The question came up in a forum about when you are too old to jog?

This is my answer.

I am 64 soon, I have osteoporosis of the spine.  3 compression fractures of the spine pre osteoporosis of the hips, regurgitating heart valves, arthritis of the feet following all the bones in them having been broken a crushed right leg fixed up with skin grafts, I need to make sure are never injured,  (this is starting to sound comic, even to me), scared lungs, and I’m now on the waiting list for surgery for a growth which we are assuming is benign, but is causing problems.

I JOG.

I will be too old to jog the day I can’t.

Get GREAT shoes, don’t skimp on the cost.

I actually do as much running as I can on soft surfaces like beaches and soft grass.

Do you know I learned I had osteoporosis with a shock in Jan of last year. That is when I took up jogging, jumping and weights as directed by the osteoporosis association of Australia. 

I have since achieved a certificate in bone health.
I then discovered that walking and bicycling is useless for protecting bone density and we NEED high impact exercise, so our bones get the message to keep building new bone tissue, if we do all this low impact stuff I was advised to do in my mid life, we get to our senior years, with osteoporosis because we have been giving our bones the message, they are not required any more, slow down, age, let the osteoblast (the cells that build new bone) die off.
If you do not use it you lose it. 

It does not matter if it is weight work, including jumps or jogging but mid life and senior people NEED to do high impact work, obviously within the restrictions of what they are capable off and how serious any pre existing condition is.  Get a personal assesment from an expert before taking generalized advise. Obviously if bones are already too fragile, imact of any type might be the worst thing, so get the best information but I do know that wapping yourself in cotton wool is not the best thing for an aging body unless you want to age faster.

There is an amazing amount of thermal pools open for the gray nomad tourist traveller and Reg and I continue to spread the going jock amongst us nomads that for every hour in a thermal pool we become one year younger.  We joke about leaving home as young seniors and returning home as teenagers.

In Australia with many of our thermal pools free to use, their benefits, are often undervalued, where in other countries these pools are prized and are often turned into expensive treatment spas and incredible claims are made of curative benefits.

It is interesting too that some thermal pools are actually dangerous places where radon gas makes use of the pool too dangerous.

All the well know thermal pools in Australia are safe if you follow the guidelines, these include not submerging your face in the water remembering that certain types of organisms, can breed in the warm water.

Some of the therapeutic powers attributed to soaking in thermal pools are the healing of Various skin diseases * Rheumatism * eliminating muscle spasms * Gout * Neuralgia * Arthritis * Colitis * For improving circulation * good for opening skin pores and the best treatment for acne.

Thermal pools in Australia are a wonderful social meeting place where nomads gather to talk about their journey to the area and their travel plans from the area, exchange information about camps and road conditions.

Reg and my favourite thermal pools are at Mataranka, Northern territory, Moree NSW and at Nanga Bay Resort, in Western Australia.

 

I did my Biggest Loser full bodywork out choosing the mid length and the longer length beginners programs, before bed last night.  A few of the exercises called for a full length body stretch on the floor and a sideways movement of the arms and I am sure I will be able to do this on our eco-tourer caravan floor by positioning the consol, ‘just right’ and having the table folded away.

One of the exercises involved jogging and skipping on the spot. I have already tested to see if I could do this in our caravan with the stabiliser feet down, and I can, though I suspect it will be a case of ‘if it’s a rocking, don’t come knocking’, and I can guess what people who see the van rocking, will think. 

The Wii biggest loser program has an option that I have not yet tried, but I can see how useful it would be, it is for you to tailor make your own exercise routine from those in the menu rather than doing all the set ones.  This would allow you to eliminate any exercise that you were uncomfortable doing in a caravan, or that your knees might not be up to, like for instance the skipping and jumping.  I may remove them from the program when we travel in the van but I will make a note to, still do them, on the outside of the van as jumping happens to be a fantastic bone density, improving exercise.  Again, if you are a senior, or have health or bone density concerns get expert advice before exercising.  I am not recommending do as I do, just reviewing and reporting how this program is working for me.

After I had completed two different full bodywork outs, I did the yoga workout and then the stretches. I exercised for over an hour. I enjoyed it, loved that I was able to work at the best I could do. Did not feel embarrassed by my clumsiness as there was no one around to see me, and I could take a little longer to catch my breath in a water break as I had control of the start button.

I did find there was no ‘stop go back response’ if you change your mind after beginning an exercise routine, it keeps going, lol, J, just like a good trainer, there is no ‘cope out’ button.

There are some exercises, I groan when I see they are coming up. Ones like ‘the plank’, I hate doing. These are mixed in amongst exercises I like doing and while there is the option to tailor make the routines and only do those exercises I enjoy. There is no way I will let myself not do the plank, it will just become a challenge to become proficient at it, so it no longer represents the bad guy in the routine.

In the Yoga, I have the routine they call, swimming and I call ‘Superman’, it is a routine that has helped me strengthen my core muscles and help  me not injure my osteoporosis back, as easily.  I had a tendency to skip doing it, when it was up to me to choose to do it or not, I doubt that many people actually could enjoy doing Superman. It is worth while my doing it as it is one exercise that leaves me feeling so good after I’ve made the effort to do it, knowing that this one exercise is going to pay off in huge dividends for me in terms of fitness.

The stretches and cool down followed the yoga, again I tend to skimp on these when I am exercising at gym, always anxious to get home to Reg, so to be able to do these at home or in the caravan with a guide up on the screen, will ensure I actually do them . Body flexibility is something I need to work on. 

I showered after my late night exercise, slept so soundly. Woke in the morning with my knees and tuck shop arms telling me I had done some unaccustomed exercise the night before, just as my core muscles had told me they, ‘had been used’, the previous morning. It was not pain and that feeling that I have been using muscles and strengthening them, gives me a feeling of exhilaration, (or is that the endorphin high J you get from exercise) and I feel fantastic this morning.

Reg came past me while I typed this and offered me a big buttered white bread bun and I rejected it.  Now that to me is one of the greatest benefits of having done a work out like the one I did the last two nights.  There is NO WAY; I am going to work, that hard, then undo the good I have done my body, by eating refined carbohydrates and hydrogenated or saturated fats.  When I eat today, I will not be thinking ‘diet mentality’, but I will be thinking delicious healthy portion controlled food I will love and will love me.  Exercise keeps me focused on caring for myself.

Well time I did some active work for the day.  I have our ‘troopy’, booked in at Toyota for service next Friday so I need to clean it out on the inside before then, that will fit in well with my discipline to strive for active afternoons. I also need to get some auto insurance quotes and see if it is worth repairing the damage to my passenger door that happened when another car sideswiped our extension mirrors.  That was a reminder to us to not, drive down narrow streets towing a caravan in traffic if I can help it, ever again.

Keep active, keep it fun and enjoy life J as a very wise person reminded me last night  

Quote

‘Don't over do it. Keep it fun. More healthy that way. Remember hugs and cuddles are exercise too.

Bob Herdsman  

“Bob Herdsman, thank you for caring about others and encouraging them, it was so very much appreciated, I wonder if you realize how many lives you have touched and benefited, you  are an inspiration to many and I will take note of your advice”

Cheers, Kathy

 

For example, our TV unit faces the bed, but also twists around and faces the dining area. It is also a DVD player and the dining table folds back into a small coffee table giving more floor space or the table can be removed to give the maximum of floor space, which allows me to put in an exercise DVD and start doing my weight work out.

Two years ago, I took stretch resistance bands for my weight workouts, and these were good, but nowhere near as good as the great quality dumbbells with adjustable weights and the DVD from the Osteoporosis Association of Australia, on strength and balance training. I found that a fantastic start in my fight back from compression fractures of the spine earlier this year.

Following the strength training I am dong during my summer and it’s cusps, season in one location here in Northern Victoria, the weights I took last year will be too light for my current needs. I will be looking out for compact size and weight, suited for caravan use, home gym equipment while at Leisurefest.

I have just watched this kettle bell work out, http://www.kettleworx.com/infomercial.html  it appealed to me as something I could do within our caravan’s limited space and does not involve too large an amount of space to store the equipment. I am off to leasurefest, looking for Kettlebells  and goodness knows what I will come home with.J.

I hope to be back in hereJ, tonight with photos from the Leisurefest and I’ll let you know for sure, what I bought, and what i fantasized that we bought if we had of had the king’s ransom required to buy. J lol, RV vehicles of today, can cost more than a bricks and mortar home in a top suburb as more and more gray with an a for active, nomads take to this lifestyle as their permanent way of life.

 

 Advantages.

The creative bush dweller can pay for thier holiday, making and selling, hiking sticks.

My next-door neighbour Alan loves to bush camp. He collected straight sticks, cut them to length, purchased walking stick stops for the toe and then sold these at the Tod Mall market in Alice Springs Central Australia for $25. each and helped pay for his holiday.

 I have seen painted and varnished hiking poles or walking sticks being sold for $150, and above at markets and I paid about $35. for a beautiful piece of natural timber hiking stick, in an art gallery.

Exercise .

Exercising with a stick, great for travellersJ, try someJ, they are even doing some of these exercises at my Aquamoves gym.

My husband, is currently using my bush stick for its conventional roll as a walking aid.

An incident involving a dog attack yesterday gave me the idea for my first,   “Useful Stuff” post and I will hold a walking stick as a more valuable item from now on and be far more likely to grab my lovely rustic bush stick before heading out the door for a walk with my dog. 

Most gray nomad, senior travellers are very health conscious these days,  one of the first requirements for many travellers is an adequate size fridge in the caravan  or motor home so they can store sufficient vegetables to allow them to prepare and eat, healthy not too high in calorie or overladen with salt, meals.

If you were striving to slim down and get fitter, before you leave for your trip, are you able to continue towards this goal successfully, while on tour and if so, I would love to have you share your tips to fellow travellers, via the comments  section.

Do you arrive home from your travels wishing you had weight loss supplements, to help recover from having eaten more food and perhaps exercising less than you do when home?

 If so, what is the pit falls you would suggest other travellers might try to avoid?

Here are a few of my travel tips to staying trim and healthy while travelling.

Healthy holiday ideas that also help trim the waistline.

*Holidaying where you can swim and or hike

*Holiday where you can buy fresh vegetables and keep up your 5 serves of vegetables and two fruits even while travelling.

*Continue to eat from all the food groups, and consider portion size of servings.

*Watch the serving sizes of food. A serving size of fruit is one cup, a serving size of beans, pasta or rice, is half a cup. A serving size of salad vegetables is one cup but of starchy vegetables like corn, peas and potatoes, it is half a cup.

*BBQ’s are a part of outdoor life.. Enjoy them while still taking great care of you. It is best to trim off excess fats, limit fatty and highly processed meats as much as possible and limit your protein serving size to around the size of a pack of cards, or your own palm size, a measurement that makes allowance for larger framed people generally being able to consume more calories.  A very high animal protein diet can hinder the absorption of calcium into your bones so if you are wanting more protein food in your diet, can I suggest adding lentils to your stews and serving mixed bean salads with the BBQ’s.  Unless you are exercising vigorously, seniors do not need as high an iron diet as younger people, especially women, do. We do need more bone minerals however..

*Pack an extra travel fridge if the existing one in the caravan is not large enough to hold your fresh vegetable, supplies, between restocking trips to the store.

*Pack a water filter or buy water to encourage you to drink sufficient fresh water rather than calorie-laden beverages.

*Keep up your buddy system, stay in touch with friends who encourage you to live a healthy lifestyle, while you travel.

*Enjoy a healthy, happy hour, try one alcoholic drink and the remaining drinks filtered water.

*When dining out, order wine by the glass instead of by the bottle and don't worry if the food is more calorie laden than what you would cook yourself, enjoy it, eat slowly, and stop when you are satisfied, not stuffed full.

*Low fat yogurt is a great substitute for cream, fruit is a great dessert.

*Inexpensive, powdered non-fat skim milk powder and rolled oats are two lightweight staples we stock up on before we leave home and always make sure we have in stock. Rolled oats is our basic healthy breakfast, at home and on tour, it is high fibre and low salt and sugar.

*Cooking healthy is the way to go, while travelling. Sometimes we pack the thermos cooker and make stews and soups, removing all the fat, before eating, it also cooks a healthy whole grain creamed rice, desert. I use a non stick pan with no more than 2 teaspoons of a good oil, (example olive oil), per day, per person.  I also use a large George Foreman grill and I cook all the vegetables on this, along with the fish, poultry or meat. One appliance cooking is easy and can also be healthy. 

*To cut back further on fats, Reg and I have stopped buying butter and margarine type spread, gives up more space for healthier food in a smaller caravan fridge, as an extra bonus.  We buy the low fat tasty cheese, it’s an easy lunch and with milk, yogurt and a serve of cheese, vegetables like broccoli, and one calcium supplement in the evening, with a few almonds, a senior can get sufficient calcium in their diet to help protect their bone density.

*Holidays are an excellent opportunity to walk. Wear a pedometer and try to get in 1.000 steps. On days when you have long drives, stop and walk every two hours, if not more frequently and do a few press ups agianst the trees or the car bonnet,.

*No need to obsess about your weight or carry bathroom scales, just have at least one pair of tight fitting jeans or a tape measure with you so you can check each week that you are maintaining or achieving your personal weight management goals.

Enjoy your holiday and do not worry excessively about weight, focus on fitness and good health, have heaps of fun and bring back a healthy you and wonderful memories. :-)

 

My gray nomad man is getting his ‘gray with an a for active’ backJ. He went for a gentle stroll by a lake at Mooroopna Victioria while I worked out to get ready for my next session of the Extreme measures, fitness program I am doing.

I ran in the park with the dog, and Reg walked. His effort would have more than equaled mine, he is recovering from an illness so it’s still a big effort he is making. :-). I pushed myself harder than I have pushed myself before, could not have run further, under my own pushing efforts,  but not as hard as the trainers at the Extreme Measures  course I am doing at my gym, push me three-four- times a week, that's just short of ~ well, the word says it, EXTREME!.

I have to keep telling myself, while I am doing it, and afterwards. ‘I CAN DO IT’.

I hadn’t deliberately chosen to put myself on such a punishing regime at my age, if I had felt I was achieving my goals on my own, I never would have stepped this far out of my comfort zone, effort wise or financially, to have enrolled in this course. I had set myself fitness goals I wanted to achieve for me, over a three-year action plan period. I achieved an enormous amount in the first ten months, but I had made little gain for almost two years and I chose to step outside my comfort zone to try to come home, within the three-year goal plan period, with a great closing effort.  

The effort has been exhausting, I even slacked off on my writing for a few days, and started to allow self-doubt and the awful four letter word, ‘can’t’’, to be entertained in my mind. Then the possibility of a worse four letter word, ‘quit’, snuck into my head as a possibility after Friday’s grueling effort when I had not even recovered from the athletic, one hour work out in the Shepparton Park on the Thursday. I gave myself the weekend as recovery days, and I have mind and body back focusing on my goals again as of Monday, the start of my week two of the eight week, Extreme Measures program.

Thursday’s park workout, consisted of running up stairs two at a time, press ups, running down steps star jumps, repeated numerous times, then jogging, interspersed with lunges, pushups,  sit ups, press ups, running up and down steep hills for one hour, nonstop and no concession for age or low aerobic fitness.

I made an effort to focus on those things I love, nature, the river, the parkland, trees, green grass and rose gardens. I LOVED that much of Tuesday, all of Thursday’s and some of Friday’s exercise was done out of doors. This pleased the gray nomad nature lover’s soul of mineJ.

 I saw it as a positive that we were working-out as a group with trainers, as it gave me the confidence to do exercise out of doors.

Friday’s Extreme measures program began with my barely able to take those steps two at a time and certainly not at a running pace, I part ran and mostly walked up those stairs. I managed to do all the exercises required that day though still exhausted from the Thursday, I was grateful there were more upper body and weight work outs, allowing my feet to recover from the running of the previous day.  I had to sit out one short sprint, and sat down and rested during one exercise. I was proud of what I achieved. I found the Chinese wrestling we did, outside with a partner, great fun and easy compared to the work out of the previous day.

We went inside and did circuit training. In this, I found the hearing impairment I have, a problem, as the main instructress did not understand that yelling into a microphone, fast instructions does not make words clearer.  If your hearing impaired like I am , you know rapid loud words with a head turned away is harder to hear than normal volume normal speed speech and many of us seniors throw in a bit of lip reading too, so talking to you while looking away from you, makes it all just muffled noise. One wonderful member of the group would ‘show me’ the action I was required to do, whenever I looked in her direction with that, ‘confused look’, on my face.

When I got home after the work out, on Friday night, I just about fell, rather than stepped up the step to the porch and fell through the door.  Week one Extreme Measures completed. They said ‘if you cannot say something positive, do not say anything’, and so I cannot say how I was feeling’.

I had asked those who have done the course, ‘Will it get easier’, they replied, ‘No it gets harder’.  I began to think, ‘I had to have been mad or just plain insane to have enrolled to do this course at my age and fitness level’, and that, ‘the gym had been unwise to recommend that this would be within my ability to do it’.

I don’t like to quit anything, I set myself and I remind myself I chose to do the extreme measures, for a reason, to achieve an increased fitness goal and pep my metabolism up. My reasons to enroll in a group program like this one, is because healthy eating and activity levels that had allowed me to release a large part of my excess weight were not allowing me to release the last of my excess body fat, I am still soft and wide in the middle. I did not intend to go on any stupid, harm my muscle and bone density diet, just to strive to achieve a goal weight and I was not prepared to quit on my goal and believe it was unachievable. Releasing this excess fat by increasing my aerobic activity and strength training through this Extreme Measures program is going to help me trim up and maintain my bone density at the same time. This effort now and a bit of ongoing effort to maintain the fitness level I am pushing to reach, will reward me with benefits in body and bone health for years to come.

I am thinking of enquiring if ‘The Crocs’, the local Masters Swimming team, would like to have me as a member to train for competitive swimming in seniors events, once I have completed my extreme measures program. Never in my life competed in competitive sports.  I am also hoping to fit gym classes into my routine along with my current regular weight workouts at the gym. Already my mind is planning where this increased fitness will take me and after Thursday, I knew I had the ability to tackle any of the great bush walk climbs that Reg and I did in our younger days. The Horn at Mt Buffalo and The Pinnacle at the Grampians come to mind as hikes we have loved and efforts I had stopped making following some of the injuries and illnesses of my mid life. The bodies amazing ability to recover, if given time and encouragement, always fills me with awe.

What I am doing in this program, will certainly achieve both those goals. I planned that if I am to get through this Thursday and Friday sessions, I need to train from Monday onward this week, and so I have lifted, pushed and pulled weights in the gym last night and done some aerobic fitness training by running in the park with the dog today.

I am programming my body and mind in preparation for my next Extreme measures sessions. Once I complete this coming Thursday and Friday’s back to back rigorous fitness training sessions I can proudly know I am a quarter of the way through the course.

I will allow myself to entertain the words, ‘pace myself’ , also ‘modify to within my ability’, in my head and I am working VERY HARD, programming my mind to focus on thinking and believing, ‘I CAN’.

Time I set myself a few rewards for effort as incentives along the way. J, lol, in my forties, on a professional income, my mind might have thought of things like, loose diamonds, as my reward. For this Extreme Measures goal completion, at sixty three, I’ve little desire for adornment incentives, so I purchased a clean skin bottle of sparkling chardonnay and popped it away in the fridge. I will toast my achievement when I complete my extreme measures program, with the family, on Christmas day.