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Most of us spend much of our day sitting.  While the newest “buzz words” are “sitting is the new smoking” (which may be a bit of an exaggeration), we really don’t move our legs enough. We don’t strengthen them. We don’t stretch them. We don’t run our leg and hip joints through their full range of motion. What does that mean? It means we lose muscle mass in our legs, they lose elasticity and flexibility, and our knee, ankle and hip joints get rusty and creaky. That spells trouble.

As a person ages, the legs are usually the first part of the body to start deteriorating. How does that expression go? “The legs are the first things to go”. And once the legs start going, the rest of you can’t be far behind, unless . . . you actually do something to keep them strong.

Why are having strong legs so important?

1. Climbing up and down stairs. Many of us still live in two story (or more) homes. We climb the stairs at home many times each day.  And if you happen to be a tourist in Washington, DC this week, you’ll soon learn that the elevators in the Washington Monument are under repair. That’s 897 stair steps you’ll have to climb (and go back down, too).
2. Getting up and down from the floor. As you get older, you’ll find it more difficult getting up and down from the floor. How are you going to do floor exercises if you can’t get up and down?
3. Getting up from a chair without using your hands. I’m talking dining room chairs, not comfortable lounge chairs.
4. Walking from point A to point B without tired legs or getting winded.
5. Maintaining your balance and preventing falls. Strong legs make it easier to catch yourself if you start to fall.
6. Going dancing. Old dancers seem to live longer and keep their shapely or muscular legs. Dick Van Dyke is still dancing at age 90. The TV show “Dancing with the Stars” has showcased a number of older dancers who you would think were long past their prime. Yet they seem to dance like the kids, if not better. I saw Tina Turner perform in Las Vegas in 1962 with Ike Turner as the “Ike and Tina Turner Review”.  She danced and sang with pure, raw energy then. Watch a recent YouTube video of her dancing and singing Proud Mary. Whoa! She is 76 now and still performs with the energy, stamina, and legs she had at 22.

How do you build or maintain strength in your legs?  Let’s keep it simple. Here are four simple exercises for your legs  (Thighs, hamstrings and calves):

1. Squats for your thighs – Start out using a dining room chair. Sit near the edge of the chair, lean forward and stand up and sit down a few times without using your arms for support. Then do the same movement without a chair.
2. Hamstring stretches and raises. Lay down on the floor (see, I told you) and put your feet up on the bed with your butt close to the bed. Lift your hips off the floor, forming a straight line from your shoulders to your knees with your feet on the bed. Lower your butt and repeat. You’ll soon feel it in the back of your legs.
3. Calf Raises. This is too easy. Stand with your legs close together with your feet flat on the floor. Lift up on your toes and drop back down. After a while, put the balls of your feet on a stair step and lower your heels below the level of your toes when you drop down. Have some sort of support handy.
4. Best of all is to . . . WALK . . . A LOT!

Of course, anytime you are doing any exercise for the first time, check with a medical professional before starting.

Don’t let your legs get weak from lack of use. Do these leg exercises for a while and watch your legs get stronger – fast. Then keep doing them. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks for reading.

The Fountain of Youth is a term that is bantered around a lot. I’ve used it off and on for well over 15 years to describe that mental and physical state of energy and electricity that we, as seniors, get when we are “in the zone” of personal energy; when we feel vitally alive. It’s that personal energy and vitality you feel in your body when you momentarily peak physically, and you laser focus your mind when you are inspired. You feel it in your Spirit when you are at one with yourself in your own space in this universe.

Wayne Dyer was an author of numerous books, his most famous being his first, Your Erroneous Zones, which he wrote at age 36. His appearances on PBS Television are legend.  Wayne Dyer died last year at age 75.

It was about the time he wrote that book that Dyer made major changes in his life that resulted in his continuing on as a highly prolific, and highly read, author and speaker. What were those changes?  He began making changes in his eating and exercising habits. He began running eight miles a day, and according to his book, You’ll See it When You Believe It, he continued to run eight miles a day without missing a single day.

He cut out alcohol out of recognition that he had become or was becoming an alcoholic drinker. In his movie, The Shift, He relates the story of how he stopped drinking after a dinner and an unintentional intervention by his daughters, and never resumed. In his books, he alludes to the Spirituality and Power of 12 Step Programs without mentioning them directly. He also cut out cigarettes and dramatically changed his eating habits.

Dyer said that as a result of exercise and diet and changing other habits, his mental and physical capacity was dramatically improved. He told Michael Jeffries, author of Success Secrets of the Motivational Superstars that “the results were dramatic; he immediately began to experience a sense of vitality and well-being that he had never experienced before.” Dyer added: “His whole body and mind felt revitalized and rejuvenated, and were now operating at a whole new level.” He continued: “His thoughts took on a tremendous sense of clarity and focus. For the first time in his life he began to experience his spirituality at a deep and profound level. This spiritual transformation that Dyer was going through began to express itself in both his speaking and writing.” *  There’s a message there for us to absorb.

And in an interview with Tony Robbins several years ago, Dyer said that he credited exercise with not having any major illness since his mid-thirties. He commented that: “You must exercise; you can’t let an old person come into your body.”  Hmm, there’s that message again.

This sort of transformation comes to those who seek it. It eludes those who don’t recognize the value of making those physical and mental changes through movement and food. Where do you find it? Don’t seek so much in the world around you; seek it in your world within. How do you find it? It takes action in mind and body and is simply “there” for those who actively take action. It doesn’t come to those who aren’t in the arena of life. It comes to those who seek it, discover it within themselves, and “come alive”.

It was Joseph Campbell who said, “People say they are seeking the meaning of life. I don’t think that’s what they are looking for. I think what they are really seeking is the experience of being alive.”

 Thank you for reading.

* Success Secrets of the Motivational Superstars, Michael Jeffries, p. 66

I am on the Tony Robbins email list (along with a couple of million other people) and I get an occasional video in those emails. I watched a short video by Tony Robbins yesterday and he said some things worth repeating.

He said, “You are 100 % responsible for your experiences in life.” I agree and have often said the same thing in these articles. We have choices and make decisions. We are responsible for how we choose to experience what happens to us.  He said: “I don’t have bad days. I have bad ‘moments’, not bad days. Maybe a bad 90 seconds.”  I think that’s a great concept. We rarely go through an entire day feeling bad. And we all have the ability to change our “state”, or mental attitude, instantly.

He said that no one has to have a “bad day”. Most “bad days” are caused by some sort of life event that people perceive as having a negative effect on them. The cause is usually some sort of mental hurt or emotional pain. Most people, including you, also know that you can change your attitude toward a life event instantly, if you want. Anyone can. Since we all have different ways of experiencing the same thing, we also handle each event differently.

No one has to have a bad day. I can let an event bother me all day, or I can choose to drop it. Edie and I do this all the time. One of us will get angry about something the other one did or didn’t do. How long the anger lasts is up to each of us based on the meaning we attach to the perceived hurt. We all do this. In fact Robbins said he and his wife now put a 90 second limit on feeling hurt about something the other did. He said it used to be a five hour limit, but never longer. We all can have a bad few times but how long we hold onto that attitude or stay in that state is a choice that we can make. If we are in a bad stat all day, it’s our own fault. Why?  Because we are 100 % responsible for how we choose to experience the event.

I learned through my 12 step program that resentments are one of the major causes of hurt and anger, and that the longer you choose to hold a resentment throughout your life, the more it will have a negative effect on you. Most of these resentments are a result of unfulfilled expectations. Two of the most important steps in any 12 step program are to first, inventory your resentments and second, tell someone else about them. If necessary, make any amends to any person you may have harmed through your own actions. That’s pretty good advice for anyone. Put the resentments behind you and move on. That will help avoid a lot of future bad days.

Tony Robbins said: “It’s not about the event, it’s about the way you communicate to yourself about the event. It’s the meaning we associate with the event that determines how we feel about it. Nothing in life has meaning except for the meaning that we give it. The label we put on the experience becomes the experience.” 

Since our attitude has a huge influence on our Health, Fitness and Personal Energy, as well as life in general, the above makes very relevant reading.

So, thank you Tony Robbins. Thank you all for reading. And be sure and “have a great day”.