I was curious and I tried it this morning after my usual morning qi gong routine. I thought with those lifting, moving earth, carrying compost around the garden, the occasional digging and watering the plants with a watering can I can do at least 3 of each. In my earlier days many moons ago I could do 50 push ups and 100 sit ups a day and now I can only do ... Make a guess.
I've a couple of 5kg weights I used to use for years for a 10 minute routine every day. But haven't bothered since Covid. I find playing golf is all I need to keep me fit, that and gardening. I never did push-ups and I couldn't afford a set of weights in my youth. So my daily exercise was just to do a hand-stand up against the bedroom wall, then lower myself down until my head touched the floor, then push myself up until my arms were straight again. I could manage a dozen at a time on a daily basis. I wouldn't even attempt a handstand now.
Exercise according to level of fitness is helpful. Yearly gardening done in each season and beyond is great exercise to stay in shape. I read that gardening is equivalent to bicycle riding or walking. Gardening works all the major muscle groups: legs, buttocks, arms, shoulders, neck, back and abdomen.Also helps burn calories.
Riley I gave up golf about 10 years ago when I have some back problem. Yes golf is a good way of keeping physically fit. Pacnorwest that is exactly what I thought until I started to feel the aches and pains when I have to dig and lift to prepare each new beds after removing the old plants. Weeding also give me aches but these aches and pain will go away after a couple of days. I do not doubt that gardening is great exercise to stay in shape but the irregular exertion and staying in a difficult position for a long time need to be address. On the day I posted this thread I could not do 3 push ups and 3 sit ups, today I am able to 3 push ups and sit up is still difficult.
I've never been able to do sit ups, i have trouble with my neck and doing them hurts it. There is a yoga exercise and you stand up and pull the stomach in and release it, do that until the muscles ache. But i can never remember to do them, it's good for the back to do some stomach exercises. There's also some Zumba exercises that you do when standing, i think that is based on yoga.
For most of my thirties and forties I played squash for a club team in the North West Counties Leagues. Team matches at home or away were on Thursday nights. I'd also play a couple of friendlies with other team members earlier in the week. We never did any exercises or training routines, just playing was considered enough. (I occasionally played five-a-side football on Friday nights with work colleagues). When I gave up playing in my early fifties, the thought of regular exercises by then and since, never appealed to me, other than the use of my dumbbells, I've never seen the inside of a gym since I left school. I took up golf when I took early retirement at 59.
Logan I think Zumba is interesting but it is just a little too vigorous for me. Logan I used to play hockey in school and continue doing so till my late twenties and it was scuba diving. In my thirties I started golf because my company gave me a club membership. I did a lot of cycling all that while too!
That's good @KK Ng I've never been into sports, I've tried swimming but i get a bit panicky when in the water. When i was 10 i watched the swimming on TV and thought that I'd like to do it but when i was given the opportunity at school i realised it wasn't for me. But I've always walked a lot and that's why we had our golden retrievers, meet a lot of people and neighbours. I haven't done the Zumba for about 8 years, don't think that I'll get into it again.
Sit ups are beyond me now as I have Osteoarthritis in my hips and knees and Osteoporosis in my lower spine and hip collar and bone spurs in the neck. I think we do well on the exercise level just doing what we do daily now. As @Pacnorwest said gardening certainly plays a big part , we also walk at least 3 miles everyday and I use my static bike daily too. I learnt to swim ( but hate it ) about 20 years ago. I do however enjoy Aquacise classes but haven't been since Covid. Thinking about restarting them again ( if they're still going) after my TKR recovery. When in the mood I do have a good Zumba video to follow. I do my daily stretches...I put the poster with them on up on the door of our ensuite bathroom.....so no excuses for forgetting them!
As a young soldier in boot camp, we often had to do a hundred pushups at a time. I don't know if I can do one, now. I don't recall if we did situps. There were a lot of other things. Considering my age and medical misadventures over the past decade, I consider myself lucky. I do take a protein supplement. Gardening is my exercise. I usually work until I wear out, the keep going a while further. I walk about a mile and a half a day, and exercise bike about 45 minutes a day. I'm working on losing some pounds. I think I could get around better with less burden to carry. I would feel better. It's very carb restricted (a challenge for a vegetarian), no processed foods, and taking a fiber supplement. Over late summer and fall, I've lost 16 pounds - open ended goal. I think 25 pounds loss would be kind of amazing. Or 30. Currently losing about 1/2 to one pound a week, so can I keep it up another ten or 20 weeks? I don't know. I watch my blood sugar. It went from diabetic range - not diagnosed- down to completely non diabetic without any medication. Not even slightly high. Twenty years ago, I was bike-commuting 20 miles a day. Even so, I weighed 35# more than I do now. True, some of that was muscle. Much of that was body fat.
Swimming is excellent exercise at any age. In my early forties, I developed tennis elbow. I put that down to a change of squash racket. So I had to drop out of my team for a while. My doctor recommended swimming as physiotherapy. I previously only ever went swimming on holiday. But I gave it a go. I went to the local baths three times a week and just did gentle lengths of breaststroke. I set myself a target. 65 lengths each night. That equated to a mile. Six months later I was back playing squash and gave up swimming, as I found it really boring.
It is nice to know we seniors, err hope I did not assume wrong, are doing some kind of exercise to keep us going. Today I am able to do 5 sit ups, 5 leg ups and 5 push ups. With the leg up and sit ups I feel my back is getting stronger. Yes I go for a 5 kilometer walk on alternate days and with all these exercise I hope to enjoy my gardening more.
Good that you're slowly increasing how many you do @KK Ng The other day we both walked a mile with our boys, only because we couldn't get them to go the way we wanted to, which was shorter.
