Age Discrimination?

Age is just a number. I've always accepted the fact that, well, we have young women on my triathlon team that can run five minute miles and keep that pace up for 2 hours. I work hard and they respect that.

In the area of combat sports, which is my main thing, we have people who train all their lives. Nobody is trying to put crutches under my *kitten*. (Skilled heavyweights, even older ones, are not people you generally want to get hit by.) I get inspired by the older people because they have really mastered the technique and still have the timing from their younger fighting days. I had a teacher that passed away last year that was sparring up until a few months before his death at 96 from complications surrounding pneumonia. He always smiled and laughed as he was mopping the floor with me and always had a good-natured joke afterwards. But I marveled at him because he was so efficient and natural in his movement it almost looked like magic. This weekend I will train with another master teacher who isn't resting on his laurels, he is training six days a week.

As you age, training becomes more important to your well being, not less.

I'm 55 and I want to get in shape, so at 65 I can look back and say, "man I was an outta shape youngster back then and now I'm buff. Lift, lift like your life depends on it! Just do it with good form and don't look back. I say 65 is the new 45, Git-R-Done!

This kind of started out with ageism by doctors, so I will comment on that first.
Doctors see a wide variety of people and are often on a tight schedule. Like we learn to be effective with meal planning and fitting in exercise into our daily routine, they had to learn to be effective in figuring out their patient's problems by first admitting the most common problems and average person of their general stats would have. It is not their fault that quite a lot of older people do NOT do a lot to stay healthy before it is too late. Congratulations to the others, but you are just not the average.

If they are not willing to listen to your explanations, then they are generally not good doctors. But if they listen and adapt, first going from what would have been correct in an average situation, forgive them. It is not ageism. The same thing happens to everyone else who in some way is "not average". It could be worse.

I am 30 years old, normal weight, non-smoker, no genetic predisposition in my family and I happen to have high blood pressure. I am not being treated. There was one test done to find a cause which turned out negative. The doctor just told me to "check it once a month", as if a random once a month measurement would give me a reasonable idea if my blood pressure is consistently high (like it is). Because their typical risk factors don't apply to me. He couldn't tell me to lose weight, stop smoking or just live with medication because my genetics are like that. He was lost and he was unwilling to go deeper into it after his standards failed. Here I am, with nothing. And I could say, because high blood pressure is more common in older people, this is ageism. They don't want to care because I am too uncommon for my age. Maybe they would care if it was even higher, but it is high enough to damage my health in the long run. And I seem to be in it for the long run unless my own efforts to be even healthier can solve the problem (so far they do not).
A similar thing happened to my boyfriend who was not diagnosed with something (that I, not being a doctor at all, suspected based on his symptoms from the beginning) for a long time because "he was too young for that" and that was why the necessary tests for it were the last thing to be done, after everything else came back negative. He asked for this to be checked at the first visit to the doctor and it was refused. Ageism? No. Bad doctors with bad judgment. Bad systems that discourage them from straying away from any standard diagnostics and treatments, even if they actually would have better judgment. Treating the masses instead of treating the individuals.

I am also actually one of the youngest people in my gym. No signs of ageism against the regulars which have an average of definitely being over 50.

When I took a course on gerontology, one of the key aspects that was stressed is that the older a population gets, the more diverse the experience.

This is extremely true for physical fitness. At 65, it is very common for seniors to have very weak bodies from decades of sitting on the couch or behind a desk. But if a person has been physically active and healthy, at age 65 they may well be going on quite well, thank you very much. I've noticed most marathons have a senior division, for example.

Setting the bar low in the medical community is probably trying to just get older people off the La-Z-boy and walk to the mailbox rather than end up in a scooter--which is important. But what is often overlooked is the fact older people can do much better.

I just look at other examples. My in-laws neighbours, in their seventies, are still running. No longer the marathons they used to do but still half marathons He's had a quintuple bypass 10-years ago She's had a few injuries too. They are healthy as. My FIL has had an aneurysm (11 years ago) walks and cycles everywhere and looks and does great. As he takes care of MIL his time is limited.
My own dad at 73 goes to the gym 2-3 times a eek doing weights and cardio and walk everywhere (has dog - needs to walk a lot) To be honest compare him to the 65-year old he once was (just a dog then) and this version He is healthier now Looks loads better and stands up straighter and his neck is back. His dad (my granddad) cycled regularly 40km well into his eighties. He lived until 89.
When I was doing aqua jogging there were ladies in their seventies giving me (48 at the time) a run for my money At my gym we have some older ladies too and they work as hard if not harder than some of the young things.

I tend to think that doctors are not up to speed with what keeps people healthy and what can be achieved. In the past a 65-year old was worn, but times have changed
Luluinca is totally right about feeling that things are changing for older generations They are healthier and more active than ever before yet society at large still tends to see 65 and older as more or less finished physically speaking. She is an inspiration and example to many - I fully hope to be as active as she is when I reach her age.

laurenmjenkin wrote: »

Ageism is a thing. Often I go to casual group fitness and I am pointed to light weights, exercises modifications..... then I beast it! I notice in these classes too that the youngsters are always with varied injuries, more than I ever get. I do love that I am fitter and stronger than our students in their 20s, although at the gym the other week I saw an instructor in her 70's doing a cardio step workout; my she was totally smashing it, everyone in class looked stuffed and she would totally beast me! That's what I inspire to be. Outliers? Maybe, ppl didn't have disposable money or access to such things or easy information generations ago, but maybe now we'll see a rise in "old" people embracing more aggressive fitness. For now I'll choose my own weights and variations thanks!

Based on my experience, I see this (the bolded) quite differently. To a certain extent, I see the "age = disability" equivalency as a newer (maybe 20th century, post-WW2) idea. I come from a working class background.

My dad, born in 1917, came from a farming family, starting to work for pay for other farms at around age 5, picking vegetables, and basically never stopped working (in factories, for county parks, literally built his own house at age 38 with his brother in a year (and no crew, except for times like laying cement when the cousins would come for the day) while working full time at manual labor; building included cutting trees from the property for some of the lumber)). Even in retirement, he was working: When I called him one day, when he was in his early 80s, he'd been digging up the entire roots of a tree he'd cut down - didn't seem unusual.

My mom, born in 1912, was single until age 42 (43 when I was born), and worked as a housekeeper/live-in invalid caretaker, then a nurse. When she died at 81 from breast cancer, she'd remained vital and able to do whatever she chose until just the last few months, despite moderate obesity. Both grandmothers lived into their 80s, vital and not institutionalized, one a wiry, hard-working farm woman, the other an active blue collar worker into her 70s despite rather severe obesity.

The idea that older people just sit around and decline - the whole idea of "retirement" for the masses, in fact - is pretty new, and typical only in the 1st world. In other places and times, people worked. Even sedentary employment for masses, or heavily machine-augmented manual labor, grew to be common over the period from the mid 19th century to the late 20th centuries.

One of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon stories involved Uncle Ed going down to the Twin Cities to visit his niece. Seeing people running around a lake "for exercise", in genuine puzzlement, he asked "Can't they find work?".

Strong and active as long as possible is the traditional aspiration; it was enforced by economics. The consequences of disability were dire. We modern first-worlders need to find reasons and means to reclaim strength and vitality in age, absent that degree of economic necessity for most.

Edited: omitted word