Exercise worth the effort as you age
By Lethbridge Herald on March 27, 2025.
LEAVE IT TO BEEBER – Al Beeber
How can a person maintain a healthy weight and a healthy heart at any age?
As a guy who spent many years and hours in the gym hitting the weights hard before surgery in 2002 at Foothills Hospital in Calgary to remove four herniated discs in my neck, I know all about fitness.
Before that surgery, even as I lost the ability to use my right arm, I still tried to lift while awaiting the surgery which had the potential to leave my paralysed or kill me. But I was on my way to paralysis anyway so there was no option.
Before those discs blew, I lifted heavy – at least to me. I was also religious about watching what I ate, keeping fat intake to 10 grams or less per day. I ran 30 minutes every day on the treadmill and spent time on the stair machine, I lifted hard and had a body fat index at one point of a miniscule 2.5 per cent.
After Dr. Rick Hu at Foothills performed the fusion that left my neck screwed together with a titanium plate, I wasn’t allowed to do any weight lifting for a full five years. I’d already quit rec hockey for a couple of reasons and because I was no longer allowed to run, softball was out of the question and so were road races such as the Moonlight Run.
But still wanting to keep fit, I adopted a dog from the Humane Society and then rescued a second. Those dogs made me exercise because they needed regular walking. And since then, I’ve kept up a daily regimen of hitting the pavement as early as 5 a.m. most days to burn off some calories and increase the heart rate.
And after a hiatus pretty much since the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m back at the gym using my membership that I kept and only sporadically utilized.
For years, I set a goal of 20,000 steps which gradually reduced to 15,000 and then 10,000. As I’ve been reading, that benchmark goal of 10,000 steps may actually be fiction. From what I’ve read that number came up as a marketing campaign before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics because apparently the Japanese character for 10,000 resembles a walking person.
For lowering dementia, one study suggests that 9,800 is the optimal number of steps to walk daily. And all those steps can also help reduce joint pain.
Another study did suggest that walking 10,000 steps a day can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and other issues including strokes and heart failure.
Canada’s McGill University states on its website in a 2018 missive written by Christopher Labos, MD, MSc, that “30 minutes of moderate physical activity at least five times per week. Moderate physical activity is usually described as a brisk walk. A good rule of thumb is that you should be a little short of breath while walking or have a little difficulty carrying on a conversation with someone walking next to you for it to count as moderate intensity.”
It also states that wearing a pedometer is needed to count those steps and compliance wanes with time. I use a phone app called Pacer which tracks the steps while the device is left in my pocket. It can be sensitive to motion – on a fishing trip to Ontario in 2014, I got more than 20,000 steps by leaving the Iphone on my truck’s dashboard, for example.
“Increasing from 5,000 steps per day to 9,000 steps per day will likely yield important health benefits even though you fall short of the 10,000 step threshold. The focus should be on increasing your current level of physical activity, rather than comparing yourself to others. As the saying goes, the race is long and in the end it’s only against yourself,” wrote Labos.
The Mayo Clinic states that walking can also reduce the risk of depression, obesity diabetes and high blood pressure. Its website also states that the American Department of Health and Human Services
recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise each week and that can include brisk to walking. Over a week that amounts to 2.5 hours each day, an amount that could be difficult for people with busy lives to achieve, let’s face it.
And questions exist about whether the benefits of walking are best achieved by several shorter ones during the day or a longer session. I tend to do multiple per day, starting with a lap around Nicholas Sheran Lake with Izzy and then a slightly shorter one two hours later. We often go again mid-day and late afternoon.
When I make the time, I hit the gym at 7 a.m. to lift for about 40 minutes with maybe another 15 minutes of cardio. After the spinal surgery when I started working out again, I was reticent to risk injury and for several years, my right arm still never had all of its strength back. By the day I underwent the spinal fusion, I could only curl 10 pounds with my right arm without using my left hand for assistance. Before the disc issues, Iused 50 to 60 pound dumbbells in each hand for multiple sets. I did dumbbell bench presses with 110 lbs. in each hand and could do the entire rack on the tricep machine.
And when I wasn’t lifting I was burning calories doing cardio. I lived on the stair machine at the gym, as much as I couldn’t stand it. But a stair machine to me is the best way – and most painful – to burn calories.
Now I walk up and down stairs doing laundry.
Since my back issues a few years ago, I also try to stretch during the day, which is accomplished easily now bending over to look for the squeakers that Lady Diana constantly loses under sofas, ottomans, beds, tables and chairs. I’m probably looser at 65 than I was at 25.
The Mayo Clinic has a few tips that would be helpful for anyone wanting to get into a walking routine or is interested in picking up the pace.
As we all have read in The Herald, cardiovascular disease is hugely problematic in southern Alberta, hence the efforts by Dr. Sayeh Zielke and others to improve cardiac services here.
So here are a few short tips courtesy of mayoclinic.org – see you at the park.
* Take the dog for a walk. If you don’t have a dog, volunteer to walk dogs at an animal shelter. Or combine your activity with social time by joining a friend to walk his or her dog.
* Try music. A bouncy tune or something with a strong beat can make activity more enjoyable and help motivate you to walk farther or faster.
* Include the family. Instead of an afternoon movie, go for a walk or hike together.
* Go in person. Instead of sending a work email, walk to your colleague’s desk.
* Walk while waiting. Take a walk instead of sitting when you’re early for an appointment or waiting for a flight.
* Schedule workday walks. Put reminders in your calendar for short walking breaks to ramp up your energy throughout the day. Have a one-on-one meeting? Plan to walk and talk.
* Park farther away. Choose parking spots farther away from the entrance. If you take the bus, get off a stop early and walk the rest of the way.
* Take the stairs. Even going down the stairs counts as steps and burns calories.
I’ve employed most of these tips for years and they work. I also have a personal favourite that can even be unintentional – don’t pay attention to where you park at a shopping centre. By being completely oblivious to your vehicle’s location, a person can potentially walk hundreds of extra steps while also pushing a heavy cart to increase the heart rate even more!
Trust me, it works.
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Keep it up Al.
Here’s an old saying that is both very true and also relevant here.
“ If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. “