Healing, Self Improvement and Fitness as You Age

It's generally well accepted that as you get older, your mobility decreases. That's normal, right? Well, it is if you don't do anything about it. That saying, "use it or lose it" came into use for a reason.

As you age, things in your body do indeed slow down. Your muscle mass decreases, injuries take longer to repair and your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones become less pliable. Years of bad habits catch up with you and can start to cause pain and deterioration. But this doesn't mean you have to just roll over and accept it as fate. While it may take longer, your body can still repair itself and bad habits can still be undone. Mobility can be increased back to what it was and maybe even improved upon.

Bad Habits Come Back to Bite

In my early 40s I started getting pain in my right upper arm when I reached my arm out or up to get things. The pain would shoot down the outer muscle from my shoulder. It didn't affect most of my day to day activities, just times when I had to reach under things in the cramped chicken coop or get things off high shelves. I found that if I moved it very slowly into those positions I didn't experience the pain, so I decided to make sure I continued using my full range, just slowly in the ranges which caused pain. This seemed to do the trick and the problem went after a few months.

Unfortunately it came back again, this time in my left arm. I took the same approach, but it gradually got worse instead of improving. It got to a point where I couldn't lift my arm up above my head fully and it wasn't just painful to try to do so, it physically wouldn't move any further. One day a woman at the supermarket asked if I could get something down for her that was on a higher shelf, because her shoulders wouldn't allow her to reach up and as I reached up with my right arm I realised I that was halfway to having to ask the same of others myself, because I couldn't have gotten it with my left hand either.

Trying to shave my left armpit was becoming a farce. I was at the point of wondering if this was deterioration that comes with age and I'd just have to accept that this was going to become a part of my life. Luckily, I've read too many anecdotes that have said otherwise and decided that I wouldn't give up so easily. It meant having to accept some home truths if rather have ignored, but isn't that always the way when it comes to self-improvement and self-healing?

Home truth number one was that my posture had never been great. Years of slouching and looking down to avoid eye contact had done me no good. The other thing I had to face was that in order to get my mobility back into that shoulder, I would likely have to work through some pain.

I'm grateful that it's now so easy to find information and guidance online for just about anything, so after finding some ways I could work on my posture I started to do so. I also started gentle yoga stretching in 'child's pose' to slowly push my arm towards a position where I could raise it above my head again. It was a gentle stretch, just to the point where it was hurting a little and pushing into that resistance I was encountering, then I would relax into that position for a while.

I wasn't entirely convinced it would work, but improving my posture was only going to be a good thing, so I figured I may as well commit to a long haul plan. I was actually pleasantly surprised when I started to see improvement much faster than I'd expected.

Exercise as you Age

This was back in 2020 and my daughter was looking at retiring from gymnastics, so we'd decided to try out climbing. I recall being a bit worried that I still wouldn't be able to fully use my arm, but I was going to give it a go anyway and use it as part of my recovery process. It was July by the time we could start, after covid lockdowns had lifted and it turned out that my arm and shoulder was completely healed and gave me no issues whatsoever. I have now been climbing for 3.5 years and it's made me realise how much I was letting myself go mobility wise. Not only have I regained my previous mobility, I'm actuality stronger now than I've ever been.

It's been accepted for a long time now that exercise and keeping active as you age is a good thing to keep you mobile, so walking, swimming and gentle exercise classes have been encouraged for the elderly. However, recently studies have been finding that strength training is incredibly beneficial as you age as well. We couldn't have imagined encouraging elderly people to lift heavy weights at one point, because surely that would cause them injury. Yet it's been shown to improve bone density. Improved strength also means better balance, potentially reducing the risk of falls. Osteoporosis is particularly high in women as they approach and enter menopause, so strength training is very much being encouraged for them as we try to move away from the idea that weight lifting is just a man thing.

Find What You Enjoy

I'll be honest, I've never seen the appeal of exercise for exercise sake and most certainly would never have joined a traditional gym. I don't think I'm alone in this, because I know there are plenty of people who have gym memberships they never use. They get them because they want to get fitter, but the reality is that the process is not that enjoyable for most of us. I know that the only way I'm going to exercise is by doing something with a useful purpose (like walking to a destination) or by doing something I enjoy. Body builder, Sam Sulek, said that if you enjoy the process you'll make much more progress than just working towards goals. Someone who enjoys walking is going to walk more than someone who is just walking to a destination. This rang true for me when I realised that I climbed because I enjoyed it, not because I was wanting to get fit, yet the side affect of my climbing was that I had gotten fitter, stronger and my mobility had improved. I will now even make time to do regular stretches and exercises in a way I don't enjoy, in order to be able to get a climbing skill I want to be able to do. My motivation comes from reminding myself that I want to be able to make that move on the wall. I know that getting flexible and getting stronger will take me much longer than it would someone half my age, but I also know that if I'm persistent I will still improve. I recently told a 25 year old, who felt like he was making no progress, that if I can improve my hamstring flexibility then he most certainly can.

For any who want some inspiration, I hope I can give some with my climbing shared on Instagram.