OT: Daily practice is the secret to everything. Swimming. Photography. Relationships.

I mentioned a book earlier this year called, "Younger Next Year." A wonderful book about making it to 80 and beyond without succumbing to physical and mental decline. There were chapters about diet. Sections about social connection. And lots of words about having purpose in life. All good. But when it comes right down to it the authors were clear that it's daily exercise that is the magic, secret, most powerful silver bullet to slow down the aging process. Nothing else comes close. Nothing. 

What staying fit boils down to is the need to spend at least an hour a day, at least six days a week, exercising vigorously. But it doesn't stop there. One also has to retard muscle loss that comes along with aging and that means resistance exercises like weight lifting. 

I've spent the last 30 years trying to follow this recipe. Swim practices in the mornings six days a week. Not leisurely dog paddling but swimming in a masters group with competitive swimmers, coached by professionals. Out of breath swimming. Push to your limits swimming. Beat the guy in the next lane to the wall swimming. An hour of interval training that gets my pulse rate up into the 150 bpm range for the majority of the workout. Which seems optimal for someone about to crest 69 years of age.

Added to that is a trip to the gym three times a week for weight training and, usually, a daily walk through the hills around our place or through downtown. Sometimes longer walks

but never less than three miles in a day. Finally, there's stretching because part of swimming fast is having flexibility. But the workout schedule isn't like a menu in a Chinese restaurant where you just pick your favorites and skip the rest. The core stuff, the swims and the walks and the stretching, those are daily practices. And it all works. 

Today our maniacal Thursday coach put up a workout that was entirely composed of I.M. sets. I.M. stands for individual medley and in the swim world it means 200 meter or 400 meter events that are composed of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and then freestyle in equal measures. All swum straight through with legal turns on each wall. A lot of triathletes who come to masters swimming to improve the weakest part of their event (usually the swims) become proficient freestyle swimmers but mastering the other three strokes is different because they require different technical skill sets. I contend, as do many coaches, that butterfly in particular is a stroke the cadence and rhythm of which is mastered by your teenage years or not at all. 

After our long workout of all four strokes today the coach put up a 400 I.M. for time at the very end. The first 100 of which is butterfly. The 400 I.M. one of the more grueling race events for swimmers imaginable. Your technique is half the battle but the other half is having the stamina to finish the back 75% of the event after what is usually the hardest part of the event for most people; the 100 meters of butterfly at the start. We certainly felt it today. 

On the other hand, the water temperature was a perfect 78° which makes swimming glorious. You have to move to stay warm. And that means your body isn't locked in a battle to wick away heat, or to deal with heat that doesn't transfer away in warmer water. To a point, the cooler the water the faster you can go and the harder you can swim.

It's a fool's game to convince oneself that instead of daily exercise one can pick random/scattered days during a week or month and get the benefits of truly being in great shape. The benefits of a daily regimen are so compelling that anything else seems to me like giving up. At 68+ our generation could be in so much better shape than the generations that came before us because we've learned so much about the benefits of getting into and staying in great shape. The science is there. The literature is there.

It does take discipline to start and to continue but then everything is interrelated. Learn discipline in swimming and it transfers to making art, doing business, being present in relationships. You can only do your best work when you feel great. Everything else is a compromise. 

Just sayin. 

 Start them young. Never let them quit moving.... You'll wind up with wonderful, powerful and disciplined adults.