Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Life is about move­ment; the minute you stop mov­ing, you be­come inan­i­mate, a piece of fur­ni­ture. Every­day we are con­front­ed with some of life's chal­lenges that af­fect us ei­ther men­tal­ly or phys­i­cal­ly; some­times both. Apart from this, our bod­ies be­gin to show tell-tale signs of nat­ur­al ag­ing. For ex­am­ple, af­ter age 30 you be­gin to lose ap­prox­i­mate­ly one pound of mus­cle per year; if this is not cor­rect­ed, with a struc­tured ex­er­cise pro­gramme, it trans­lates in­to de­vel­op­ing a slow­er me­tab­o­lism, where­by you be­gin to no­tice an ever-in­creas­ing waist­line. By age 40, you now need glass­es to read my col­umn and your hair be­gins to de­vel­op a salt and pep­per look.

All of this is con­sid­ered nat­ur­al ag­ing, but that does not mean you should give up on ex­er­cise and not keep in shape. You should look good for your age. As a mat­ter of fact, there are some fit old­er peo­ple that look good for any age! Of course, many peo­ple still de­vel­op dis­eases that are en­tire­ly out of their con­trol; like those that may have a hered­i­tary link. How you cope (your mind­set) with your af­flic­tion will de­ter­mine your qual­i­ty of life. Nev­er give up! Live life to its fullest un­til the good Lord is ready to re­ceive you.

A true war­rior

Dr Learie Gra­ham DC (Doc­tor of Chi­ro­prac­tic) is 75- years-old and is pres­i­dent of the Chi­ro­prac­tic As­so­ci­a­tion of T@T (CATT). He has bat­tled many of life's ob­sta­cles, in­clud­ing sur­viv­ing a se­vere stroke and a brain le­sion, yet he re­fus­es to stop mov­ing. He ap­pears in our do­jo on a reg­u­lar ba­sis to train in the art of Shotokan karate. As a mat­ter of fact, he is the hold­er of a first de­gree black belt from the late Mas­ter Masatoshi Nakaya­ma, one of the great­est karate mas­ters to ever walk on plan­et earth. At an age where some peo­ple may be con­tent to live a qui­et lifestyle, Dr Gra­ham, apart from at­tend­ing my karate class­es, works out at the gym and in kick­box­ing class­es. He has tak­en life's best punch­es and is still stand­ing.

Pro­grammes for the ma­ture adult

Af­ter ob­tain­ing ex­er­cise clear­ance from your doc­tor, if you have not trained for a cou­ple of years, be­gin by first tun­ing up your car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem with some reg­u­lar walk­ing, at least four times per week for ap­prox. forty min­utes. Don't be in a hur­ry to lift weights or kick (karate) some butt. Give your­self at least a month of reg­u­lar walk­ing and think about how best you can change your eat­ing lifestyle so that it is in sync with your ex­er­cise pro­gramme.

When you de­cide to pump iron, re­mem­ber the weights are on­ly a tool and you are not in com­pe­ti­tion with any­one. Use poundage to stim­u­late your mus­cle, not your ego!

As you age, weight train­ing be­comes very im­por­tant it helps � main­tain bone den­si­ty, pre­serve mus­cle tone, strength­ens lig­a­ments, ten­dons and joints; it al­so helps to in­crease your me­tab­o­lism. Al­ways try to work op­pos­ing mus­cle groups (ag­o­nist/an­tag­o­nist) in the same work­out. For ex­am­ple, bi­ceps op­pos­es tri­ceps. If you are un­sure about how to struc­ture a pro­gramme, you should con­sid­er hir­ing a pro­fes­sion­al per­son­al train­er. Maria Robin­son once said, "No­body can go back and start a new be­gin­ning but any­one can start to­day and make a new end­ing."

Keep Train­ing.