Another Top Gun: At 92, former Air Marshal PV Iyer runs 8 km a day, doesn’t miss his workouts and has kept chronic illness at bay
He’s just back from an 8-km run; he’s never missed one in his life. Some days, just for variety, he straps on 5 kg weight bands and runs again. Now he’s sheafing through the newspapers as he awaits his breakfast of oats, toast and eggs. Mid-morning through to noon, he reads books, writes journals, lens to podcasts and learns foreign languages. He hits the home gym 5 pm, doing some weight training with dumbbell workouts and pull-ups on exercise bars to work his muscles. He has run 1,20,000 km, is as lean and supple as an athlete but not quite one. At 92, former Air Marshal PV Iyer is somewhat of a fitness maverick, who can give most young people a run for their money. And he has managed to keep chronic illnesses, which are plaguing the younger generation, and old-age fuzziness of his peers at bay, simply “using his legs.” If he’s managed to hold your interest so far, know this. As an Air Force man, he kept to his drills but started running long-dance only at the age of 47.
“In the middle of my career, the Air Force introduced an age-specific fitness test that required us to run a mile in less than seven minutes. That’s when I started running. It actually improved my body, kept my major organs disease-free and I have never stopped since. There’s so much strength in our bodies derived from our prehoric ancestors. They ran long dances and had excellent heart and lung conditions. We have their genes; so all we have to do is to activate our body potential,” he tells us. He even reasons how the capacity of the human body is higher than predatory animals. “Human beings are endowed with a large number of sweat glands, which enables them to endure the excess heat generated during prolonged physical activity. Animals like the cheetah, with superior speed, can only run for a minute or two. If they are unable to capture their prey in that period, they have to rest, cool off and try again. But this is not so in the case of a human being. Australia’s indigenous people have a unique method of capturing kangaroos. They follow the animal, which will initially hop away out of reach. But they patiently follow them, sometimes for several days, until the poor animals can no longer stand, let alone run. The animal can then just be picked up from where it fell.”
#ExpressHealth | Meet Retired Air Marshal PV Iyer. He’s 92, has never missed his morning 8-km run and has managed to keep chronic illnesses at bay.
Here’s how he does it: https://t.co/ckyeS0tnQH pic.twitter.com/aNFoIAALdV
— The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) October 29, 2022
Having lived disease-free, he simplifies a mantra that can be effortlessly followed all age groups. “Fitness depends on your daily activity. You have just got to move your legs, be it walking, jogging, running, cycling, swimming, even the to-and-fro pacing in your hall, for 30 minutes and go up to one-and-a-half hours if you can. Your heart becomes stronger as the blood gets supplied to all parts of your body and your heart rate comes down. You work up an appetite, sleep well, your skin glows, you shed unwanted weight and you don’t get tired,” he adds.
Iyer’s schedule has never varied while on duty or time-off.
Iyer, who has now written a book, Fit at Any Age, A Practitioner’s Guide, claims that his daily drill has actually made him a better person. “I have never been so enthusiastic, self-confident and content. In fact, using your legs raises your happy hormones to such levels that you do not feel negative emotions like jealousy,” says he.
Value your right to life
Settling down at his study, where he loves to write on his computer, Iyer debunks the idea of ageism, arguing it is a reality projected others. “The older we get, the more we value our lives. In my 80s, I had to once consult an ENT for a slight nosebleed. I wanted to be reassured that there was nothing seriously wrong with me or that it wasn’t symptomatic of a major illness. Instead of suggesting tests, he asked me to relax and accept whatever comes along since I had lived a full life. The doctor completely missed the point. I did not go to him for compassionate advice but to be cured. After a certain age, just get yourself checked before embarking on a fitness regime and customise it to your condition relying on the advice of your medical practitioner. Heart patients need to follow their cardiolog’s advice to a tee,” he says.
Science of life: Why you can start over at 50
None of what Iyer advocates is illogical. In fact, he has spent years studying the science of body processes and mechanisms before devising a schedule for himself. “It is around the age of 50 that we sometimes tend to fall into a defeat state of mind, a feeling that it is too late to get back to a vigorous state of health. It is important to realize that it is never late to regain your fitness,” he says.
Science says that much of our present health status depends on what we have been doing during the last three months. That’s the benchmark that decides what we ought to do next. “For example, if you discontinue exercise even if you were a regular before, your body status would be no different from a person who has never exercised. You will have to begin again and build back your strengths. Luckily, when you enter an exercise programme, you will become fit within three months. This is true for both men and women and aperson of any age. If you start living a healthy life, you can be assured that the vestiges of your earlier lifestyle will not come in the way of acquiring robust health. But then fitness training needs to become a part of your daily life,” says Iyer.
Respect your regime
Iyer’s schedule has never varied while on duty or time-off. He wakes up at 5 am, then runs between 6 to 8 am. And he hasn’t ever broken the habit while on holidays. Travelling on a long-dance train, he would get down at a station whenever it halted. If the stoppage was for 20 minutes, he would jog up and down the railway station for 15 minutes. And if the train was relatively empty, he would run in the narrow passageways. “I have run in ships, in hospitals, on mountains and in valleys.”
He even recalls working out at a gym in Bethesda near Washington during one of his foreign trips. “I was 84 then. A man complimented my agility and called me a ‘young man.’ I proudly told him my real age and was promptly humbled when he told me, ‘Well, I am 93,’” he says with a guttural laugh.
Iyer and family
His mid-morning is devoted to writing, editing his manuscripts, reading books and learning languages. With razor-sharp memory, he has mastered English, Russian and French besides Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayali, Kannada and Marathi. He’s now hooked to podcasts. He has lunch at 1.30 pm, takes a little siesta and works out for one-and-half-hours 5 pm onwards. Dinner is 7.30 pm and it is lights out 9.30 pm. Of course, you would say that Iyer has had the advantage of military rigour but he suggests that this is far easier to maintain compared to doctor visits and drugs.
Always eat moderately and have a great variety of food
“We often hear about the virtue of certain abdominal exercises that are supposed to reduce belly fat – leg raises, sit-ups, oblique crunches and so on. These are all good exercises but they do not contribute to the reduction of belly fat. What they do is strengthen the abdominal muscles. To get rid of belly fat, we have to consume fewer calories in a day than we spend that day. Now, in my 90s, I do not eat meat anymore but have one egg a day. I do take milk and milk products, but in a limited fashion; for example, I do not drink milk, but use milk for my oats porridge in the morning and three cups of tea a day. I also take yoghurt during meals. My main food conss of rice and a variety of vegetables, nuts, fruits, and seeds (for example, pumpkin seeds added to the morning porridge). I also add a fair amount of cranberries to my morning porridge,” Iyer tells us. His lunch comprises rice and vegetables and dinner is usually a dosa or idli with vegetables.
RUNNING GOOD FOR HEART HEALTHIf your heart is healthy on evaluation and you are episode-free, then running is good for heart health. As Iyer says, “The consensus of the medical fraternity is that exercise reduces the build-up of plaque in the blood vessels. As an anecdotal justification for my confidence, take the example of Clarence DeMar, a famous American marathon runner. When he died at an old age, an autopsy was performed on his body. The findings of the autopsy were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1961. His coronary arteries were found to be two to three times the normal size. This, of course, does not lead us to any scientific conclusion regardingthe benefits of regular running. But anecdotal examples do boost our confidence in the efficacy of running in preventing atherosclerosis.”
As legs have the biggest muscles in the body, Iyer feels that working them would need blood supply and make the heart work hard and strengthen it. He recalls how, being a long-dance runner, he could control his resting heart rate to about 38-40 beats a minute, one that had shocked one of the nurses during a routine health check-up as she pressed the emergency button. However, the doctors understood. A low resting heart rate leads to efficient heart function.
Age is just a number
The former Air Marshal says he is not a rare breed but one among peers. He cites the example of Fauja Singh, who is 110 years old and lives in Britain, took up running in his 90s, ran marathons, including the one he completed after he was 100 years old. “It is not just men, many women in their fifties, sixties and seventies toorun regularly. My daughters, Mina (67) and Indira (65), exercise regularly and often take part in 10-km runs.”
How do I overcome my Day 1 fear factor?
Iyer suggests a longish prep routine spanning three months to get into the running routine. “Jog-walk-jog or walk-jog-walk at intervals. Continue for a month, then pick up pace. Then try a 10-minute run. Within three months, you can get there,” he says, making it look all very easy. “You can jog for increasingly longer periods and the need to walk between the jogging sessions becomes progressively less. the end of six weeks, many of you may be able to jog continuously for the full 20 minutes. But people who are not so young or are overweight or have no athletic background may not be able to jog continuously for more than a few minutes at a time even after six weeks. So be it. When I started running at the age of 47, it took me about a month to run continuously for 10 minutes. When you reach the stage where you can run continuously for 10 to 12 minutes, you have hit a landmark. You have become a miler! Most people can run a mile in 12 minutes,” says he. Of course, the benefits of running show up only after six weeks. But then life is worth living to its fullness.
(PV Iyer’s book, Fit at Any Age, A Practitioner’s Guide, has been published Bloomsbury)
