Posts Tagged → fitness

Physical Strength and Dexterity the Key To Good Mental Health [in Boomers]

maxresdefaultSylvester Stallone, 70.

Ever read a story along the lines of … “61 year old man knocked to the ground by two teenage girls?”

When you’re in that chronological ballpark, the story becomes more about you than it does what happened to someone in some small town far, far away.

Could I have defended myself in that situation?

Would the teens have even dared approach me, given my physical condition and size?

What would happen if I somehow lost my ability to defend myself in a situation like this?

Would life even be worth living?

Would I have to move to some gated retirement community with 24-hopur armed security to protect me?

As weird as this may sound, the right answers to these questions are at the core of good mental health for men my age.

I have always been very athletic.

To this day I hold the USAPL Texas State record in the Power lift.

I can still run, jump, climb, swim, bike, throw a football…all the things I could do 30 years ago.

But it isn’t 30 years ago. Now I have to warm up, stretch, prepare for battle.

No longer are the days when I went from idle to full bore without missing a beat.

See, no matter what you do to maintain yourself, there’s always a price to pay.

This is why so many older men do stupid shit.

You can fill in the blanks here. I don’t need to reiterate what I’ve said a thousand times before.

In the end, what all older men fear most is Indignity.

Once you understand that, you begin to understand older men.

Time Waits for No One, Especially Older Men Who Spend Their Lives on a Couch [at home]

time-knows-no-time-and-waits-for-no-one-255x327As we age, we fall apart.

This is normal and natural.

Falling apart is life’s way of preparing us for death, when we look at our situation and decide it’s better to die than go through any more of the crap we may be facing.

You think back to a time when playing flag football on a beach was no big deal. You walked out to the beach and started throwing the damn ball. Done. if there was no ball, there was a Frisbee. If not that then rocks. Whatever.

There was no shoulder pain, no need to warm up. The joints were healthy, the mind free of all the bullshit that accumulates over time, like clothing you never wear but never seem to get rid of.

Stay in this mindset long enough and you fall into the rumination pit. So get out before it’s too late.

You know where you are, what the situation is, where you are in the scheme of life. The best you can do is mitigate the damage.

How?

By changing everything about your life, excluding nothing.

You will transition from loving meals to hating them. Taking its place will be the shrinking waistline, improved mobility, and absence of adult onset diabetes.

This is why older people are so often heard ordering “fabulous salads” at dinner, when you know they want that rib-eye and mashed potatoes.

It’s a mind trick we all ply on ourselves to get through the payment process to good health.

Then there’s the gym. Yea, the gym. As in you’ll have to go to the gym all the time – and I mean all the time – because anything less than 5 days a week constitutes weekend warrior status, which is worse than not doing anything at all.

If you don’t believe me, try it.

And don’t get me started on how much sleep you’ll need to recover or how much you’ll have to pay a personal trainer to keep you on track.

And did I mention friends, wives and/or girlfriends?

Yea, that too. You’ll need new friends who live healthy lifestyles or you will drop your fitness routine faster than your next heart attack.

And this applies to the significant other in your life. If she’s a fat-ass, you’ll follow suit.

Fitness couples are like codependents. Some think of AA sponsors.

It’s that important.

So now you hate to eat, must face a gym 5 days a week, establish new friendships, and perhaps, find a new wife.

This is when many older men find a therapist and buy an apartment for a stripper.

After all of this is done, you have to be able to let go.

Of everything. Of fate. Inevitability.

You have to accept where you are and go out doing things you love…even if doing them will kill you.

It’s not like you wouldn’t be there already of you hadn’t paid the aforementioned price.

Baby Boomers Finding Fitness Groove in Houston

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http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/health/article/Baby-boomers-find-a-new-fitness-groove-as-they-age-8351062.php

The article makes some good points about aging and athletics.

But there is far more to the story as I will detail shortly, blow by blow.

…………

By the time most people hit 60, it’s pretty much game over as far as living life to its fullest is concerned.

Most of that’s in the past, the memories, when a good night’s sleep was irrelevant.

These days, it’s more about a nice place near a beach, and plenty of whiskey.

Of course, I don’t know any of these people.

The people I do know are still semi-active in their careers, and regulars in the gym.

But I live in a bog city where the bar is set sky high.

In other words, people don’t see 60 as the end of days, but rather the beginning of a new dawn where even actuarial tables are considered abstractions.

Statistics

The Baby Boom is a period in history between 1946 and 1964.

There are roughly 77 million of us between the ages of 52 and 70.

We’re facing body changes that include a slower metabolism, arthritis, menopause, weakening joints, and, of course, depression.

…………..

THE REALITIES OF A FITNESS LIFESTYLE AT 60

People at this age, with time to focus on workouts and the lifestyle that goes with it, are already successful in their careers.

Money buys the time, and this is a big deal because fitness is not just what happens in the gym.

So rule #1 is to have reasonable degree of financial independence.

Once you pass this initial test, you’re ready to start –– or continue, as the case may be.

As a lifelong athlete, I can tell you unequivocally that even for someone like myself with decades of training behind me, shit changes…and it feels like it comes in the night and takes what the hell it wants.

I wake up exhausted most days. Even the days I don’t, I’m still exhausted, relatively speaking.

It’s part physical, part existential [psychological].

I don’t know whether I want to get up and be productive or surf beachfront properties.

There’s this push-pull dynamic that I don’t recall experiencing in my past.

Then there’s the endless inflammation, the rehab from anti-inflammatories to prevent liver failure, the weird little shit that pops up every 5 minutes for no apparent reason other than what comes across as taunts.

This is why you needs friends who help support your efforts, your lifestyle –– particularly if you’re just starting out.

So Rule #2 is to have friends who like to workout.

Without a support network you are dead in the water, because, at some point, you’re going to give up without encouragement.

No 60-year-old in his right mind is going to workout unless he can share the journey with like minded friends, people who prop him up like AA sponsors.

Then there’s the whole low testosterone things, which, on some level, affects all of us at some point.

Many guys I know are on testosterone supplements, which is not without risks, but worth it if you don’t care what happens to you in 10 years.

To them, it’s the next 10 years that matter. You’ll have to decide for yourself if the risks outweigh the rewards.

Rule #3 is to get your Tes levels checked.

If they are ridiculously low, Prada makes beautiful syringe cases for your drugs.

There are also countless physicians who make handsome livings prescribing steroids to successful older men.

Rule #4 is to get more rest than you think you need no matter how little time you think you have left.

With or without the drugs, you’re going to need extra rest to recover from tough workouts…and, by the way, those are the only workouts you should ever have if you want to get anywhere.

If you’re going to piddle around, just stay home. Gym workouts are not for the faint-hearted, which brings me to Rule #5.

Rule #5 is to find a therapist if you don’t already have one.

Most older men get depressed, and without a healthy outlet beyond the gym, we tend to do stupid shit like buy motorcycles or bring in a hooker.

The best approach is to get help for the inevitable existential drear that comes with aging, and combine it with tough physical training.

If these two don’t nail it, call a priest.

In a way, staying fit at 60 is like boot camp used to be, only this time around you get to the final chapter in one piece

Another upside is that you’re not training for actual war, though it may feel like it.

Child-Free and Deluded

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As a 60-year-old man, I’m the first to admit that I’m neither comfortable with, nor accepting of, my age.

But I’m also not so out of touch with reality that I think I can do a damn thing about it.

This awareness, however, doesn’t make things any better.

I look in the mirror and i see someone who bears only a vague resemblance to the handsome young man who relied on his appearance and charm to open doors.

Now such cavalier behavior comes across as creepy and deluded.

This “old guy” just flirted with me!

Wow. That might have been me.

See, I feel trapped in a body that no longer feels like my own. I’m inside of it bouncing around, unhinged and spiraling.

Who is this person I’ve become?

My 84-year-old mother confessed to me the other day that she still feels like a kid, but knows it’s just life’s way of  doing what it does to maintain our instinct for survival.

As many of you who read my blog and know me personally are already aware, I live with a woman half my age.

In another reality, she might very well be my daughter. She is also child-free and rebellious like I was at her age.

Together, we live in a kind of cocoon of art, entertainment and fitness, the later of which being the primary outlet for our interaction with others.

Other men my age have children in the workforce with wives and children of their own. A few are married to the same women they met back in college.

This is normal.

The reason I bring this up is because the only way that men like me mature properly is to deny ourselves introspection through chaos [i.e., distraction].

But because there is no chaos in the form of “a boss,” “children,” an “age-relevant wife” and a culture group built on conformity, I’m like a wild animal that that digs deeper with every step, making my journey more conscious, more aware, and less resilient where acceptance is concerned.

The truth is most people don’t think about any of this to the point of distraction bordering on preoccupation.

They live vicariously through their children, and allow themselves to be swept up into the mindset of friends, wives, country clubs and common vacation destinations.

They throw up their hands, get into the hospital system, and disappear into enclaves populated by others of their kind until they fall ill and die.

This is also normal.

But guess what?

There are others of my kind who fight this every step of the way. Not that it gets us anywhere, but we do it anyway.

God did this to us.

He put us here to do a couple of things and then die.

But many of us refuse to die under any circumstances, so we’re forced to suffer through a kind of extended Purgatory of the mind.

There are books and drugs to calm the mind, both natural and otherwise, but in the end we’re stuck here in these distraction-free zones cannibalizing our innards.

Here are the only ways I know to fight back with a reasonable expectation of success:

1] Travel constantly, or at least every other weekend. While it is nerve-wracking, it usually doesn’t kill us, which makes us stronger, psychologically.

2] Go to the damn gym no matter how crappy you feel because after a workout, you will again find yourself full of enough endorphin high to get you through the next 12 hours. For extra endorphins, lift very heavy weight. There’s nothing like it to get your head back to ground level.

3] Laugh as much as possible. Even if you’re depressed, laughter is a sure-fire way of exorcising noonday demons without the help of a Catholic priest.

4] Retail therapy is an integral part of happiness as we age. Yesterday I bought some new Bose Noise Reduction headphones and it did me good all through last night.

5] Have passionate interests. I’m never bored because I love to play musical instruments, write, read, take photographs go to the gym and watch commercial-free television shows on my Macbook Pro. If you’re not passionate about anything, you’re toast. 

6] Spend time each day around normal people so you can appreciate just how wonderful abnormality really is…no matter how bad it can often seem. 

7] Spend a lot of time in water. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a shower, bathtub, ocean or swimming pool. There’s something about it that feels cathartic. Yesterday I took three showers, one whirlpool and 20 laps in the swimming pool.

8] Go back to your music collection and play something you really love as loud as possible for 10 minutes, preferably after a glass of wine or a joint if you happen to live in Colorado.

9] Find a massage therapist who actually performs massage, not trigger point. The idea is to feel good, and therefore, escape. this usually works for a good 24 hours.

10] Have erotic sex as often as possible no matter how much it may irritate your lower back. The absence of depression will more than make up for it and keep you feeling relevant and alive.

and last, but not least…

11] Nurture those closest to you. The rest are irrelevant at this point.

You’re welcome.

Final Comment

If you still wonder if or why people don’t see the same young man they saw when you were a young man, please reread this.

 

The Fitness Lifestyle is a Group Effort

fit-couple-after-50Getting – and staying – in shape is not something most of us do alone.

In fact, left to our own devices, we’d be dead by 40, either from a heart attack, a diabetic coma … or drug overdose.

Why?

Because we’re social beings that require back-up from others of our species.

Notice that women who are married to fat men tend to be fat themselves.

But when one or the other gets in shape, an affair ends the relationship.

When in-shape couples marry it is implicit in their vows that they remain as close as possible to the people they were the day they said “I do.”

See, “I do” denotes certain guidelines that don’t usually appear in the marriage contracts

They are as follows:

1] “I do” agree to stay in great shape as I know the reason my husband chose to be with me is, in large part, because of my appearance, and furthermore, the fatter I get the more he feels disrespected – and resentful. Thus, we both agree that neither of us will be disrespectful of the other. The only exceptions involve illness or pregnancy.

2] Everyone knows that the moment divorce papers are filed, both parties will be back in the gym in a heartbeat in order to attract the best candidate available. This alone speaks volumes. 

3] No matter what, women, in particular, are objects first, as they are well aware. They must maintain their appearance to within a stone’s throw of their original form or face the consequences, which also applies to men in some cases.

4] Fitness-minded people tend to spend the lion’s share of their time in the company of others like them. When they don’t, the results are, at the very least, suggestive. 

5] Never believe that love trumps fat. It doesn’t. In fact, excessive fat is the leading cause of divorce, not money – though it’s close. 

Psychology and the Retirement Nest Egg

heart-moneyMost of us Baby Boomers have launched retirement calculators a thousand times. Almost every financial institution has one, and invariably, the ones we tend to go to offer the most optimistic outlooks on how much we can spend until the day we die.

The problem is that no one knows exactly when they’re going to die, or if they’re going to die for those of us who’ve opted for cryogenic sleep.

Nonetheless, there is still an annual charge for keeping a body on ice, perhaps for a thousand years or more, so there’s that.

So here’s the dirty rotten obnoxious and existential nightmare-provoking truth: You probably won’t outlive your money.

As I stated in my book, Urban Dystrophy, The Perverse Truths About Mid Life in the Big City, a starter portfolio is $5,000,000.

I know I know. How the hell are you supposed to save $5,000,000 on a $500,000 annual salary over the course of 25 or 30 years?

After taxes somewhere in the 39% range, you’re only taking home somewhere in the $300,000 range.

If you own a home that costs $1,000,000, you can expect to pay $25,000 in property taxes and after a 20% deposit, approximately $60,000/year on a mortgage.

Now add electricity and other related home expenses and you’re down to $200,000 — and you haven’t taken a vacation, bought a single meal or paid a single car note.

Back out those expenses and with luck you have approximately $150,000 left over.

If, however, you have 2 kids, you have basically nothing left over.

So, for the past 25 years you’ve made $12,500,000 and don’t have a dime left in the bank.

Even if you were frugal enough to contribute $75,000,000 a year to a retirement account [for 25 years], you would still only have $1,875,000 in contributions, plus investment interest at an average of around 5%, so $2,800,000 – $3,000,000.

Seriously?

If you retire at age 65, that’s not even close to enough for anyone I know.

The reason for this is because you want to live the same way you did before you retired, which means you’ll need a few million more to generate the income you need to avoid running out of money before your time is up.

For most men I know who give a crap about living well in retirement, the number is around $7,000,000.

At a 5% return, you’re still at 350k/year.

If, however, market crashes, feel free to put a bullet in your head because being broke isn’t worth the struggle for older people.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY

Most men my age validate themselves based upon their relative financial security.

And while every psychiatrist on the planet will call bullshit on this because it’s about as unhealthy a perspective as one might have given the vagaries of money.

But nothing is going to change it unless you plan to join a monastic congregation in Burma.

Money is kind of like a living thing that follows you around wherever you go.

When it doesn’t, you have a big fat fucking problem.

Walk into a car dealership, new prospective home…or hell, the Apple store, and see what happens when the money monster isn’t with you and smiling.

Then you know true meaning of nausea.

The reason you feel the hubris of filthy rich older men with the tans, snow white veneers and $3000 suits is because they’ve beaten the system.

They’ve overcome whatever life can throw at them, shy of a brain aneurysm, stroke or stage 3 cancer.

In other words, they can ride out the highs and low of the stock market, or pay marginal tax increases and still live their lives without making any changes whatsoever.

This is where you want to be, but unfortunately, probably won’t be.

The media is always talking about wealth; who has this or that.

Magazines feature $5,000,000 homes like they’re normal abodes for anyone who’s led a reasonably successful life.

But this is a lie.

The only way to afford a home like that is to inherit it or sell something.

Salaries don’t pay for homes in that price rage.

Investment capital does.

Psychologically, this is a massive hurdle for otherwise success older men facing retirement.

You look down the road at the rest of your life and you don’t see the picture you’ve been sold…and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

Many men lose their younger girlfriends and/or wives to cut backs in lifestyle.

The ones who don’t tend to be with women their own age who have little to no value on the dating market, who and just sty put.

On top of all this we have a government hell bent and determined to tax out of existence everyone in the middle to upper middle class – including the bottom end of the top 3%.

This is because there are more of them than there are people with $100,000,000 or more who don’t feel any tax increases whatsoever.

So now we have an oligarchy and you’re on the wrong side of it.

WHAT TO DO

1] Figure out how much you absolutely, positively need to live the way you want to live and carve your expectations accordingly.

2] Accept that fact that as you near the end of your life, your retirement savings will be nearing the ends of it’s life.

3] Add 5 years to your anticipated lifeline and then hope and pray you don’t outlive it.

4] Find someone in your personal life who can handle stock market turbulence.

5] Don’t marry a gold-digger unless you’re in the $100,000,000 demographic.

Surrealism Reins in the Gym

grid-cell-24048-1424205844-5I have to tell you people how ridiculous, not to mention surreal, this world of mine has become.

Most 60-year-old guys are not replicas of what they were at 25 no matter how in-shape they are … unless of course, they’re on pharmaceutical steroids.

The fact that an astonishing number of them are [on steroids] has changed the dynamic of gym life these days.

Now, working hard is no longer a necessity in order to bleed body-fat and gain lean muscle mass.

You’re a simple injection away from eating whatever you want and spending a fraction of the time in the gym.

Of course, getting most men to admit to taking steroids is another matter altogether because no one wants to feel dismissed for cheating.

Yes, it’s true, most older men can’t put on all that mass and drop precipitous amounts of body fat by the grace of God.

No, it’s actually the grace of Big Pharma.

It took a while for the gay community to come out of the closet, and this is no different.

Rock Stars [and their waistlines] of Yesterday and Today. Lord, Say It Ain’t So.

368D0CA300000578-0-image-a-14_1469488251428Johnny Rotten back in the day.

368C73B100000578-0-image-m-15_1469488256938Johnny Rotten, age 60.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3707850/Rock-n-roly-polys-big-pop-stars-past-er-bigger-now.html

None of this has to happen.

None of it.

Okay, some of it, but not all of it.

Youth is all piss and vinegar. Everything is exciting, hopeful. Possibilities, endless. The caloric burn from this alone is equivalent to 3 hours in the gym.

Then we get older, more successful, and less driven by the very forces that fueled the journey.

Eventually, many of us just don’t give a shit because whatever we’ve lost in youth and beauty we make up for in dollar bills … and whatever relevance still lingers from our “glory years.”

The fact is if you look at most older celebrities you see an existential nightmare.

So many are – for all intents and purposes – already dead or dying of indignity and depression, which becomes a sort of default state.

Aging is not easy, but fighting it’s effects can be a kind of beautiful thing in its own right.

Everyone respects older guys who who try, who get out of bed and hit the gym with a vengeance; particularly when they used to be fit and trim, and now resemble lawn ornaments. It’s an indignity to all of us.

Take Johnny Rotten [aka John Lyndon]; a man who once extolled the virtues of anarchy and threw birds at the royal family while fronting for the infamous Sex Pistols.

Now he’s dying of “I don’t give a shit” as the birds sit on power lines waiting for him to stroke out.

I bring this up because Johnny Rotten and many others like him make a conscious decision to give up before their time.

And I suppose if they were accountants or bus drivers no one would notice.

But when public figures, particularly those who led revolutions in the world of music, they’re fair game for criticism.

They’ve earned that right and now they must own it.

~~~

4 Top Reasons Older Men Give Up:

1] Low testosterone

2] Poor physical health

3] Depression

4] Financial problems

5] Divorce

~~~

As these relate to Johnny Rotten:

1] Low Testosterone

It’s just a shot away.

2] Poor Physical health

It’s just a gym away.

3] Depression

It’s just a pill away

4] Financial problems

With a net worth of 15 million and wife, Nora Forster, a publishing heiress from Germany, not a problem.

5] Divorce

I’m sure she has a pre-nup, but he doesn’t need it.

Bottom Line: NO EXCUSES, JOHNNY. 

My ‘Private Idaho’ of Gym Eccentrics

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My health club is like an outpatient psychiatric facility where patients attend daily group therapy sessions between med checks.

It’s a free-floating phantasm we all play a role in creating.

The list of characters that make up this world are as colorful as the disorders that drive them.

Here are my top 10:

1] …

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