If you were a kid in the ’90s or early 2000s, Tony Hawk was inescapable. He lived in your video game console, he turned up on Rocket Power, and in 2003 he skateboarded off a ramp into an 11,000-gallon tank of green slime at the Kids’ Choice Awards, which is a sentence that only makes sense if you were there.
But before Hawk became the rare athlete who could cross from skate parks to PlayStation to Nickelodeon without anyone blinking, he was just a kid in a sport where “old” arrived early. Very early.
“The older skaters were in their 20s. That’s when they would quit,” Hawk, now 58, tells Reader’s Digest. He remembers seeing a photo of legendary skateboarder Mark Lake in Thrasher magazine with a caption marveling that Lake was “30 and still killing it.”
“I remember thinking, ‘That’s crazy—he’s 30,'” Hawk says.
Nearly three decades past that supposedly ancient milestone, the X Games icon is still on his board. But he’s no longer pretending his body is indestructible. “I learned the hard way that I’m not invincible,” he admits. “We’re all human, and we’re all fallible.”
That lesson became painfully literal in 2022, when Hawk broke his femur. Eager to get back to skating, he pushed his recovery too quickly and displaced the bone, which kept it from healing properly. He kept going that way for roughly eight months before needing another surgery. “I took my recovery much more seriously and much more methodically after that,” he explains. “I wasn’t so cavalier to get right back on my skateboard. And it worked, but I learned the hard way.”
Even now, decades of experience don’t make him immune to injuries.
This past March, the pro skater says, a relatively basic trick went wrong and tore three muscles in his hip. The move itself wasn’t flashy, but it came with what he calls “sneaky dangers.” That may be the most relatable Tony Hawk injury story possible. Most people aren’t falling on a vert ramp, but plenty of us know what it’s like to realize our bodies have started keeping receipts. One day you’re invincible. The next, you turn your neck too fast backing out of the driveway and suddenly have a “good side.”
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“You have to listen to your body,” Hawk says. “I am as guilty as anyone of not listening to my body and pushing through pain to the point where I sabotage my own health. I don’t do that anymore, but I used to do it in the worst way possible.” Listening, these days, is mostly unglamorous maintenance: Strength training, stretching, sleep, diet and roughly “eight supplements” every morning—four of them from Qunol, the brand he’s partnered with on its Move Like a Champion campaign. “[Taking supplements is] not something I ever imagined that I’d need or want,” he admits. “But it has allowed me to live this dream into my old age.”
He’s also stopped measuring himself against the guy who landed the first 900. “I’m moving like a 58-year-old champion. So that doesn’t look the same as moving like a 20- or 30-year-old champion,” Hawk says. “It just looks like movement.” Moving at all puts you ahead of the pack, by the way. Only about one in four American adults fully meets the CDC’s physical activity guidelines, which the agency considers a key piece of aging well. “[Movement] doesn’t have to be skating, obviously. It could be walking your dog. It could be dancing. It could be pickleball, chasing your grandchild.”
As for the campaign, the ask is simple. “What we’re doing is encouraging people to share how they move,” the San Diego native explains. Post a clip of whatever gets you off the couch and tag Qunol with #MoveLikeAChampion. Prize packs are up for grabs, including a Hawk-signed skateboard, no kickflip required.
Hawk, for his part, already knows his thing. After more than 45 years on a board, skating still gives him something nothing else has quite managed to replace. “Zen,” he says. “A peacefulness and a joy that I just haven’t found with any other activity. I appreciate it more at its most basic level now than ever. Because I still get to do it—it’s a privilege.”
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Sources:
- Tony Hawk; interviewed July 13, 2026
- Variety: “Kids’ Choice Awards’ Slime So Sublime”
- Skateboarding Hall of Fame: “Mark Lake”
- CDC: “About Physical Activity”
- Qunol: “Move Like a Champion Contest”
The post Skateboarding Legend Tony Hawk Has Entered His Listen-to-Your-Body Era: “I Don’t Do That Anymore” appeared first on Reader's Digest.
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