their idols.

Beyoncé seems to have this in perspective. In “Renaissance," she says that she relates to time differently now, seeing the world through her children’s eyes. Her 40s have been the best years of her life: “I have nothing to prove to anyone at this point. I’ve allowed myself to just be free." Looking at the young dancers and musicians sharing the stage with her, she says, “They are the new beginning."

Perhaps this is where the metaphor of Beyoncé’s new album comes full circle: She is experiencing a renaissance, a convergence of past and future, anointing a new generation while her own genius is still very much alive.

Shaan Sachdev is an essayist and cultural critic and the co-host of “Diva Discourse," a Beyoncé-centered podcast.