Lowering exercise intensity with age, what has worked for you?

Excellent. Thanks for coming back to update us.

Assuming that you are in good health and have no significant medical problems or disabilities, I don't think that 32 is an age at which you need to worry about reducing the "intensity" of your workouts.

Ask again in 28 yrs when you turn 60.

So, says this 70 yr old man who doesn't do any workout w/any degree of "intensity" any more.

Lo and slow to avoid injury is my motto doing any type of exercise now.

Joe Friel is the father of aerobic training - he's written seminal books like Runners Training Bible, Triathletes Training Bible, etc. He's well into his 70's now and a few years ago he wrote a book called Fast after 50 which is based on the latest science on aging and exercise. The number of athletes over 50 is growing and new performance records are continually being set. Two major takeaways from the book: (1) in order to maintain/improve fitness, high intensity training needs to be part of your program, including weight training. People who just do a lot of low intensity aerobic work over time lose fitness over time. Not saying it's not good for you, just in terms of maintaining threshold performance (as measured by VO2 Max). (2) As you age, you need longer periods of rest and recovery, which includes sleep. Friel is a big proponent of periodized workouts where you have weeks of higher load followed by a week of recovery. For younger athletes it's often 3 weeks of build followed by 1 week easy. For 50+ athletes it's more like 2 weeks build followed by 1 week recovery. The other elements that become really important are stretching and flexibility. So I would encourage keeping some level of intensity in your program if you want maximize your vitality. Best of luck in your journey!