Physical fitness for older adults can become an enjoyable and productive habit once we put our minds to wanting better health.
It’s an age-old conundrum: We know we are supposed to do those things, those activities, those chores, that we need. But we don’t always get to the finish line if they do not become a thing that we actually want to do.
In other words, we need to feel a tingle in our bones to have that thing become a routine and a habit that we cannot ignore. A famous quote from Helen Keller, who did not let blindness and deafness become an obstacle to happiness, states: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”
That is certainly true with physical fitness. As we age, we realize that exercise has pivoted from a need to a must. We all hear about the benefits of fitness. The resultant boost to our well-being, be it reducing falls, or granting us the ability to lift a heavy box, or allowing us to walk confidently without stiffness or a bent back. We know how it can promote longevity and lessen mortality risk by around 13 percent.
We understand its effect on controlling high blood pressure or in allowing cardiac regularity and the pumping of blood to the joints and muscles. We know it provides a mental confidence boost. We realize that as we age, our bone density declines radically — women may lose as much as 20 percent of their bone mass after menopause, and everyone loses bone mass after age 65. Osteoporosis is a real problem for aging adults.
After age 30, evidence suggests that we lose as much as 10 percent of our muscle mass each decade. By age 60, that’s a 30 percent decline in strength from our younger, more robust days. It is a snowball running the wrong way down a hill.
We see the need to exercise regularly as we age. Resistance training is a great tool to fight off the loss of bone and muscle density as we get older. Cardio exercise, such as running, swimming, or brisk walks, can fight off heart problems and even some forms of cancer. This has become a need, even more so than for someone in their 20s and 30s who has fewer worries about their bodies.
So why don’t we just do it already? Or to put it in another way, how can we make physical activity into a want instead of a need. Because exercise is hard work. It is rolling sweat, it is aching muscles, it is huffing and puffing like a smoking chimney, it can sometimes cause minor injury. It is easier to make excuses. We will start soon once our bodies are prepared for it or we have more time. We do walk sometimes, so it is something. But the harder effort is more than we want to manage, like a widower who knows they should date again but does not want to suffer rejection.
Like that widower, we need to rebuild our relationship to good health. I know how that works. I will share my journey in future articles. But in a nutshell, I was a fairly smug 57-year-old in 2015 who went to the gym
occasionally for a light workout. I told myself I would devote more time to fitness soon. I ignored my shortness of breath on steep climbs or the fact that my triglycerides were elevated to over 300 mg. I ate my share of snacks that turned to sugar but was only slightly overweight.
Then came reality, in the form of a heart attack. I ignored the symptoms for a few days. That burning feeling snaking up my sternum to my neck was only a bit of heartburn that a tube of Tums could correct. That slight pain in my left arm was just a pulled muscle.
Then late on a Saturday night, the burning sensation would not subside. I told my wife to drive me to the ER. Instead, she advised an ambulance after seeing me white as a snowdrift. I was taken to the hospital, where
I was told I was undergoing a heart attack right now and that I may not have survived the night if I had waited. A visit to the catheter lab at 1 a.m. led to the discovery of two blocked arteries and a stent installed, all while I watched in horror from the metal table where I lay, eyes wide open and staring at a monitor.
Fortunately, for me, there was no lingering heart damage, just damage to my psyche and a new outlook on life. I went through some trauma, a bit of depression, for the next six months. Then, my need became a
want. Regular exercise was my partner, my raison d’etre, my spirit animal. I was not going back to the angio lab. I was given a second chance, and I would make it my mission. It was a vision for the heart and from the heart, in Helen Keller’s words.
I have run close to 20 half marathons, around 25 shorter runs and a full marathon in the past nine years, after never being a runner or much of an athlete before then. I took up strength and conditioning training and
go religiously to a gym five days a week. It is not about building a Schwarzenegger body or being the next Jack LaLanne (for you oldtimers who remember his TV fitness program into his 90s). Running was not about setting records or outdistancing those 30 years my junior (although I have won my age group in a few races). It was about feeling good, being confident in myself, looking, acting and feeling much younger than my 68 years might suggest to an outsider.
Which goes back to the want. A Jewish proverb once said that “What one has, one doesn’t want, and what one wants, one doesn’t have.” We strive for something in practice when we realize we don’t have it anymore. As older adults, we need to make exercise a want before we no longer can do it. We need to see that vision of what we can be to better ourselves instead of a vision of what we may no longer be in old age. We can turn back time on some level if we just make exercise a want to keep us vigorous, engaged, alive.
One of my favorite authors is Haruki Murakami, an imaginative, Japanese fiction writer who also is a runner well into his 70s. He has run the New York Marathon at an advanced age. Murakami wrote a meditative memoir called “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” In it, he writes that running becomes more than a task but a
way of life, of escaping, of turning habit into soul-lifting ritual. He writes
As I run, I tell myself to think of a river. And clouds. But essentially, I’m not thinking of a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.
I will share more of my fitness and health journey in future posts and discuss how we can all make the leap to think of exercise as a river to cross or of not anything but an activity we want to do. I am now a certified personal trainer for older adults, the next stage in my transition to good health.
Some of you may have seen the recent quote from Dick Van Dyke, who turned 100 and still goes to the gym several days a week. He is mentally alert and physically agile for his age, a remarkable person. His thoughts on fitness have become a Facebook meme. He says that “At 30, I used to exercise to look good. At the age of 50 to be fit. At 70 not to be padded in a bed. At 80 to be able to live without assistance. Now at 99 I do it out of pure defiance.”
Be that defiant, purposeful individual. I’ll be supporting you along the way.
Joe Pryweller is a heart attack survivor, professional journalist, competitive athlete and fitness advocate who now trains senior adults in their fitness journeys to lead healthier and more productive lives.