Live Blog: CARP Conference- Part Five

Jim Laing, founding director of Ji Hong Tai Chi School: “I am 50, I might look a bit younger than my age.”

He looks 30, and the audience issues a collective “wooow” after his introduction.

Laing leads the audience through a few Tai Chi exercises (great for those with osteoporosis). At the end he says, “that was one of the reasons I look younger than my age.”

Moses to Jim: “Maybe you can give me the secret to that Tai Chi botox later.”

Champion bodybuilder William Friedman was born in Germany and grew up in Montreal. “I see aging as a symphony, a composition of our mind and bodies,” Friedman explains.

As we age these thoughts get in our way:
Defeating thoughts
Discouraging thoughts
Critical thoughts

“I was 50, working 18 hours days at my law firm … feeling bad about myself. So, I talked myself into getting into the gym”

“My trainer told me to touch my toes. I said, ‘If god wanted me to touch my toes, he would put them on my knees.'”

Friedman didn’t have much strength and was discouraged, especially because of his age, but he stayed persistent: “The Golden Years can kiss my a**.”

Fight those negative thoughts. “Capture those thoughts that are associated with the feelings that inhibit us.”

Nutrition is important in bodybuilding, it is 75 per cent (when Friedman competes, he does so at six per cent body fat).

Friedman’s son made award winning documentary on him, The Bodybuilder and I. The film helped their relationship after 20 plus years.

“Let’s not take the easy way out … The hard way out my be the only real way out.”