Keeping Fit

When I was 18 to 20 years of age I used to press 1000 pounds with my feet and lifting up to 400 pounds while doing construction work, especially cement was pretty normal for me. However, I preferred not doing that all the time just here and there. Because being an intelligent person I knew that you don't want to keep your discs in your back compressed all the time with weight. Once in a while is okay but all the time can lead to problems. I starting out being a distance runner not for speed but rather for endurance. So, since there was a freeway being built nearby, at night I would ride my bicycle there and run for 1 to 5 miles along the partially completed new freeway not yet open near my home then in Glendale. I was around 16 or 17 then. Later in life I often jogged 1 to 5 miles a day with my second wife in our 30s to stay in shape. But when I reached about 40 I started to have problems with bone spurs in my feet and had to stop running so much. In my 50s I had my feet x-rayed and there were many little fractures in my feet from when I was young (8 years old to about 15) when I and my friends thought it was fun to jump off the roofs of houses because we could and survive it. However, by all the many mini-healed up fractures in my feet I had also paid a long term price for being a boy who jumped off of roofs as a macho thing to do back then.

Jumping off of roofs was replaced with racing cars, flying planes and piloting gliders from inside the pilots seat, jogging, rock climbing, surfing and SCUBA diving starting at age 12, as well as body surfing along the coast of the Pacific ocean.

Today I was trying to increase the weights outside on my weight lifting set from 45 pounds up to about 70. Since I'm now 63 I found that even though I can still lift 70 pounds above my head I found that I'm not yet ready for this weight all the time. I felt sort of unbalanced at this weight and worried about falling off my redwood porch. (It is better to do many repetitions at a lower weight than to be stupid and try to lift more weight than you can safely do both for yourself, your pets and your loved ones. Unless you are safe for all of you, you shouldn't be lifting at that weight level.

In addition I keep a mountain bike for cardio workouts so I can ride it uphill up about a 4% to 6% grade to really get my lungs going and my heart pumping. As I begin to lose more weight from the diet prescribed from my wife's and my nutritionist I likely will begin to jog again once my weight goes down enough for me to feel like I'm not harming my feet and lower legs by jogging once again.

I also work out twice a week with a physical trainer once on the beach and once doing yoga. I find that a yoga designed perfectly for my age and body at this age takes away about 50% to 75% of my body pain. Since I almost never (maybe once a year at most) take any pain killers having this much body pain taken away by yoga is really wonderful for my at age 63. So, much of the time now between taking Armour thyroid for my hypothyroidism and various workouts and diets I often both in my mind and in my body now feel as good or sometimes even better than I did in my 20s or 30s once again.