In my view, a good diet and a regular and demanding exercise program are absolute essentials for the maintenance of good health and physical fitness in one's old age. The easiest way for me to answer that question is to describe exactly how I spend my mornings five days a week every week.
I've been legally blind for the past 11 years, so I have a driver who picks me up between 9 and 9:30 AM and drives me to a nearby high-school track where I train for roughly one hour. He then drives me to my athletic club for about a one-hour workout on weights (upper body and lower body onalrnate days), and also a variety of stretching and balancing exercises.
I have a really great physical fitness trainer at my athletic club who is a former track star. He lays out on paper a different and progressively more challenging workout and running routine with emphasis on my weakest points every two or three months. Each time he changes my routine, he works with me (with my driver observing) two or three days, one hour each day, after which my driver takes over as I can't see well enough to read the instructions. There are far too many different exercises, different weights, etc, for me to commit them to memory.
My coach shows me no mercy and expects me to keep pushing to the very limit of my strength and endurance, after which I am totally exhausted. However, I am blessed with a very rapid recovery time and I feel great after resting a few minutes and I continue feeling great for the rest of the day. After exercising strenuously, my heartbeat quickly returns to its normal at-rest rate of 48 to 50 beats per minute.
Two of the great benefits of my strenuous exercise routine are my high-energy level and the fact that I almost never feel tired. I take pride in the fact that very few 93-year-old men or women can make such claims. Following that statement, It may sound contradictory to say that I truly wish a lot more could make such claims as many more old folks like me would still be enjoying life.
End of Blog No. 6.
Editor's Note: Jim Hammond has written a wonderful book about
his life and experiences called "What a Beautiful Sunset." To read
more about his book or to buy it, click here [1].