EXERCISE °
But first a plea! Thanks to those who sent in what they're doing with exercise to stay healthy, but we need more to share with us what you do! 1968yls@gmail.com
Ham Osborne
At a bit less than 180 pounds, I am about 25 pounds heavier than I was in law school, but I was rather gaunt then. For about 30 years, from ages
25 to 55, I jogged regularly for exercise and fitness, but weight gain and increasing age forced me to stop jogging in my mid-50s. At the urging
of my wife, I started walking instead, and I have walked regularly since I stopped jogging. My walking route is in my neighborhood, where I have
lived for over 40 years, and it is almost exactly 4 miles long with about 150 feet of altitude gain and loss over the entire course. I carry
2-pound hand weights for upper-body exercise, and the weights also provide some stability, much like a balance pole. My normal routine is to
walk three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I need the intervening days to recover.
I am grateful to be fit and healthy, and I want to stay that way as long as I can.
The steep uphill regime [see below] reminded me immediately of the 1965 motion picture “The Hill,” which starred Sean Connery. You can watch the trailer
here: The Hill.
Hardy Wieting Primary for me is cardio. My father
died at 73 of cardiac arrhythmia. He'd given up smoking years before,
and had taken up jogging due to my wife's buying him a jogging suit for Xmas, and he liked the jogging which improved his health -- but alas.
I've never had arrhythmia, but giving the heart a lot of exercise has for a long time seemed like a good idea. I now live on a very steep
street and weekday mornings I run up that, sprinting the steepest 20 yards. Knee-bends at top. Sunday--run a mile at
Soka University's track, which was closed during covid. Luckily, after climbing over cyclone fences locking up high school tracks for a
long while, I found a unique, ungated sand track behind an elementary school in
Capo, which I grew to like so much that I added running a mile there also -- on Saturdays. Situps and long walks.
Coda: Walking down to Soka's track in Wood
Canyon, I always see this woman running her laps, only a little slower than me. She keeps on running after I've run my mile and leave.
Bart Tiernan A recumbent bicycle involves sitting with one’s back supported and legs extended (more or less straight out) so that one can peddle at various speeds and resistances while eliminating any strain on one’s back. I have stuck with daily gym exercises (except I cheat from time to time without any feelings of guilt). Exertion has an adverse effect on my oxygenation, so the recumbent bicycle is less arduous than a real bicycle or walking. Recumbent exercise & PT.
° CLASSMATES °
Bill Iverson I walk three or four miles a day, row my erg a few
thousand yards, and try to motivate myself to do strength and balance exercises (boring). Erg and exercises have been off the table recently
for several reasons, including, ironically, trying to get back in shape too fast. But I am getting back to these and continue my daily walks.
Footnote: "What is the difference between a rowing machine and an erg? Wiki, Indoor rower:
"An indoor rower, or rowing machine, is a machine used to simulate the action of watercraft rowing for the purpose of exercise or training for
rowing. Modern indoor rowers are often known as ergometers (colloquially erg or ergo) because they measure work performed by the rower (which
can be measured in ergs)."
Bill and Mijo Horwich My exercise is primarily a lot of hiking. I founded a hiking club in and around Berkeley some 2.5 years ago. The Over the Hill Hiking Club is now some 24 members and we do 4-6 miles on the 2nd Friday morning of each month, weather permitting. And since 2015 (except 2 years out during Covid) Mijo and I have spent 4-6 months per year in Europe, primarily in France. Each fall we’ve done a 5 or six day hike, with bags following, of about 95 kms. total. This year’s was along a feeder route towards Santiago de Compostele. We hiked from Montbrison to le Puy-en-Velay.
DG
At about the same time that you wrote about exercising, I got the note below from my son--pushing me to exercise more. I live about 3 blocks
from a great gym. I go about 3 times a week for about 15 minutes of work on the weight machines. Should do more!!
“The new study of resistance exercise and the elderly found that even people in their 80s and 90s — who had never lifted weights before —
showed significant gains” Weights.
Alan Ziegler I am not sufficiently diligent even though I am aware of the statistics correlating activity and longevity. I abhor exercise just for the sake of exercise and I don’t need to lose weight. I try to use a stationary bike with weighted pedals for 35-45+ minutes several days a week while I divert myself by watching something on the internet and a few times a week, I follow the NY Times seven minutes exercise program guidelines, which I modify in light of a ripped shoulder tendon. I also try to play doubles pickleball a couple or so times a week, depending on weather, and table tennis twice a week, but neither sport is truly an aerobic exercise in part because I try to participate using my non-dominant arm (left-handed). NYT: 7-minute.
George Bunn You’ve inspired me! Playing golf is about all I can do! 4 times a week. All the best, George
° ON THE MOVE
Mike Parish I swim 3 or 4 times a week after a jacuzzi to loosen up, and I do some walking but not much. I have a stationary bike I try to ignore and need to get back into after various periods of covid, RSV and flu. I also do a set of morning stretching, simple RCAF, if you remember that fad. The main thing I've done is lose another 25 pounds last summer and fall after learning that one of my college classmates sees his optimal weight as 185, and he's my age and height, so I got as far as 191 and ran out of gas. But that was 25 pounds after losing 40 pounds to get down from 247 to 207. Then gained 10 back, so in total it's only another 15 but I'll take it since I finally feel comfortable in my body. Wall St work with free fancy lunches and expense accounts took its toll on me, and I'm glad I finally looked myself in the mirror and said this is not going to carry the day. So that's the word, as Colbeart says.
Put and Nannie Brown Nannie and I don’t do any of the standard exercises at a gym, have
no weight training or other equipment at home and don’t do sit ups and such things in the morning as many people do. Really, the only thing we
do is walk or hike in the nearby area. Typically, we walk 4 to 6 miles a day, sometimes just along the side of a rural road, but often on more
rugged nearby or abutting hiking trails. I have lost muscle mass, but don’t feel any different and weigh about what I did in law school or
maybe even a little less. In the milder months, we work a lot outside doing all sorts of projects ranging from digging post holes or
splitting wood to raking and pruning. We do walk practically every day, however.
I suppose Nannie has one routine that you could call exercise: she never uses the bathroom on the same floor.
Joe and Ruth Bell
Ruth: Exercise 4-5 days a week between 6 and 9 miles, other days peloton, some weights, gardening in season, some Pilates. I walk. And it helps to
have a walking group that starts out promptly at 7 am.
Joe is out shoveling the snow as we speak.
Joan Andersson and Bill Zimmerman
I do weights 3 times a week, yoga once a week, Pilates once a week. And I hike twice a day every day.
Bill does weights 3 times a week and stationary bike 3 times a week for an hour each time.
Swim @100 Motor memory article: Motor. "Indeed, being physically active and elevating one's heart rate has the wonderful side effect of improving our ability to learn by increasing the brain's ability to remember."
Fitness and prostate cancer: Cancer Prostate Fitness. "reduce their risk of prostate cancer by as much as 35% by doing a little more jogging, cycling or swimming." Remember Garrick Utley?
