As I write this, it is early morning on New Years Day. A lot of you are still asleep, and some are just waking up and getting started on 2012. Millions of people will make resolutions to do things this year that are both good for them….and very hard to stay with. I’m going to make a few resolutions that can help you do the right thing, AND stay with your good habits.

One of the most important things I’m going to do is level with you about what it takes to build a strong healthy body that will be fun to live in for many more years. If you waste your time and money on things that will do little or nothing for you, all you will accomplish in 2012 is to get another year older.

Building a stronger and more healthy body really come about ONLY through proper eating and exercise. You have heard this before….but millions of people continue to believe that they can take a few pills (or a lot of pills) and some injections, and poof…they will drop years off their body. This is strictly pixy dust….

There are a huge number of scams out there that do a good job of selling you a day dream. The problem is that we all want to believe that a significant transformation can be achieved with little work….so that we can go on about our lives with none of our routines interrupted. We also want magic transformatons to occur without any pain. That is why pills and potions are so attractive.

With almost 80 million of us in the “boomer” generation, there is a huge market for almost anything that promises to help us regain some of our physical vitality. Unfortunately, an old saying applies here: “if it is too good to be true, it is too good to be true…”

There are a few things that can make a major difference in your life, but they don’t come without effort, and are not always easy to stick with. But…the good news is that these practices will actually do good things for you….not just raise your hopes, take your money, and leave you worse off than you were before.

My resolution for you is that if you follow this blog, I’ll tell you about a lot of things that can really improve your life without sticking it to your wallet. You can take decades off your body….but it will take resolve, focus, and discipline to do. I’ll tell you how to spot fake products, how to assess things that might actually be good for you, and tell you about things I have tried and researched. In short, I’ll do my best to help you make the right choices for you.

I’ll have things for sale on this site. If you buy them….great. If you don’t buy them but use the free advice to help you build a better life for you that is fantastic! Like singer Jodee Messina says, we all just get one “ride around the sun”. Let’s all make the most of it. I’ll do my best to help you make the most of your ride.

Richard
7:45 AM on New Years Day

In the United States, major changes in health care insurance are coming, and they will be a nasty surprise to some people. It is evident that in the not too distant future there will be different insurance rates for people who make limited use of doctors and hospitals, and those who are constantly visiting the doctor. Up to now, to some degree the healthy people have been subsidizing those who are chronically sick.

All of us will be paying a bigger percentage of our own medical bills. Thus, it is in your own interest to be as healthy as possible so that you don’t have to incur medical expenses that come from conditions like diabetes (Type II) that are basically preventable. The answer for you is pretty simple….get into good physical condition, and stay that way for as long as you can.

This is a pretty simple money saving strategy. It also has the major side benefit that you get to enjoy the benefits of being in good condition every minute of every day. These benefits are basically that you have no real limits on the activites you may want to do…and you “feel good” almost all of the time.

The cool thing about all of this is that YOU are the one who is in control of your own health and fitness. You have full control over how you eat, train and care for your own body. No one else is involved. If you make the decision to build a strong and healthy body, you are the one who can do this.

Our goal is to live as long as we can, and be as healthy as we can while doing this. To accomplish this, you have to do two things: eat properly and exercise vigerously. You have to do BOTH of these things, not one or the other. They are completely interdependent.

Don’t fall for the fantisy of buying some pill or potion that claims to give you the fountain of youth. If you are seeking good health and fitness, 90% (or more) of your success will come through eating properly and exercising. There are some supplements that can add an increment of 3-5% to your health, but only if you have done the things that create 90% of the effect.

So…is it possible to build a strong healthy body after age 50, 60 or 70? Well….I offer myself as living proof that it can be done, and done to a level that would amaze you. How can you do this? I offer you a FREE “Quick Start” course that can show you how to get rolling on the path to better health and fitness. You can fill out the little form on this page, and the course will be sent to you automatically by e-mail.

Once you get a taste of what is involved, I suggest that you check out my full course. That is a six month guide to building a body that you can enjoy for the rest of your life. You can find that informaton on this site as well.

Again, the cool thing is that a great deal of your future is in your own hands. You can really do major things to bring about a better life for yourself and those you love. If you don’t have your health, you really can’t enjoy much of anything. So….sign up for the FREE course, and get started on the road to a healthy life in your “senior years”. Oh yes…you also take a big step toward reducing the amount you spend on doctors and health care.

Richard

How you apply your mental focus can have a dramatic impact on your chances for succeeding with any fitness program. What you think about your fitness can literally determine whether you succeed or fail. Let’s look at some of the major ways this happens.

First, if you think the program is not going to work, you are correct. If you believe that your program will fail, then the chances are that you will not do what is necessary to succeed. This is a subtile and sinister factor that can undercut your best intentions. In simplified form, here is how it works.

You start a training program, but deep down you don’t believe that it will give you the results you want. There are some movements that you have to learn, and they are a bit difficult at first. Rather than commit fully to learning how to do them properly, or put out a full effort, your mind says “what’t the point, this won’t work anyway”. As a consequnce, you give a half hearted effort, and never master the movements, or do enough work to produce a result. After a few weeks, you abandon the program because “it does not work” (like you expected it would not work).

A second type of mental subversion comes when you focus on distractions that prevent you from putting your energy and effort into training. This can take many forms, but the most common are looking at other people in the gym and thinking “I’ll never get to level where they are”; wondering if others in the gym are “looking at me” because you are a beginner; and feeling inept because you have not mastered certain parts of training immedately (a lot of training is difficult).

To succeed you need to focus on the tasks that YOU have to perform, and not on what everyone else is doing. You should understand that every person you see in a gym setting who is doing well had to start out as a complete novice. They mastered their craft one step at a time….the same way you will master the craft of being fit. If you feel inept at some point, remember, everyone else felt the same way at one point or another. You need to be persistent and focus on what YOU are doing. That way you will make progress, not get lost worrying about what others think of you.

A third way you can subvert your chances for success is to go into a fitness program is by holding a really negative self image about your fitness. It sounds like the reverse of what should be the case, but if you dwell on your shortcomings and lack of conditoning, you will grind your enthusiasm down with a constant stream of negativism. At the beginning of a program, you may not be in good conditon. However, you need to congratulate yourself on taking the steps to become more fit.

One of the things that sustains a person over a lifetime of fitness is that the “journey is enjoyable” rather than exclusive focus on the end result. If you constantly focus on the negative, you will find that your progress is stunted because eveything seems so frustrating and painful. Thus, at the onset of a new program, remind yourself that you are doing good things for your body, and that you can be proud of doing this.

In a forthcoming post, I’ll discuss one of the biggest reasons I beleive that many people fail at becoming fit. Again, this is counter intuitive, but the attitude known as “perfectionism” can be one of the biggest reasons people sabotage their own best intentions.

Richard

There are a lot of myths about senior fitness that are generally accepted without question.  As you will find out, some of the most important of these are just plain wrong.  Chief among the incorrect ideas is that if you are over 60, you can’t become fit and strong. 

At the moment I’m 70 years old.  I have been involved with training people of all ages since I was in high school.  What continues to surprise me is that there is a “general consensus” that people who are past 40 will decline dramatically, and over 60 you can forget ever being physically fit again.  This line of thinking seems to be that there is little or nothing that a person can do to improve their conditioning (and their quality of life) after they reach middle age.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Reality is that almost any of us who are over the age of 60 can make dramatic positive changes in our physical conditioning and overall health.  The main thing in our way is not the inevitable “march of time”, but the fact that many of us believe there is nothing we can do to change our situation.  Because we believe we can do nothing to improve our physical health and fitness, that is exactly what we do…..nothing!  And guess what?  When we do nothing, we indeed fall prey to the “march of time”.

None of us will live forever.  What we can do is take steps to insure that the time we have left is spent in the best health possible for each of us.  This does NOT mean that we take ever larger quantities of prescription drugs.  To achieve the best health we can have there are three essentials…that most people already know:

• Regular exercise
• Proper eating and diet
• Being mentally active

The regular exercise part is where most of us over 60 seem willing to accept a pretty low standard.  If we work out at all, the general approach is to do a few modestly challengin exercises, or some “5 minutes to fitness” program and stop there.  Granted, training for 5 minutes is better than nothing….but not much.  The first big myth that we seem to have accepted is that we should accept really low levels of fitness as all we can achieve.  I submit to you that this is completely wrong.  There are plenty of older folks, myself included, who work out at levels of performance and intensity that would put most high school kids to shame. 

The reality is that there are some limitations that come as a consequence of aging.  However, these limits are not nearly as significant as are generally believed.  Most men and women over age 60 can train themselves to a level that would astonish many 30 year olds.  The key is that you have to do this training gradually and build up your strength and endurance over time. 

In short, you can reach some very high levels of fitness regardless of your age.  However, you have to build up gradually, and consistently increase the challenges in your training.  If you accept the “5 minute fitness” program idea, that is all the further you will ever progress.

To give you an idea of what is possible for you, I have prepared a “Quick Start” course you can check out for FREE.  It will be sent to you by e-mail and will give you a taste of what you can accomplish.   The course can by yours by simply signing up in the boxes at the right of this article. 

Once you see what is involved, I’m convinced you will be motivated to build the best body you can.  The whole idea is to be strong and fit so that you can have a great life in your 60’s, 70’s and beyond.  The quality of your life in these years should not be limited by weakness, chronic conditions, or self inflicted physical problems such as obesity, Type II Diabetes, hypertension and similar health issues.  You have the power to prevent most of these conditions, and to build yourself into a strong, healthy person.

To your great health,

Richard Schuller

When you join a health club, one of the things you need to consider is the social environment of the club.  How you fit in the prevailing social atmosphere will have a lot to do with whether you will keep training there, or should join in the first place.  One of the reasons to take a trial workout at a club is to see if the social atmosphere is one where you feel comfortable. 

The big issue for most people starting training is whether they feel intimidated or otherwise uncomfortable when they train at a club.  How uncomfortable people feel is a direct result of how much they feel “different” from the other people training at the club.  Regardless of age, when people first begin training, they feel like everyone else “knows what they are doing”, and the place is loaded with “Ken and Barbie” types.  That may be the perception.  Reality may be somewhat different.  However, if you are new to the club, perception IS reality.

Feeling intimidated or “out of place” is normal when you first enter a new club.  One of the reasons is that everything seems unfamiliar, and you may feel that everyone is “looking at you”.   In about 90% of the cases this is not what is happening.  The “Ken and Barbies” are  either looking at their own reflection in the mirror, or at each other.  A new person training, especially a senior, is virtually invisible. 

If you feel “alone” when you start, remember that everyone else in the club probably felt the same way when they started training.  It takes a few workouts to begin feeling like you belong in a new place.  If you keep training at roughly the same time, you will probably meet a few people who also train at the same time.  Over time the club will become part of “your territory”, and you will be one of the “regulars” who new people look at and assume that you “know everything”.

The bottom line is that feeling comfortable in a new situation often takes time.  Most people will quit rather than deal with a little discomfort.  Humans are hard wired to seek short term comfort.  Unfortunately, this means that we do a lot of things that are damaging to us in the long term.  Overcoming the feeling of “strangeness” in a health club is in your long term best interest.  Leaving because you don’t feel “comfortable” makes you feel OK in the short term, but will subvert your quest to become more fit and healthy.

With that in mind, be aware that different clubs may be dominated by different groups of people.  In general, the larger the club, the greater the diversity of people who will train there.

Most clubs, especially larger ones, will have a mixture of social groups training there.  In big clubs you will find several different age groups, types of training (weights, yoga, aerobic dance, etc.) and people at all different levels of fitness (beginner to pro).  Most of the time the established groups (eg. 20-something) will tend to train together and ignore everyone else.  

In places like the YMCA or a neighborhood center, there will generally be a lot of different people training. There will be many different ages and fitness levels.  There may be a few “superstar” types, but in all liklyhood there will be some beginners, with the greatest number of regular patrons being “regular folks” of all different ages.

There are some specialty clubs that only accept women as members.  You will tend to find these almost exclusively in large cities, as the economics of the health club industry tends to require that clubs be open to both men and women.  If same sex clubs are an issue for you, it might be worthwhile to consider training at home until you have progressed to the point where you feel comfortable in a regular health club.  You can also train at Curves or some similar place until you are ready to train at a regular club.

There are a few high end clubs that offer exclusivity and are in essence private social clubs.   They offer the prospect of social networking for business and some other on site options such as cafes, meeting rooms, etc.  If this is what you want, be certain to take a complementary training session or two to see if the promises are likely to be realized in your particular situation.

Regardless of the equipment or the social atmosphere, doing the training is the only thing that will produce the results you desire.  Where you train is infinitely less important than the fact that you are consistent, and keep to your training schedule and nutrition plan. 

In the next installment on how to select a health club, I’ll cover the things that may cause you to quit.

Have a great day,

Richard Schuller

If you join a health club, one of the things they will encourage you to do is contract for the services of a personal trainer.  You need to determine whether this is a smart investment for you.  The key for you is to buy what makes sense for you.  That will be different from one person to the next.  To help you make a smart choice, I’ll offer my observations based on: 1) having trained in a LOT of different gyms; 2) knowing a lot of personal trainers; and 3) being a licensed personal trainer myself.

For openers, you need to decide why you would need a trainer.  They can provide you with the following things: 1) a workout program; 2) help in doing the exercises properly; 3) give you personal support while training; 4) help you feel less uncomfortable in the gym when you are first training. 

The first issue is having a workout program.  You have the option of using the free introductory program you can down load on this site. This will get you through two months of training.   You also can buy my book for $29.95 that will give you six months of training programs with directions on how to perform the movements, select the weights to use, the number of movements, etc.  You can contrast the cost of these options with the normal fee for a personal trainer which runs from $50 per hour to $100.  That charge is for each session.

One of the questions you may have if you are new to physical training is whether the trainer can give you a “better” program than you can get from a book.  My answer, based on having trained for over 50 years in multiple gyms and for multiple sports is as follows.  If you are untrained or completely out of shape, anything you do will have some positive impact.  In short, if you go to the gym and do random movements, it will be better than doing nothing, and you will see some (modest) improvement.  If you do the programs I offer, they will give you a comprehensive training session and you should see solid progress.  There is no magic program a personal trainer can devise for you that will give you better results than one you can get from a book or the free program I provide.  It may be different but it will not be better.

The only thing that will give you the results you desire is you must do the program and do it regularly.  If you don’t do the work, you will not get any results. 

If the trainer helps you establish a regular schedule of training, and helps you feel more at home in the gym environment, that is great. Some people find this to be well worth the investment.  You are trying to establish good habits and having someone who will hold you accountable and keep you on the path when you want to stray off is sometimes worth the investment.

If you don’t want to spend the money on individual training sessions, many gyms offer classes where you train in a group of people.   This can be a great way to establish your training habits, and find the social support that keeps you training.  It is up to you, and what is going to work best for you.

Having made some comments about trainers that may sound critical, I’ll now offer you my opinions about how they can be very useful to you. 

First of all, most trainers take their profession very seriously.  Most study and constantly keep up on the professional literature.  The cool thing about trainers that can be a huge help to you as you get more fit is that most of them have a specialty.  That is, each of them will have some area of sports or fitness where they excel.  All of them know the basics, but their real advantage to you can be in the areas where they have genuine expertise. 

For example, one of my trainer friends is a specialist in training people for racquet sports and golf.  (You will see video training programs from him on this site during 2011).  He really knows these areas well, and can help you prepare to do you very best in these areas.  At the same time, he would not even claim to know how to train people for “power”.   Another trainer I know really knows how to teach dance, aerobic dance and similar types of dancing conditioning.  She is great at teaching this…but would not be your first choice if you were trying to upgrade your tennis game.

In my own training, I pay two different personal trainers to work with me in area where they are specialists.  One knows powerlifting, and the other teaches swimming.  Both of these trainers actually function more as a “coach” than a trainer.  They provide me with very focused and specialized instruction on how to improve my skills in each of these areas.  Their real value to me is their ability to help me improve performance in each of these areas.

If you are using a trainer (or coach) you should expect to see concrete results from the training.  In this case, you need to have established some way to measure the improvements you want to see.  If you are training for the first time, you should see increases in strength, flexibility and endurance on a continuing basis.  If you are hiring someone to help you build on an existing base, you should see specific improvements in your performance that are tangible and measurable.  If you “feel” like you are improving, it would be a good idea to have your own set of criteria to measure this.  Otherwise you are spending time and money for no identifiable effect.

In summary, when it comes to your decision on whether to hire a personal trainer, you should be very specific about what you need them to do…and what it is worth to you.  Then, decide how you will evaluate their value to you as you progress. 

Have a great day,

Richard Schuller

The new year is when a huge number of people decide that it is time to get fit and join a health club. Finding the club that is right for you can be confusing. You can either get a great deal that works for you, or wind up spending a lot of money for things you never use. There are a lot of factors you need to consider in selecting a club or gym. This week I’ll be making  a set of posts that are designed to help you sort through the things you need to know in order to get whats best for you when you consider joining a health club.

The posts will cover the following:

• Facilities, costs and contracts
• Personal trainers
• club social environment
• Attrition and how to not be a “statistic”

The most basic consideration is whether the club you are considering has the equipment and facilities you want. If you want to do weight training, the club should have a large supply of free weights. If you want to swim, a pool is mandatory. The same holds true for tennis, raquet sports, yoga, etc. If they don’t have what you want, don’t give them a second look.

When you enter a club for the first time, you will generally be greeted by someone who will be able to tell you about the prices for membership, hours of operation, parking, day care, class schedules, and other benefits of membership. Someone should also give you a full tour of the facility including the training areas, locker rooms, shower and sauna’s (if available), courts, pool, etc. You should see the place before you agree to join.

At some point, you will be shown a list of prices for various options. It is really important that you be very alert at this point to avoid buying things that you really don’t want or need. The first thing you should know is that almost all clubs charge an “initiation” fee. This is a one time charge to set up your membership account. This fee will vary depending on whether you live in an expensive urban area like New York, or in a less expensive area like Omaha. In any event, the fee should be $100 or less if you are joining a health club that is part of a major national chain. If you are joining a high end exclusive club, such as a golf country club, the fee will be much higher. However, almost all clubs will have this fee.

The next item of cost is your monthly membership fee. In the area where I live (Seattle), the fee for a single person will run from $29 per month (before tax) to $85. Fees for couples or families will of course be higher.   It is absolutely critical that you understand what your monthly membership fee includes!   Some places will charge you extra fees for certain classes.  You may also have to pay for use of certain facilities at certain times, such as tennis courts, spa’s, consultations, etc.  Be absolutely clear about what you are getting with your monthly membership.

Another thing you must understand is how long you will have to pay the monthly membership.  Most clubs require a one year commitment when you sign up.  If you quit using the club in two months, you are still obligated to pay them for a year, even if you don’t visit the club.  The sad fact is that most people who sign up in January with high hopes for success will quit going to the club within three weeks.  They did not get any results, but they are still obligated to pay for the membership for a year.

You should also ask specific questions about the following:

• Hours of operation
• Parking
• Peak usage times
• Day Care
• Classes and charges for them
• Any restrictions on use of the facilities during peak hours
• Towel and locker availability and charges

You should find out how much help you will get from the staff without having to pay extra charges.  Most places will try to sell you the services of a personal trainer. These charges will range from $50 to well over $100 per hour.  I would strongly recommend that you do not sign up for personal training services until you have been a member for a few weeks. My next post will cover personal trainers and how they can be useful to you, or an excessive expense. 

The most important thing in selecting a club is how it feels to you.  You can get a small taste of this by asking for a complementary workout to try the place out.  Personally, I would be suspicious of a club that did not offer you a “test drive”.  If they believe they have a good product, they should be more than happy to let you experience it for yourself.  

After you take your “test drive”, you will have a better understanding of whether the club is a place you want to spend your time training, and spend your money to get desired results.  If you have some reservations about the place, then you need to make a list of the things you like and those you don’t like.  Decide if any of the things you don’t like mean that you would not want to train there on a regular basis.  If so, look for another club.  If not, you are almost ready to join.

When you “join” a club, you are going to be asked to sign a contract that obligates you to pay a certain amount of money up front, and then each month.  Be absolutely certain you understand exactly what you are committing to pay.  Once you sign the contract, you will be obligated to pay the club regardless of whether you quit training or not.  Also, ask under what circumstances you can get out of the contract.  When you have answers to all of these questions, you will know exactly what your financial commitment is.

Most clubs require that your monthly bill be taken directly from your checking account.  This is almost universal in the industry.  When you sign the membership contract, you are agreeing that your monthly fee and other club charges will be taken directly out of your checking account on a specific day of the month.

That covers the things you should check out before you sign the membership contract.  Next comes the issue of whether to use a personal trainer or not.

Have a great day,

Richard Schuller

There is no better time than right now to begin regular exercise.  There is nothing magic about beginning on the first of the month, or at some unspecified date in the future.  Once you start a training program, the big challenge will be sustaining it.  Most people quit within a few days or weeks of beginning.  You dont want this to happen to you.  The short video below gives you some key information on how to give yourself the best chance to succeed over the long haul.

To your good health

Richard Schuller

Trying to make positive changes in your life is usually difficult.  The main reasons have to do with the fact that we have established bad habits that are almost “hard wired” into our brains.  We can change these, but only if we recognize what we are trying to do, and what tools and techniques we have available to us to make the changes.  Even then, it will not be easy.  However, is is both possible and desirable.

Our brains are hard wired to make us do things that provide short term comfort, but often at the expense of our long term welfare.  When we evolved in the wilds almost everything we did was linked to a short term response.  For example, if we found food, we had to eat it because the supply was always precarious.  When we saw something that we wanted, we took it because usually it was necessary for survival.  Our internal drives were linked up with our daily needs for survival.  We still have the same drives that we did 10,000 years ago, but our life circumstances are drastically different.  Now our drives actually work against our long term welfare.

In the primitive situation, there was no “long term”.  We had to eat “right now”.  We had to find fire wood “right now”.  We rarely dealt with any situation where the planning horizon was longer than a few days.  As we developed more dependable forms of subsistence, such as farming and tending animals, we still had no more than a seasonal view of the world, and everything was always scarce. 

In our current world we still have the drives to “eat now” drive and a host of others that work against our long term welfare.  We are dealing with non-conscious drives to do things such as eat, relax, and save our energy that had survival value in pre-historic times.  Now, these drives turn us into unhealthy people who have to deal with obesity, hypertension, heart disease, and a host of other conditions related to eating too much and exercising too little.

When you take the plunge with a new resolution to improve your life, what will happen at once is that you will be working directly counter to your non-conscious hard wired drives to eat and conserve energy.  You need to understand that when you begin restricting your caloric intake, your body will scream “your starving me”.  When you start working out, you non conscious mind will tell you that “you have to conserve energy, you might have to run away from a predator, or survive a famine”.    These are the internal forces that will constantly work on you to quit eating properly and stop exercising. 

Most of your non-conscious drives and habits can be re-directed by your conscious mind if you recognize that you have to do this.  When you begin any program designed to change your habits, your mind and body will constantly try to get you to stop doing the programs.  New programs may run counter to your conditioned habits, and will usually run counter to your primitive survival drives.  Your conscious mind is the best resource you have for battling those habits that are really bad for you in the long run. 

As in the previous post, you need to have a plan to give you any chance of succeeding at your resolutions.  You not only need a plan for your eating and your physical training, you need a plan to help you stay on the program and the diet.    

For example, you can get a good plan for both diet and exercise in my book A Guide to Getting Younger After 60.  If you follow the training and the nutrition guidance, you will be able to make major changes in the your physical body, and other parts of your life as well.  The book provides the plan for you to follow.  You also need to understand that once you are a few weeks into the program, your basic drives will begin to emerge that move you to do things that will be very bad for you in the long term. 

You must have a plan to deal with the forces that will end your diet, stop your physical training, and terminate your progress to any of your long term health goals.   90% of the time the subverting forces will come from your non-conscious mind and the primitive drives to eat constantly and conserve your energy for life threatening situations.   If you understand this, you have a better chance of succeeding with your long term goals (AKA: resolutions).

Your first line of defense (plan) is to decide what you are going to eat each week.  Once you make this plan, then you will find it is much easier to avoid eating anything that is put in front of you.  Without a plan, you are totally at the mercy of your own will power in any situation, and the lack of any strategic reason to eat or avoid any goodie you may encounter.  If you have never tried to do a weekly eating plan, give it a try, you may be shocked at how often you simply eat what happens to be handy.

Most serious resolutions involve a lot of long term commitment and working against your inner drives.  Those who succeed are most often those who have a plan on what to do, and then follow the plan!!!!   As any of you who have worked in an office know, it is really easy to make plan, but very tough to implement the plan.  Rest assured that if you make a plan, recognize that it will require your constant attention to make it work for you.

Richard Schuller

Practically everyone keeps telling seniors that they need “regular exercise”, but no one seems to say why. Here are three big reasons that you should take to heart.

The word regularshould be highlighted. Exercise needs to be a habit. It is a very good habit because as we age the maxim “use it or lose it” is the order of the day. We all know that training can build lean muscle, and good cardiovascular health. The importance of “regular’ training is that as we age, our bodies tend to lose the benefits of training more rapidly than when we were younger. In your college days, you could skip a week at the gym with only modest impact on your overall condition. This is not the case as you get older. You need to be regular with your training (3 times a week) or you will find that you not make the gains you could.

A second reason for regular training is that most of us need to build or re-build our neuromuscular system to regain some of our youthful strength. Regular training is critical to build the coordinationthat gradually deteriorates if you don’t do a wide range of complex movements. Older people tend to gradually restrict their movements, and thus gradually lose the ability to control their movement in the unused ranges of motion. Thus, they are prone to fall, or have other accidents because they have lost control over certain types of movement. Regular training can substantially reduce this problem.

Finally, a third reason for doing regular training is that the key to a healthy cardiovascular system is regular training. The circulation system, the lungs and the supporting muscle structure need to be stressed regularly, or conditioning diminishes rapidly. Cardio conditioning is key to preventing stroke, heart attacks, and other degenerative diseases that occur because the veins and capillaries are clogged or constricted. Keep doing cardio workouts regularly and you will minimize the chances for losing the conditioning you have built up.

Again, three good reasons to be “regular” in your training.