In days gone by, it would have been very difficult to find a senior citizen looking for a gym. The idea of taking responsibility for ones fitness was not a common one in the general population anyway, and was even rarer among the senior citizens who would always feel that if they had gotten to the ages where they could be considered ‘seniors,’ then they were doing things right and there was no use ‘fixing it if it wasn’t broken.’

Then somewhere along the way, the idea of taking responsibility for one’s own fitness took hold and with time grew to a point where many people, including senior citizens are now to be seen undertaking exercises aimed at taking themselves to a higher level of fitness.

Now by the time a person attains an age at which they would be considered senior citizens, they usually have dispelled the notions which would make them subject to ‘mob Psychology’, that it, just doing something because others are doing it. Because of this, there must be something else to explain the proliferation of senior citizens taking more responsibility for their physical fitness.

Indeed, as it turns out, the reality of living in today’s world calls for a new level of fitness for senior citizens.

People are living longer, for one, and today it is considered realistic to expect to live to an age like 80 or 90 in many countries, at least if the life expectancy statistics are anything to go by. Now considering that someone who is 60 (and who already qualifies to be considered a senior citizen) might have another 20 or 30 years to live, it is only fair that such a person would take responsibility for their personal fitness – lest they end up spending the last years of their lives on a wheel chair, which to many people is a very off-putting prospect.

People are also working for longer – and this is another factor leading to the need for a new level of fitness for seniors. The International standard retirement age has progressively been lifted from 50 to 55 and lately to 60, with most countries have lifted theirs even higher to an extent that it is not rare to find a person who has clocked 70 still on a company’s or a government’s payroll. Challenges of the modern workplace on the other hand call for a higher level of fitness and the senior citizen who has to stay at their work place has to conform to this new degree of physical fitness requirement to work effectively.

Beyond the workplace, living in today’s world – which is becoming ever more fast paced – also demands for a new level of fitness for seniors who find themselves having to rush from place to place to get various things they need to be done, a great difference from the past when they would have just sent a child or some other youngster to get the same done for them.

Pedometers are electronic devices that count your walking steps and from the same steps work out the distance you have traveled in the more advanced pedometer models.

The working of a pedometer largely depends on a motion sensing mechanism – which is implemented using a coiled spring set-up in the most basic models, a hairspring mechanism in the slightly more advanced set ups and a piezo-electric accelerometer mechanism in the most advanced set ups.

The main role of pedometers in personal fitness is motivation. Success breeds success, or so we are told. Noticing that you managed to walk 5000 steps yesterday, and then 6,000 today can motivate you to do some 7,000 tomorrow. That build up of figures can lead to a sense of accomplishment – which can be considered a form of success, even before the success starts to show up on the weight scales, for those who want to use walking exercises as a part of their weight loss effort. As it turns out, many people using other exercises for their weight loss would be glad to get such a way of getting motivation before their weight loss starts showing up on their weighing scale – and unfortunately, this is something that only people using walking exercise can get, thanks to pedometers. This is to say that through a pedometer, you get a way of enjoying the exercise journey, as well as the destination (weight loss) – which is consistent with the sage’s advice of enjoying the journey as well as the arrival at the destination.

The more advanced pedometer-models can convert the steps that one has walked into actual distance (in terms of kilometers and miles) and this way one can get a way of enumerating their weight loss efforts to their friends (or more usefully to their physician) in a way other people – even people who are not involved in weight loss efforts, can relate with. Saying that you walked 10,000 steps yesterday might be meaningless to someone who is not conversant with the recommended walking steps for weight loss. Saying to the same person that you managed to clock some 10 kilometers obviously sounds much more meaningful.

The even more advanced pedometer-models can even convert your walking in terms of calories (albeit approximations) you are likely to have lost through the effort. In this way, coupled with a monitored calories intake, you are in a position of working out whether your are expending the calories you are taking in your exercise regime and whether you are even going beyond expending the calories you are consuming to burn up those stored in form of fat in the body, which is what will ultimately result in weight loss from your exercise effort.

There are even pedometers that come with a memory feature – that they are able to keep a record of how much you have been walking, and perhaps even represent it graphically in the most advanced pedometer models. Now if watching your walking graph shoot up and up is not motivation, then there is really no telling what motivation is.

Many people assume that swimming is a just a fun activity and are unaware of the potential health benefits of swimming.

Learning how to swim and going for regular swimming work outs can reduce your risk of developing health problems that arise from being overweight – things like diabetes, hypertension and stroke among others – because swimming is a very effective fat loss program, which can in the long run lead to healthy weight loss. The way it works is that swimming tends to aid in the conversion of fat to muscle because while swimming, your whole body finds itself having to exercise to overcoming the resistance posed by the water you happen to be swimming in. Now overcoming this resistance results in the build up of muscles which in the short term might manifest as a weight gain rather than a weight loss. Well developed muscles, however, turn out to be your best weight loss allies in the long run because the kind of tissue that makes up muscle actually burns fat even when you are not doing much. Exercise which build up muscles – and swimming is a very good example of it – is therefore best seen as a weight loss investment because the muscles so built can then help the person who has developed them to lose weight almost on ‘autopilot’.

People who suffer from diseases that are characterized by inflammation like arthritis and who are overweight at the same time are yet another group that can benefit from swimming. This is because swimming offers them the opportunity to lose weight without causing too much pain in their joints, which they would have to do on most exercises on dry land.

The kind of breathing required while swimming, too, can really strengthen one’s heart as well as the lungs – keeping one from the health troubles they would have had from these vital organs.

Learning to swim and then going swimming regularly can also lead to better mental health because swimming, like any form of exercise leads to the release of ‘feel good’ chemical in the brain – resulting in good mental health. Furthermore, as a good weight loss exercise, swimming can help a person who is overweight to attain a better body shape, in turn leading to a better body image and higher self esteem, which is the foundation of good mental health and happiness. The very activity of flapping of arms and legs in water involved in swimming together with the continued soothing feel of water against the skin is itself also very therapeutic.

Of course swimming is an activity that is usually carried out in groups and in this way, it gives the person undertaking it to really go out and meet other people – fellow swimmers, swimming instructors and lifeguards at the swimming site for instance – meaning that they have an opportunity to get outside themselves. This can be a great boost to mental and emotional health, seeing that most mental and emotional health problems have loneliness and self-confinement as their root cause.