Rediscovering the joys of exercise

If you want to be a fit 80-year-old, you have to be a fitter than average 50-year-old, so I signed up for an exercise class

I became a sporty person a decade or so ago.

Up to then I had been conditioned by youthful experiences to avoid any kind of exercise that did not involve dog walking, birdwatching, or walks home from the pub.

My primary school was small and had no games at all, unless you count fighting during playtime.

When I moved onto the muscular Christianity of a religious Brother’s secondary school I had dreams of sailing past obligingly ponderous defenders and scoring a dozen goals a match.

The sad reality was that after a few minutes of running I would have to pull up, hands on knees, gasping dramatically for air.

The sad reality was that after a few minutes of running I would have to pull up, hands on knees, gasping dramatically for air

So I ended up in goals. I was actually a promising goalkeeper, but the goalies were always picked last, which was hard on the self-esteem. I also wore glasses and often only saw a sliotar just before it hit me in the face. So I spent game-time banging a leisurely ball on the tennis court, or better still wandering around with a pack of other exercise shunners, picking up litter. We could hear the warlike cries from the pitches and felt like conscientious objectors, while I slipped away to watch the fieldfares and redwings scrummaging in the fields, my favourite spectator sport. The Brothers were lacking in many respects, but they had lovely grounds.

After a while I started smoking. If you had landed up at my school with a posh accent and no sporting credibility you would have smoked too. It would have helped to get you into the tough townie gang, with their denim jackets, scowls, and heavy metal albums under the non-smoking arm.

When I got to medical school I was obliged to show up for the class rugby team, and enjoyed it, but the same dreaded shortness of breath recurred.

It is a lot more acceptable to stand on a rugby pitch, chest heaving, than a soccer field.

It was also generally easier to chase down the players. There are few feelings as good as those post-rugby, when every muscle is aching in a good way, and all your aggression is vented, but at that stage I just didn’t feel at home with organised exercise.

I worked summer jobs on building sites; I roadied for bands and touring theatre companies without difficulty, but I always avoided anything that involved shorts and trainers.

I soon gave up cigarettes and never smoked again. I was reasonably fit from walking my slightly deranged Boxer dogs and gardening, but all the metrics showed that if you want to be a fit 80-year-old – and I did – you have to be a fitter than average 50-year-old. At last, with considerable fear, I signed up for an exercise class. Like most avoidance behaviour, I had forgotten why I disliked that sort of thing.

I felt strange leaving the house with a water bottle and a tracksuit. It didn’t feel like me.

And then I was doing press-ups and squats, feeling the long-forgotten burning chest, and gulps for air. And that was just the warm up. As we got into weights, pulling elastic bands, stretching, and jumping, I started to enjoy it. The sense of peace after a workout was priceless and I wanted to keep it up.

So I went to see a specialist.

The stethoscope stayed on her desk as she asked me probing questions for about five minutes and then she asked me one last question.

“What would you say to a patient of yours who only experienced shortness of breath on strenuous exercise?”

“They had exercise-induced asthma?”

Her patient and slightly condescending smile confirmed that I was right.

She didn’t leave it at that. More sophisticated tests confirmed that I had excellent lung function; however, on strenuous cardiac activity my airways would constrict.

Luckily for me, it was an easy fix. I was prescribed an inhaler and took a squirt before my next exercise session. The workout was transformed. There was no initial shortness of breath – well, no more than anyone else –  and that made all the difference.

Now I rarely let a week go by without a couple of sessions of weights, stretching, or cardio. I have far more strength and energy and it feels as routine to pull on the trainers as to check my emails. Sometimes I wish I had discovered the fix decades ago.