Category: Senior Fitness

If you are reading this blog, it means you are interested in your own personal Health, Fitness and Personal Energy. It means that you understand that your personal health and fitness are your own responsibility and that it is the choices you make that will keep you healthy as you get older.

Most likely you’re already doing many of the things you need to do, or know what you need to do and just need the motivation to keep doing it. Over the years, I have written a lot about Movement, Food, Breathing, Mindset, Motivation, the power of Visualization and other aspects of discovering your Fountain of Youth and turning on the Flow of Life that comes from it.

This article will simply reinforce what you already know about your own health and fitness and the things you need to keep doing to build and maintain your Personal Energy and Vitality. Here are the aspects of your own Health, Fitness and Personal Energy that you have complete control over.

What and How you think.

“It all starts with the way you’re thinking!”

The way you see and think about yourself, the way you look, and the way you feel, will determine what you do for your health and fitness. A positive attitude toward, and about, yourself and your life will go a long way in determining how well and how long you live a happy life. A negative attitude will do almost as much for damaging your health as lack of exercise and eating poorly.

This is not a new concept. Greek and Roman philosophers wrote about it, it recurred during the Renaissance. It became popular again as the New Thought wave expanded during the mid to late 1800s as authors like Dr. Samuel Smiles, Orison Swett Marden, Bernarr MacFadden and others wrote about both the physical and mental aspects of personal energy, overall health, and fitness. Paul Bragg, Jack LaLanne, and yes, even Charles Atlas all emphasized the mind-body connection in health and fitness. All emphasized Visualization as well as some form of Meditation as tools for physical and mental self-improvement. There has been a renewed emphasis on Health, Fitness and the Mind-Body Connection in recent years.

How You Move

If you move your body the way nature intended, you will be active, your muscles will be strong and supple, your hinges will work smoothly, and your body will stay flexible. Your blood will circulate freely, and your posture should remain tall and upright. Your internal organs will work and your body will purge itself of toxins.

What should Seniors be able to do with their bodies? Simply put, they should be able to push things, pull things, lift things and carry things, twist and bend, stand up straight, get up and down from the floor with relative ease, walk, crawl, swim, and in some cases run. Whew!

All of the above requires strength, flexibility, joint mobility and guess what — Self Discipline to actually do the exercise required to stay in good physical condition.

 How and What You Eat and Drink

It’s simple. Don’t eat junk. Stay away from processed foods, refined sugars and white flour. Drink plenty of water. There are many different viewpoints as to what constitutes healthful eating. All seem to be backed up by studies and some even by real science. What’s the right choice? Who knows! There are more theories about food choices than there are fish in the sea.

Personally, I cut back on meat and upped the fruit and veggies and lost 30 pounds over about a ten month period several years ago. Do what works for you.

How You Breathe

Breathing deeply will improve your life dramatically. You will increase your endurance, power your muscles, improve your circulation and increase your energy. Your respiratory system includes a lot of filters so for the most part, deep breathing is beneficial no matter where you are. Please don’t do your deep breathing in the middle of an Interstate Highway with lots of truck traffic and pollution.

There are some who encourage a form of hyper-ventilation. If you’re a Senior, you should probably get a doctor’s opinion before doing this. It’s one of the recent “trends”, but it’s been around for a long time.

How Well You Rest, Sleep and Recover

There has been a lot of recent research into the value of sleep, rest and recovery. It seems to show that a good night’s sleep is much more important than originally thought. Recent studies reinforce the value of true darkness in getting the most benefits from sleep. Artificial light from bedside clocks and even the blue light from “devices” seem to be a no-no for restful sleep.

Recovery from exercise and the stresses of daily life seem to be getting far more attention than in the past, and studies show that meditation and mindfulness can go a long way in that recovery process.

No Lecture Intended

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, you may recall a similar summary a couple of years ago. Not much has changed since then. In fact, not much has changed for thousands of years. Move, eat right, breathe deeply, rest well, use mental imagery and reflect deeply (meditate). These tools for longevity and feeling alive have been around forever. Use them correctly and they may keep you around “forever”, too.

Thank you for reading.

 

For the last several weeks, I have written about the central theme of being in the Flow of Life as active adults. I discussed what is meant by Flow of Life and Fountain of Youth; how to get there, and some energy vandals that stop that vibrant energy from flowing. And how do we get back into, and stay in that Flow of Life? The final energy vandal I listed in the article on this subject was: “And finally, when you write your own story, you’ve let someone else “hold the pen”.

Where did that come from? It came from an old Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company advertisement that said:

“When writing the story of your life, DON’T LET ANYONE ELSE HOLD THE PEN”

That stands out as one of the great tag lines of all time.

So who is writing your story; who’s holding the pen? We know we are responsible for our own health, our own fitness, our own mindset and our own Joy of Life. Some seniors, today, allow other people to “hold the pen” when their senior life story is written. The allow kids, government, other family, situations, etc. to determine how their life will be lived. The don’t take responsibility for creating their own reality — they let circumstances or other people do it for them. Bruce Lee once said: “Circumstances, hell I make circumstances.” That’s a great line and we seniors should take it to heart.

Unfortunately, all too often we become complacent, get apathetic, and let others determine how we will live our lives. But if we want to keep our personal independence, then we have to “hold the pen”.

As a thinking older adult, we each have the ability to shape the rest of our life any way we want it. We can determine our general health, our posture, our overall positive or negative mindset, our mental attitude, our self-motivation, our actions, and most important, we can shape our own thoughts. And it’s important to remember that the thoughts held in mind become our reality.

How do you visualize your future? Well, how do you want to look? How do you want to feel? What do you want to do? How do you want others to see you? “Visualize” is the operative word here. You can shape your future by how you see and feel it now. You shape your body by what you picture in your mind, and then do something about. That’s what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to build his muscles to win bodybuilding championships. He also visualized himself as an actor — and became one. What you see and feel in your mind will become your reality — but only if you take action to turn on the flow of your Fountain of Youth, and make it happen. You can direct where you want that flow to go, or you can let someone else do it for you.

The late American Motivational Philosopher, Jim Rohn, once said, and I paraphrase, “The Fountain of Youth is within reach of anyone who wants to reach for it. The question is, who will reach?” I’ll rephrase it by saying it this way: “The Story of Your Senior Years is Ready to be Written, the question is, who will write it?”

As the Harley-Davidson ad said so clearly:”DON’T LET ANYONE ELSE HOLD THE PEN”

Thank you for reading.

 

The theme of this week’s article is supposed to be titled: Write Your Own Story.  It’s not. In fact, it’s not about anything.

My wife, Edie and I are at the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and will be here all week. The concept of Writing Your Own Story for the rest of your life, both physically and otherwise is too important to write as a “quicky” from the beach.

It seems to be mostly retired people who are here at the beach after Labor Day. It’s an ideal time to come — still warm and not very many kids. It’s interesting to watch some older couples walk down the beach like they owned it, while other older couples look like they could barely walk from their room to the beach — but would be well cushioned if they fell down.

While I hesitate to put “writing the rest of our story” off for a week, it is better to do that than write junk just to get it published on time.  All too often, as we get older we tend to let others dictate our choices and it is extremely important to our futures that we don’t let other people write the story of the rest of our life.

Next week will be the post about Writing Your Own Story for your Senior Years.

Thanks for indulging me.