Wow, friends, I can’t believe we are at the end of February. Where does the time go? A rhetorical, but an important question to ask. Last month I started this series by posing the question, “What does it mean to move well?” While I do not have enough hubris to assume I can answer that question completely, I want to start by chatting about moving well during the aging process today.
What’s the saying? The only certain things in life are death and taxes? That’s a bit of a cynical outlook, but it is certainly true that time will catch up with all of us. I often talk with my students about factors that they have some control over and ones that they don’t. We have some measure of control when it comes to our diet and exercise habits. We can choose to spend time meditating or journaling. We can budget and declutter and do any number of things that can have impacts on our Dimensions of Wellness. Or not.
But there are a few things we have absolutely zero control over. The first is genetics. What we get from mom and dad we are stuck with. If we inherit a propensity for heart disease or family risk for cancers, we gotta work with that. The second thing we have zero control over is age or time. Every day we get a day older.
Just as we can make choices to work with our genetics (i.e. eating vegetables to try and reduce our chance of cancer), we can make choices about how we age. And I’m not talking about surgery or fillers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no prize to be the best looking corpse. However, when we pass in poor health due to our choices, there are often comments.
A common question I ask new clients is what they want their body to be able to do when they are 75. Disregarding the privilege of living that long in the first place, most of us have a picture of what we’d like to be able to do at that age. Based on client answers over the years, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think most of us would like to be able to play with our grandkids. Not just take them to the playground, but actually get down on the ground and interact with them.
Being able to get down on the ground requires taking care of flexibility and mobility as our body ages. Mild injuries start to pile up. The body makes less collagen as it ages. More time spent sitting causes joint stiffness. Truthfully just a few simple stretches and regular walks (or something similar) can attenuate more of these losses than people expect.
Being on the ground also involves keeping a certain amount of strength. Because at a certain point, you need to get back up. Strength losses are a classic case of if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. The longer I work in fitness, the more I realize just how important it is to pick up heavy stuff repeatedly.
Another common answer that clients have to my question is that they want to be able to travel. Travel looks different for everyone, but if this is a goal you have, then the aforementioned care with flexibility, mobility, and strength are still in play. Depending on the type of travel you are aiming for, you’ll probably want to spend a bit of time to care for your cardiovascular health. Trekking from place to place can be taxing on your heart, even if you aren’t hiking Kilimanjaro.
Rounding out the top three of common answers is not being a burden to loved ones. From a Physical Health standpoint, this means being able to care for yourself. The aging process isn’t fair to some and that means dealing with degenerative conditions, like arthritis. In come cases, a simple injury can turn into a long term struggle.
Again, time is going to roll onwards and we don’t know what the future will hold for each of us individually. That being the case, I have always been of the mind that anything I can do now to build myself up or put myself in a better position physically can only be a help. Maybe it will all be for naught and I’ll end up laid low. But I don’t want to be one of the ones that wonders if walking or lifting or stretching might have made a difference.
To my mind, moving well through the aging process means that the body is moving on the regular through as many years as possible. How it moves and what feels good is going to change season to season, but putting in the effort to keep the machine we were all gifted running as smoothly as possible is moving well. Recognizing that we might not be able to do the same things at 50 as 30 but still working with what we have is moving well. Choosing the honor the body for what it can do by giving it things to do is moving well.
So, I ask you friend, what would you like your body to be able to do at 75? And more importantly, how can you support that dream now? In March I’ll be chewing on what it means to move well during our youth so stay tuned!
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