How do you see yourself at age 65? If you are like the average person you will have probably retired from your job - and your exercise routine.
Imagine it, a spare tire has settled around your midsection and your knees hurt when you move around.
Your length of stride has reduced to a shuffle and your balance is so poor you have to be careful navigating over something higher than a half an inch.
And forget about touching your toes - on a good day you might just reach your shins.
All in all the life force has been sucked out of you like some dwindling old engine.
Yes you will clock up some years as the decades tick by, but you don't have to watch your health and vitality quietly fade away.
No matter what your current age or physical condition with the right exercise program containing strength training you can regain and maintain an exceptional level of strength and fitness.
In fact 6 months of the right exercise can reverse 30 years of inactivity.
How's that for reclaiming your youth? It is important to understand that getting older doesn't mean losing your strength, energy and vitality.
Like a good bottle of red wine you can get better with age and you can be stronger and look better at 60 than you did at 30 if you get stuck in.
Is that likely? Unfortunately if you are like most 50- plus people, you may believe that you are too old to begin a proper exercise program.
However if you commit right now to get in about four hours of proper exercise each week - not much, considering the average person watches 20 hours of television weekly - you will see results almost immediately.
Staying strong and breaking into a sweat regularly is a crucial part of becoming and staying a healthy person.
Rather than relying on doctors and drugs think of your exercise program as medicine.
And this medicine is the most powerful tool you can prescribe for yourself to prevent the many nasty diseases and conditions that may well shorten your life or leave you disabled and unable to care for yourself.
The average person due to their lack of strength and fitness needs around 10 years of care towards the end of their lives just to manage daily tasks of living.
With the right exercise this can be reduced down to around 3 years.
Wouldn't that be a great gift to give to family, your community and the world? Why should someone else be responsible for taking up the slack for our care when it could have easily been prevented by each of us taking personal responsibility for our own health and well-being? It is important to believe that what we do right through our lifespan with our strength and fitness determines what happens in the last 15- 20 years of our lives.
Your fifth or sixth decade of life isn't a bad time to start an exercise program.
In fact, for many people, the freedom they experience later in life - from having their kids out of the house delivers a powerful impetus and opportunity to make fitness a priority.
This exercise program has to be right, don't think that just going for walk or doing the gardening is going to cut it as it won't.
The program must contain strength building exercise and some low level cardio interval training.
It is crucial that this program is set up, taught, supervised and monitored by a fitness professional.
This will ensure that it is safe, progressive and effective.
Whether you are climbing a mountain at 75 or sitting in some rest home somewhere not knowing what your name is and not being able to feed and dress yourself is totally up to what you do right now.
The secret: Start wherever you are now, and don't ever stop.