Hi folks,
This whole baby boomer thing is fascinating, especially when you are looking for a market for your experience as an older athlete. Apparently there are about 75 million of them. Here is the birth rate graph from Wikipedia that determines whether you are a boomer or not.
Based on this graph, to qualify as a Boomer your birthday should lie within the date range from 1946 to 1964, inclusive. From: http://goo.gl/ciVud
I was born in 1943, making me older than the oldest boomer. How about that! I don’t feel old. Does that qualify me to dispense advice to Boomers? Well! Older brothers do love to do that, though the only input I remember receiving from my older brother was a clonk on the head with a heavy book, accompanied by the comment “Now I’ve impressed you with knowledge!” I wasn’t impressed by his humor. Having made many endurance sports training errors, resulting in some pretty serious injuries, I have decided to write a training manual for Boomers based on these experiences. During the process of writing, I have been exploring ‘Boomerspace.’ There is some good stuff out there, such as The Boomer Blog. From the articles on this blog you would think that Boomers are taking over the world, however their stories also indicate that they might be too busy social networking on their computers to work out.
This demographic is showing the potential to impact many aspects of American life. For instance, Citizen Dave says, “Cities should prepare for a wave of aging Baby Boomers.” One of the Boomers cited in this article is quoted as saying, “Boomers can be obnoxious with our sense of self-importance. But you can’t argue with the numbers. We are important because there’s so damn many of us. Moreover, we have very different ideas than generations that came before us. (And, for the most part, I think you have to admit that we changed most things for the better. Please ignore the 1970s — we made big hair mistakes, among others).” I found this pretty amusing, but did they change things for the better? In some ways yes and in some ways no, as is usually the case.
The Boomer generation contributed to tremendous technological advances, but they were not very savings conscious. Being pre-Boomer, my recommendation is that they try to live as full and balanced a life as they can, including some exercise – preferably without too much television. If you want to know more about Boomers, read the linked article entitled, ‘What Boomers Do,’ and here is a complementary video, to complement it:
Whether Boomers will be interested in what I have to say about exercise, I have no idea. If we learn from our mistakes, I certainly have something to contribute. I plan to give it a try, with a deadline for September 24th, 2011.
As an ‘even older than Boomers,’ it’s good to have a goal.
On generational cycles try “The Fourth Turning: an American Prophecy” by W Strauss and N Howe.
For me it fitted sort of okay with economic cycles especially the long wave Kondratiev cycles. I am not sure their case is proven but theird is a detailed and thought provoking intervention.