My regime

Since this past April we've been working out usually six times a week. When weather permits we ride the bicycle (tandem) 4 times a week (Tues., Thurs., Sat., and Sun.). Twice a week (on Mon. and Fri.) we do strength training, concentrating on the upper body--since we get a good workout for the legs from cycling.

Cycling mileage varies quite a lot. On weekdays during good weather we get in 10 - 20 miles per day. On weekends in good weather we do 25 - 70 miles per day. When the weather is bad we ride stationary exercise bikes indoors for 1/2 hour to 1 hour per day, depending on the time of year.

Our strength training sessions run about 45 minutes. They consist in some calisthenics (e.g., bicycle crunches, some push-ups, chair dips) and some work with weights. Right now I use a Soloflex and some dumbbells for weight/strength training. I'm not especially happy with the Soloflex and will write a review of it later. But for now the Soloflex serves the purpose.

We are fortunate in having a seldom-used exercise room in our apartment building. We do our strength training and stationary bike riding there.

We also do some walking--not so much as a regular fitness activity, but as a way to run errands and get a little extra exercise at the same time.

Future plans: on the strength-training front, we will soon switch from weight training to more calisthenics. I plan to incorporate parts of the P90X routine into our strength training. Later, I will write a review of the P90X exercise regime. Just to give a foretaste, I will have some positive things to say about it but will not give it an unqualified endorsement.

Inaugural post: why this blog and who am I?

So, why am I writing this blog? The short answer is that I recently undertook an exercise regime and had trouble finding helpful information about exercise for people around my age (49, soon to be 50). I decided starting a blog might attract attention to what I'm doing and could help create an internet resource for others who, like me, are trying to keep fit and active at 50 and older.

Mind you I can't say I found nothing at all on the internet related to exercise for people in my age group. It's just that the information I did find was not very helpful. To tell you why I found it unhelpful means telling you a bit about myself. And telling you a bit about myself will, in turn, help you decide whether what I write about in this blog will be helpful to you. So, a bit about myself.

I've been fairly fit all my life. I enjoyed playing the more popular American sports (baseball, football, and basketball) throughout childhood and adolescence. I didn't play on school teams but loved to play sandlot or pick up games with friends and peers. At the age of 19 I took up bicycle racing and cross-country bicycle touring, which has remained an avid interest of mine since. I really still enjoy that kind of good aerobic workout.

Cycling, in conjunction with the manual labor employment (construction) I had, ensured that I kept fairly fit throughout my twenties and into my thirties. I began some serious academic pursuits in my thirties, which made me a bit less active. The lessened activity may, in turn, have contributed to high blood pressure readings I've gotten over the past 2 - 3 years. It was partly as a response to those readings that I decided several months ago to institute and maintain a more disciplined exercise regime-which, in its turn, is also what led me to create this blog.

So, the long and short of this review of my history is to say that I have never been terribly unfit in my life. I could definitely, at any given point in my life, have done, say, 10 push-ups, walked 5 miles, or cycled 20 miles. I was at no point so out of shape that I couldn't have done these sorts of modest fitness feats. In fact, my weight and physique have remained pretty much the same since I was in my early 20's, and I can still wear all the clothes that fit me when I was 23 years old.*

Don't get me wrong . . . I wasn't totally happy with the effects I saw in myself recently that resulted from a combination of aging and decreased physical activity. No, I was coming to the point about a year ago where I didn't like some of what I would see in the mirror. Some rudimentary "love handles" were forming and overall I seemed to be getting more soft than I had ever been in my life. That, in combination with the health issue I mentioned helped motivate me to get more serious about exercise.

So, why am I rehashing all this? I'm telling you all this because I want to make the point that, although I had gotten a bit soft as compared to other points in my life, it was fairly easy for me to undertake a comparatively advanced exercise regime because I was not too far from being in decent physical condition. It may be, then, that some of the things I will write about exercising will not be very applicable to you, if you're in worse condition than I was to begin with. I certainly sympathize with and support your attempts at fitness if you're quite a bit behind me in your basic level of fitness. But this blog is going to be geared more toward those around my age who are already in fairly good condition. So, don't be disappointed if you don't find much here in the way of really rudimentary fitness discussion.

Which brings me to a point about the unhelpful information I found on the internet. I would classify what my searches turned up under two broad headings: 1) superficial "feel good" articles about how wonderful it is that people 50 and older are pursuing fitness these days; and 2) ads oriented toward people who have become really out of shape and that make unrealistic promises that, by following this diet and that exercise regime one will soon be as toned and svelte as, say, Michael Phelps. I might include even a third, unhelpful category here that I ran across because I was searching for information on strength and weight training: 3) body-building sites and forums.

Why was this information unhelpful? The first was unhelpful because it was devoid of any practical advice. These sorts of articles simply indulge in a kind of social gloating, their aim apparently being to make us feel that our culture/generation/era is superior to any that have gone before. What good does that do someone seeking advice on developing and maintaining a fitness regime at 50 and beyond? None, I submit.

The second type was unhelpful because it didn't apply to me. I wasn't fat by any stretch of the imagination, and even at my most unfit stage I think I always held the conviction that a month or two of more serious exercise would see me in a shape not too far from my condition in my 20's. The exercise regime I've followed for the last few months has, I think, proven out that conviction (we began our current regime in April of this year).

This is to say that those ads bank on unrealistic expectations, and I didn't have unrealistic expectations. You know how they show those before and after pictures when trying to promote exercise programs and diets? I looked a lot closer to the after pictures than the before pictures they showed, even at my most unfit stage. So this information was kind of a red herring.

The body-building information was also not terribly helpful. What I was hoping to find was advice on how hard one can expect to push oneself when beginning some weight training anew at my age. But what you mostly find on those sites is advice on building up your abs or triceps or something. I have no intention of entering competitive body-building--which would be delusional at my age in any case. And on top of that I don't find the physiques of body-builders attractive. I recall, even in my younger years when I did some weight training and was beginning to look more muscular than I wanted, switching from weights to calisthenics so as to not bulk up any further. Now, is that the sort of approach you'll find on body-building sites and forums? The short answer: no.

What I wanted to do was a fair amount of aerobics (cycling) and a bit of weight training and/or calisthenics. I did want to build up a little more muscle since, according to my reading having extra muscle mass helps your body to burn fat (remember those nascent love handles I mentioned?). But I think I would do the same thing I did in my younger years with regard to weight training, i.e., to switch to calisthenics if I started to gain too much muscle mass from the weights.

So, I've had to largely blaze my own trail. I've gotten some information from the internet and I intend to share much of that through this blog. I also hope that this blog will attract the attention of some professional trainers who might offer their advice or point me to internet resources I've overlooked. It may also attract the attention of some medical personnel, who can offer similar input. Finally, it can attract the attention of others who, like myself, are sort of going it on their own and who have advice to offer based on their experience.

In any case, it's time to conclude this inaugural blog posting. The raison d'etre and vision have been laid out and the rest can be developed with the passage of time. Thank you for reading and for offering your input.

NOTE: This blog was inaugurated several months (about 8 months, to be precise) after we started our current exercise regimen.
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* The 1984 photo seen in this blog's title was taken during this period and at the height of the bicycle racing season (I'm standing at the starting line of a race in that photo). I had undoubtedly put in a few hundred training miles by that point, as well as having several races under my belt, so my weight was likely a little lower than usual--probably down around 195 or slightly less--in the photo.