I have to get my life organized & get motivated to start swimming & working out more consistently. Last few times out surfing I really felt kinda weak / vulnerable, and it was only like 3-4 foot. My 69 bday is coming up soon, growing old kinda sucks.
I have a friend who’s about 3 yrs older, he gave up surfing several years back, but used to ride his bike at the point every day. Taking out his trash one day he had a fall, hit his head, got a concussion, now his balance is shot he can’t even ride his bike!
This is how it happens, I’m just trying to postpone the inevitable
You nailed it there! Make every day count you never know what is around the corner. I worked on a house once and the owner was an old chap who was building a fence. I asked him at smoko (coffee break) how old he was (if he didn’t mind me asking). 93 he replied! I asked him his secret and he said you just have to keep moving!!!
Growing old is slow death for sure Huck. The final decline is inevitable. However a major factor in the decline is attitude alone, leading to inactivity. Exercise, nutrition and sleep are critical.
The type and combination of exercises make a big difference — done diligently. You can recover and maintain a substantial portion of physical capacity for much longer than most realize.
At 70, my goal was to reach a much higher level of daily exercise (6 days per week). I forgot to mention an important caveat. I startedlow and slow, and gradually increased. It took me a year to achieve my objective, with lots of modifications along the way.
I was surprised by the success of my end results. In my 40s, I thought my workouts were high power. Turns out that they were not.
Well I had my first paddle in the ocean since the operation on my shoulder.
I went out on a small day, clean as a whistle a beachbreak with no one on the bank. I was on a custom surf mat that a bloke made me but it was actually limiting with the shoulder. so i have my new freshly sanded 7 6 ready to go not even waxed. shaped it and glassed it about 2 years back before i went deep into the virtually no fibreglass compsand builds. I paid someone to sand it when my shoulder was fully rooted.
I’m keen as to get back in now. was gunna go today but I got called in for a relief teacher day. boooo.
My daughter had two classes this past semester at Santa Monica College- one from 10am to 12:30. The second from 1:00 pm to 5:00pm. She asked me to accompany her on the drive the first couple of days (she’s a relatively new driver). So I went along. Well, what was I going to do for seven hours? I could have gone surfing but there was no swell. So I decided to go for a run. A 6 and a half hour run, 26.5 miles with 3600 feet of vertical, climbing up Temescal Canyon. After the first run my wife said “You’re not going to run a marathon every week are you?” Well, that’s exactly what I ended up doing - 12 marathons since March. My cardio is pretty good right now.
Then I got Covid. I thought I’d dodged that bullet. Hadn’t been sick in any way since before the pandemic (except the back problem, which has resolved). During my first surf after 2 weeks convalescing I get pitched on a late take off, land on my back and whiplash my neck. I felt a sharp pain and heard LOUD cracking and I swear I thought I was going to be paralyzed. Luckily I wasn’t but am now going on four days dealing with neck and shoulder pain. I might have been injured at any age (I’m 62), but I just feel all the hard earned physical conditioning gains I made over the months slowly leaving.
Oh well, I’ll just have to get back on the horse when my neck normalizes. If it is still painful next week I might have to go see the MD. About ten years ago when I first started having neck and shoulder issues, my doctor asked me, “Do you want to continue this activity (surfng)?” Well, yeah…
ps except the climbing my runs were in zone 2 heart rate, slow and easy.
You were definitely killing it with weekly marathons llilibel03. You are way beyond my league!
Sadly you begin to lose training benefits at around week 3 of inactivity.
Sucks about your neck. The loud cracking sound is a bit disturbing. Did you get X-rays of your neck. You might want to check for cracks and micro-fractures in the vertebrae. I would not want something like that to go undetected.
Live to resume the fight another day. Slow but steady wins the race.
I read about whip lash and mine does not seem really serious. According to the scale on this website I’m between 1 and 2. I sure hope I’m not sidelined for 3 weeks.
Very impressive llilibel03 !! I’ve found it very difficult to keep my HR in zone 2 for more than 15 minutes or so. It seems that no matter how slow I go (unless walking), after a point my HR creeps up. Very sorry to hear about your neck problem. Unfortunately, as Stoneburner said, without training you lose fitness very soon. I was feeling good about my training until a month ago when I pulled a hamstring by pushing too hard; I had to take 2 weeks off and felt like I was starting all over again. At our age we just have to be thoughtful and aware of how we regain fitness. The important thing is to not give up and to keep at it. I hope your neck gets better!
Thanks. I decided to do two months exclusively in zone 2. When I started my pace was like a 10:30 mile. It felt absurdly slow. And if I ran 13 miles I would have to walk periodically towards the end. I was told not to go above zone 2 otherwise your body switches metabolic gears and you don’t get the mitochodrial benefits. And, if you go over but then slow down, your metabolism doesn’t downshift back into zone 2. So you have to be persistant. But it improves over time. By the end I could do the first few miles at around 8:45 and my 13 mile run was about 9:30-9:45. It would always slow down. Those 26 mile runs I did consisted of 3 miles down to the beach, 4 miles along the beach, then six miles up into the mountains and then back. To stay in zone 2 climbing up the mountain I would actually have to stop periodically. Of course running down I would run as fast as was safe and barely be able to reach zone 2. And then when I got back down to the beach zone 2 was really slow, like back to 10:30 or even 11:00. The last few I would abandon zone 2, but would be so tired at the end that I couldn’t go much faster anyways.
My neck still hurts 4 days later but I slept 9 hours last night and it hurts a little less. Got to remember how important recovery is for training. I’m kind of ADHD so I would tend to neglect rest days. Not any more. Today I’m going to try to go the day without any pain meds.
Well, you clearly don’t know what really slow is. I’m at about 13 min miles, and still go above zone 2 after a couple of miles. And very interesting what you said about your metabolism not going back down if you go over zone 2 and then back down–I’m going to have to watch that, since there are a couple of hills on my run.
That’s very interesting for me too. Do I get it right that if you overstress you don’t get back in the metabolic state for the mitochondrial benefits?
I never approached it that way , although I know that splitting my training in low heart rate runs and sprint intervals on different days was way more efficient than doing the same 10k mixed heart rates every other day.
Of all my workouts, I find that my strength and stamina for bar exercises (chin-ups, pull-ups and dips) starts fading fastest after about 14 days of no workouts.
Hey legends,
Adam here again, I finally graduated to big boy push ups this week. Frozen shoulder surgery December 13, I have posted on this thread a few times.
Its been a long process, I have had a few surfs, before I graduated to full body push ups, i struggled to get to my feet on really small waves but not as much when the waves were a little pushier. I have a had one session of body surfing with no hand plane, all of which has been fun. but I’m super careful not to over do it.
but my whole body has been so out of action I have started a regime of full body work outs. Also keeping up the shoulder range of movement stretches at least once a week.
I wont list the full session as it would bore you but its about everything from upper body, core, trunk and legs all combined.
yesterday arvo I did a fairly extensive session where I kinda felt like i could push the reps out to point where I was struggling on the last 5 reps etc. and didn’t pull up too sore at all which is gold. The Crowning glory was two sets of 5 full body push ups with good form and only a little discomfort. Looking forward to getting into some waves over the next few weeks.
I don’t think anyone would be bored by knowing your full shoulder workout. Was this due to a traumatic injury or overuse? In you don’t mind, how old are you?
My shoulder hurts but it’s mostly the result of a pinched nerve in my neck (cervical radiculopathy) which was exacerbated by the whiplash. Two weeks from the incident and I still get some ache in my shoulder (doing nothing). I have been running which did not have any adverse effects except when I tried the intervals. I’ll hold off on those for now. Saturday I might try picking up my barbell again.
I saw that in a video. Might have been Dr. Attia. Maybe not. I’ll look for it and post it here. I also was told the same thing by an Ironman competitor- stay obsessively in zone 2 when building your aerobic base.
