Too many high-impact sports when I was young and too many injuries have left them a little messed up and tender in my  middle-age . I can t run on anything except treadmills, and even then my knees still ache after a three mile run. I’ve tried everything, acupuncture, massage you name it, well everything except surgery, but the damage has already been done. They re never going to be perfect again and  that ache s not going to go away  even if I’m wearing a pair of $200 running shoes.

Yeah, I know, I could go swimming but I love being outdoors. Treadmills are dull, and I’ve never been a fan of the pool. I want the fresh air! I want to run but I can’t run fast enough to work my cardio without hurting my knees and I can’t make those treadmi that ache s not going to go away lls steep enough for walking to be a worthwhile cardio exercise. I’d hit a design limitation of my body. I couldn t do any more without hurting myself.

Giving up wasn’t really something I wanted to do. I like doing beep tests. Not good for the knees so I don t do them too often but I like doing them anyway. For kicks. Leaving those guys half my age behind is my own  personal ego trip . I wasn t going to let all this good cardio go to waste.

 Then it occurred to me..

Why not make walking, an easy thing as hard as possible to do?

You don t get much more low-impact than walking, and walking up hills can be quite a challenge. So, I bought a weight vest and tackled those hills near my town. No knee aches and pains, and it was surprisingly hard work.

All it took was about 20% of my body weight to give me a good workout.

With a weight vest, my heart rate can hit 160 walking up some of the steep hills here pretty easily. It’ll stay there for as long as I’m walking, so I get a low-impact, injury free workout that can be as intense as I like. If I want to work harder, I just go find a bigger hill to climb.

Thinking about it, you could use a weight vest to make any easy exercise harder, if you can t do something, find some other drill that’s easier to do, that doesn’t injure or stress your body and make it harder.

 Fitness and health exercises, especially designed for the middle-aged and senior citizens

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I’m just like anyone else. I’m just like anyone else, if I eat more than I need I put on weight. If I don’t take any exercise I know my weight will increase, just the same as it will for anyone. So my trick, if it is such a thing, is to only consume as much as I need.

A key aspect of the way that I maintain my weight is exercise. I don’t do any sports, I don’t go to the gym and I don’t jog, so how do I maintain my  youthful physique  and remain fit and healthy? I use a technique I call passive keep fit.

What is ‘passive keep fit’ you ask? Passive keep fit, for me, means getting exercise while going about my daily business. For example I will walk to my local shops rather than use my car. And when I walk I walk fast so that I get a little breathless. Driving to and from the shop will just make you fatter and lazier but my visits to the shop burn off calories and help me  keep in shape.

I use the same approach in buildings with lifts. I will always use the stairs and often two stairs at a time to burn even more callories. Also, when sat in front of my computer screen at work, I’ll take a break and get a little upper body exercise by lifting myself on the arm rests maybe 10 or 20 times a few times a day.

I also try to get a little light exercise while relaxing in front of the TV by doing a bunch of abdominal scrunches that help to keep my stomach flat. This has helped me keep my six pack and flat stomach, much envied by my friends and workmates.

I always try to stick ot a healthy diet by eating and drinking sensibly. I try not to eat any junk food and when I do I consider it a very big treat. I actually get a lot more satisfaction from resisting temptation than I ever do from giving in. I have a pretty good idea of how much I can eat before I begin to accumulate fat so I have a habit of visualising everything that I have consumed in a day, as if it was all spread out on a table in front of me. This visualisation technique clearly highlights how many cups of tea and coffee I’ve consumed, whether I’ve eaten enough fresh fruit and vegetables and any other aspects of the days consumption that was less than ideal.

So I don’t count calories, I don’t work out in a gym and I don’t play sports. Yet I am the slimmest and  fittest 50 year old man  that I know, and I still look OK in Roxy or Animal surf clothes, which can’t be bad.

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