About four years ago, I made this presentation for a group of older people. I have learned to consider these types of exercise:
aerobics
strength training
flexibility
other, such as explosive power and balance
I have no formal training in exercise and everything I know and practice comes from reading and experience. In my younger years, I thought the forms of exercise were of importance in the order listed above. I wrestled in high school and college but I was not outstanding in any important way. I had a natural stamina and strength. I was bored then by running and spend my practice time practicing wrestling. I visited the wrestlers' workout room a year or so after my last semester and quickly found that I was out of shape and out of practice. That was about 1961. About 1966, I read a Sunday supplement article by Ken Cooper, the father of aerobics. I was a full-time grad student at the time and had not thought about exercise. I found I could not meet Cooper's standards for high performance but I did enjoy steady exercise. I promised myself I would get in shape, whatever that means, and stay in shape for the rest of my life.
I am fairly short and slow. I have never had the urge to run a marathon or even a half-marathon. By the 1970's, I ran fairly regularly. I told a orthopedist about my running since I had a knee injury in college that left me with no anterior ligament on my left knee. He said that running was all right as long as I didn't over do it. I learned that weight-lifting should be done three times a week with a day of rest following each day of lifting. I watched a memorable Scientific American program on training and care of race horses where they discovered that the horses in general were not rested enough for optimal performance. I use the day-on/day-off idea for running 3 miles three times a week and walk the same distance on the off days.
Dr. Kenneth Pelletier says that understanding the benefits of exercise has as much medical importance as the discovery of penicillin had. Thus, getting the patient up and walking so soon after an operation, as opposed to the old way that used bed-rest for a much longer time.
It is possible that exercising will extend my life just as much as the time it takes to exercise. If that is true, is there any point to doing it? For me, the answer is clearly yes. I feel better with a steady exercise program. I have read that life in 1850 required much more walking and chopping wood for heat. With central heating by oil or gas and cars to move us, we have lost that required movement. My pedometer shows 10,000 steps most days but Time magazine said that Amish farmers regularly get 18,000 steps a day while their wives tend to get 14,000. More of anything is not always better but the right dose of movement helps the body of a food-gathering ape. Exercise is one of the valuables we have to supply for ourselves, a requirement if we are going to watch tv, compute and read.
(Copy edited by L.S. Kirby)
