Category: Senior Fitness

This is my 96th Energy Bite.  I’ve been writing and publishing these Energy Bites as both a PDF newsletter (early days) and later as a blog, for a couple of years now.  The topics have always been built around various aspects of Health, Fitness and Personal Energy for Active Older Adults.

Until just recently, no one has asked me what I meant by Health, Fitness and Personal Energy.  Someone did last week.  So I thought I’d write this post as a bulleted list of what I mean.  All the terms interrelate and this list is by no means complete.  In fact, if you have additional bullet points to add, feel free to let me know (see below).

If you are Healthy, Fit and have an abundance of personal energy . . .

• You are able to do nearly all the things that you personally want to do on a day to day basis, and then some more.
• You have a strong and effective immune system, helping you combat long, lingering chronic illness.
• You are mobile, flexible, and able to move your muscles and joints through their entire range of motion, limited only by injury or disability.
• Your muscles and bones are healthy and strong. You are able to push things, pull things, lift things, carry things, bend and twist, keep your balance, and move from point A to point B at your own leisure.
• You have a strong infrastructure of ligaments, tendons, joints and internal organs.
• You have a strong cardio-respiratory system.
• You are able to maintain good posture.
• You have the Personal Energy to get through the day with a smile on your face, and plenty left over in reserve.
• You have a high degree of enthusiasm for life and depression is only fleeting at most. You have a positive attitude about living.
• You have the ability to overcome inertia. When you want to do something, you go ahead and do it, moving out of your immediate comfort zone.
• You are friends with the floor. You have the ability to get down to the floor and up again with little difficulty.  You are able to catch yourself or slow yourself in the event of a fall, to prevent or minimize any injury.
• You feel good physically and are comfortable in your own skin.

This list is certainly not complete.  Some may have other ideas as to their definitions of health, fitness and personal energy.  These are some of mine.  Please feel free to let me know your thoughts at bob@thecomealiveproject.com. Please put “Personal Energy” in the subject line.

You get most of your personal energy from good exercise, nutritious food, plenty of oxygen, and a “Come Alive Attitude” toward yourself and your life.  And that’s what The Come Alive Project and these blog articles are all about.

Thanks for reading.

There is no better source for personal energy than having Grandkids around.  We have seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.  My daughter’s kids used to live near us so we saw them often.  My son’s kids live a number of states away so we don’t see them often enough.

My son’s kids have all flown out by themselves for a week alone with us away from their parents and their siblings.  The last of his four is on the airplane on her way here as I write this at the airport.  She is eleven years old.

Hanging around with an eleven year old for a week will be fun.  It can also be exhausting for grandparents who are not physically equipped to handle it.  Fortunately, Edie and I are both in good condition to take her all over the place.  Will we be worn out at the end of the week?  Probably.  But it will be fun, and the fact that we have the energy to do things and go places will make it much more fun for her as well as for us.  We plan to go to the U.S. Capitol, to Mount Vernon, to the Spy Museum, to the massive underground caverns in Luray, Virginia, to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia (maybe), to the Peter Pan show at the 360 Degree Theater, to a hands on Science Museum for kids, and a whole bunch of other places.  All that and more, plus the swimming pool in the late afternoons after we get home from our daily adventures.  We wouldn’t be able to share those things with her if we didn’t have the vital energy to constantly be on the move with her.

Grandkids can be one of the great pleasures in life and it’s important to have the energy to enjoy them.  They like to be active.  Sure they play video games and watch television, and do other passive things, but they also like to “do things and go places” that they don’t do when they are home.

The house is ready.  We are ready.  The plane has landed.  Come on, girl, let’s enjoy the week!

Thanks for letting me share that and thank you for reading it.

Edie and I just finished walking.  We are house sitting a friend’s house in the Virginia mountains, surrounded on 3 sides by Virginia’s famous Skyline Drive. We always feel better after a brisk walk, even in the hot Summer sun.

We were in this same spectacular place last year at around the same time.  Our friends had suggested we would enjoy house sitting for them while they were traveling, as a way for me to recover from open heart surgery, which had just been done a month earlier.

It was here that I really started back into an exercise program of walking, strength rebuilding and flexibility exercises.  It was the walking, though, that helped me the most.  We didn’t play around with the walking, but neither did we overdo it.  This time, as we drove up the steep driveway to the house, I wondered out loud, “How did I manage to walk up this hill a year ago?”

But I did walk up that steep driveway last year, many times.  And I did it the same way that I would suggest anybody new to exercise start a walking program.  Start!  Walk a little.  When you get out of breath, slow down.  Then as you recover your breath, pick up the pace again.  Continue with on and off, fast and slow walking until, over time, you can walk for a half hour or more at a brisk pace of 3 to 4 miles per hour.

If you are new to exercise, walking is one of the very best ways to start building strength, breathing deeply, and building endurance, all rolled into one simple and enjoyable exercise.

Why is walking so good for you?  OXYGEN!  It builds your cardio-respiratory endurance.  Walking strengthens your legs.  It’s easy to set your own pace.  And it’s easy to see your progress. Some suggest that the benefits of walking outweigh the benefits of running, particularly with respect to the impact that running has on your knees and legs. And some studies have shown that the cross-body effects from walking can help activate the brain and can potentially stave off Alzheimer’s or dementia.

Hospitals now require patients to get up and walk as soon as possible after most any surgical procedure.  That was the first thing they made me do after surgery, and  Edie had to walk from her hospital gurney to her bed immediately after her knee replacement surgery.  Walking longer distances every day was the best thing I did during my recovery from heart surgery and walking on a treadmill was the first thing I did in Cardio-Rehab a couple of weeks later.  I started with ten minutes of slow walking twice a day around my neighborhood, and built to two miles in a couple of weeks.

An older adult can start out with a slow walk around the neighborhood and increase it to where you can walk several miles.  Once you reach a distance of several miles, you reach a “point of no return” in benefits, and you would be better served by adding in some other forms of exercise to your routine.

A good cardio walking speed is around 3 to 4 miles per hour.  You certainly don’t want to start out at 4 miles per hour but it’s not unreasonable to see that kind of speed for part of your walk.  At 3 miles per hour, you are walking a mile in twenty minutes.  For some, a mile seems to be a long distance to start with.  It’s may seem like it at first, but it won’t be long before you are walking that mile in fifteen minutes and walking for a half hour with ease.

A big question that often comes up is about the benefits of using a treadmill.  Yes, many of the physical benefits of walking on a treadmill are the same as walking outside.  You can adjust most treadmills to change speeds and inclines, and you can see your progress in terms of distance walked and your speed.  For some, a treadmill is just fine.   But, by walking outside you can add in the mental, emotional, and even the spiritual benefits (remember, the word “spirit” is derived from the Latin “Spiritus” meaning breathe).  Treadmills can be expensive to buy but most gyms have them available for member’s use at a fraction of the cost of buying one.

So, if you haven’t walked as exercise for a long time, or ever, it’s time to get started.  For me, early morning is the best time to walk but that’s up to you.  Carry some water with you and just get out and move.  You won’t want to stop.

Thank you for reading.