Enjoy this great video of Stephen Jepson showing how he turns exercise into play. This TOJ really likes his mix of balance, agility, fine motor skills, and endurance.
Too often exercise recommendations for older adults are not very challenging. Older adults are treated like delicate porcelain vases ready to break at any moment. Jepson sees it differently, and shows how it can be done.
He understands that an older body, just like a young one, has muscles with motor units that are ready to go with a little stimulation and practice.
The more I observe other TOJs, the more I realize that to progress, we need to regress.
Remember when you crawled around on the floor as a child? Or rolled your body across the grass? Or doing short sprints and agility drills in high school physical education? For most of that, those movements are in the distant past, and it's to our detriment.
As we grow up and age, very steadily we reduce both the range and velocity of movement. Once we're out of school at whatever grade level, we sit more, maybe walk or run, or lift a few weights, do some activities of daily living, like mow the lawn or vacuum, but no more crawling on all fours or hopping sideways or skipping or jumping or quick lunging. Adulthood in industrial societies becomes an inexorable process of steadily forgetting body movements.
This TOJ thinks that this is a mistake. We become fragile because we act fragile. Our society cues us that we're delicate and vulnerable. Yes, it's part of the natural process of aging for your bones to gradually become more brittle and the muscles, ligaments, and tendons to lose strength and be less flexible. However, by accepting and living the stereotype of the old and fragile, we accelerate this process and grow old before our time. I see it all around me in our spectator culture.
If you're an older TOJ, now's a good time to rethink how you exercise. If you've been limiting yourself to any one activity like endurance running or pumping iron, break out of the rut and think back to agility drills you did for high school football or basketball. Get on the ground and do a commando crawl. Get in a push up position with only your hands and toes in contact with the ground and do a crab walk. Dribble a ball while moving forwards and backwards.
The reason older people can't do many movements is because they just stopped doing them a long time ago. The muscle motor units still remember, but they've gone to sleep from sitting in front of the television or a computer. You can wake them up. You need to wake them up.
Once you did these exercise routines to prepare for competition. Now's a good time to revisit some of those routines to prepare for the rest of your life.
Start slowly. Obviously you need to be mindful of vulnerabilities if you've had injuries or surgeries. You'll feel awkward. Sometimes you'll quickly fatigue. It can be a sobering reminder that you've aged.
But if you persist, you'll get stronger and more flexible than you ever thought you could. Your joints will feel better. Your energy will increase.
Will you be as young and strong as the good old days? No, but you're body will become functionally younger in the only time that counts - right now. Question or topic you'd like addressed? tuffoldjock@yahoo.com
After a circuit class at our gym, this TOJ was talking with Dennis Jennings, a fellow TOJ, about how hard it is to find a suitable workout regimen if you're a male and older. Most of the group classes at the gym have dance elements and just don't incorporate stuff that's very athletic. Although the classes can plenty challenging (in circuits you get out what you put in), something's missing in the other ones.Gyms are careful not to over-tax the old people to prevent injuries and heart attacks.
As I described what I thought it is and what exercises needed to be added, he got a smile on his face, knowing just what I meant. He thought old guys would like a workout like that. He suggested, tongue in cheek, that we should form a group called the Black Knights, named after the hilarious scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail. I went home and watched it again (101st time) and agreed.
TOJs are just like the Black Knight when he says his classic line, "It's just a flesh wound." We probably don't have a much better handle on our actual physical capabilities than the Black Knight, but, like him, we keep at it against all odds. He doesn't quit, whine, or hesitate. He fights on, despite his steadily vanishing capacities and mortal condition.
Don't forget that the only reason the Black Knight didn't skewer King Arthur was that he was exhausted from his previous fight. Swinging broadswords really takes it out of you. He needed a few minutes to restore the ATP in his muscles.
The Black Knight has inspired me to design a workout routine in his honor. It will be hard, a full body workout with agility drills, plyometrics, strength, power, and cardio. It'll start with a dynamic warm-up, and go immediately into high intensity sequences to enlist every muscle in the body, deep down into the core.
Designing a program like this will be a challenge because TOJs were always physically active, so they have muscle or joint vulnerabilities and limitations from old injuries or over-use. You have to find ways to work around these.
But the Black Knight shows the way. If worse comes to worse, you hop around on one leg. It's better than nothing, and you're still in the battle. Aging is just a flesh wound.
