Fitness. Sports. Bucket List. What’s The Difference?

The Combo Cheesehead for Fitness, Sports, and Bucket List

A healthy hello to all boomeon members and readers.

As boomeon.com’s Baby Boomer Sports Blogger my posts won’t be limited to specific boomer sports, but you’ll find a boomer edge in every column.

In the new year I plan to comment on particular teams and trends and boomer action. By outlining a plan for the year, you’ll know a few things ahead of time.

Not all sports ask for everything you’ve got, but they do ask for the basics: balance, coordination, dexterity.

Fitness is what you do every day. Sports is what you can do with your fitness. Bucket List items have the potential to cancel fitness and sports. And the rest of your life. That’s the biggest difference between the three. Things get more complicated the further you go into the outdoors.

Hiking a mountain trail improves fitness; participating in extreme sports like a mountain adventure race takes extreme fitness; save Mt. Everest for the Bucket List.

Boomers embrace fitness. Those who’ve read studies on exercise benefits matching drugs for heart disease, diabetes, and hyper-tension know the first step. Once they decide gym time is better than time spent shuttling between the doctor’s office, pharmacy, and the TV chair, they may never need the drugs.

The fit boomer works on maintaining their health status, not getting bigger, stronger, and faster. If they decide to set personal records later in life, and avoid injuring themselves, they start looking at sports and the active Bucket List.

What are good boomer sports? Most require a level of fitness. Even shooting pool takes fitness if you live where smoking and drinking still happens in the pool room.

Golf has a few hazards too. It lowers the fitness bar with carts, a rolling beer wagon, and a walking cigar between holes. At least you have fewer things to lean on like you do with pool. Still not challenging enough?

Try Boomer Basketball with no-run/no-jump rules. If running and jumping are a problem, this is the league for you. If running and jumping are problem areas, but you don’t want to surround yourself with the same problem, try the young man’s game. They run and jump. They’ll also make you feel older than you want. Don’t retaliate by fouling and tripping. Poor sportsmanship won’t turn the clock back.

If you’ve still got good wheels and fitness, you can take basketball into Bucket List territory by playing on a city league team, shooting and making half court shots, or becoming a rabid fan of your favorite team.

Please continue reading on boomeon.com.