How much importance do you give to regular exercise?

It is very important to get regular exercise. I guess I’ve just been too busy with work and putting together a graphic design portfolio for university to dedicate time to it.

Next week I will probably start going back to regular Yoga classes again. Because I have not had regular exercise in a long time.

It has made a tremendous difference for me. I have been running five times a week for some time now, and if I can’t run more than two days in a row I miss it.

The only thing that has kept me from running on some days has been a long hike or a day skiing. This past weekend, despite drenching rains, I ran both Saturday and Sunday.

I go in cycles, there have been years where I faithfully adhered to a walking/jogging routine and also was riding my horse at the time easily 20 miles a week on trail. Riding is incredible exercise for your core strength , balance, legs, ass and upper body work. Now, the last few years I am very active daily doing ranch chores and walking around the property I live on but not so much aerobic, more weight bearing and muscle toning work. Getting older now I really have lost interest in forcing a regime on myself.

I still ride but not as much as I used too. I also have a bad ankle that I have sprained repeatedly over the years and now wear an ankle brace almost daily. I just came out of spraining the same damn ankle TWICE in an 8 week period. It is pretty good again now after 12 weeks but I am super paranoid because I know I have severely damaged the ligaments and must be extra careful.

One false step and boom out it goes and down I go.
Quite frankly I really don’t give a damn about pushing myself to the limits anymore, been there, done that and now I just want to mosey along the trail at a nice easy pace. haha

Regular ans vigorous physical exercise is important for maintaining good health. I exercise EVERY day at least one hour. I do a variety of exercises including: calisthenics, canoe paddling, weight training, walk/jogging and exercise machines.

I began regularly exercising in the gym out of desperation back in the mid ‘90s when I was so tired after work, I would fall asleep in front of the TV until dinner, then go to bed. I began spending my weekends mostly lying around the house. I got scared that my life was ending at 45, so I went out and bought a really nice hybrid tour bike and started cycling like I did in my teens, 20’s and 30’s. Things picked up. I had more energy. I spent the daylight hours after work biking the city and weekends doing 100 mile tours with other bikers on bike trails around Florida.

Eventually, I wanted to do something for my upper body, so I bought a really nice ride-on-top kayak and alternated biking and kayaking weekends. This led to kayak or biking camping trips. I met a guy who talked me into going back into the gym after not being in one since high school. The first month was no fun at all. By the third month, I was addicted to my own endorphins. I found that I could bike faster and further using less energy as my body got more efficient—the same with kayaking. I was hooked.

One day I decided to take sailing lessons, something I did when I was in my twenties. I joined a couple of clubs in order to get crewing experience. This led to renewing my Scuba license and upgrading to instructor. One of the guys at the club sold me his old 22’ Catalina sailboat for $500. I taught my wife how to sail and we began taking weekend voyages together. I bought two carbon fiber tour bikes with aluminum, titanium and stainless steel parts (salt-resistant) to store on deck and put the kayak off the stern by a painter and off we’d go.

But I found I was getting too muscle bound to work the deck efficiently, so I got into yoga and that fixed it. Yoga led to tanscendental meditation, also something I’d played with in my youth, and today I feel ornery if I don’t spend at least 20 minutes per day quietly in formal meditation. It brings mind and body together and puts big and little things in their proper perspective.

I eventually got my crew certs and a USGS skipper’s license in order to legally take charters out, six people or less in order to help pay for maintenance costs. Today I captain a 42’ Hunter and have soloed throughout the Caribbean and crossed the Atlantic last year to Ascension Island and back. I’m thinking about trading a friend for his 53’ Pearson and doing the Pacific and possibly circumnavigating.

I’m sure if I would have continued with the lifestyle I had back in 1995, I would have died years ago, bored to death in a recliner with the TV remote in my hand.

I got my life back.

Wow..that’s amazing how it can turn your life around…truly inspirational…))

I run six miles a day, every day, work out with weights & sessions of sit ups & push ups.
Always been fit healthy & active, always will.

Right up there with food and water. Almost everyday, I do one of the P90X routines, either original, 2, or 3.

I see the Chinese doing morning exercise, and it isn’t a big breaking a sweat type thing, and they live long lives. That’s my anecdotal evidence that movement is important.

I remember also reading in Real Age that there is a sweet spot where not enough exercise doesn’t help much, and too much can actually be harmful. That book uses statistical averages to tell you if the behaviors you have are shortening or lengthening your life.

Most of all, when I started doing dance and Zumba regularly it gave me back something I loved as a child. It’s not exactly the same as then, but very close, and I make friends in my classes and feel connected and I think it’s very good both psychologically and physically.

If my body was as active as my brain I’d be an Olympian. haha
My brain muscle is ripped now if only I had my 20 yr. old ass again. :-p

It’s very important to me. I powerwalk 2 miles about 5 or 6 times each week. I love it.

It keeps your body more flexible and you wont have as many injuries. Even the rioted people who dont work anymore have to keep in shape or their muscles will get week and wont perform well.

Regular excercise throughout one’s life really pays off after 60. Instead of ending up a stiff geriatric good for only sitting on a bench feeding the birds, or in a lonesome corner of the library, you can actually do most of the shit you dreamt of all those years closed off in that cubicle—and look pretty damn good doing it.

And there is nothing more rewarding than showing a young person a technique requiring physical exertion, expertise and experience, then getting their awe and respect. Instead of barking orders like a gritty old bastard, you can actually demostrate how it is done right. I really love that most of all.

So far this morning as it is again sunny and beautiful out after days if extreme stormy weather, I have picked up about a thousand branches of various sizes in a garden cart from all over the 3 different large lawn areas here and hauled them off to the burn pile at the back of the property. I have fed horses, loaded 2 hay wagons for the next couple days feeding, and pulled them about 100 yards to the breezeway of the paddocks from the hay barn. Lifting & pitching 36 10 lb. flakes of hay for a total of about 350 lbs. of weight bearing ‘exercise.” haha
I also brushed out one of the muddy horses, a workout in itself, stretching up to reach his back on my tiptoes, bending to brush his belly, changing arms every few minutes for an equal arm workout.

I just came in from sweeping and blowing off around the patio and pool area, and am now going to go give the horses their lunch. I do not like regimented exercise but just being outdoors doing outdoor chores is a pretty good workout for me and doesn’t feel like something I feel I have to do.