Original Articles by Donovan Baldwin

There's a fallacy going around that as you grow older in years, you have to stop living.

How silly!

Every day we hear or read about seniors who are waterskiing, surfing, swimming, bowling, gardening...even lifting weights and bodybuilding. I have often written about people like Kelly Nelson and Morjorie Nowlin who were not only competing in, and winning, bodybuilding competitions in their 70's and 80's (in bikinis, I might add). The key point in their stories, however, is not how old they were when they were competing, but how old they were when they, both non-exercisers, began training to compete.

Kelly was in her late 50's, and Morjorie was in her 70's!!!

Now, not every wants to train with weights or compete in bodybuilding contests, and maybe not everybody should try to. After all, not only do we each have our individual hopes and dreams, but we each have our own realities, and for seniors, that often does include certain limitations. There are so many ideas for senior fitness programs and activities that zeroing in on one does not make much sense.

What does make sense is being aware of genuine health considerations. There are seniors running marathons, but there are also seniors with joint problems who probably shouldn't do that kind of thing. There are seniors with a wide range of health issues that could possibly prevent their participation in some particular kind of exercise or sport, but I will leave that to the individual and their doctor to determine. Anyone can find some form of activity in which to become involved.

My point is that just because we are seniors does not mean we cannot live full, active lives. I am not saying that we all need to get out and water-ski or line dance, but that we do not have to give up activities and the enjoyment of life just because we are older than we used to be.

Certainly, aging does curtail some aspects of being active for most of us. For example, even a fit and healthy person who has been regularly exercising with weights for years is going to lose some physical strength as he or she ages. However, just because you cannot lift as much as you used to does not mean you should not lift anything at all...or that if you cannot run any more, that you cannot walk or bicycle either.

Ideas for senior fitness abound, and the list of reasons for pursuing regular physical activity is a long one. In fact, even writing about the health benefits of exercise for seniors, or for anybody, for that matter, could be an article much longer than this one. Suffice it to say, that regular physical activity, even if only begun in our later years,

One of the great things about "exercising" as seniors is the broad range of options that we do have available. Not only CAN we participate in almost anything we might have wanted to do when we were younger (or not), but many of us often have the time and resources to do so as well. Also, because we are not necessarily attempting to master a sport or activity so that we can compete over a lifetime, we can take the time to have fun in the process. We do not have to even concentrate on any particular sport or activity but can learn to enjoy several different activities and avoid boredom by changing up from time to time.

You may have noticed that this small article on "ideas for senior fitness" seems to be a little short on specific suggestions as to what you can do. Well, that is because the sky's the limit! I did mention personal limitations earlier, but, other than that, and the realities of time and finances, almost any regular physical activity or formal exercise program will provide physical and mental health benefits to seniors...and the rest of the population, as far as that goes.

Let's face it. We can use a lot of words to describe why people do not succeed with exercise programs, but the word that probably covers the most aspects is going to simply be "fear".

People are afraid to start exercising, afraid to keep on exercising, afraid to stop exercising, afraid to talk about their exercising....

One of the most common causes of fear is ignorance. Another cause of fear is pain. Pain has many aspects as well, their can be the physical pain people associate with exercise, there can be the pain of failure (anticipation of which breeds fear), the pain of disappointment, and the pain of embarrassment...after all, how many people, including yourself, really believe that YOU are going to stick with it and start looking and feeling good.

Fear and pain. That's what many associate with exercise, fitness, and weight loss...because odds are that if you are thinking about exercise it's because you're gaining weight or are already heavier than you want to be.

One big cause of pain is ignorance, of course, but another, an offshoot of ignorance, is trying to do too much too fast.

Very simply, if done properly, exercise works and will produce a healthier, fitter, trimmer you. However, if you try to do too much too quickly you can actually injure yourself.

Now, when I make a statement like that, people tend to think of pulled muscles, soreness, and the after effects that we are all familiar with. The problem is that many, no, make that most, people do not realize how deeply exercise is involved in all the processes of the body!

You have to think of an exercise program as something like a road construction project. You may drive by one day and see a completed road, but first there was a grading and clearing, dirt and/or rock was trucked in and trucked out, some workers came in and did one thing, then another crew came and did something else. If you tried to build that road in one day, or if you tried to build it with one crew, or if you tried to skip some of the steps, your road, if it gets built at all, will at best be a very substandard road. And, if you are not doing the proper things in the proper manner, you will go way over budget...and the whole thing gets cancelled.

When you do your first exercise routine, you not only injure muscle fibers...relax, it's part of the process...but your heart, lungs, liver, glands, in fact almost every part of your body, begins to at least think about changing. If you don't exercise again for several days, it forgets what happened and you continue being who you were before.

If, however, you exercise again within a certain period, and then again, and so on, ALL THE SYSTEMS AND ORGANS begin to take notice and begin to make adjustments. This is work, and it is going on while you work, while you sleep, while you have sex, or play the piano. In fact, if you try to do too much too soon, you might decide that you are not in the mood to have sex or play the piano!

A lot of this occurs at a level you do not really notice, but it can be strong enough to make you feel an aversion to doing the next rep, the next exercise, or even the next workout...and you won't even be aware of WHY you feel that way!

The next thing you know, it's been two weeks since your last workout, and it seems that once more exercise just did not seem to deliver what you expected.

On the other hand, many of us expect too much!

After all, the ads say you can lose 30 pounds in 10 days! Here you've been working out for 10 weeks and have only lost a couple of pounds!

The facts are that exercise does work for fitness and weight loss, but it will take time. Rome was not built in a day, and neither were you! It will take time to readjust your body with exercise alone.

That's another point, by the way. If you exercise but continue to follow your previous lifestyle, which probably included some bad eating habits, the exercise may be, if not doomed to failure, doomed to inadequate results! Oh, you will still get healthy and lose weight, but no matter what exercises you do or how much you exercise you will not reach anything like the point you want to get to.

Again, we discover another factor. Your particular fitness and weight loss journey will depend on a great many factors, including the kinds of exercises you do, how often you do them, the intensity of your workouts, etc.

It can actually turn out to be a very complicated area, this exercise thing, and is beyond the scope of this article, although I have written others on the subject as well.

However, you can still simply choose to begin inserting small doses of exercise into your daily activities and functions, and gradually increase the intensity until you are experiencing all that can be obtained merely from exercise...which is one h*** of a lot! If I were going to recommend one lifestyle change for better health and fitness, it would be to get more exercise, followed closely by; take a daily multivitamin, watch what you eat, get eight hours of sleep a night, keep your mind as well as your body active, learn to relax, have fun, make friends, and get a pet.

There should not be a need to fear exercise. It works, but like any tool it can be misused. Misuse of tools results in accidents, damages, and injuries. Even the best tools, if not used regularly, cannot complete their tasks properly, nor on schedule. Tools not used become strangers to our hands and we lose our skill with them.

Exercise is a tool for the health of the body and mind. Use it well and it will reward you by helping you build a fine healthy body, fit and toned. However, like any construction project, you cannot probably complete the whole project in a day. Long before the first brick is laid, or the first load of cement is delivered, there must be preparations made for the edifice which is going to rise from the mud of the construction site.