THE QATSPY® Quapaw Aviation Tactical Sportswear Performance, Yukan Outfitter Company
By: Charles W. Boatright, President of THE QATSPY®
The Importance of Health/Fitness over 60– Health/Fitness is not just to Maintain Your Physical Fitness; but Your Cognitive Abilities As Well
The AARP just released their guidelines and recommendation for those over the age of 50 to remain active in sports, fitness, and to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle to prevent the ravages of aging. Sports, fitness, and healthy diet extend far beyond our physical status and directly affects our mental ability, as well.
Sports, fitness, and a healthy diet directly impacts our cognitive abilities to function in order to retain our language skills, memory, reading/writing/math skills, and maintaining those other highly developed motor skills that we depend on in our daily life.
Just because you have retired or are close to retiring from your current career, doesn’t mean you retire from being engaged and physically active in sports, fitness, and watching your diet. It is vital that as you approach your 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, that you stay mentally and physically active and engaged socially as you get into your 70’s and beyond.
One great method to stay engaged is to take one of your hobbies and develop it into your second career after retiring that you can do at your leisure and on your schedule. In my mid-30’s, I went to VoTech college to pick up welding that I do now as a second part time career. I thoroughly enjoy working with my hands and metals.
Sports, Fitness, and Diet after Your 50’s
Since I was 12- years old, I have been active in fitness in order to maintain my athletic performance in football, rugby, baseball, and golf. I was never going to compete at a higher level than high school sports, but I knew the importance of keeping in shape going into the U.S. ARMY after graduating from high school, and later as I approached my 50’s. I knew what the ravages of aging can do to those over their 50’s that don’t take care of their fitness.
Except for a short period of time in my mid-40’s, when I had two knee surgeries and a hip replacement, I have maintained my health and fitness routine faithfully. Just a couple of years ago, I converted the space above my photography studio into what I call my OASIS-MOJAVE GYM, shown in the featured image, above. This turned out to have a significant impact on my current health and fitness even now at age 65.
Anyone can convert a spare room or garage into a workout area just by using very basic exercise equipment, that I use. The exercise equipment that I use, shown in the featured image, above, is all the exercise equipment that I use 5- days per week. The only other piece of equipment not shown here is my programmable exercise bike, that I complete my exercise regimen.
The Work I Did before and After I Retired in June of 2015
For 33- years before retiring, I worked as a grid engineer with Entergy Mississippi where I was in Transmission Lines where I also flew aerial patrols. That required sitting in the cockpit for long hours between fuel stops, they used to call us Kerosene Cowboys, because of the Jet-A fuel that smells like Kerosene. Sitting for long hours takes a toll on one’s body, especially the sciatic nerve area that can cause numbness, pain, and balance issues. That is why I kept my same FBX-25 workout routine for the past 35- years.
Where I’m shown above with a KAMATSU Bulldozer, above, I was called back from off retirement at age 62 in October of 2020 to help out with restoration efforts after Hurricane Laura and Delta that hit southwest Louisiana. What was amazing was that I still remembered the design specs, standards procedures, specifications, and assemblies that I did six years earlier, in June of 2015 when I retired.
Above, I have attached my FBX-25 & CASIMIR DIET, for those interested in a health and fitness regimen that has allowed me not just to maintain my health and fitness, but even more demanding and scrutinizing was modeling that I do for our Hemi-Quinn Bush Pilots Cockpit Collection that I still do at age 66, below:
After a photoshoot that we did in January of 2023, the ground crew challenged me to an AB Challenged that I did below at age 65 in our hangar on my INDIAN Scout Motorcycle with a P-51(D) Mustang in the background. This P-51 was like the one that Tom Cruise (Maverick) flew in the movie TOP GUN: MAVERICK.
