The Come Alive Project

Tag: Senior exercise

  • Energy Bite 346 – What Holds YOU Together?

    I was in a toy store recently and I saw one of those toys which is a figure of a person on a pedestal. When you press a button on the bottom of the pedestal, the body collapses. Sometimes they are called “push puppets”. Many of us have seen similar toys.

    It collapses because when you push the button on the bottom, you release the tension on the strings which hold the figure together. When you release the button, the tension on the inside strings is returned and the body goes back to normal. When you push the button slowly, the figure collapses slowly.

    Compare that string to your skeleton, muscles and the other internal structures of the body that hold YOU together. When those internal bodily structures collapse by pushing the button of aging, you start to fall apart.

    Our muscles and bones are like the string that holds the toy together. As we get older, we start to lose the tension on our internal support system. It’s our job to keep our muscles, bones, joints, etc in good condition so our bodies continue to hold together.

    As we age, the body’s internal structure tends to weaken. Muscles atrophy and get smaller and weaker, bones become brittle, circulation slows and body fluids pool. We weaken and ultimately collapse into a shuffling, bent over, struggling ghost of our former selves.

    One of the goals of exercise is to strengthen the infrastructure that holds our body together. The takeaway? Start an exercise program that strengthens your muscles, keeps your joints moving smoothly, and keeps your bones dense. This involves resistance exercises for the muscles, weight bearing exercise for the bones, full range of motion exercises to keep the joints mobile, and some aerobic exercises to keep the fluids circulating and the lungs strong. You will grow older much more gracefully.

    There are plenty of opportunities to get exercise. At home. At the gym. With friends, with a group, or alone. Any and all exercise will help keep your old body young.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 340 – What’s it REALLY all about?

    Not long ago I read a 1987 book called, Body Worry by an overweight, overfed and under exercised writer named Remar Sutton. He took off from his job to spend a year getting in shape, and to become a “hunk” with bulging muscles, and writing about it as he went along. He wrote a series of articles published in the Washington Post among other publications examining his experiences and commenting on them. Some of you will remember those articles.

    He said he was totally focused on his looks and overall appearance and health was not his major concern. He wanted muscles.

    So, he packed up and ran off to the Bahamas for a year in the sun and a year of exercise, working with a team of high powered medical and fitness experts to reshape his body into a muscular Adonis.

    But, sometime during his journey, he realized that he was not going to become the super muscled hunk he wanted to be. Instead, he found that with exercise, he would realize his goal of becoming a good looking “hunk”, but rather than having the huge, bulging muscles he started out wanting, he developed a lean, toned body and was filled with an energy and vitality he never experienced before.

    Why is all that relevant? Well, it simply emphasizes what this blog and The Come Alive Project is all about.

    So, What Is It All About?

    These articles are not about having big, bulging muscles or running an ultra-marathon, or being “SuperSenior” or anything close to that. Instead, they are about you having a toned, fit and healthy body along with the energy and vitality that will help keep your mind and body functioning at a high level — longer than normal. It’s about you having the physical ability to do the things you want to do, and remaining independent for as long as you live. It’s about you enjoying feeling alive.

    It’s about being as strong and fit at 70 as you were at 50. It’s about keeping your old body young and healthy, and keeping your mind active and alert.

    It’s about being able to get out of a chair or getting up from the floor easily and gracefully.

    It’s about being able to keep your balance and avoid falling.

    It’s about being able to look in the mirror and saying: “I like what I see”.

    It’s about coming alive and enjoying your senior life with the energy and vitality to enjoy the experience. It’s about being able to say to yourself today and ten years from today, “I look and feel alive!”

    That’s what it’s all about.

    I hope you get something from these short articles and I thank you for taking the time to read them.

    And as you read these articles, always remember to:

    Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”    — Bruce Lee

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 338 – Fitness and Flow, Part 3

    “Our experience shows that by keeping your mind focused on what you are doing, you can greatly increase the intrinsic pleasure of vigorous movement as well as the benefits you receive.”   — George Leonard and Michael Murphy, The Life We Are Given.

    When you exercise with full awareness of what you are doing, without FitBits or other external and distracting accessories, you can easily discover yourself exercising in a Flow State, and getting far more benefit than you would get from the average exercise session. No watching TV or reading magazines while on the Treadmill, please.

    Remember that the Flow State is defined as:

    1. An optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best, and

    2. An altered state of consciousness whereby an individual performing an activity is immersed in a feeling of energized hyperfocus, full involvement, and enjoyment of the activity.

    It’s a temporary state brought about by focused engagement in an activity that you do for its own sake. It’s a mind-body “thing” that helps you perform at your best, that which you have mastered through long term practice.

    When you move into a Flow State, certain chemicals are released into your body and brain that provide you with feelings of euphoria, intense focus, sharpened sensory perception, and complete present moment awareness.

    Ironically, Exercise can produce these same chemicals, particularly exercises which increase your heart rate and cause you to breathe faster and more deeply. When you exercise, you produce most of those same chemicals and they have a similar effect on your brain and body. You feel alive and in the flow of life.

    Also ironically, some of the chemicals are the same chemicals found in certain mind altering substances, many of which are illegal.

    “To live is to move. Even when seemingly motionless in sleep, the body is incessantly moving. We share a silent pulsing of heart, blood vessels, glands, diaphragm, lungs — the busy intercourse among a hundred trillion cells — with many other organisms. When we consciously move through space, we can’t help but affirm what is both unique and universal about our species.”  — Leonard and Murphy, Ibid.

    Physical activity is not necessary to move into a Flow State. Artists, musicians and entrepreneurs often find themselves in Flow as a result of deep focus on their activities. This article is limited to the discussion to exercise and flow and how they merge together to form a powerful fitness experience.

    Mastery of a physical activity often precedes flow. When you have Mastered the activity through deep practice, you will find yourself feeling better and performing better because you are doing it for its own sake. The motivation comes from inside rather than from some external reward.

    All of the elements I have listed need not be present. The “runner’s high” is one of the first examples people use to describe Flow. The euphoria involved in running or rowing or other sports is the easiest way to describe flow to the novice. Yet the same state can occur when lifting weights, doing other exercises or even in children playing games.

    And the fitter you are, the more likely you are to encounter the Flow state in your own activities.

    “Every person, no matter how unfit or fit he or she is, can rise a little higher, go a little faster, and grow a little stronger. The joy of surpassing the limits of the body is open to all.” — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

    So, if you really want to feel good, and if you want to really improve your performance in all that you do in life, then — MOVE YOUR BODY!

    Thank you for reading.