Chilling On The Reclining Chair
As we age and hit retirement age we tend to tell ourselves we are not going to stress ourselves out anymore. This often means sitting back on your reclining chair more often. During your working days, you probably had a set schedule. Get up in the morning, hit the gym (maybe the gym in the evening), come home and do a few chores, then relax for the night.
In retirement, it probably looks a little more like this. Wake up, roll over and grab another hour or two of sleep, have some breakfast and coffee, sit back and either watch TV or read, take a nap, sit back, and relax some more.
As you can see there is not much exercise going on there. Some people when they retire will continue the gym but it usually becomes more of a social aspect. Very few people actually like working out or going to the gym. The bottom line is that even though you’re retired, approaching retirement, or even a little younger and still working is that you should do some kind of exercise.
Time To Hit The Gym…Not
This was me too. I am not really a “hit the gym” everyday kind of person. Don’t get me wrong, when I was younger, I did use gyms and even went through the “at home” workout programs. That coupled with working was usually enough to keep me somewhat fit. When I retired, I looked at it a completely different way.
Full-Time RVers
My wife and I became full-time RVers and worked seasonal jobs. Between our seasonal jobs and some hiking, we figured that would be more than enough exercise. Apparently riding around in golf carts doesn’t count towards steps or mileage…lol. The hikes were good but they were few and far between.
Walking?
Fast forward to today and we are in need of some exercise. Being on somewhat of a fixed income (I was doing seasonal work preparing taxes, yup more sitting…lol) we were looking for a solution without a monthly price tag. What did we come up with? Walking.
Loops Around The Mall
I know, I know, walking is completely boring. I get it. You wind up walking around your block, on a high school track, or at some local mall, and after a while it just sucks. We started walking around the RV park we are in now and we still get a little bored with this.
So What’s the solution? We definitely want to walk. Walking has awesome health benefits. Our solution is simple. We walk the campgrounds some days and other days we find parks, trails, or lakes to walk around. It’s perfect. Sometimes, depending on where we go, we can even Geocache!!!
Update (May 2024)
Although walking is still a great (and free) way to get exercise, I did join a gym. There are 2 reasons for this. The first is that since I live in Florida it gets way too hot (for me) to do any kind of decent walk. The second is that I wanted to add strength training. Now I could do some band work in the RV but again, Florida’s heat is too much. The A/C in the RV makes it comfortable (at best) and I do not want to overheat. The gym is air-conditioned with fans…lol.
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