One of the things about getting older: Even if you can still do many of the things you enjoyed when you were younger, you may need more down time in between.
Go for a 5-mile run, work a 9-hour day, then go out with friends? I could do all of those, one after the other, in my 20s. Plus chores!
By my 40s, I was probably down to two of those back to back.
And now, in my late 60s? That’s more like a 3-mile run, not 5 . . . and I may want to rest for a bit before considering something else.
Which is why if you’re still working full-time later in life, even if you’re privileged to have good-enough health for exercise, it can be challenging to do enough physical activity. 30 minutes of cardio, plus warmups, and work 8+ hours? And strength train a couple of times a week? Plus balance and flexibility exercises, which I believe are also vital for aging well?
That’s an awful lot to fit in between a demanding job and family/household obligations, especially if your energy levels are a bit lower than they used to be.
So just at the life stage when it’s critical we don’t slack off on physical maintenance, it gets harder to squeeze in.
After retiring, though, many of us have more time available for self care. For those of us fortunate enough to have both the time and physical ability for exercise, the question becomes what exactly we want to do and how much – without going overboard. (That last part is key, by the way, especially for us older Type A personalities.)
General guidelines in the US advise 150 minutes per week of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobics, plus strength training twice a week. And, of course, always warming up first and cooling down after – something we might get away with skipping when younger but not so much now.
However, those guidelines are a baseline. “Gain even more benefits” if you do more, the American Heart Association notes.
I’ve started experimenting with 45 minutes daily, six days a week. That’s what the “Younger Next Year” series of books recommend to ward off a lot of preventable deterioration that can come with aging. They make some convincing arguments. Plus, a recent study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found 42 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous daily exercise to be an “optimal” amount.
Results so far
After a couple of months, I’m finding that I often feel better in a way I can’t fully describe. Even when I’m tired after a more intense workout, somewhat counterintuitively I feel more enegerized. It’s like I got a tune-up. Things feel like they’re working a bit more efficiently.
I’m also more likely to eat better when my body feels tuned up, because I like that feeling. And I don’t feel great after eating junk.
However, I’ve also discovered there’s a difference between finding half an hour for a lunchtime brisk walk with my walking buddy at work, which I did for many years pre-retirement, and 45 minutes plus warmups and cooldown by myself – especially if I add in a roundtrip to the gym for strength training. It’s both a bigger time commitment and not quite as easy to do when I’m solo.
This hasn’t been too tough in the summer, when days are long and bright and I have the urge to get out of the house. I’ll see how it goes as the days get shorter, colder, and darker.
One of the best pieces of advice I read about this was to make exercise my new job. “Go to the gym the way you go to work,” Chris Crowley wrote in Younger Next Year: The Exercise Program. “You don’t decide every day whether or not to go to work, you just go. It’s one of the most important things you learned in the workplace: Use it now.”
And for us older, no-longer-working-full-time people?
“This is even more important. You need the structure. And, frankly, you need it even more than younger people. . . . So make it your job. . . . Do this stuff and you will enjoy a radical change in energy, fitness, mood, health, optimism, effectiveness, everything!”
It’s also important to jettison perfectionism. And that means not “working” seven days a week if the goal is to do six. And giving myself some grace if I’m feeling under the weather or having an exceptionally difficult day.
Given all that, committing to an exercise habit seems worth an hour a day – even two! At least for now.
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