Happy National Senior Health & Fitness Day!

Staying healthy and physically fit is important always but especially as we age. In 2016, I got my Functional Aging Specialist Certificate. The first chapter of the text for that course scared me to death! It talked about how fast you lost your endurance and then your strength as you age. I thought, “That is not going to be me!”

Lao Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This is GREAT advice! If you’re not currently training, you don’t need to start out running 5 miles a day or lifting weights for an hour a day. You might be able to do it but will you continue doing it? Probably not because you will be so sore you won’t be able to move.

Find something you like to do! I love to dance. Dance cardio is currently part of my workout every day because it makes me happy. Along with that, though, I also do bodyweight exercise and bounce on a rebounder.

People think their metabolism slows down as they age but what really happens is that we start losing muscle around age 35. So by the time we are in our 60’s we have less metabolically active muscle and, therefore, can gain wait easily. You have to work on maintaining (or growing!) muscle. My favorites are swinging a kettlebell and I adore powerlifting because I’m super competitive and I like to see just how much I can lift. But you can do bodyweight exercises which can be a complete workout without a gym.

Don’t think that cardio exercise isn’t good for you. It is! But it can’t be all you do. Lift some heavy stuff!

I love to try new things and in the future, I want to run a 100 mile ultra marathon and I want to compete throwing shot and discuss at the Senior Olympics. And I for sure want to do a powerlifting competition. What about you? What are you going to do for your physical fitness?

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Fitness is something I believe in 100% I am down here on the floor stretching. Stretching is something that has gotten a little more difficult as I age but something that is even more important as it plays a big part in your overall health and wellness.

Flexibility is the body’s ability to move a joint or group of joints through a complete range of motion. In short, flexibility relates to your body’s ability to move.

The more flexible you are, the easier it is to move. Whether you’re walking, running, stretching, or going about your daily life, flexibility always comes into play.

Sadly, the aging process results in the natural loss of elasticity in muscles and tendons, which can cause stiffness in your joints and a decline in your flexibility. This is why I’m working at it every day.

Flexibility can help you:

Prevent injuries
Increase mobility
Improve your posture
Build muscle strength
Reduce physical pain

When your body is flexible, you can move with more strength, stability, and mobility. What are you doing for your flexibility? I find that getting down on the floor and doing the same exercises I did when I was a cheerleader in school are the same exercises that continue to keep me limber. But I’m open to trying new ideas. Whacha got?

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I got my rebounder 20 years ago. (20 years!) I had read some good things about rebounding and I knew I wanted to be able to benefit from them. I paid a few hundred dollars for a Needak Soft Bounce which was a pretty big investment but if you divide it over 20 years, not so much! I have replaced the springs on it once at a cost of $85. So when you think about paying less than $25/year for something that contributes SO much to your health, it’s a no brainer as to why you should bounce.

Bouncing is super fun. It doesn’t take a long time to get benefits, either. When I bought my rebounder, it came with a VHS tape (you can see how long ago it was!) that showed a white blood cell eating a cancer cell. We all have cancer cells in our bodies and our bodies are made to keep them in check. When I watched the video, my dad had just died from liver cancer. I saw the video and I was sold. Rebound every day for Lauri!

Some benefits of rebounding are:

Anti-inflammatory
20 minutes jumping up and down = 1 hour of cardiovascular exercise
Gentler on joints and bones than pounding the pavement
Firms whole body
Improves balance
Muscle strengthening – including the heart muscle
Improves bone density
Improves immune system
Improves skin
Improves digestion
Regulates bowel movements
Improves mood
Improves blood sugar control
Immune cells are more active

You don’t even need to bounce hard or high! There is a bounce called the health bounce where your feet never even leave the surface of the rebounder. The health bounce will bring these benefits. After I broke my ankle, I had a little trouble with the bouncing so the health bounce is what I did until I was able to bounce more vigrously.

What do you have to lose? It’s easy, fun, and it’s going to make you healthy. Have you ever rebounded?

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Today I want to talk about the 75 Hard Challenge. 75 Hard was created by Andy Frisella and it’s a mental toughness challenge. A couple people I knew were doing it and I watched them thinking maybe I’d do that someday. My friend, Brett, finished his challenge and that week I had a truly awful, really bad week in real estate. I figured getting some mental toughness might be exactly what was needed. Over the course of 75 days, I:

Drank 75+ gallons of water. When I got my real estate license, I basically stopped drinking water. But in the past, I would drink a gallon a day so I knew I could do it. I actually ended up drinking at least 154 oz every day.

I did 150 workouts, two a day for 45 minutes each. One each day was outside. I only had to workout in the pouring rain once but some days the humidity nearly did me in. Mostly I did a dance/walk video from @uptothebeatfit. One of the things I love about 75 Hard is that it’s completely scalable. You don’t have to do the very same thing as someone who has been training years longer than you or you don’t need to start at a beginner level if you’ve been working out. You can do the two workouts that work for YOU!

I took a progress photo every day. From where I started to now, I don’t see a lot of change but I know it’s there because I have measured. I lost 42 pounds and 29.5 inches. For the very first time in my life, my upper arms and thighs are the same size as each other. Weird? I don’t know but definitely remarkable.

I followed a low carb, mostly carnivore diet. I ate 5 meals in restaurants where I chose a salad with meat because I couldn’t figure out an entirely carnivore option. I had no cheat meals or alcohol. I feel amazing!

I read 10 pages of a self-improvement book every day. I read:

Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
Becoming Odyssa by Jennifer Pharr Davis
Eat and Run by Scott Jurek (I became fascinated with ultra running!)
Ask by Mark Victor Hanson

David Goggin’s book made me want to be a superhero and thus the books I read after that were mostly by extreme sports athletes.

The hardest part of this challenge for me was reading this last book. It just doesn’t speak to me and although my motto has always been life is too short for bad books, I pushed through because I can do hard things.

The coolest thing that happened was that my ankle feels good! I broke my ankle in November of 2018. I had tried to do 75 Hard a little bit before I actually did it but decided not to continue after the two a day workouts bothered my ankle so much. This time, I pushed through it and guess what? My ankle feels better now that it did since before I broke it. I’m not sure if I broke through some scar tissue or what but that was amazing and I’m super happy it turned out like that.

I’m not sure I gained any mental toughness because on Day 64, a client delivered some extremely harsh words and it affected me just like what happened that made me start the challenge. But I definitely gained clarity and was able to make some hard decisions.

Andy has created a whole Live Hard plan and it’s a year program to do hard things. I’ve tried a couple of times to get going and haven’t made it but I’m determined. Brett has just finished Phase 2 and I’m so proud to watch his success. I want that for me!

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