Am writing this having just come back from a fortnightly Pilates training session with my trainer in London, Rob Filmer. The photo above is of Sue Merren, who is a top trainer in Cayman and who I am eternally grateful to for her guiding and teaching me on my Pilates journey starting well over a decade ago now.
In my mid-40s I recognised, for men of my age, the importance of increasing focus on the muscles, on strength, stability and flexibility. For the previous decade or so I had mostly focussed on aerobic fitness, with the anaerobic a side benefit. I’d played a lot of squash, then moved into cycling, yoga, and other classes. I’d not been a gym goer (for weights) since my mid-20s.
When I started working with Sue I knew I wanted to focus on maintaining and developing my muscles (again strength, stability, flexibility), but without getting “big”. By empirical measures, this has succeeded beyond anything I could have foreseen. I am, empirically, far stronger, and have better stability and more flexibility than I ever had when I was in my 30s and 40s.
Taking all of that, I can look at where I am now, at 58, and recognise that my foundation from Pilates at this point sets me up to continue with this as a practice and discipline to slow down the physical ageing process as the years progress.
Moving from the physical to other areas, this post is titled “How do you keep your mental muscles moving?“, something I spend much time doing, and often write about in different ways. Stay curious, learn widely, and keep practices of learning in different and eclectic ways.
Two recent thoughts also come to mind.
First, I have started watching certain streaming services with subtitles on, not because my mild to moderate hearing loss means I have to, but because the sound mix and quality (Netflix is the worst, I find!) is so poor it can be hard to make out the dialogue. Now, I am about to get hearing aids (for that mild to moderate hearing loss), and I noted this use of subtitles to my audiologist. They noted that this was not a good practice, as I likely am at the stage where I unconsciously lipread to a certain extent, so it is best to keep the subtitles off to stimulate the mind to process more.
Second, I was in France on vacation in late summer and it was good to be back there for the first time in years refreshing my dormant “mild to moderate” French language abilities. Right now a family member is on a language immersion course in France and we have been using French exclusively in our WhatsApp messages. We’ve agreed to keep doing that when they get back to England, again to work the mental muscles.
What do you do to keep your own mental muscles moving?