Getting older doesn’t mean giving up on staying fit

IT HAS been eight years since Ray Weiss last missed his regular 10am Pilates class. It should be noted that Weiss is 97 years old.

George Corones, 99, beat a swimming competitor aged 47. Exercising has helped him remain fit and strong. (Pic: Liam Kidston)

IT’S been eight years since Ray Weiss last missed his regular 10am Pilates class. This morning is no exception: the former pastor is in a communal room at Uniting Northaven Turramurra, an aged-care home in Sydney’s upper north shore, waiting for the session to start. He is 45 minutes early. It should be noted that Weiss is 97 years old.

While the nonagenarian now gets around with the help of a Zimmer frame, Weiss says he has no intention of giving up his regular exercise routine, weakening limbs be damned. In fact, he credits Pilates for his good health and badgers other residents at the home to join him.

“If you stop moving, that’s it,” Weiss tells Stellar. “You see some people come in here and they don’t even try. Sometimes they only last a week before they’re heading back out the door in a box!”

Weiss says he doesn’t spend much time worrying about whether or not he’ll make it to 100. He just wants to remain as mobile as he can until his last day.

That attitude is on the rise among those aged 85 and older, who happen to be part of the fasting-growing age group in Australia. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are around 4870 centenarians at present; by 2050, they are expected to number 41,100.

A social group in Brisbane eschews an entry fee in favour of one simple qualification: you have to be at least 100 years old to join up. They call themselves The 100+ Club. And their motto? “Just keep breathing.”

Eileen Tayler is one member, and the way in which she has lived her life may have something to do with why she is still bowling and ironing at the age of nearly 103, despite the fact she is totally blind in one eye and has just five per cent vision in the other.

The great-great grandmother grew up during the Depression on a farm in rural Queensland, where she had to get up at 3am to milk cows before walking more than three kilometres to school and back.

“It was plain living and hard work,” says Tayler, who lives with her daughter Kathryn McDonnell, 70, and son-in-law Quack, 72, just outside Cairns. “I’ve had a good life — and I’m still having a good life.”

George Corones will qualify for membership of The 100+ Club in less than a year — he will hit the milestone early next April. A swimmer from Brisbane, Corones lives by a simple mantra: do today, and every day, at least what you did yesterday. He tells Stellar that he begins his day with simple stretches and single-leg balances, which he calls “flamingos”.

“Doing less is a step backwards,” he says over email. (Corones is nearly deaf.) “Retiring from sport and putting [your] feet up commences one’s terminal process.”

Corones tells Stellar he is “still loving life”, swims 500m and walks two kilometres three times a week, then tops it all off with weight-resistance work at his local gym. He was a family GP before eventually retiring at the age of 80, at which point he joined Masters Swimming Queensland to stay active.

George Corones is proof that living an active life is good for you. (Pic: Liam Kidston)

He enjoys a glass of wine with his evening meal, gave up smoking at the age of 65 and only eats enough to satisfy his appetite. His son Harry, 69, is proud to have a father who still lives independently. Corones drives himself each day to visit his wife Thelma, 92, who lives in a home. The pair have been together for more than 73 years.

“He watches his swim times and grumbles if his training has been interrupted by ill health,” says Harry, who finds inspiration in his dad’s zest. “Now I want to make it to 100!”

Given his family’s genes, Harry could have a good chance of reaching his goal, says Professor Perminder Sachdev, who is behind the Sydney Centenarian Study which researched around 350 people between the ages of 95 to 110. “When you get to an exceptionally long life,” he says, “genes are important, but so is lifestyle.”

He found those in the 95-plus age bracket were either “escapers” (healthy with no disease), “delayers” (those who have managed to push back disease until later in life) or “survivors” (those who have had or are living with disease but have not been incapacitated by it).

“Of those involved, 50 per cent had escaped dementia and many, while frail, were still functional,” adds Sachdev, who has deliberately lost a few kilos himself since starting the study.

Most of those who had made it to 95 were nonsmokers, drank only a little or moderately, had never been obese and stayed active and sociable late in life. They also tended to be conscientious and optimistic, backing up findings from similar studies.

These amazing centenarians feature in Stellar’s The Timeless Issue. (Pic: Stellar)

Jillian Pateman, an administrator with Masters Swimming New South Wales, cites one elderly swimmer who recently completed a 2.4 kilometre ocean swim. “A decade ago, we would still have had swimmers in the over 90s category, but they wouldn’t be swimming competitively like today,” Pateman tells Stellar.

Not long ago, she adds, “society demanded if you were over 50 you hang up your swimmers. Nowadays they are making up their own minds. They want to go on forever. The people in the over 90 category are sparky. They’re all intellectually there, still in control of all their faculties.”

Back in Sydney, Weiss’s Pilates instructor Julie Flowers has succeeded in curing her students of everything from frozen fingers and shoulders to incontinence. She says that staying fit well beyond what most would consider one’s peak physical age is less about vanity and more about simple dignity.

“If you can still feed yourself and don’t need incontinence pads all the time, then you’re going to feel better about life,” she says.

As for Corones? His ambitions are somewhat grander. In March, he competed in the Masters Swimming Australia Championships on the Gold Coast, swimming the 50m freestyle in 55.21 seconds. He beat a competitor aged 47. Corones’s success in the pool has him thirsty for another personal win, and he’s not apologising for it. “If you don’t exercise,” he reckons, “it will not be done. No one else can do it for you.”

Originally published as Getting older doesn’t mean giving up on staying fit