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You're
Never Too Old To Exercise
Abe Cohen works out every day, and the workouts include
at least a couple hundred crunches. Cohen is 92. His wife,
Esther, who works out with him, is 86. Her daily ab exercise
total is 400.
The Bay Shore, N.Y., couple have been exercising at a Bally's
Fitness Center in their Long Island community for 27 years.
"We go to Bally's seven days a week — me and my
wife, of course — and we go for two hours," Cohen
said.
Experts think the Cohens show what older people are capable
of, although they caution most of them not to try everything
the Cohens do.
For the Cohens, exercise started at Abe Cohen's retirement
in 1975, with a suggestion by the younger of their two children,
57-year-old Martin.
As Abe recalls it, the conversation went like this: "He
said, 'Dad, join the gym, you'll have something to do.'
I said, 'Come on, I never did it; why are you bothering
me?'"
Even though neither Abe nor Esther had been exercisers before
they joined the Bally's club, both were used to physically
hard work.
He had worked at a plant that made electrical equipment
used in power plants. "I used to pick up steel sheets,
cut the sheets, but I got so used to it that to me it wasn't
heavy work," he said. His wife had worked in clothing
factories, and retired a year after her husband, so she
was still working at the factory while they had started
at the gym.
The Cohens began with the cheapest contract, to see how
things went. "It worked itself up," Abe said.
Now, it's habit. "We do it automatically. We just enjoy
it. It's not a chore."
The Cohens typically are at the gym at 6:15 a.m., just after
it opens. He does 30 minutes at a fast walk on the treadmill,
works his legs and arms on the machines, and then does his
famous crunches.
She also does arm and leg exercises, along with stomach
exercises, but no aerobics. The club no longer has the track
she used to walk, and the dance exercise classes are too
fast-paced, so she lets her housework handle her aerobics.
"I keep myself busy going up and down to the basement,"
she said. "That's enough walking."
The Cohens' workouts get attention from members and employees
of the club. "They fuss with us," Abe Cohen said.
So do other seniors. "All the guys say, 'We want to
be like you,'" he said. "I give them incentives,
they say."
"Most people are amazed by their age and what they
are capable of doing," said Mitch Solarsh, the club's
general manager. "It is unbelievable to exercise as
consistently as they do and lift what they do."
But Abe Cohen does not believe exercise alone is the secret
to the couple's successful old age. The Cohens will celebrate
their 67th wedding anniversary Nov. 9, and he believes a
happy married life is a big factor.
"We thank God for our blessings, and she takes care
of me and I take care of her," he said. "We don't
envy nobody, and we are grateful for what we have."
Experts also marvel at their ability. "To some extent,
they are geriatric supermen," said Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko,
head of kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
"I like to think of them as a barometer of the possible,
an indicator of human potential."
The Cohens can be an object lesson to people young and old
about the benefits of getting strong and staying that way.
"If a person practices regular moderate to vigorous
physical activity, they can expect to be outperforming the
average for their age group," Chodzko-Zajko said.
The trouble for most people is that they don't exercise,
said Colin Milner, chief executive officer of the International
Council on Active Aging, an advocacy group for physical
activity in older people. "They lose their abilities
to function on a daily basis — a result of disuse,"
he said.
Studies have shown that starting exercise, even in the
90s, can restore some of the loss. It won't make all old
people into future Cohens, but many people are headed that
way, Milner said.
He pointed to the athletes of the Senior Olympics, although
those competitors can start at the callow age of 50. The
Summer National Senior Games began with 2,500 athletes in
1987, and had risen to 12,000 in 1999 — a sharp increase
in elite-level older people, he said.
Very old people should see a doctor before they start an
exercise program, and then work at their own pace, Milner
said.
"Listen to your body and go with the pace your body
is telling you."
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On the Net:
Senior Olympics: http://www.nationalseniorgames.net
Bally Total Fitness: www.ballyfitness.com/
Medline database on aging and exercise: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/exerciseforseniors.html
Article Source: Associated Press
Article Author: Ira Dreyfuss
Net Reference 102
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