BABY BOOMER SWEAT

NOT FROM HOT FLASHES OR BLOOD PRESSURE SPIKES

White Water On The Columbia Gorge

Exercise is no mystery. No one investigates exercise.

Why? Because it’s already a proven health remedy.

Before you roll out your mental list of more important things to do than exercise, relax.

You won’t read about joining a gym here. Membership gets you in the door, but it won’t dress you up and drive you there.

That part’s all you, even if your get up and go got up and left.

If you are a gym rat, you’d already be in there.

No ads for an exercise DVD here either. Do they even work?

For better results, go to the authority, The National Association of Baby Boomers. Babyboomers.com lists the top five exercises for baby boomers.

Here’s the breakdown:

• CARDIO:

It’s a word, not a whip. Instead of picturing yourself on a treadmill with a squeaky-voiced ‘trainer’ in spandex tights standing in front of you yelling “TEN MORE SECONDS, NINE, EIGHT” think of a river. Think of a river flowing over rocks, through canyons, and down waterfalls. Think of the churning water sweeping leaves and twigs downstream.

Compare the river to a cesspool. The cesspool is dark and smelly and doesn’t move. It seeps pollution into the ground and eventually into the water table.

With exercise, your body is the river. Without, it is a cesspool. Ready to get moving? Good.

• CORE:

You’ve got a core. It’s somewhere between your shoulders and knees. How important is your core? Stand an uncooked spaghetti noodle in a corner and it stays there. Drip hot water on the middle of the noodle, then stand it in the same corner. It flops.

Your core is the soft part of the experiment. It’s the guy with fabulous arms and legs with a boiler belly the size of a beer keg hanging over his belt. Work from the core out. Tap that keg.

If a core workout seems too easy, find another core workout, The Marine Corps. You’ll find exercises to make you feel like one of the few, one of the proud. Instead of a squeaky trainer exhorting you to finish strong, imagine a grizzled ground-pounder barking the count down.

• LEGS, ARMS, BACK:

If walking is too hard, practice standing and sitting. Stand up with good posture, step forward, back, and sit. Repeat using the other leg. Once you’re warmed up, add a calf raise to the stand. Do it often enough and your body will take a walk on it’s own. You’ll go along for the ride.

Now you ask, “How can I exercise when I don’t have enough time for everything else I need to do?”

It’s a fair question, not an excuse. Here’s a fair answer:

Park further away from your destination on errands. Go ahead and walk across a parking lot. You’ll be surprised at the spring in your step avoiding cars backing out toward you and your cardio power from yelling at them.

Think of Ratso Rizzo in The Midnight Cowboy with his street crossing rant, “Hey, I’m walking here.” An exercise nut gets the same room.

While you’re at the store, reshelf a few cartons of laundry soap from the bottom rack to the top. This is your adaptive squats.

The best part of baby boomer exercise is getting up, literally getting up on your feet, not getting emotionally up. That comes later.

Getting up means you’re not sitting. Maybe you’ve heard sitting is the new smoking? Agree or disagree, sitting is not your friend. Sitting is the cesspool, not you.

Be the wild river, the untamed torrent of energy seeking new adventures. We all know how dams work. They block rivers and create lakes.

Avoid the blockage, my boomers, and flow like the wind, or at least like the fan near the treadmill. Those are your orders. Mount up.

The glistening on your forehead is the reward. The rivulet of sweat on the side of your face means you’re winning.