Success Stories 18

At age 76, Philip Winship “Wink” Davis still works on an orchard, but he is hardly what you would call a “gentleman farmer.” Instead, think “farm fit.”

Imagine climbing up and down a ladder with heavy pruning shears, lifting them over your head while still on the ladder, and then squeezing both hands together with enough force to cut thick branches off fruit trees. Or, during harvest season, think about strapping a large basket to the front of your body, filling it with pounds of fruit, and then climbing up and down ladders for hours. Finally, consider what it would be like to carry a bulky ladder from tree to tree on the often uneven ground that is typical of orchard fields.

While this may sound like the orchard version of the movie “No Country for Old Men,” none of it fazes Wink even as he approaches 80. Ever since his childhood in Concord, Massachusetts, Wink has loved the outdoors. He was a competitive skier by the time he was in junior high school, and then he added soccer each fall to get in shape for the winter ski season. Wink ended up playing both sports at a high level at Colorado College.

After college, Wink went to law school at the University of Colorado and tried his hand at environmental law for a number of years. What he soon realized was that sitting behind a desk all day was not in his DNA, so he tried to combine his law practice with ranching or farming in Wyoming for a few years. He ended up moving around various other locations in the western United States, including Montana, New Mexico and California, doing either law, mediation, agricultural work, or some combination. When Wink turned 60 and his two daughters were fully launched, he and his second wife, Max, decided to buy a piece of farm land in Colorado that was both an orchard and a vineyard. This had been his lifelong ambition – no more switching time between office work and outdoor work. Now he could be outside working on the land full-time.

During those years in Colorado, Wink had plenty of time to hone his orchard skills. All of that experience came in handy when they decided to relocate to St. Louis a couple of years ago to be closer to Max’s children. Once in St. Louis, Wink discovered EarthDance Organic Farm School in Ferguson, MO, and he now works as the farm’s part-time orchardist. Under Wink’s supervision, EarthDance’s orchard, which had long been underutilized, is now thriving. Wink tends the orchard with the help of volunteers who are sometimes decades younger than he is.

About a year ago, Wink encountered a medical challenge that threatened to derail his orchard work. While he was at the hospital for a routine colonoscopy/endoscopy, he had an episode of atrial fibrillation (“A-Fib”). He had started noticing these events occurring at night when he was in his early 60's. But now the doctors at the hospital were telling him that he should see a cardiologist and figure out how this condition could be treated.

He thinks that his A-Fib might be connected to his sleep apnea. In any event, his cardiologist advised him to start taking a blood thinner and some blood pressure meds to reduce the risk of a blood clot that might form during an A-Fib event causing a heart attack or stroke.

Not a fan of being on prescription medication, several months ago he decided to schedule a cardiac ablation. An ablation is a minimally invasive procedure that scars tissue in your heart to block the irregular electrical signals that can cause A-Fib. From everything he read about ablation procedures, it seemed that there was not a big downside risk. On the other hand, he realized that even though this was not open-heart surgery, it was a serious operation and there was no guarantee of success.

As he was nervously awaiting the date of his procedure, one of his orchard volunteers shared with him Clarence’s website article about his own experience with ablation. Having already spoken with a few people that knew about this procedure or had it themselves, reading about Clarence’s experience gave him some comfort. “I figured that if it worked so well for him, maybe it could work for me, as well.”

The ablation procedure was performed on April 15. His cardiologist had warned him that some patients experience A-Fib events shortly after the surgery, but many of those who have such relapses eventually see them taper off and fade away. The existence and the duration of an A-Fib event can be somewhat subjective, but Wink enjoyed a comparative advantage in this regard. Beginning in August of last year, he installed the Kardia app on his Phone, which enables its user to record their heart rhythm and objectively assess and identify an A-Fib event.

Whenever he feels that he is having an event and his phone is handy, he activates the app and records a 30-second tracing of his heart rhythm. The algorithm within the app interprets and records whether the result is “possible atrial fibrillation” or “normal sinus rhythm.” On those occasions when the app says “possible atrial fibrillation,” he continues to monitor his heart rhythm until the result shows “normal sinus rhythm.” In that way, he can record the duration of each event. Each time he produces such a record, the heart rhythm tracing is stored in his phone.

In the first couple of weeks following the ablation procedure, things were not looking good. In the first week, he was able to confirm three A-Fib events. Unlike his experience prior to the ablation, these three events did not occur at night, and they included a 33-hour A-Fib, the longest that Wink had experienced since he started recording these event. Week two was not any better. He had five confirmed A-Fib events during that second week, ranging from 9 to 14 hours in duration.

Week three brought with it a big turnaround and some hope. In that week, he had just one confirmed A-Fib event of one hour in duration, although he also had seven of what he called an “incorrect interpretations.” For Wink, an incorrect interpretation is when he thinks he is sensing an event but it turns out to be a normal sinus rhythm. Weeks four through eight included some more incorrect interpretations but no confirmed A-Fib events.

“To go five weeks without an event (and six weeks with only one event) is unprecedented since I began using the Kardia app,” he observed. “The frequency and duration of A-Fib events in the two weeks immediately following the procedure had me very worried, but lately I am coming to be a believer: the ablation was successful!!!”

The ablation procedure produced one other unexpected but immediate benefit in Wink’s case, although he has no idea whether this is common. “Ever since the ablation, my nighttime trips to the bathroom have been reduced significantly,” he said. “I used to average maybe four times each night getting up to go, but now it’s down to usually just one time. So that has also helped my sleep.”

Wink is back working at the orchard, but his biggest limitation is not his heart. Instead, he is struggling with a bum shoulder he first injured as a young man and then re-injured while teaching his 13-year-old grandson how to ski.

He has started seeing a physical therapist for his shoulder, and is now determined to start a strength training program at his local YMCA so that he can continue his work at EarthDance farm as long as possible.

“Eventually I would like to train a successor for my role at the orchard,” Wink says. “But I’m not ready to retire from my work at the farm. I still love being outside and active, and the farm has been a great place for me to be useful and find community.”

To learn more about EarthDance Organic Farm School where Wink works in the orchard, check out their website at https://earthdancefarms.org/

Our thanks to Dan Keating and his wife Jane, the volunteer who alerted Wink to Clarence’s experience with ablation, for sharing Wink's challenging experience with our visitors.

Ever since I began working out at age 15, I have been a basement trainer. But it wasn’t until the pandemic hit two years ago that I suddenly had to become a basement teacher as well. My basement’s transformation from the place where I worked out to the place where I worked was a change that happened very suddenly, and I remember the details all too well.

It was early March of 2020, and my wife Jane and I were on a spring break trip in Albuquerque, NM. We have a number of friends that we were visiting in Albuquerque, including Clarence and Carol Bass. A highlight of the trip for me was getting to work out with Clarence for the first time, in his Ripped Enterprises office gym. Clarence was 82 at the time and I was 58, but I considered it a victory whenever I could even come close to matching his poundage on any given exercise. It was fun and inspiring to experience in-person Clarence’s focus and intensity even at that age.

Meanwhile, I kept getting updates from the Vice Dean at Washington University School of Law, where I have taught for the past 34 years. First, we learned that upon our return to St. Louis, our classes would all be offered remotely through a platform that I had never heard about called “Zoom.” A day later, we learned (to my relief!) that spring break would be extended by one week so that faculty members would have an opportunity to plan how to teach in this new format.

When we arrived home from that trip, my basement became the site for two kinds of training: my usual strength-training and aerobic workouts, plus this new challenge of teaching via the internet. Fortunately, my basement was already very well-equipped for the first kind of training. What was completely missing was any kind of office setup so that I could start practicing remote teaching from home.

Fortunately for me, Jane and I had our basement finished when our three kids were younger, so the basement had a tile floor, a drop ceiling and dry wall, along with a ping-pong table, a pinball machine and a pop-a-shot machine. Since our kids are all out of the house now, I had free rein to use all of the spaces available for work purposes. The ping-pong table became the place where I kept all of my class notes and other papers. The pinball machine became the place where I kept my law books that I would need to consult for my classes and research.

Dan in his spacious and pristine basement office with the ping-pong and pinball tables for class notes and other materials needed for remote teaching. (He is also meeting his step quota while reading.)

I also had to create a work station for myself. I already had an old desk that my parents had given me that was serving then as a display table for a 46-inch TV screen in the family room part of the basement. The TV screen got temporarily set aside and replaced by a computer and keyboard that my law school provided me. I also ordered a new printer for printing out my class notes and other writing.

In re-creating my office work space at home, I wanted to make sure that I retained all of the features of my actual office. In particular, I wanted to keep practicing two lessons that I had learned from reading Clarence’s website through the years: first, that you should avoid excessive sitting; and second, that you ought to get up and move around periodically during the day.

As far as the first lesson goes, I had a natural incentive to avoid prolonged sitting. If I sit too long, my back starts to bother me. Several years ago, I switched to a standing desk at work, and I ended up doing the same with my basement office. In both places, I use a popular product called the VariDesk. There are many similar products out there now, but I like the VariDesk because you can simply place it on top of a standard desk and then easily adjust the height with a spring-loaded system. I know that some of my colleagues who have a standing desk will sit for part of the day and then stand for the rest of the day. The VariDesk makes it easy to do that kind of switching. In my case, I don’t adjust the VariDesk at all, but rather just keep it in the standing position all of the time.

Part of my secret to having my VariDesk always be in the standing position is that I don’t stand on the ground but instead stand on a balance board that was made specifically for standing desks called the Fluidstance Springboard. The Fluidstance has been a game-changer for me. Just as sitting for long periods of time can bother my back, so can standing still for a long time. I originally tried a cushioned mat that they sell for this purpose, but I didn't find that to be very helpful.

By contrast, the Fluidstance allows me to move slightly side-to-side or forward and backward in a way that varies the stress on my back. The way I try to explain it to people unfamiliar with the product is that it’s like having a “rocking chair for standing.” Another analogy that I use is that it’s like standing on a floating surface rather than on a hard surface. According to studies done by Fluidstance, use of the Fluidstance increases energy expenditure vs. sitting by 19%, and it increases your heart rate by 15% vs. sitting.

Even when using my Fluidstance, however, I find that I need to take walking breaks. At the law school, I have a 20-step path that goes from the window in my office to the wall outside of my office through the library stacks. In my basement, I have been able to create a V-shaped 20-step path from one corner of the basement to another. The reason that the length of the path is important is that the shorter the path, the more times that you have to stop and turn. Through practice, I have become adept at reading while I walk. That way, I can get my steps in and my work done at the same time, making it super-easy to hit my 10,000-step goal each day.

In the fall 2021 semester, we returned to teaching in person at the law school. Nevertheless, I have continued doing much of my non-teaching work at home in my basement. I currently do my weekly office hours through Zoom from my basement, since many students prefer the convenience of being able to meet with me whether they are at home or at the law school.

Now that I’ve explained my basement work setup – the more recent of my two different uses of the basement – I feel like I should say something about my basement workouts, which have been going on down there for decades now. On this topic, I should begin by noting that every part of my workout today has been influenced by Clarence and his writings. I started following Clarence when I was in college and read his first book, the original and best-selling Ripped. I also faithfully followed his columns in Muscle and Fitness magazine at the time. Since then, I have read all 10 of Clarence’s books as well as almost all of his monthly updates on his awesome website.

When I say that my workouts today have been influenced by Clarence, that does not mean that Clarence and I do the same workouts. The fact that Clarence and I have different workouts is consistent with what Clarence preaches in his writings: it’s not about the precise details of what you do, but rather about following the overriding principles. Clarence has never been a “my way or the highway” kind of guy with his fitness advice. Instead, he has always promoted the idea of finding out what kinds of exercise you like and what works best for you. Even for the same person, the details of that formula can evolve over time, as they certainly have for me.

When I first began training at age 15, I just wanted to get bigger. I am a classic ectomorph, and I have always struggled to add size. I did get a lot stronger through my workouts and I have always kept a low bodyfat percentage. However, I have more or less stayed at the same bodyweight, 150 pounds, for my 5'10" frame from my college days until now at age 60.

As I look back on 45 years of training, I see a theme of adapting and evolving my training as I have aged. Strength training has always been at the core of my workouts, but other aspects of training have become more prominent as I got older. I had always done some aerobic training, but I got a lot more serious about that when I had my first visit to the Cooper Clinic at age 42 (inspired, not surprisingly, by reading about Clarence’s trips to Cooper!). It was then I learned that I had coronary artery disease, so that caused me to get more serious about the aerobic side of my workouts. I also (again through Clarence’s articles) began incorporating high-intensity interval training in my aerobic workouts, something that I continue to this day.

As I entered my 50s, I had to deal with a series of training-related injuries that forced me to drop certain exercises and to replace them with others. I ended up seeing various physical therapists for shoulder, back and neck injuries, as well as working through some other injuries on my own. I added components to my workouts that had not been there before: stretching, balance and core work. Even my strength training evolved, as I started using resistance bands for certain exercises and isometrics for others, all in the name of training certain muscle groups without aggravating old injuries.

Dan stands on one foot for 2 minutes with his eyes closed as a regular part of his workout. I've never been able to do that, and I don't know anyone else who can do it. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

The good news is that today I am injury-free and still training. I currently work out three times each week (still in my basement), and each workout includes three components of about equal duration: strength training, stretching/core/balance, and high-intensity aerobics. For strength training, I do 8 to 10 sets of mostly compound exercises, one set per exercise, usually 8 to 12 reps. My three workouts each week include different exercises, and I typically go close to but do not actually reach all-out failure on each set.

The middle part of my workouts includes a 10-minute stretching routine using stretches I learned from physical therapy, plus some Pilates-like core work and an extended plank. Then I finish with balance work, standing on each foot with my eyes closed for a couple of minutes, followed by stepping one foot in front of the other with my eyes closed, forward and backward for a couple of dozen steps.

The final part of my workout is high-intensity aerobics. Here I am fortunate that my basement includes four different pieces of aerobics equipment: a treadmill, a Schwinn Airdyne, a standard exercise bike, and a stair-stepper machine. This means that I never have to do the same aerobics workout more than once in the same week. I use various kinds of interval training here, ranging from 4-minute intervals on the stationary bike to 10-second super-high-intensity intervals on the Airdyne, as well as 20 and 30-second intervals on the other machine.

Dan's Airdyne intervals are so intense that he has to stabilize the base with heavy dumbbells and weight plates. It's another part of his workout where he is amazingly strong and fit.

I used to work out four times each week and then cut it down to three times a few years ago. Maybe as I get older I will cut it to twice a week, who knows? Right now three workouts each week seems about right in that I feel recovered by the time I do each new workout, but maybe my recovery capacity will change as I age. The key thing for me now is that I feel good and am still very functional at age 60, with hopes to continue feeling that way for many years to come. It’s also great to have people like Clarence and my 95-year-old Washington University colleague Dan Mandelker (who I write about below) as older role models!

Laszlo travels the world taking photos for mining companies and of weddings.
In his spare time he visits and photographs Iron Game giants such as Bill Pearl and Tommy Kono

It’s Saturday morning and I wake up with pain in my lower back. This is unpleasant but nothing new. In the course of my fifty plus years of training and competing in weightlifting I’ve pulled and stretched just about every muscle and joint in my body. I’m used to such pain and take it in stride. I attribute this pain to the seated good mornings I did on Friday. Those really do stretch the lower back.

As the day progresses, I find that the pain extends to my upper left thigh. I can’t walk more than six steps without having to pause and bend over to recover. This is more serious than I’ve experienced before, but I figure it will heal and be over soon enough.

After a week, there is no improvement, not even slight. This lack of recovery is something I’ve never experienced before. I’m not expecting to be back to where I was before, but I am expecting some change for the better. Also the pain is relentless. I feel it in all positions, though it is less debilitating when lying on my side.

Fast forward to week three. I’m still crippled. I realize I can’t live like this. In effect I’m completely incapacitated. I get a call from my best client. He has a photo shoot for me in Arizona. I have to turn him down and he is forced to hire another photographer. This is the first time in my life I’ve had to turn away work for the sake of my health--the hurt to my spirit is as great as to my body.

Finally, my doctor schedules an MRI. The results are so clear you don’t have to be a radiologist to understand the problem. There is a blob of material extruded from between two lumbar vertebrae. It looks to be about the size of a quarter. I have a herniated disc. For several years I’ve had weird lower back pains that come and go. Looks like my last workout has pushed me over the edge.

I meet with a physical therapist a couple days later. She suggests a spinal stretch that has me lying on my back and pulling my knees up to my chest. This is the sort of treatment that might be appropriate for an untrained person. I know immediately that it will do me no good. As we leave the hospital I tell my wife to drive me to the gym. It’s been three weeks since I’ve done any exercise and I’m fed up. I just have to find something I can do to elevate my spirits.

I enter the gym pausing every six steps and make my way to the lat pull down machine. I figure I can at least do this. As I’m sitting there a sudden flash of inspiration hits: why not just hang onto the overhead bar instead of pulling it down and allow it to stretch me? Won’t the force be transmitted through my arms, shoulders, and upper back directly to my spine? I put on 135 pounds and do five one-minute stretches.

The feet on the big ball helps put the pulling force directly on the lumbar spine, much like what the physical therapist recommended.

When I got up I found that I could walk twelve steps before having to pause! This was my first improvement since the incident. I came back to the gym three-times-a-day for the same routine for a week. Each day I got a little better.

By the end of the week I could walk from the parking lot all the way to the lat machine without having to pause. After three weeks, I was able to drive to a park and walk around taking pictures for half an hour without having to pause. At six weeks, I was living normally again, with just a barely discernible bit of occasional discomfort. After three months, I was fully recovered and back to doing regular workouts at the gym.

It is now nearly two years since the injury and I’ve regained much of my lost strength.

The only health-care person interested in my experience was my own doctor, an osteopath. He asked me to explain the process to share with his patients.

3. Select a weight that exerts pressure but does not hurt. If the weight is too light it will not exert enough pressure on the spine. You should feel a pulling sensation.

4. I attach my hands to the pull-down-bar using straps. The amount of weight and time will be uncomfortable unaided. I use: https://www.versagripps.com

5. I sit down facing away from the weight rack with my feet on the ball or chair.

Well, it’s hard for me to see how anyone could hurt themselves. After all, you’re not actually lifting a weight. The weight is lifting you. It is actually easier to do this stretch on the lat machine than by simply hanging from a chin up bar. I’ve tried that and the chin up bar hang exerts more force and is uncomfortable.

If you still have concerns, consult your doctor or physical therapist before proceeding.

There is little doubt that at age 95, Dan Mandelker is the oldest active full-time tenured law professor in the United States today. The only question is whether he is the oldest active full-time law professor ever – and the answer there is probably.

Dan Mandelker has been my friend and colleague at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis since I first joined the faculty in 1988. Thirty-four years later, we are both still here at “Wash U Law,” as our school currently brands itself. I like to joke to my friends that Dan is my inspiration because, if I use him as a measuring stick, then I am not even halfway through my teaching career – even though I just turned 60 this fall! At my age, it’s great to have a reason to still feel young.

Dan began his full-time teaching career at Drake University Law School in 1949 – that’s right, 72 years ago. His next faculty assignment was at Indiana University School of Law, where he taught for nine years. Then in 1962 he settled in at Washington University, where he has taught for the past 60 years.

During that time, he has become an internationally known expert in a diverse range of areas including land use law, state and local government, and environmental law. He has authored or co-authored a number of casebooks and treatises that are still in use today. He is also a consultant to local, state, and federal governments and to foreign countries in his areas of expertise. For a more complete description of Dan’s professional accomplishments, you can check out his law school home page at: https://law.wustl.edu/faculty-staff-directory/profile/daniel-r-mandelker/

When you ask Dan about the secrets to his longevity, he is quick to put exercise at the top of the list. Dan was something of a late bloomer in this regard, first beginning a formal exercise program about 40 years ago when we was in his 50's. Dan is a big believer now in the power of strength training, something he still does twice a week with a trainer even though he is well into his 90's. In Dan’s early days of exercise, he would swim and use the weight machines at a local health club.

Even as he approached 90, Dan was still a regular at his health club and still pushed hard with the weight machines. Six years ago, however, he suffered the first of two major falls. “I was getting off the lat pulldown machine,” he recalls. “I either blacked out or lost my balance. I ended up falling onto a different machine. I fractured my pelvis and also hit my head pretty badly.”

Unbeknownst to Dan at the time, he suffered from a balance issue that stemmed from problems with his inner ear. After this first fall, he spent about three months at a rehab facility before he could live independently again.

Then three years ago, he fell again, this time at home while getting up in the middle of the night. With this second fall, he fractured his hip, at age 92. After an operation that included inserting a steel rod to repair the hip damage, he did more time at a rehab facility before returning home.

Following the second fall the doctors finally realized the source of Dan’s balance problems, and he has since been taking daily medication that seems to have remedied the issue—and allowed him to get back to productive training.

Shortly before the second fall, Dan had started working out at his health club with a personal trainer, Joseph “Skip” Hall, a former powerlifter now 80-years-old with a full slate of clients.

Following Dan’s return home from rehab after the hip surgery, he had Skip do workouts with him through Zoom, with a spotter to help.

Skip says these workouts focus on functional fitness and include a combination of bodyweight exercises (including lunges with balance assistance from a walker), hand weights, resistance bands, balance exercises and stretching for range of motion.

Skip says Dan’s arm and shoulder range of motion is still in the 97^th percentile for the population as a whole, even though he is 95!

On the days that Dan is not working out, Skip encourages him to keep moving. So Dan makes it a point to get up off his chair every hour to walk around his condo with the aid of his walker.

“One of the worst thing for people who are Dan’s age is to sit all day on their lounger,” Skip says. “You’ve got to use it or you will lose it.”

Dan also follows a healthy diet that is centered on whole foods. On a typical day, he might have eggs and fruit for breakfast, and then chicken or fish along with some vegetables for lunch and dinner. He avoids red meat and tries not to overeat.

Skip also encourages him to make sure that he gets enough calories. (Eat your fill of the right kind of food and you’ll find the correct balance of calories and movement naturally.)

Even more impressive than Dan’s physical strength at age 95 is his mental sharpness. “Dan is always challenging himself, whether physically or mentally,” Skip says. “Even at his age, he is a master at using the internet, and he’s always up for trying something new.”

He continues to write law review articles and update his treatises and casebooks, and he does not shy away from assuming new teaching challenges.

In his mid-80s, the Dean asked him if he could take on the teaching of a first-year Property course. Dan did and did it well for as long as needed.

More recently, he added a 14^th Amendment Constitutional Law course to his teaching load—even though it meant doing a new course preparation.

Beyond his day job, Dan has tackled other interesting projects to challenge his brain.

Three years ago, he started doing a biweekly literary podcast in which he discusses and reviews popular fiction, including the works of a Missouri-based emerging author, Jackie Adams.

A few weeks ago, Dan surprised me and most of my colleagues by announcing that he was planning to retire from teaching at the end of this academic year.

“I felt like I had contributed enough in that area,” he explained. “I still loved the teaching, but the preparation time was taking away from my writing. This way I will be able to focus more on my writing and on other projects, such as updating my treatises and doing some consulting."

As a long-time colleague of Dan’s, I think that the most impressive aspect of Dan’s retirement announcement is that he decided to stop teaching while he was still at the top of his game.

As teachers, we all fear as we get older that we are losing our “edge” and that we just cannot do our job like we did when we were younger. In Dan’s case, though, the numbers would suggest nothing of the sort.

Somehow Dan still continues to receive high evaluations from the students in his courses. For example, in his most recent course evaluation for his 14^th Amendment Constitutional Law course, Dan received a 4.73 out of a possible 5.0 in the “Overall Quality of the Professor” category.

One of his students even wrote in the evaluation, “Professor Mandelker may be my oldest professor, but he is also my best professor!”

For Dan, his retirement from teaching will be not so much a conclusion as it will be a transition to other productive pursuits. In the meantime, he continues to be an inspiration to me and many others on our faculty.

Professor Mandelker looking half his age, while striving--and moving—full time.

(Our longtime Australian friend Wayne Gallasch sent us this inspiring story from South Australia’s news journal Adelaide Now.)

The only thing that’s slowed her down so far is a broken left hip, sustained 18 months ago while hanging out her washing.

It’s not her first broken hip either. In her 90s, Mrs. van der Linden broke her right hip after road-testing her grandson’s skateboard while wearing heels.

“Some people can sit for hours – but I’m not a person who can sit still,” she says. For the past three years, Mrs. van der Linden has participated in weekly group fitness classes.

The classes are run at ACH Group’s Health Studio 50+ at Glenelg and involve a 45 minute circuit of state-of-the-art fitness equipment designed to strengthen upper body, legs and core for older gym bodies.

Mrs. van der Linden also flexes her muscles twice a week through seated exercises at home – now Southern Cross West Beach Residential Care. “I really think movement is something that is necessary to live a healthy life and is important for every person to do – don’t be sedentary,” she advises.

Fitness leader Scott Attwood says Catherina is an inspiration for class members. “She is a great role model and encourages them to work out and keep fit … It’s very rare for her to miss a class,” he said.

Mrs. van der Linden was born in the Netherlands in 1912 and migrated to Australia with her accountant husband looking for work post-World War II. The couple had four children – among them Mariella Hocking, who says her mother wasn’t always a “gym junkie.”

“She has always walked and ridden a bike but the gym is something she has taken up later in her life,” says Mrs. Hocking.

She says her mother‘s ‘try anything once’ attitude motivated the entire family. “I think she is quite inspiring – she inspires me,” she says.

Thank you Wayne for sharing this uplifting story of Catherina's active decades after 80.

Hello Clarence:

I am 82 and doing a weekly routine comprised of mountain biking about 8 miles on some fairly challenging single track trails. I ride a pedal assisted mountain bike that has a lithium battery and a drive unit comprised of a small electric motor and a torque sensory that senses one’s pedaling effort and supplements it proportionately. The pedal assist is a big help on really steep climbs that I find marginal or even undoable on my regular mountain bike. The ride is still a really good workout, and I often see a maximum heart rate in the 140’s.

In addition I do a hike up a short (0.4 mile) trail with an average grade of 25% which comes out to about 650 feet of elevation gain and loss. During this climb my heart rate steadily increases, and I sustain a HR in the 140’s for the last 10 minutes or so of the climb. Very bracing.

I have also become interested in blood flow restriction (BFR) training and have just recently started doing it - too recently to have a personal experience base worth commenting on. (See PS below)

The primary benefit of BFR is that it can provide the full benefits of high intensity training with heavy weights while using weights as light as 20% of one’s one rep max. This greatly reduces the stress on aging joints and also greatly reduces the possibility of injury.

(I am told this method is becoming popular in the body-building community.)

My approach is to start slow, make my bands a little too loose rather than too tight at first, use no more than 20% of what I thought my 1 rep max would be, and pay attention to any funny feelings I didn’t like. It has gotten smooth as glass for me; tightened my bands progressively, increased the number of reps.

I feel like I'm getting stronger, although it's difficult to tell using such light weights.

I am interested - as you are - in maintaining leg strength at a high a level and for as long as possible.

Check it out, Clarence.

Best to you,

Name withheld for privacy reasons.

Editor's Comment: We found a wide selection of pedal assisted mountain bikes on line, along with info on blood flow restriction (BFR) training. We have minimal experience on mountain biking and none with BFR training.

That said, we find the pedal assisted mountain bike very interesting, but urge caution experimenting with blood flow restriction training.

PS: Hello again Clarence:

Thanks for your interest.

I am continuing to do the blood flow restriction training, and I feel (subjectively) that I am already gaining significant leg strength after only three weeks of effort. I intend to stay with this program - I am doing leg presses and calf raises - and see what my experience has been after three months or so.

The mountain biking I am doing is very satisfying and beneficial to me, but is actually a pretty weird thing to be doing the kind of riding I am doing at my age. It is hard even to talk about it without feeling like I am making people think I am bragging, which makes me uncomfortable.

Here is a video of the trail I ride every Monday morning that was posted on YouTube by another rider and his partner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QoV1Bi8wMw

These gentlemen seem to be somewhat unfamiliar with the trail, which was heavily overgrown after a lot of rain at the time of their ride, and they go a lot slower than my partner and I do. Also, the video does not provide an adequate impression of the actual steepness of some of the short climbs and descents that make this a really interesting and challenging ride, especially when one pushes the pace.

Moving on.

My main purpose in telling you about the BFR training is to suggest to you a possible solution to the problems you have encountered as a consequence of continuing to lift heavy into old age.

I hope you will take BFR seriously as something that might benefit yourself. With BFR, I feel like I am getting the benefits of doing 350-400 pound leg presses while actually using only 80 - that is EIGHTY - pounds. I am getting a huge pump and burn, but my knees, hips, and sacroiliac joints are cruising.

And, I recover in two days, so I can do two workouts a week.

I think BFR was made in heaven for crazy old geezers like you and me. Sorry to say, we are officially among what the medical profession labels the “very elderly."

Love that you are still at it. I will stay in touch.

Name withheld for privacy reasons.

Editor's Comment: Once again, be careful on both trail bike riding and BFR training. While the dangers of trail bike riding are obvious, blood flow restriction training requires more digging to assess the benefits and possible dangers. That said, results for our friend have been impressive and worth sharing with our visitors.

October 1, 2021

Visitors Comment on BFR

Doctor Says "No Way"

Saw the email on BFR -- this had come up on another site and talked to my doctor, who is a weight trainer, about it. Immediate answer? "No way" He said that can cause clotting if you're not careful and would not recommend it. He said "I'm a doctor and won't do it."

Could Be Dangerous

BFR. Sounds like it could be dangerous. Better if used, selectively and sparingly. Is it the veins that have valves? And how much pressure would cause a rupture-collapse of these veins. Well we shall see what the "eager guinea pigs" report after a time.

What You Need to Know

Hey, I saw your comments regarding blood flow restriction training. I have several of those and I think they work but are a bit of a chore to put on. Once on, I think they are fine but I thought you might want to see this article from ACE fitness: Blood Flow Restriction Training: What You Need to Know (October 2021)

Skeptical

The Success Story from your anonymous 82-year-old reader was interesting. Like you, I am skeptical about this reduced-blood-flow training, but I guess it has been helpful for him. Reduced-blood-flow training for me is about as appealing as the idea of doing a high-intensity aerobic workout while wearing a COVID mask! It just seems unnatural, uncomfortable and potentially dangerous, but I admit that I have not researched the issue.

Roy Rose is no stranger to our Success Stories page, having appeared here at 62 and 66. He may be the most accomplished of the many athletes we’ve featured—certainly the only one to have competed in more than one Olympic Games—making his training at 80 all the more noteworthy.

Not so well known outside his own country of Australia is his career of outstanding sporting achievements, including state honors in cricket [his country's national sport] and equally successful endeavors as a basketball player, rugby footballer and a competitive professional sprinter. His crowning achievement is representing Australia in archery at the Olympics from 1976 until 2002.

Roy returned to the sport of archery after almost three decades, amassing over 40 state and national records in his age division and, at 62, wining two gold and two bronze medals at the 2002 World Masters Championships.

A member of both the Australian and American Archery Halls of Fame, Roy is known for his love of the sport and way with words. On December 11, 2019, Bow International posted his “favorite quotes and drollery from the archery world.” You’ll be amazed at the depth of his selections and pithy additions: https://www.bow-international.com/features/the-best-quotes-in-archery/

When he surprised us with details of his training (weights and aerobics) at 80, we knew we had something special to pass on to our visitors. Clearly a volume trainer, about as far away from infrequent high intensity training (HIT) as one can get, it shows that successful training comes in many forms.

The following is an edited version of what he had to tell us about his training at 80:

I am still highly motivated about my training, but have retired at last from competitive archery, and just recently veterans’ cricket. I still write for two of the world’s big archery magazines and am doing winter cricket practice and coaching of wicket keepers.

My training focuses on two body parts per day: delts/chest, quads/leg biceps, back/triceps, and biceps-forearms/calves.

I train 5 days a week, do around 8 to 10 sets per body part, alternating medium to high reps, 15 to 20 reps to failure, and an HIT session of low reps to failure utilizing appropriate weights for each particular session.

At night I ride the exercise bike for 30 minute sessions on a decent level of tension and train abs on my off days. So all in all I keep quite busy!

I have very little rest between sets, so a workout is done in around 30 to 60 minutes. I count random numbers to get to failure and that gives me the best chance of reaching a real failure situation.

I train with respectable weights, realizing my now 80 years, and sensible caution about injury.

Shown here at 79, Roy tells us that he gets up every day aiming to do what he did the day before. "So far it seems to be working," he adds.

The bottom line is that I’ve done this all my life. I love it, and it has rewarded me with a level of fitness and strength which is clearly unusual for my age, which medical folk constantly seem impressed about!!

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1At age 76, Philip Winship “Wink” Davis still works on an orchard, but he is hardly what you would call a “gentleman farmer.” Instead, think “farm fit.”

He is not a fan of being on prescription medication if he can avoid it, so several months ago he decided that he would schedule a cardiac ablation. An ablation is a minimally invasive procedure that scars tissue in your heart to block the irregular electrical signals that can cause A-Fib. From everything he read about ablation procedures, it seemed that there was not a big downside risk. On the other hand, he realized that even though this was not open-heart surgery, it was a serious operation and there was no guarantee of success.

The ablation procedure was performed on April 15. His cardiologist had warned him that some patients experience A-Fib events shortly after the surgery, but many of those who have such relapses eventually see them taper off and eventual fade away. The existence and the duration of an A-Fib event can be somewhat subjective, but Wink enjoyed a comparative advantage in this regard. Beginning in August of last year, he installed the Kardia app on his iPhone, which enables its user to record their heart rhythm and objectively assess and identify an A-Fib event.

To learn more about EarthDance Organic Farm School where Wink works in the orchard, check out their website at https://earthdancefarms.org/

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