Tony Hawk thinks it’s 'absurd' to still be skateboarding as a 56-year-old grandpa. He's doing it anyway.

It was 25 years ago that Tony Hawk cemented his icon status in skateboarding when he became the first to land a “900” — completing two-and a half turns in the air before landing — at the 1999 X Games. At 56, he hasn’t stopped reaching new heights.

“The idea that I’m a professional skateboarder in my 50s is kind of absurd,” Hawk, who became a grandfather last September when his son Riley and daughter-in-law Frances Bean Cobain welcomed a baby boy, tells Yahoo Life. “I want to keep doing it. I don’t have some ultimatum that if I reach a certain age I’ll no longer be a professional skateboarder.”

So he’s making efforts to ensure that he can continue to level up as he gets older. “I've learned to redirect my approach and my skillset to something that has more longevity,” says Hawk. Here he reflects on what that looks like and how he takes care of his health.

He had to learn some lessons the hard way

Hawk is considered one of the most prolific athletes in his sport. But it took him a while to start treating his body as an athlete should.

“I think I was more proud of the fact that I was sort of the antithesis to athletes and jocks,” he says. “I didn't stretch. I didn't work out. I only skated for exercise and kind of ate what I wanted and slept when I wanted.”

The lack of routine worked in his favor as a young skater, but “as I got older, I got wiser,” he says. “I kind of found out the hard way when three years ago I broke my femur.”

He had misjudged a landing on a McTwist — a 540-degree aerial rotation — which resulted in his right femur snapping. It was far from Hawk's first injury, but at 53 years old, it was one that ended up changing the course of his career going forward.

“I thought I was going to make a full recovery and still be doing everything I did,” he says. “At some point I realized, you know, this is a hard lesson that you can't keep doing this forever at this level. And I need to take care of myself in other ways to even get a baseline of being a professional skateboarder at my age.”

Hawk prioritizes his heart health

While he wishes he took steps to take better care of his body long before the 2022 injury, Hawk says he’s been laser-focused on his heart health for well over a decade. His father had two heart attacks by age 55. In his 40s, Hawk learned that he was on a similar path.

“I was heading towards being pre-diabetic and having high cholesterol and high blood pressure,” says Hawk. “That was exactly what my dad had gone through. But my dad didn’t take action. He wasn’t proactive in trying to change the tide.”

Seeing how his father didn’t prioritize his health inspired Hawk to do the opposite. He started taking a statin and Qunol, a coenzyme Q10 supplement — which may improve heart health and blood sugar and help manage high blood pressure in people with diabetes, according to Mount Sinai — per his doctor’s recommendation. “That led me down a path of starting to take care of myself much better.”

Embracing a safer lifestyle

The setback from his femur injury forced Hawk to slow down and allowed him to prioritize some new wellness practices in his day-to-day life.

“In the last year or two, I added strength training to my workouts and added stretching to my skate routines,” he says, in addition to focusing on nutrition and sleep. “I would say sleep is probably the number one shift in the last few years. Getting a good night's sleep is paramount to me being able to do anything these days.”

He also decided to give up on performing high-impact tricks that could lead to serious injury. Although that felt like the end of an era, it allowed Hawk to usher in an even better one. “Now my skating is much more technical, and I found a new creative outlet in that,” he says, noting that he still challenges himself to learn new tricks within his new limitations. “It's more fun than ever.”

More important, it’s sustainable. “It used to be that after I skated, I would just feel kind of exhausted and very sore, very stiff, kind of sick. And now after I skate, I feel energized because I have a much healthier approach to it,” he says. “Being active — not just exercising, but also skating — keeps my mental health in check. If I go more than two days without doing either one, I feel it. I feel anxious, and I feel uncertain.”

His impact on skateboarding isn’t over

Hawk is no longer competing professionally, but he continues to advocate for those who are. He’s currently set on getting vert skateboarding — the discipline he popularized — onto the world’s largest sports stage.

“It's a hard road, I’ll tell you that, to get a discipline added to the Olympics,” he says. “I am campaigning endlessly to the powers that be that they need to add it to the LA games.”

If he succeeds, Hawk says, “I would just be the ultimate cheerleader.”