Let me just say a little more about where I’m at fitness-wise, and how I got here.

I’m in what would be considered pretty average shape for a person of my age in our culture. Maybe even a little better than average, in that I’m not what our society would consider overweight, and I still have some residual athleticism from my younger days. We’ve been playing all-ages ultimate frisbee in the park with a few other families, and it’s been fantastic. Though last week I could barely walk for a day or two after. Walking and stretching in the mornings helped me not have such a terrible “exercise hangover” after we played this week!

I have some kind of foot/ankle/achilles tendon injury lingering from about two years ago. As far as I can tell I injured myself doing a long drive with the seat poorly adjusted. Sounds ridiculous, I know, so there may have been other factors, but that’s it as far as I can tell. I’ve had it looked at and tried to do some work on it, but without success. It doesn’t cause me pain day-to-day, but it flares up badly if I do intense exercise, and makes it hard to really run properly.

This injury may be a minor thing in some ways, but I suspect this type of thing may be a big factor in the way a lot of people go downhill physically as they get older. It goes something like this. Sedentary lifestyle leads to getting a “minor” injury. Minor injury leads to even more avoidance of physical activity. More avoidance of physical activity leads to less energy, which leads to even more sedentary lifestyle, which leads to a further decline in fitness…etc So a downward spiral is created which eventually comes to just feel normal and then is called “aging.” But as I was saying in the previous post, the precipitous decline in fitness that we normalize as “just getting older” involves a lot more than the simple passage of time.

And can I just say: I really don’t want to get a knee replacement. Or a hip replacement. And it feels weird seeing these surgeries become almost like a rite of passage for people of my parents generation. And that’s not a comment on whether those kinds of surgeries “work” or not, or are “good” or “bad.” My superficial observation is that, when people do the intensive physio required to recover from them, they move better than before the surgery and are generally happy with the results. I’m just not about to concede that major joints being completely wrecked is an inevitable result of turning 65 or whatever age. Clearly our overall health – not just weight, but how much we move, and maybe especially how we move (more on shoes and how they mess up our gait in future posts!) – is a part of that.

One of my major goals for this project is to simply share my own thoughts and experiences in a straightforward way without worrying what other people think. My vision is fantastic health and fitness for myself and my family, and to support other people in achieving those same goals. If that resonates with you, please follow along!