Number one is finding an exercise you enjoy so it becomes part of your routine.
My wife and I (we add up to 162) found mountain biking 20 years ago when I retired and we clock up about 200ks a week on our ebikes in Booderee NP,every ride includes forest bathing and a picnic under a Gumtree
I read a good quote recently "if you are exercising to lose weight you need to change your diet".
"we add up to 162" - gold!!!! As you know, it's impolite to discuss a woman's age 😉 so you handled that one beautifully.
Mountain biking is a fantastic form of exercise. You get cardio and lower body strength training, and most importantly you do it outdoors, in nature! I recommend adding in some upper body strength and balance training, as well as something that involves impact, like skipping or box jumping, to build bone density.
Your quote is excellent. It reminds me of that old maxim, "you can't outrun a bad diet".
In my retirement I have taken up tennis. For many years I chauffeured, catered, cheered, consoled, and celebrated while the rest of my family actually played what I now understand to be a very challenging sport. Thankfully, my tennis playing family members are also very good teachers, extremely patient, and have put up with my "this is too hard, I give up" tantrums and encouraged me along to the point where I can play well enough for it to actually be worthwhile exercise - and I love it! (I'm with Davo - the more you enjoy it, the more the habit will stick.)
I am constantly appreciating new benefits - it's outdoors, it's social, and when played well involves observation, concentration, strategising, problem solving, large muscle groups (watch how the pros move around the court almost in a half squat), balance, coordination, core muscles, even eye exercises - changing focal length while tracking the ball, and cardio interval training. I can get my heart rate up significantly while having a ball (pun intended) and I'm so busy paying attention to all those other aspects and having fun, I don't notice how hard I'm breathing till I stop!
Since I have been playing I have noticed improvements in my glute strength, quad strength, and cardiovascular fitness.
Unlike some other forms of exercise, though, it helps if you have an opponent of a similar standard, and I should add that doubles provides less cardio benefit than singles but, in my experience doubles played well still has many of the above benefits.
- "For joggers, we found a multivariable-adjusted increase in survival, with a U-shaped association between dose of jogging (calibrated by pace, quantity, and frequency of jogging) and all-cause mortality. The dose of running that was most favorable for reducing mortality was jogging 1 to 2.4 h/wk, with no more than 3 running
days a week, at a slow or average pace."
- "the health club activities group had the longest total duration of all the sports combined, at 599 min/wk" - so my speculation that this group may have done quite poorly due to low participation was completely off-base.
And this may be the money shot: "Possibly, the observed differences in mortality benefits were due to the differing social aspects of the various sports studied. Interestingly, sports that require 2 or more individuals to play together and socially interact - tennis, badminton, and soccer - were the sports that were associated with the best improvements in longevity, whereas the less inherently interactive forms of PA, such as jogging, swimming, cycling, and health club activities, were associated with less impressive longevity benefits. This is in line with previous studies consistently showing that social isolation is among the strongest predictors of reduced life expectancy."
Good for you, Anita! It's wonderful to see you stepping out of the 'supporter' role and into the 'active participant' slot. Tennis really is a top-notch sport for physical, mental and social health. Do you think there's any hope for me, with my total lack of eye-hand co-ordination??? My rare ventures onto a tennis court have produced nothing but embarrassment, I'm afraid. I always find that both the racquet and the ball are too small for me to get them to connect with each other 😉.
That's a fascinating paper, BTW. Looks like you picked the right sport to take up in retirement! I wonder whether the dismal impact of 'health club activities' on life expectancy gains is due to the fact that most people with gym memberships don't actually go there??
Oh if I can learn it, there is definitely hope for you! Re the size of the ball and the string - it still fascinates me that, given the surface area of the stringed area on the racquet compared to that of the frame, I still manage to hit the ball with the frame (on the odd occasion)!
The fact that you get any part of the racquet to connect with the ball puts you way ahead of me 🤣 . But I shall draw courage from you, and promise to check out the local tennis club to see if they have classes for the severely eye-hand coordination deficient.
To "You can't outrun a bad diet" I add "Having an exceptional diet is not enough!". And something along the lines off, just because you are fitter that 'most' people your age is nothing to crow about because that's a pretty low standard. ; )
Ok, 1), 2) and 3) make total sense to me. Stonemasonry is a VERY physical occupation; retirement is an abominable concept (at least the way most people do it) and walking your dog in the countryside is terrific - outdoors, in the sunshine, with tons of microbiome enhancement from all those plants, trees and soils. But 4) has got my mind racing and what it has raced to, is perhaps not what you were intending to convey 🤣 .
Hello Robyn,
Another great post full of useful information.
Number one is finding an exercise you enjoy so it becomes part of your routine.
My wife and I (we add up to 162) found mountain biking 20 years ago when I retired and we clock up about 200ks a week on our ebikes in Booderee NP,every ride includes forest bathing and a picnic under a Gumtree
I read a good quote recently "if you are exercising to lose weight you need to change your diet".
Thanks again Robyn,
Davo 😊.
"we add up to 162" - gold!!!! As you know, it's impolite to discuss a woman's age 😉 so you handled that one beautifully.
Mountain biking is a fantastic form of exercise. You get cardio and lower body strength training, and most importantly you do it outdoors, in nature! I recommend adding in some upper body strength and balance training, as well as something that involves impact, like skipping or box jumping, to build bone density.
Your quote is excellent. It reminds me of that old maxim, "you can't outrun a bad diet".
In my retirement I have taken up tennis. For many years I chauffeured, catered, cheered, consoled, and celebrated while the rest of my family actually played what I now understand to be a very challenging sport. Thankfully, my tennis playing family members are also very good teachers, extremely patient, and have put up with my "this is too hard, I give up" tantrums and encouraged me along to the point where I can play well enough for it to actually be worthwhile exercise - and I love it! (I'm with Davo - the more you enjoy it, the more the habit will stick.)
I am constantly appreciating new benefits - it's outdoors, it's social, and when played well involves observation, concentration, strategising, problem solving, large muscle groups (watch how the pros move around the court almost in a half squat), balance, coordination, core muscles, even eye exercises - changing focal length while tracking the ball, and cardio interval training. I can get my heart rate up significantly while having a ball (pun intended) and I'm so busy paying attention to all those other aspects and having fun, I don't notice how hard I'm breathing till I stop!
Since I have been playing I have noticed improvements in my glute strength, quad strength, and cardiovascular fitness.
Unlike some other forms of exercise, though, it helps if you have an opponent of a similar standard, and I should add that doubles provides less cardio benefit than singles but, in my experience doubles played well still has many of the above benefits.
Interesting - https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(18)30538-X/abstract
Got the full text of this paper: https://www.wellesu.com/10.1016/j.mayocp.2018.06.025. Some interesting passages:
- "For joggers, we found a multivariable-adjusted increase in survival, with a U-shaped association between dose of jogging (calibrated by pace, quantity, and frequency of jogging) and all-cause mortality. The dose of running that was most favorable for reducing mortality was jogging 1 to 2.4 h/wk, with no more than 3 running
days a week, at a slow or average pace."
- "the health club activities group had the longest total duration of all the sports combined, at 599 min/wk" - so my speculation that this group may have done quite poorly due to low participation was completely off-base.
And this may be the money shot: "Possibly, the observed differences in mortality benefits were due to the differing social aspects of the various sports studied. Interestingly, sports that require 2 or more individuals to play together and socially interact - tennis, badminton, and soccer - were the sports that were associated with the best improvements in longevity, whereas the less inherently interactive forms of PA, such as jogging, swimming, cycling, and health club activities, were associated with less impressive longevity benefits. This is in line with previous studies consistently showing that social isolation is among the strongest predictors of reduced life expectancy."
Good for you, Anita! It's wonderful to see you stepping out of the 'supporter' role and into the 'active participant' slot. Tennis really is a top-notch sport for physical, mental and social health. Do you think there's any hope for me, with my total lack of eye-hand co-ordination??? My rare ventures onto a tennis court have produced nothing but embarrassment, I'm afraid. I always find that both the racquet and the ball are too small for me to get them to connect with each other 😉.
That's a fascinating paper, BTW. Looks like you picked the right sport to take up in retirement! I wonder whether the dismal impact of 'health club activities' on life expectancy gains is due to the fact that most people with gym memberships don't actually go there??
Oh if I can learn it, there is definitely hope for you! Re the size of the ball and the string - it still fascinates me that, given the surface area of the stringed area on the racquet compared to that of the frame, I still manage to hit the ball with the frame (on the odd occasion)!
The fact that you get any part of the racquet to connect with the ball puts you way ahead of me 🤣 . But I shall draw courage from you, and promise to check out the local tennis club to see if they have classes for the severely eye-hand coordination deficient.
To "You can't outrun a bad diet" I add "Having an exceptional diet is not enough!". And something along the lines off, just because you are fitter that 'most' people your age is nothing to crow about because that's a pretty low standard. ; )
Ain't that the truth!
My fitness program:
1) I used to work in an office and changed to a stonemason 23 years ago;
2) I'm not retired (although I could have been last year) and probably never will be;
3) I live in the countryside and I have a dog, so daily walks on top of everything else;
4) My wife is French.
Ok, 1), 2) and 3) make total sense to me. Stonemasonry is a VERY physical occupation; retirement is an abominable concept (at least the way most people do it) and walking your dog in the countryside is terrific - outdoors, in the sunshine, with tons of microbiome enhancement from all those plants, trees and soils. But 4) has got my mind racing and what it has raced to, is perhaps not what you were intending to convey 🤣 .