Moving to a lower intensity workout

Ever since we moved our workouts to the new Breakaway Sports Training facility in late November, we've had a different trainer for what used to be general fitness classes, but are now high intensity speed and agility classes run by an 18 year old trainer and more geared toward a younger and far more agile crowd. I can almost keep up with the kids but I often have to stop at fewer reps than they can do because I just flat out run out of steam earlier than they do. It's a simple factor of age. I just don't have their stamina, nor is it likely that I ever will, either. It sometimes gets me down that I am the token "old lady" among a bunch of exuberant kids that can beat me, hands down, at just about anything. So what has come as something of a relief is that Jason, my physical therapist, is starting a women's workout class that was supposed to start this past Tuesday, but was cancelled due to our nasty snow/rain/freezing rain/ice storm that hit this week. However, since it starts at 6 p.m. on Tuesday nights, I plan to switch to this lower intensity class come next week and then go to the Saturday noon women's class instead of the 10 a.m. high intensity speed/agility class that I have been going to. This leaves me more time to sleep in and a longer period in the morning to have my newspapers and coffee, a kind of "sacred morning ritual" that is very much a part of my day each and every morning. I am looking forward not only to working with Jason again, who I've missed working with very badly, but I am also looking forward to having people closer to my own age to workout with. I'm also hurting in places that I don't think I should be hurting in, indicating to me that maybe I've been overdoing it a bit, so having a lower intensity workout will be good for my aging body in that it won't push me so hard and yet will still keep me fit and agile. That will be a good thing as I enter my fifties and try to stay as physically fit as possible in my middle years of life.

YOUNGER NEXT YEAR
So I got this book called "Younger Next Year for Women" about how to stay youthful into middle age and beyond. It sounded like a good book, and it's got some wonderful advice, admittedly, but it says that the only way to do this is to exercise six days a week, and by that, they mean going to a gym and doing a full out workout. Fine if you've got the time and are retired, but for us working folks, well, it's all I can do to juggle all the things I do each day. I work full time, have a bit of a commute, then I have stuff going just about every night of the week...OK, so this is a personal choice I've made. I could give up all that stuff and go join a gym and work out six nights a week to the exclusivity of everything else I'm involved in, but I suspect that after a while, I'd become terribly bored with that, especially going at it alone without someone there to kick my butt into doing it. But the fact that I exercise at all I consider to be a good thing, because anyone that knows me knows that I really detest exercise at all. Really. I do. Given the choice, I'd just as soon curl up on the sofa with a good book, or sleep or do anything else but exercise. I've never been an athletic sort to begin with and I just don't like having to do any kind of physical activity if given a choice, but I know that at my age, it's just plain out becoming a necessity if I am to stay healthy into my middle aged years, so I force myself to go and train at Breakaway once or twice a week. It helps to have Jason there, who rehabbed my left knee twice and my right arm once after injuries in the past year and a half, and I really having access to his knowledge when some part of me hurts that ought not to. He can give me exercises to help deal with that issue. He also knows how to make me laugh when I'm having a rough spell and encourages me a lot to keep pushing even when I'm fighting to make it through a high intensity workout with the kids. So that is what helps me to get up off of the sofa and go exercise, period. But six days a week? Maybe when I retire and have more free time! This book is good, though, in that it is teaching me lessons for how to live in an aging body and how to forestall a lot of problems that crop up with aging. If there's anything I do not want to happen, it's to become infirm to the point of having to depend on others. I want to remain strong and independent for as long as I can, and if this book can impart any good advice on how to do that, it was well worth the purchase price.