Part of an ongoing series

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LEDUC -- Gwendolyn Ross is living the life most people aspire to -- she's a healthy, pain-free, independent older person.

"My mind is clear, I don't need a hearing aid, I have my own teeth, I volunteer quite a bit, and have many friends who say they envy me. I love my independence," the sprightly 88-year-old says.

Ross wasn't always this healthy. She started life as a sickly infant who could only survive on barley water. Her childhood was marked with lots of illnesses. When she was 13, she spent a whole month in bed with pneumonia and tonsillitis.

Most of her adult life involved working a farm with husband David and raising their five children.

Her health was pretty good until her 50s, when chronic back pain and a growing stiffness in her joints set in. She decided she had to start doing something before it got worse.

Ross took advice from doctors, a chiropractor and a daughter who regularly works out, added it to things she had read about health and fitness, and designed a 30-minute home-based exercise routine she does every day.

Each morning starts with a series of exercises she does while lying across her bed. Her arms, legs, and hips move effortlessly from one exercise to the next.

Ross then stands and does several stretches.

Her flexibility is amazing for a person of any age. Many people require a towel or exercise band to be able to do a shoulder internal rotation, where one hand is extended over the shoulder, the other is bent behind the back and they are brought as close together as possible. Ross's hands connect, even though she has a hump in her upper back from osteoporosis.

"I was also bending over and touching the floor with my hands until the chiropractor told me, at my age, to only reach down to my ankles," she says demonstrating.

Ross does a series of arm stretches and exercises against a wall in her hallway, before heading for the basement where she works her arms with a pulley rope hanging from the ceiling. "I put up my first pulley in 1973. I've gone through a lot of ropes since then," she says.

Ross uses a broom handle which she raises and lowers above, in front, and behind her, with both hands, exercising her shoulders.

The rest of her workout involves functional activity: doing the housework, tending a large vegetable garden, and walking 25 to 32 blocks, two or three times a week, to shop and pay bills.

"I never learned to drive," says Ross, who has been on her own since her husband died nine years ago.

She keeps her mind sharp by reading the newspaper and staying on top of current affairs.

Her only prescriptions are for eye drops and osteoporosis.

Last October, while wearing ill-fitting shoes, Ross took a tumble down her basement stairs and had to spend three weeks in a seniors lodge building up her strength and gaining a few pounds. It made the grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of two appreciate her healthy, independent life even more.

"Those homes are good and necessary, but give no stimulation to one's mental health, unless you play bingo," she says, standing in her lovely backyard. "There's not much to look forward to other than the next meal."

Ross has many overweight friends and relatives who say they wish they could follow her example, but their knees are too stiff, or their backs ache.

Well, they're not going to get any better if they don't try, she says.

"Personally, I think we are responsible for our own bodies that God gave us, and we should look after them and always try to be useful."

There is nothing as good as being an independent senior, Ross adds, but you have to work at it, keep active, if you want your golden years to be golden.

czdeb@thejournal.canwest.com

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Workout Stories

There are lots of stories about people who don't have the time/money/motivation to exercise.

But what about the people who do whatever it takes to get regular exercise -- the ones getting up a couple hours earlier every morning to fit in their workout, giving up night after night of TV watching to ride their bicycles around the neighbourhood, walking five kilometres uphill -- both ways! -- to get to the gym. Tell us about the lengths you (or someone you know) will go to get in that run/walk/workout.

E-mail your story to livingwell@thejournal.canwest.com

If we publish your story, it just might inspire others to find a way to get past their own barriers and start moving.

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edmontonjournal.com