Consider this scenario: You’ve just celebrated another business, your sixty-seven and haven’t done any exercise for a very long time. Wisely, bravely, you decide it’s time to start. What you want is encouragement. ‘Great!’ ‘Go for it!’ ‘Legend!’ Instead, what you hear is ‘Careful!’ ‘Caution.’ ‘Best see a doctor, have a check-up.’ Age thirty the message is very different: ‘Excellent, go for it!’ ‘Harder! Faster!’ Whether you receive encouragement or caution is age dependent and age is a magnet for warnings, negativity and imagined dangers.
I’ve been to many ‘senior,’ ‘fifty plus’ ‘legend’ fitness classes. Usually, the class is taken by someone thirty or forty years younger, than the seniors. have yet to hear one word of encouragement at these classes, no ‘harder, faster.’ Instead, there’s a curious quietness. Is this age respect or a belief in the ‘warnings’ so often associated with the older body? It’s as if encouragement or motivation itself might be dangerous? Participating, slow movement and be careful seems enough?
When I quietly slipped into the Windsor gym after decades of inactivity and started to exercise, I was weak, overweight and I became exhausted quickly, but I tried my best. I pushed myself and all went well. It was only later I read the advice warning me that I should have been more careful and cautious.
When will your body benefit most from exercise and need more encouragement and support? When you’re young and in good physical shape? Or when the body is older? When the muscles may be weaker, the joints tighter, flexibility diminishing? The answer is blindingly, physically obvious. Time and years of use naturally take their toll. Surely the older your body, the greater the benefit.
In my book, DiscoverAge, in the Preface, titled ‘the Brochure,’ I write about visiting my mother when she was recovering from a hip replacement operation. Mum was 88 and in good health, the operation was a success. The brochure she’d been given after the operation listed movement and exercises which, if followed, were supposed to strengthen the hip and surrounding muscles. I looked at the brochure and watched Mum as she followed the instructions. It was obvious to me the brochure was steeped in warnings, the obvious ‘Caution! Be Careful’ and the subtle, the physical goals and the challenge of the movement to her body were insignificant. It was sad to watch.
The operation may have been a success, but recovery, rehabilitation, and the rebuilding of strength and mobility was a failure. There was no physiotherapy, no gym membership or personal trainer. All my mother had was that flimsy brochure.
If there are warnings about to the danger of starting exercise when age qualified, they should be balanced by warnings about the danger of inactivity and not doing exercise! ‘Exercise regularly!’ ‘Loss of muscle strength = loss of independence.’ The warnings should be in every doctor’s surgery.
The attitude to risk in the medical profession is worth noting. A study titled ‘Risk Attitudes in Medical Decisions,’ concluded that “Doctors and nurses in the medical profession showed a high degree of risk aversion in all health contexts, with risk aversion being the preference in nearly 100 percent of the subjects. Doctors will favour the lowest risk option.”
In fairness, medical advice is changing As Neel Chokshi, MD, director at Penn Medicine writes “the chance of having a heart attack or cardiac event during exercise is really very low.”
The DiscoveraAge message is: Go for it! Challenge your body! Stay active stay healthy into the Deep years. Everyone no matter what age, will respond to and benefit from encouragement and motivation. A fit and healthy ageing body is not only beneficial to the individual, it’s vital for the whole of society.