Bookish Thursday - Guest Post by Sherri L. Dodd

I am fortunate enough to be able to host a guest post from author, Sherri L. Dodd. You can read my review of her book, Moonset on Desert Sands here. But one question I had, as I am about two weeks away from turning 69 (how did I get to 69!), is staying at least semi-active and fit as the old body says enough.

So please, read on...

The Aging Body and Fitness

There is a saying that only two things are certain – death and taxes. While Benjamin Franklin aimed his phrase toward his cautious optimism of a newly created U.S. Constitution, the human aspect of the first topic only scratches the surface of its impact. Before death comes aging.

In 2022, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed questionnaires from twelve-hundred-plus young adults, ages eighteen through thirty, on the topic of aging. Just over four percent of the negative perspectives focused on “decline and death.” Decline meaning anything from dementia to disease to an achy body. For the purpose of this write-up, and because I have specialized in physical wellness for the past twenty-plus years and must now put my knowledge to test, I think of the declining body.

When a person subscribes to a lifestyle of fitness in young adulthood, that knowledge and experience can last a lifetime. Many get their footing as part of a sports team. Sometimes, it is more individual-based. My first step into exercise was a racquetball trainer set at age fifteen. A bouncy blue ball secured to a leaden base by an elastic string provided me with hours of fun after school. I was not doing this for good health; I engaged in the activity because it was fun smacking that ball and hearing the echo of impact throughout my townhome complex. When I turned eighteen, I took my novice status to the 24 Hour Nautilus competition courts. While the court was the draw, I soon found myself in step aerobics followed by kickboxing. By the age of twenty, the habit had stuck, and my mind and body fed off exercise. I felt the loss if I went over three days without activity. By 2000, my adulthood led to altruistic measures of sharing how great regular exercise made a mind and body feel, and I certified in personal training to guide others.

The years went by, and my body looked and felt great. I would try the latest and greatest of all the new fitness fads – ThighMaster, TaeBo, BowFlex, and slide board fitness, to name a few. I even signed up for Taekwondo at forty as a bucket list endeavor! To this day, I participate in UJAM, yoga, kickboxing, and the everlasting routine of free weights.

I admit it; my body is tired. My joints and vertebrae have overuse injuries, as do a few of my tendons. But the interesting thing is a body is better off with the taxing exertion than it is without. The resulting aches I treat with R-I-C-E (Google it), occasional ibuprofen or CBD, and/or a trusted masseuse.

Sure, young adults may see my un-Botoxed face and think “that poor lady is kinda old,” but they do not know the strength my arms and legs can generate, the flexibility my joints can extend, nor the mental acuity that permeates throughout my exercise-fed brain. This is not paranoia talking. Recently, I found a survey on Edubirdie entitled How Gen Z and Millennials Feel About Aging. Bottom line is that most think it is pretty miserable, with one in eleven Zoomers also believing that sex stops at forty! Millennials are not much more optimistic, with one in thirty-three quadragenarians pessimistic about that pleasure and aging.

While wrinkleless beauty and ache-free days are fleeting, I could not be happier with the health of my aging body. Sure, concessions have been made. Instead of a kick to the jaw, I can still deliver a helluva smash to the groin area – safety, check. Instead of my former twenty-pound dumbbells, my usually achy back allows me twelve-pounders – strength, check. Instead of foot-high jumping during my cardio classes (like I did on cement during COVID), I have taken the height of my plyometrics down a few inches – heart health and burning calories, check. And sex, check!

There is nothing to fear in the aging body. If you take care of yourself, the effects are not so drastic as the young mind would imagine. In fact, the result is rewarding. Yes, you will need to modify, but I have seen eighty-year-old men and women jogging Bay Area streets. 

Anyway, another group stat from the 2022 NIH survey had it right. Twenty to twenty-four percent of participants believed there was no use worrying about the inevitability of aging, and I think ol’ Ben would agree.