Customer Reviews

Staying Fit Over 50: Conditioning for Outdoor Activities

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Not everyone will agree with me (I'm sure), but based on my own being a fifty-something male who is fighting Father Time as part of my never-ending quest to stay reasonably fit, I think that any book that purports to cover the subject of "fitness over fifty" needs to address the realities of what happens to the human body as it ages. This requires more than a trivial reference to a few measurements of physical decline, including percentage loss of "VO2 max," it demands frank and full discussion of what it actually means to be aging and yet trying to remain athletically active.

Here's the deal, like it or not: as we get older, we get more brittle, less flexible, more prone to gaining weight, and more prone to injuries, which in turn take longer to heal. And on and on. Consequently, it becomes increasingly important to be smart, prudent, and strategic in the way one approaches physical activities.

A good book on this topic would devote a great deal of its contents to these realities of aging, and would serve as a guide to avoiding injury, dealing with various kinds of soreness and other age-related physical issues, and addressing the *psychological* issues related to the realization that one's body no longer can do what once it did.

Instead, this book is, for the most part, just another general treatise on "beginning exercise," with but a very few comments that might be helpful to 50+ people in particular. In fact, the first part of the book is actually counter-productive, in my opinion, as its message is essentially the old "inspirational" saw about how "age is only a number," etc. Folks, this isn't true, and even the best-trained athletes over fifty years old will confess as much.

Most of the book is a slog through "how to begin" various sports, including running, swimming, cycling, and cross-country skiing. This information may be useful for people who absolutely have never done any serious exercise, but these sections are addressed to a general audience, with practically no information that is of particular use to an "over fifty."

With so many people who have exercised one way or another getting older, there remains a crying need for a book that actually addresses the issues that aging athletes will encounter as the years go by. As the old saying goes, aging isn't for cowards, it's a tough process that has to be addressed head-on, not sugar-coated and pep-talked out of existence.

I was hoping that this book would tell me how to go from a moderately fit fifty-year-old to a very fit fifty-one-year-old. Unfortunately, it is written for the person who has been incredibly fit through their forties and tells them how to maintain that through their fifties. I think its target audience is quite small.

The examples of fitness Mr. Sloan uses are definitely those of people who have been running marathons, racing on cross-country skis, and who have been punishing themselves physically for many years. In one chapter, he tells his readers how to find their ideal exercising heartrate. He uses the example of a forty-two year old man with a resting heart rate of 43. This person is already incredibly fit and probably doesn't need a book to tell him how to stay that way.

In another example, he says suppose you now run ten kilometers in forty-three minutes. That is a pace of about seven minutes a mile for six miles - there are very few people approaching fifty who can do that.

There is a lot of good information about training using heart rate has a monitor. The chapter on stretching is also very good and probably the most useable chapter in the book. Unfortunately, most of the book is directed to people who are more fit than most of us can even dream about.

This book teaches a lot about the body, its production of energy, diet, and philosophy behind a training program. It's focused on aging jocks. It's weak on specific examples for non-jocks like me. But it does explain what happens to the body as it ages and how physical activities are affected and what can be done about it (and, at times, what can't), which no other book deals with that I've seen. I'm glad I bought/read it. I can now converse with my cross-country runner & cyclist 17-year old son! For more specifics on exercises you'll need another book, such as "Conditioning for Outdoor Fitness", authored by Musnick & Pierce.

I'm not a "jock" but I am a reasonably fit 50+ male that still runs, backpacks and cycles. This book does a very good job of explaining why men need to be working out and staying fit, and provides good motivational information towards that end.

But much of the message is "To stay fit over 50, you should have been working out while you were in your 40's". Well, DUH!

And as others have well said in these reviews, this book is way too short on specific examples of workouts and examples of how and why a reasonably healthy male can increase their flexibility and strength. It's very strategic (30,000 feet) rather than dropping down in the weeds and getting specific. I don't want strategic- I already know that I need to stay active to stay healthy. I wanted specifics, and this didn't deliver.

Unless you want a book on WHY you need to stay fit over 50, instead of the specifics of "Conditioning for Outdoor Activities" (as the title states), don't buy this one. Sorry.

I am one of the 30% of very fat adults. I have always been overweight and don't really know how to exercise and get fit. This is a good book, well written but it is not the kind of book i need right now.

It is scientific in tone and attitude, full of good facts and the kind of knowledge that is testable in a college classroom. Weak on motivation and push to get and keep going. The first half is a introduction to exercise physiology, with the chapter on the brain(6) especially well done. The second half is a introduction to several different outdoors sports to open up vistas to the already fit---skiing, swimming, running, walking, rowing. And that is the problem for me with the book, it is preaching to the choir, those who are already fit. Who exercised through their 40's rather than reading and playing with the computer as did i. So if you are in the targetted audience this is a very good book, but if not it is just ok....

Motivation, push, desire. These are the things needed by novice walkers, not provided by the book. It assumes you are already on the positive feedback curve where you feel better because you are fit and now need a variety of things to do with your body. Assuming this type of person the book is a very good buy as it will give you a few new facts and lots of choices to investigate.

So it is not directed to me, or the rest of us need to get fit bfore the fat kills us....But rather to the rest of you who approach 50 worrying that the best years are behind you. This is a good place for you to start.

I used this book, along with "Body for Life", to work out a routine that matched my lifestyle and capabilities, and get rid of 30 pounds of fat that I had accumulated since college days. I just finished my first Power Walk marathon this spring, and am training for my first 10K next year at age 70. This book leads you through many, many options; swimming, hiking, walking, running, bike riding, etc. with great advice on each. I keep it filed with my jogging shoes and my hand weights for quick reference. It's not the only book you will need to get in shape, but it is one of the few, and it is one you will refer to weekly as you progress from couch potato to 'ramblin Grandpa'.