First time I've ever heard of this, and I am older than you. I personally am planning to get killed long before a nursing home sets in.
Member
Assisted living
I seem to continue to get into.....discussions....with friends about making plans for assisted living as we all age. I've made it clear that I am not planning to be in assisted living, or more to the point I am planning not to be in assisted living (30 years from now in my 80s) by keeping strong. They don't get the distinction.
So to you (and Sully). Is that a reasonable stance? Are YOU ever planning on assisted living? I just can't see it.
Catastrophic injuries aside (minimized I damn well hope by lifting and staying strong) it seems needing to go into assisted living does not have to be where you are at the end of your life if you actively plan to stay out. Even my lifting partner is expecting to go there. Am I being just a pig headed male or extra naive?
TMPHBITEU
First time I've ever heard of this, and I am older than you. I personally am planning to get killed long before a nursing home sets in.
Member
I think some of this depends on your mental outlook and your mileage. I work in healthcare (pediatric intensive care) and i have a call room in an adult icu for a bunch of idiotic reasons. So I go by the adult icu every day I work. There are people I see in their 40s that look like they are 70. If you smoke, eat like shit, don’t exercise and/or have poor genetics you can very well end up in assisted living or worse. On the other hand I have seen a guy in his late 60s rep 315 like it was 225. I stupidly asked him if I could ever bench 300 and he acted like it was a given, provided I worked hard. That guy will likely die fully functional and not ever need assisted living I would bet. He has the attitude Rip has. So if you ask me I think you have to have that mental outlook. There are many 80 year old men and women that don’t need assisted living and it helps if you stay strong and don’t accept the inevitability of assisted living.
Member
If you can squat half your body weight, from a physical standpoint, assisted living is not even a topic.
My grandmother was living independently at a time I wouldn't have dared having her try 20% of her body weight.
IMO, she went to assisted living about the time an air squat was sort of off the table. (no science, no measurement, I wasn't even doing the program then, just my guess)
That is not a very "high bar" for the physical aspects of avoiding assisted living. Which in my personal (/limited) exposure is what gets you there.
Given what I perceive as the cognitive benefits, and the impact on blood sugar / heart health. I figure if you're reading this, your golden.
Because, unless you're "doing the program", why would you be reading this?
TLDR: So yes you're pig headed and that's good.
Member
Is your will anything like this?Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
YouTube
Member
My not so well-informed two cents:
You can't control mental decline, but you can control physical decline. I think it's reasonable to assume that strength training will minimize the ravages of sarcopenia in a way that jogging/cycling/etc. will not. Combine that with the mental benefits of strength training, and I think there's a chance of avoiding assisted living.
✓ Member
Maybe if I can find an assisted living center with a platform and a rack I might consider it.
Member
I very much hoped and assumed these would be the responses, so thank you. As far as that low bar, I hope to hell I'm never squatting only 1/2 my BW. It's time to take my first and last lesson in skydiving if that happens.
Starting Strength Coach
Remember guys: strength training can "slow" the arrow of time, but it can't stop it. If you age strong and healthy into your 80s or 90s....you're still going to be 80 or 90. Training won't make you young and strong...it'll help you get old and strong....which is still old.
Goddammit. Shitty truth, but truth it is.
"Assisted living" is a spectrum. My client John The Internet Star, who is 91 and lifts heavy, lives in an "assisted living facility." I've visited it, and it's frippin' awesome. He has a very nice apartment where they fix him a nice dinner every day and take care of some of the chores attendant upon living life in his stead, so he can go out and lift weights, do reading programs with urban children, take naps whenever he wants, see his great grandchildren, rescue damsels in distress (long story), and basically live a life of action and mystery. He lives on his own, but he's got assistance.
In other words, he lives live a fucking king. Like an old king, still vital and strong and having adventures, but with a bit of dizziness and poor eyesight and a tremor and so on. I wouldn't condemn this out of hand, and when I look at the guy's life story I conclude he's earned it, and continues to earn it by the way he lives.
And then, of course, there are "assisted living" facilities that make Dante's Inferno look like Sun City. I've seen them, and it's hard to think that there's anything more physically, existentially, or spiritually horrible in the whole world.
So yeah. It's a spectrum.
✓ Member
First and foremost, if you are defying the conventional wisdom and using barbells to progressively train to become stronger, you are already "pig head" and "extra naïve." Thus defying the conventional thinking that assisted living is just a necessity is right up your alley. But I digress...
A few years ago my wife's grandmother ended up in a nursing home. We watched her physically die of a period of two years. I say "physically" because mentally she was gone within a few months. She was a very sharp, quick-witted woman who unfortunately fell and broke her hip, landing her in a nursing home. Only a few months later she barely recognized us. Every time we visited she was in her bed with the TV on. All day. Every day. Easily a fate worse than death.
What's particularly sad was when she had her wits about her, she would tell my wife exactly what Rip has said. "Just fucking kill me if it comes to that."
Anyone who does not agree with euthanasia needs to watch someone's mind die off in a nursing home. Assisted suicide is far more ethical than assisted living.
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