Why train?
It’s a very simple question. That one question however can have an infinite amount of follow up questions as well as a myriad of answers.
“What are your goals? What is your motivation? What’s your history?” Endless questions.
“To lose weight. To get strong. To feel better. To run a marathon. To rehab from an injury.” Even more answers.
The evidence supporting regular safe exercise is overwhelming. We knew even before there were focused scientific studies researching the benefits of exercise that moving and running around when some mother instinctually told her kids to get outside of the cave, run around, and maybe find some food while they were at it.
Instinctually, our bodies want to move. They were built and designed to move.
The difference for me from sitting around for an hour and then trying to stand up versus walking for an hour is night and day. One experience is much less pleasant than the other. Whenever I get up out of a chair or work at my desk for hours, getting up and moving around isn’t the most pleasant experience. I am always stiff when I get up and I usually let out some type of sigh.
Conversely, I just finished up a three-mile morning walk. I feel great, energized, and focused.
On that walk, I was thinking a lot about a woman I worked with recently.
She was in her early 90’s and had some health conditions that affected her balance and mobility.
I helped her develop a daily mobility routine focusing on the basic motor functions.
Many of these exercises I had to modify so that she could safely perform the movement.
During the sessions, she would get frustrated with herself at how difficult some of these basic movements are for her, and she would make comments about if she had only taken better care of herself or paid more attention to these things when she was younger. She was adamant with me about me not helping her get into positions.
At one point, tears welled up in her eyes because she was so frustrated at her lack of mobility.
I had her take a deep breath and take a step back in her mind. I looked at her and told her that she needed to give herself a break.
“You can do what you can do right now. Nothing else matters. You are here. You are doing it, so give yourself a huge pat on the back. You are an inspiration to me.”
I mean that’s “it” isn’t it?
That’s the endgame of the training for me.
I mean this woman was determined, feisty, funny, and she was doing it to the best of her ability as she approached her mid-90’s.
One of my grandmothers stayed active into her late 90’s while my other grandmother gave in to the pain and I watched her wither away as she gave up. It was hard to watch but the contrast in my two grandmothers taught me a very valuable lesson.
Keep moving to the best of your ability for as long as you can because once you stop, its over.
Don’t get me wrong: I love pushing my body physically and challenging my mind in the process. I love getting the heart rate going, getting drenched in sweat, and riding that endorphin high.
That’s what I can do now, but the end result of all the hours of training, all the squats, and the pushups has to be the ability to maintain the basic movements of life into old age.
How do I do that?
My strategy is simple: do something every day that I enjoy and don’t get hurt.
One of the laws of physics states that a body in motion stays in motion.
Some days I push myself hard, but I always stay mindful of my form and listen to my body. If it’s telling me to back off then I will back off. That also isn’t an excuse to tap out though when I feel uncomfortable and I know that I can keep going. It’s being in tune with myself. I train with mindfulness and focus. I know when my body is getting in a bad position and I could get hurt. This takes daily, focused effort to know my body as to when I can keep pushing on the gas pedal and when I need to pump the brakes a little bit.
One of the best ways to keep myself in check and reduce the chance of injury is that I control the speed of the repetitions. I try to keep reps at two seconds for the negative and positive parts of the movement as well as focusing on keeping my body tight to stabilize myself. I also stop short of complete muscular failure. The best indication of this for me is when I feel my form starting to slip. Once the form starts to slip, I am done. I would rather live to fight another day. I have hurt myself plenty of times trying to get “one more rep.”
If I am trying to stay in motion, being sidelined with an injury is counterproductive. That one extra rep clearly wasn’t worth the risk.
All this takes practice. The beauty is that the more consistent I am with my training and the better shape I am in, the harder and longer I can push myself.
In order to train for a lifetime, I have had to change my mindset to one of “smarter not harder.”
Even more inspirating than the great feats of strength and endurance that people have accomplished, are the older trainees that refuse to be beaten by father time.
I don’t know when the sands of time are going to run out on me, as they inevitably will, but what I do know is that I can control what I can such as to how I use my time moving and being active and what I put into my body.
Back to my mantra: “Do the next right thing today and let tomorrow take care of itself.”
Since I know what the endgame is for me, and what I aspire to decades from now, which is being active well into my 90’s, it is much easier to know what the next right thing to do is in terms of healthy decisions that I can make.
Instead of “Gain or lose “X” in Six weeks” as we so commonly see, how about we change the message to resemble something like “Enjoy your best life well into your 90’s!”
Maybe it would get more people up off the couch and into the game.
One can hope.
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