At age 70, Jim Owen was, in his own words, “a physical wreck.” After 35 years in the investment world, he wrote a bestselling book called Cowboy Ethics, which led to 4 a.m. alarms to fly to speaking gigs, followed by dinner with wine at 9:30 p.m. – and not much movement in between.
“My back was killing me. Both knees were shot. I was a good 35, 40 pounds overweight, and I had no energy at all,” Owen says. One day he looked in the mirror and thought to himself, So this is what old age looks like. He realized that if he didn’t make a change, he’d soon end up relying on a walker or wheelchair, and that wasn’t how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.
Flash forward 15 years, and Owen is in the best shape of his life. A couple of years ago, he swept the competition at the San Diego Senior Games. “I’m the only guy who’s ever won a gold medal in all 10 fitness events,” he says.
He Started By Walking
After a lifetime as a self-described couch potato, Owen began his fitness journey by challenging himself to walk every single day for 30 days. “I was huffing and puffing after about three blocks on day one,” he says. But he loved the way walking made him feel, so his 30-day challenge stretched to three months.
His back still ached, though, so he hired a personal trainer to help him strength-train. “On my first day, I could not do one push-up – that’s how weak I was,” Owen says. But he kept at it, eventually exercising six days a week, including two sessions with a trainer and one strength-training session on his own. “By the time I was 75, I was doing sets of 50,” he says.
Even better: With consistent strength training, his back pain disappeared. Research shows that strength training can help relieve chronic low back pain by strengthening the muscles that support the spine.
Owen’s slow-and-steady, expert-led approach meant he avoided the two most common pitfalls of a new fitness routine: doing too much too soon and using improper technique, according to Stephanie Rogers, MD, a professor of medicine in the division of geriatrics and the medical director of the Age-Friendly Health System at the University of California in San Francisco.
When someone who hasn’t exercised for a while suddenly engages in vigorous activity without gradually building up their fitness, the strain can overwhelm the heart, increasing the risk of serious problems such as atrial fibrillation (an irregular, often rapid heart rhythm originating in the heart’s upper chambers) and heart attack.
“The time when you have the highest cardiovascular risk [from exercise] is when people – especially older people – go from nothing to super high intensity, so you want to start slow, and walking is the best way,” Dr. Rogers says…