How fit do you need to be?
I’m wondering, not about 50, but 60, of course. 9 months to go!
Back in the blog’s early days when it was a Sam and Tracy blog that focused on our fittest by fifty challenge, we spent a fair bit of time thinking and writing about what fitness meant. See here and here and here. It was inevitable. We’re philosophers and analyzing concepts is a big part of what we do professionally.
These days, as we and many of the bloggers here hover around 60, we’re definitely thinking in terms of fitness as successful aging. We want to be able to do things as we get older. For some of us, that’s bike traveling. For others, it’s canoe camping. But we all lead pretty active lives and want to keep on moving.
That’s why the Twitter thread above (I know it’s X, I know, but I just can’t) caught my eye.
Dr. Paddy Barrett writes, “I base my goals on lifespan and healthspan: to be an active and capable 90-year-old. I want to win at the ‘game of life’. If I have the extreme good fortune of living to 90 years of age, I do not expect to be exercising at my current level. Still, I do hope that I will be able to pick up my grandchildren or put my travel bag in the overhead compartment of an aircraft unassisted.”
Being in the top percentile for V02 max and strength matter more than just about anything else when it comes to longevity, he writes.
“Think of it as the height needed for a plane to glide to the runway if it lost its engines. It will continually lose height, just as you will likely continue to lose athletic performance over time, even with the best exercise regime. Most people are in an aircraft with minimal altitude and are likely to land well short of the runway they are aiming for.”
“If your goal is to be a kick-ass 90-year-old, you can’t settle for being an ‘average’ 50-year-old.”
Here’s the full thing on Substack, Exercise like your life depends on it.
I’m still wondering about my 60 goals. It’s definitely all about setting myself up for success in the (I hope) decades ahead.
I know what the pieces are. I want to be able to walk and bike long distances. I want to be able to go on back-country canoe trips with long portages! I want to be strong. And I want to have good mobility and balance. I’m thinking of setting some swimming goals, too.
“Setting myself up for successful aging at sixty ” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “fittest by fifty” but in reality, the idea is the same. Start from a higher peak so that to the extent that fitness decline with aging is inevitable, you land at a place where you’re happy to be.
For me, I’m mixing all of this aspirational thinking with the realization in light of knee replacement surgery that we don’t have as much control as we might think over health outcomes.
So, it’s this balance between aspiration and acceptance that I’m interested in attaining. I don’t want to acceptance to stop me striking out for new future fitness goals and plans. But I don’t want the striving to get in the way of acceptance where that’s the thing I need to do.
