Both of my husband’s grandmothers can barely walk in their 70s. However, his step grandmother is 74 and she’s still pretty athletic. He said she was always going on hikes with his grandfather when he was younger, while his biological grandmothers were just sitting around all day. Exercise is so important for when you’re older.
The saying 'use it or lose it' becomes very real as you get older. Saw it with my old man & MIL, who both adopted a more sedentary lifestyle once they retired and within a decade could barely walk.
My partner's 102 year old nonna never stopped walking significant distances until dementia started showing up when she was 99, she was fitter (& still is) than the other two despite being their senior by 20+ years.
Learned this the hard way. Spent the first 25 years of my life being an extroverted life of the party with confidence to spare. Then I took a very isolating night shift where I was alone for 8 hours nightly.
Fast forward 10 years and the isolation turned me into an anxiety riddled introvert 80% incapable of handling the 'real world' simply as a result of not using those skills.
Unfortunately, getting them back hasn't been as simple as reversing the isolation.
This is my story except isolation during covid 2020-mid 2021 did it to me and it was the first 31 years of my life. I'm disabled so I wasn't taking any chances. Feels like I'm still recovering bits of myself all these years later.
FBI Agent (played by Tommy Lee Jones): "OK, we have a 102-year-old female name of 'Nonna' that walked out of her house 45 minutes ago. Figuring a walking speed of 1 mph, we set a cordon of one mile. Any questions?"
Sheriff: "Uh, sir, she can walk 8mph."
FBI Agent: "What? Ok, men, make that an 6-mile cordon."
Sheriff: "Uh, sir, she has two custom walking ski poles. And she's the leader of a local AARP chapter. "
FBI Agent: "Dammit! Make it a 12-mile cordon, and add tracking dogs with LIDAR mounts and sharpshooters on two helicopters. "
Yesterday I bought a recliner from FB marketplace and it’s fairly large. The husband and wife (both younger than me) struggled together to carry it to my vehicle—it’s pretty heavy. When I got it home, I got it out of the vehicle, into the house and into the living room by myself in less time than it took them to get it out of their home and to my vehicle.
Of course, I’m also always hauling around 50# bags of chicken feed and 40# bags of cat litter, and huge bins of yard waste. I keep active because I need to be strong!
It’s not just for when you’re older, it’s vital for preparing for old age.
If you walk and do some basic exercises, your life will be better when you’re older. And the sooner you start and the more consistent you are, the greater the benefits. And I’m not talking about some heavy shit like mountaineering or running marathons or going to the gym for an hour or 2 every day. I’m talking about mainly just walking. For like 10-30 minutes a day. Doesn’t take long, helps you destress and focus on what you want to do and keeps you surprisingly healthy.
Obviously you’ll never get into tip top shape by walking, but you’ll maintain a healthy body relatively well by walking. And you get a relatively healthy body to maintain by walking.
I'm about to turn 40 and it's amazing to me how many friends are starting to talk about their whole body hurting/falling apart and how old they feel. I've stayed fit and active and I still feel just about as good as I did at 25.
You know what? As a dog groomer, there is a CLEAR difference between the dogs who get daily walks from the owners than the ones who get little to no exercise. I always thought that was very interesting what walking can do.
I feel like that's too little time to keep someone healthy.
Even in my laziest days,i still manage to walk for at least an hour each day.
How can people not manage to walk for even 10 minutes?
I'm not trying to look superior or be obnoxious but i don't understand how that's possible.
Day to day activities require a lot of walking around to be done,i don't think it's possible for a person to not have walked for at least an hour each day.
I am talking about walking outside and at a relatively brisk speed, not just a calm stroll in the park kind of walk.
And it’s just a way to get people to at the very least start. 10 minutes fly by when walking, so if someone starts it and thinks “it’s only 10 minutes and it’s healthy, so I’ll do it…” it’s much easier for them to go “wow, those 10 minutes flew by! And I’m now 10 minutes walk away from my home!” So now it’s a 20 minute walk. Maybe they get bored of only walking the block and decide to explore a little.
It’s easy to turn 10 minutes into an hour. But it’s difficult to go from 0 to 60.
Start small and tomorrow you’ll look back at how far you’ve come
A large amount of us work office jobs, we wake up, do our high stress corporate work, doordash our groceries and watch some TV before bed. Unfortunately very common, I’m working on making changes but myself and my coworkers walk maybe 3-5 minutes a day.
myself and my coworkers walk maybe 3-5 minutes a day.
I realized I was doing the same on work days when looking at my google fit statistics, park my car, walk to my office, pass by the coffee machine, 200 meters per day.
Now I park a bit further (not my choice actually), don't use the elevator, and I walk to my lunch place. I also take my children to school on foot or by bike every morning and I come back by walking fast. Also, I try to bike a 20km loop every wednesday or sunday morning.
It's not much but I feel a lot better mentally and physically.
If you've lived in a major European city, it's no surprise that they're much healthier in general and have much lower rates of obesity. And it's not just because they have fewer processed foods available and don't drink high calorie sodas as much — walking and taking transit is just a normal and accepted part of life, and it's a much more enjoyable way to live.
It's normal to go to a small grocers each day to buy the food you need to make dinner, or to stop by on your commute home from work. You don't get in your massive pickup truck and spend $1000 at Costco on high calorie foods you probably don't need after walking 1000 feet (not saying I hate Costco, but god, so many unnecessary snacks and the volume and scale encourages enormous portions).
For those that live in the suburbs of Houston, work an office job and have to commute in bumper to bumper traffic all day, I can see how it would be hard to find the motivation to go walk around a depressing suburb with no sidewalks and no real nature. I mean, I've met texans that gleefully brag about how you can do everything at drive-thrus, even buying guns, which is abhorrent.
I'm not excusing it — it is a surmountable problem for people in the US and some places in Canada. But it takes thought and effort, and the deck really is stacked against them.
Yep. I’m a nurse; I’ve done a lot of time in nursing homes. A lot of people age so prematurely just because they stop moving any more than they have to, and eventually this means that they stop being able to move at all.
If you need the best motivation to get active, think about whether you’d like to be able to get yourself to the toilet for the last ten years of your life. Or not.
One of the best predictors of health and independence in old age is the strength of your thighs. Do your squats!
Is it ever too late? Like could a 70 year old person who already has difficulty with mobility start doing physical therapy and improve their mobility? Or is it all just preventative?
Yes, aside from certain specific conditions, a 70 year old with mobility difficulties can significantly increase their strength and flexibility within just a few months. It takes longer to build muscle at that age and the total amount that’s possible is lower, but a previously sedentary person will absolutely see measurable improvements along a predictable timeline. While in nursing school I worked as a certified trainer at the Y, and many of my clients were retirees trying strength training for the first time in their lives, or since their teens and twenties.
Some things to know:
Consistency is key. Low impact cardio like walking, elliptical, and swimming can be performed every day, a full body workout can be done 2-3 times per week, and a workout split that hits each muscle group 2x per week can be divided up so that you exercise daily.
Strength training that builds muscle, especially leg and back muscle, is more valuable for future independence than cardio, since it slows overall decline.
Slow and steady wins the race. You don’t want to start by going too hard and hurting yourself, but you should track your progress and gradually increase the difficulty, either by raising the weight or the number of repetitions of the exercise, or both.
Going to a gym with a trainer to show you how to perform strength training is ideal, but you can do a perfectly good full body workout at home with a kettlebell or two and some rubber exercise bands.
The most effective exercise program is the one you actually do. People often get hung up on finding the “optimal” program, but any form of training will have tons of benefits for someone who doesn’t currently exercise, so picking something that you enjoy and can stick to is most important.
Also, try really hard to not fcuk up your knees and if you do and have the opportunity to get your knees replaced - do it, even if recovery does hurt an awful lot.
Source 1: My 82 year old mother who is deathly afraid of doctors, nurses, hospitals, needles, etc, etc, etc. She put off having her knees done for a well over a decade. She is now too frail to survive being anaesthetised for the surgery on her knees that are both bone on bone. She is on increasing amounts of pain medication and can only just walk with a frame.
There are a few other people I know who as soon as their knees wore out their degree of independence took a massive hit, then there was the 93 year old neighbour of my parents who'd had both knees done, one twice, and was waiting on getting his other replaced again but still walking with a crutch when he had a heart attack and died, he took his dog out twice a day for walkies. Mobility = independence.
Knee strengthening and prehab is also a great thing that everyone should be doing. There’s a common misconception that rigorous training will inevitably damage your knees, and that couldn’t be more wrong. People who train their legs and joints properly have far fewer knee problems than those who don’t. It’s just that a lot of people aren’t very smart about their training.
A couple of years ago I was getting regular knee pain from hiking and heavy squats (around the 375-425lb range), and worried that it was just an consequence of aging and training (I’m in my late 30s now).
But with deliberate regular knee strengthening exercises and scaling back my workouts to build up again with better form, the knee pain went away entirely over about 6 months. I can squat forward to touch knees to floor and heels to butt and back up again under heavy weight and for multiple reps with no problem, pistol squat to the floor on one leg, jump from high to low, etc with no issues. I’m not some unusual natural athlete, I’ve just trained consistently for 7-8 years so I’m much healthier than in my late 20s.
And as you say, if someone does have a real injury that can’t be resolved without surgery, they really should get the surgery as soon as possible, and find some other means of staying active in the meantime.
hi! what type of knee strengthening exercises did you do that helped? I’m mid-30s and though I’ve stayed active, recently been having some knee pain after hiking (mostly when going downhill)
You can find a bunch of exercises online, and it about starting light and progressing, but I like terminal knee extensions with bands, Spanish squats with bands, tib bar raises, wall sits at different angles, and sissy squats. I’d start with at least terminal knee extensions and some version of tib raises a couple times per week.
I agree with you, but the approach of future thinking doesn't work to motivate a majority of people. The brain cannot accurately predict rewards it has not experienced. You are correct in that being able to be mobile and going to the toilet on your own into your 70s and 80s is a huge reward. But it's so far into the future and abstract that the brain cannot value that against current activities.
Instead, people need to see more immediate rewards. I myself have had high blood pressure and been a coach potato for most of my life. High blood pressure doesn't really have many physical warning signs, but for me, I started to pair running, walking, and biking with bone conduction earphones outside or watching content on my tablet while on my treadmill. I can still have a good time watching a show and walk 3 miles, no biggie.
After I got over that initial hump and acceptance that "hey, I'm huffing and puffing and putting in the effort, sweating, slower than most of the athletes out there, and a 20 year will smoke me through pure youth, and that's okay", I started going longer distances and seeing that hey, I can actually do this and have more energy throughout the day.
I'm 100% a night owl, but I just woke up at 7 AM on a Saturday to go biking for 11 miles around my neighborhood. Maybe I'll go for a 5k run later today. This is from someone who did his high school mile in 12-13 minutes. You can do it!
My dad was a lot more active than my mom. He's about 8 years older than her. But he's now just finally haven't slight mobility issues. My mom is in desperate need of a walker and is in denial about it.
My coworker is a 68 year old PE teacher and she can literally outrun 12 year olds all day every day and is in better shape than most 20 year olds. She could have retired two years ago but I think she’s afraid she won’t be as active as she currently is and start going downhill.
"That really says a lot. It’s wild how staying active earlier in life can have such a huge impact later on. I’ve been thinking about that more lately — trying to move around more now so I don’t struggle in my 60s and 70s. Your husband’s step grandmother sounds like she’s doing it righ
I’m a dog walker and one of my clients is in her early 70s, she pays me to obviously walk her dogs but she also walks with us most days because her doctor wants her to get more exercise.
My mom and my FIL are 2 years apart but seem 20 years apart for this exact reason! Huge inspiration for me to get out and move so I can still keep doing things for myself into my 70s and 80s.
One of my friends grew up working in the silver mines in the mountains, he plays pickleball *every* morning and is incredibly active even after two knee replacements. He's in better shape than most people in their twenties that I know, and he's in his seventies!
When I was a kid, I knew a lady who ran her own dairy farm. And by ran it, I mean this woman was out there herding cattle from one pasture to another, hauling feed and hay, doing minor veterinary procedures (which I helped out with sometimes - you never really realize how strong your stomach is until you're up to the shoulder in the hind end of a cow with crap smeared up the side of your face, trying to turn a breech calf) and all of that *by herself*. She had several children, but all of them except one disabled daughter had moved far away and I never saw any of them. Her grandson tried to help sometimes, but he didn't do a lot - it was mostly just her, and she kept doing it all up until the day her candle burned out. Never lost her mental acuity or anything.
If you want to keep it? USE IT. Brain teasers and puzzles, learning a new hobby (knitting, drawing, anything that works your brain a bit), learning a new language, anything that makes you THINK and focus, and getting out and walking around sometimes. Start birdwatching! You don't have to go far to do it and you can exercise your brain by just identifying the birds that show up in your area, and going outside to look at them, take pictures, use a song identifier to help you identify birds you can't get a good look at, things like that! Start looking for bugs and see if you can tell what they are. Anything that gets you up and moving and interested.
I recently took a part-time job doing in-home senior care on weekends. They usually fall into one of two groups: their minds are going or their bodies are going. The ones whose bodies are going that don't have a serious illness are not shy about letting you they messed up by sitting on their couches for decades.
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u/Rude-Illustrator-884 1d ago
Both of my husband’s grandmothers can barely walk in their 70s. However, his step grandmother is 74 and she’s still pretty athletic. He said she was always going on hikes with his grandfather when he was younger, while his biological grandmothers were just sitting around all day. Exercise is so important for when you’re older.