May 28 2008
Retirement Challenge THREE - Fitness
Retirement Challenge THREE - Keeping Fit - refers to physical fitness. Not body building, not even extensive work with weights or extreme aerobic efforts are required. No need to run a marathon or a ten kilometer race. Being able to walk a few miles is good. Flexibility and suppleness are things you don’t even think about and don’t appreciate until it dawns upon you that you are losing them. You know, when you can’t get up off a couch or out of a car without being careful not to hurt your back. When you stoop over for the first fifty feet you walk until you loosen up again. Not only have I BEEN there; I AM there NOW. I am resolved not to allow myself to become a cripple before my time, if EVER! Lack of activity could kill me and kill you. Although a car crash is quicker, poor cardiac health will kill too, and it often becomes a lingering, painful, bedridden end to a life. That sucks. Well, if that is what awaits me if I am physically LAZY, then shame on me for sitting on my butt.
Yoga, Pilates, and other gentle forms of exercise are excellent for our age group. Don’t be afraid of foreign-sounding names like “Tai Chi.” Not a threat at all. You can quickly become comfortable saying things like “Chi-gong.” It’s very easy to begin at home with a DVD or VCR. After you are familiar with a practice, it might be good to join a club or fitness center. YMCA’s are very inexpensive places to participate in group fitness activities. A personal trainer is even better if you can afford one, or need the personal, undivided attention that you can’t receive in a group setting. Group yoga is really lots of fun, and can be a wonderful social outlet too; and, if you make yourself available and open to casual friendships, you will find them. (I even met my spouse in yoga class; took a couple of years, but we finally got together under the correct circumstances and when the timing was right for both of us)
Ahh, so there are GOOD THINGS associated with Fitness. You darn right there are….lots of good things.
Funny, when we were working my wife and I practiced Yoga almost every day but now that we are retired we don’t have time. Well maybe it’s that we don’t have a routine so we don’t take the time and we need too. We stay busy gardening, working on our house and for me working on ‘my’ cabin but I know we are loosing the flexibility what we worked so long to gain. Time to dust off the video boxes and spend some time with Rodney Yee again.
I too practiced yoga with a lot more discipline before I retired; perhaps because I felt time was at a premium and I had to be more organized. Thanks for the Comment.
Gruggers