Get Fit, Become a Better Driver

Posted January 10, 2008, 1:00 pm in Fitness by Growing Bolder


Is the fear of buff, spandex-wearing gym rats keeping you from staying fit? Or perhaps you look at the seemingly endless rows of complicated machines and equipment and think, "Where are the dumbbells?"

Rather than staying away and risking your health and longevity, a California doctor thinks he's found the secret to getting you back in the game.

"There are millions of gyms but this is not a gym. This is fitness center dedicated to improving mental and physical fitness, not just one or the other," Sheldon Zinberg, M.D., the founder of Nifty After Fifty, tells Growing Bolder.

He's opened four Nifty After Fifty centers in California and he has several more planned for cities across the country. The 74-year-old has made a career out of studying the progressive loss of strength and flexibility as people age.

He says his research has found that if you are not hampered by a serious disease, you will lose about 1 percent of muscularity every year starting at the age of 40. That accelerates to 1.5 percent at the age of 60.

So, when you're 70 to 75 years of age, Zinberg says, you're likely to be less than half as strong as you were when you were in your 40s.

But there's good news. Zinberg says he thinks that deterioration is reversible.

"I did a research project at Nifty After Fifty with 529 frail people and we achieved 100-plus percent increase in strength in six to eight weeks. More importantly than that, this translated into a 100-plus percent increase in functionality. By that I mean how many times can I get out of a chair in 60 seconds? How fast I can walk a specific slalom? How fast they can climb stairs. So, it was really a functional improvement and not just a strength improvement," he says.

Zinberg travels the country telling audiences that fitness is not an option; it's an absolute imperative. He also urges people to take up fitness at any age.

"People who never exercised and begin to exercise between the ages of 40 and 70 can get in better shape than the high school and college jocks they knew who gave up exercising," he says in his book, "Win in the Second Half."

Still not convinced? Zinberg says medical experts at Yale University have uncovered a surprising benefit of exercise -- better driving skills.

"(The study found) that people who exercise performed better on driving tests than those who did not exercise. They had 37 percent fewer driving infractions," he says.

So, that means exercise might not only free you from the shackles of poor health, it may keep you behind the wheels of your ticket to ride -- your car.

To help keep older -- and safer -- drivers on the road, Zinberg has added "The Virtual Driver" program to his centers. It enables drivers to sharpen their driving skills under a variety of challenging traffic and weather conditions all in the comfort and safety of the center.

To find out more about the Nifty After Fifty centers, visit www.niftyafterfifty.com.


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