Grandpa bod

Pierini Fitness is enjoying this chapter of his middle-aged man life being a grandfather to four little boys. To them, he’s known as “Grandpa” which has a more familial soundbite to it. 

As I tell others who have arrived at this coveted status, grandfather-hood is an honorable profession.  We get another round being in the company of little ones who think we’re better than their favorite candy bar.

Well, almost because outdoing a little boy’s favorite candy bar is a tall task.

It gives him extra motivation to chase and achieve fitness, health and wellness goals to be able to keep up with them.  It’s easier now but will only get more challenging as Pierini Fitness marches towards old-man-land.

Staying fit, healthy and well will make it easier to give them a pony back ride, get on the floor and have a wrestling match with them, maybe put them in fun and gentle headlock or hammerlock and expand their vocabulary of another meaning of the word “Uncle.”

But it’ll only be a matter of time when the tables turn.  Pierini Fitness remembers when that happened with his son.  The day when he could no longer run faster or longer than his son.  Such will eventually be the case with the grandsons. 

So, he must be diligent with his middle-age man fitness training and with his eventual old man fitness training.  He wants to be able to keep up with them, whatever the physical fitness activity happens to be.

There’s another vanity reason why Pierini Fitness will continue being diligent with his middle-aged man fitness training. 

To avoid the visual unpleasantries of having a grandpa bod.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Time solves all riddles

Recently I spent time assessing where I’m at in my fitness department by thinking about how my current fitness performance compares to what I was doing in the previous decade of my middle-aged man life.  While being mindful that comparison is the thief of joy, I nonetheless found great delight fondly recalling some of the fitness things I was doing a decade ago.

Admittedly, my current fitness performance is at a lower level than a decade ago, but decent, I judge, for a 64-year old middle-aged man.  Out of curiosity, I pondered how it might compare to what I’ll be doing, God willing, when I become an old man, which I’ve previously defined as beginning when I turn ago 70. 

It’s fair to say that whatever I’ll be doing as an old man will probably be less than what I’m currently doing as a seasoned middle-aged man.  This is the realization of aging if making an apple to apple comparison. 

While some men might achieve greater fitness levels as an old man than they had as a middle-aged man, it’s probably only if their middle-aged man fitness was lower in relation to maximum potential than what it is as an old man.   If this is the case, then the apple to apple comparison benchmark isn’t met. 

Comparing a middle-aged man fitness slug with a fitness rating of 4 on a scale of 1 to 10 to an old man fitness superstar with a fitness rating of 8 on the same scale of 1 to 10 isn’t an apple to apple comparison.

Where am I now on this mythical scale?  For lack of knowing for sure, I’ll self-assess that I have a fitness rating of 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being my hypothetical maximum fitness potential.

Where might I be on this mythical scale when I’m in old man land less than six years from now?

Time will tell, God willing, because time solves all riddles.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

His own cardiovascular-disease health crisis

Front and center in the fitness, health and wellness goals of Pierini Fitness is upper-percentile cardiovascular-respiratory fitness and his middle-aged man fitness training is based on it.  So, he read with great interest a recent article appearing in the Wall Street Journal about a resurrecting cardiovascular health crisis, driven by skyrocketing obesity and diabetes. 

Reading the fine print of this lengthy article, Pierini Fitness learned that a six-decade significant decline in the cardiovascular disease death rate is leveling off and, for middle-aged Americans, it’s rising!  Among the age 45 to age 64-year crowd, cardiovascular disease death rates increased almost two percent from 2011 to 2017. 

He also learned that the overall cardiovascular-disease death rate is a “quiet” contributor to a recent, and disturbing, decline in American life expectancy because it’s no   longer the counterbalancing offset it once was to the emerging causes of middle-aged death from drug overdoses and suicides.  Furthermore, it’s likely that cardiovascular disease deaths will continue being the leading cause of deaths for middle-aged men. 

“Yikes!” utters Pierini Fitness, undoubtedly the proudest and always card-carrying middle-aged man of America.

So, is all his cardiovascular conditioning training all in vain?

Maybe not, because the training he is doing keeps obesity and Type 2 diabetes monsters away; they are the key culprits of a new wave of cardiovascular disease deaths.  Obesity and diabetes have link to high blood pressure and other health maladies increasing the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular-disease failures.  One cardiologist called modern-day obesity the “new smoking” in terms of contributing to cardiovascular disease.

Answering his own question, no, his cardiovascular conditioning training is not all in vain, but it must also include the other side of the equation – eating sensibly and only what is required to adequately fuel and nourish his middle-aged man body.  To eat more is an invitation to obesity, the condition of being grossly fat or overweight.

Being grossly fat or overweight happens when we eat more than required over and over.  It’s happens too often in opulent America where we live.  No longer a condition afflicting only the wealthy, excess eating and drinking is being practiced by Americans of modest and, even, inadequate means. 

Better to keep it off than to add and try to take it off.  This is a lesson Pierini Fitness has learned more than once.

Now at an ideal bodyweight, he watches it like a hawk and is always on guard duty like the Queen’s Guard responsible for guarding Buckingham Palace, or The Pontifical Swiss Guard responsible for the safety of the Pope.  

Pierini Fitness will continue his hawk-like guard duty for the rest of his life to reduce his risk that the end of his life will not be the result of his own cardiovascular-disease health crisis.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum