Hopefully, as you move further into your ‘Fitness Continuum’ Journey, you will find a lifelong pursuit in a sporting vein that suits you.

As I have said, for me that was Triathlons. For you, it could be traditional individual sports such as Swimming, Biking, or Running. It might also be any number of things: Kayaking, Roller blading, boxing, Cross Fit, hiking, skiing, etc.

Regardless, whatever sporting penchant you favor, the lowest common denominator of all these pursuits (whether you know it or not), is that they all will contribute to the parameters required for Longevity and Quality of Life in your latter years.

If you are in your 20s or 30s, the likelihood that your senior years are on your radar is quite remote. Only a few illuminated ones will confer a fleeting thought to a future still decades away. These are the years of perceived invincibility!

Unfortunately it is precisely at this age that a beginning awareness of the latter decades needs to express itself and take hold.

If you have had the good fortune to be bitten by the sporting bug early on in life as I was, and human performance became your passion, there is little reason to fear the decades that inevitably will follow. 

However, while the obvious benefit of the physicality of any sport is both physical and physiological, these are not the overwhelming considerations for success in the latter stages of your life.

If you have never broken a sweat in your life, avoided vegetables like the plague, and always eaten fast food rather than cook your own meals, you might have breezed through the 20s and 30s quite unscathed. That will change!

However, such behavioral patterns are destined to reinforce themselves and amplify in succeeding decades. And this is precisely why finding some palatable sporting penchant early in life is paramount to that time in your life still 20 or more years away.

HABITS

I hear all the people who say that physical activity is just not their thing, much less organized sports. I especially understand the 20 and 30 year olds who say that ‘Old age’ is far away. After all, and as I pointed out above, these are the ‘decades of invincibility’.

With this last point, I have to concur. I certainly felt this way back then, I was invincible! The prospect of racing an ‘Ironman Triathlon’ only brought excitement and anticipation to me.

However, short of shunning anything physical, a trait more indicative than any which may spell success in the latter years is the cultivation of daily health habits, and an unquenchable inquisitivness.

Habits over time create discipline, and discipline is what will be needed in those decades of ‘older age’.

Healthy habits such as brushing your teeth, cooking most meals, getting plenty of sleep, staying hydrated, and constantly seeking to understand the importance and validity of the latest trend in health or fitness; will contribute to developing a structured life.

The latter point of ‘constantly seeking to learn’, is the inquisitiveness that may lead to reframing and questioning prior beliefs and views.

Perhaps such a view will foster query and challenge prior personal views. Perhaps this might be the tool that causes you to reflect upon the avoidance of anything that requires you to break a sweat? Just sayin’!

In any case, life will go on and will yield a different set of rules by which to live in each succeeding decade. Change will be inevitable, no matter how young you may be as you read this.

How prepared you are, and how successful you are, to deal with the inevitable will have been dictated by what and how you lived your life 40 years prior!

IN closing, I would like to leave you with an ancient Chinese proverb:

To bear fruit, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago,

the next best time is now!