I posted about golf. If are playing at a high, you are playing 10-15 hours a week. Have you ever hit a 100 balls on a range? You’d be tired. Now try 500 or 1000 and then do it multiple days a week.
It’s not an endurance sport like cycling. It’s more akin to being a pitcher or doing some other throwing sport and building up the fitness to do it 100 times over a few hours for multiple days in a row if you play tournaments.
My dad was a county level tennis player in his youth and early adulthood. WW2 however spent in the Royal Navy have him a liking for Rum and Players Navy Cut (untipped) cigarettes.
He functioned and built his business on a bottle of the former mixed with full fat Coca Cola and 40 of the later all his life until his near fatal heart attack at 60. He stopped smoking and radically changed his drinking to having Diet Tonic with his rum for the next 24years. So not really a life long athlete.
I don’t know one of the fattest and unhealthiest guys I know makes a killing as a golfer. He also claimed the fatter he got the better he could hit the ball.
Walking verse taking the cart is also a major difference in activity level.
Golf is pretty hard though if you don’t do it a lot and I think especially as a cyclist. Everything we do is one plane and golf is completely different. Feel like my hips don’t want to move the way they need to in order to swing correctly.
Can you be fat and unhealthy and hit a golf ball straight? Sure! Technique makes up for a multitude of sins.
But if you look at the elite end of the sport, Tiger Woods broke the mold 30 years ago by showing up fit and trim and muscular. His generation made elite level fitness standard if you wanted to drive the ball an extra 30-40 yards every time.
I actually started playing golf again this last year. It is a throwing sport and a 2 hour practice session leaves me tired for the rest of the day. New muscles have been popping out of my back, shoulders, and arms.
I’ve always approached golf like cycling. I can’t enjoy being a once a week or a few times a month golfer or cyclist. I need 3-4-5x per week of swinging a club or pedaling so I stay in shape and fresh.
Some things to consider about golfing. Carting is often the norm in the US, either by course design, course rules, weather (heat mostly) or by player choice. It takes a fair bit more energy to walk a course carrying a bag or using a push cart.
Not really. He never participated in organized sports as a kid (50s Inner City Los Angeles). There was a time when he and I would ride the river trails in LA and Orange County. When he hit 40 his health took a downward spiral. He had Appendicitis at 41, in his mid-forties until he passed, he battled periods of low platelets requiring large doses of Prednisone and multi day stays in the hospital. Finally, he succumbed to Lewy Body Dementia at 77.
Contrast I will be 63 in a few days and my only time in a hospital as a patient has been for ER visits because of sporting accidents. Stitches in head from a surfing accident, ruptured tendons in ankle playing basketball in my Vans Slip-Ons, neck fracture from hitting an Amazon truck while cycling.
There’s three of us siblings and we all have different traits when it comes to diet, exercise and stress. None of us smoke though, smoking killed him.
Yeah, he was pretty active and took decent care of himself. Nothing extreme, but consistent, worked with his hands, stayed moving, didn’t just sit around. Hard to prove causation, but it does make you wonder when you read this stuff.
That’s great for your opinion! I hate to tell you that if you post it, it is up for debate. 
There’s a famous study of British busmen worker study (on their feet all day) that showed less coronary heart disease.
Your hard working co-workers that are “far from unhealthy” is because of their diet. They don’t need more exercise to turn their health around.
Fit and healthy covers a broad spectrum. You can walk every day and be very healthy with a good diet. But you can over power a lot of exercise with a poor diet.
As with golf, you can ride around in a golf cart and swill beer or you can walk the course and hit a thousand balls a week in practice. Massive difference between the two. One can ride a trail on a bike a few times a month or train 15 hours a week doing structured intervals. Again, massive difference plus all the middle ground.
What a fun post to read. My dad died recently at 97. As a youngster, he was considered “sickly and frail.” He was 6’2" and ectomorphic (which I inherited - thanks dad). He did royal canadian mounted police exercise program (mostly pushups in his undies) but was not fit. He worked 18 hour days. But in semi-retirement, starting at about age 68, he took to indoor exercise and even in the days before he died he did daily laps (walking) at his assisted living facility, TRX shoulder exercises. He said many times, “I am addicted to exercise.” So…zero example, zero enthusiasm or encouragement of my cross-country running in school or cycling as an adult. But fun to reminisce and to read about other people’s dads!!
Yep, he was a carpenter his whole life and took up riding road bikes in his early 50’s. He got me into riding.
At 82 he’s slowed down a lot and put on weight. But he has a Pinarello carbon gravel e-bike and likes to put the hurt on me going up steep hills!
His average rides are down from 50+ miles to maybe 25 miles and they always include a lunch stop. But hell, if I can be as active as him at 80+, I’m cool with that.
My dad was very active when he was younger. Playing soccer for Pitt university ( as an example) and even running the Boston marathon 3x. I never got into endurance sports until I turned 35, but seem to have decent genetics but not world tour pro level genetics.
Yup, amateur club football player and Dragon boat national athlete in his youth, road, XC, Enduro and Downhill racer after marriage
He played baseball and hockey as a kid. Started riding in his thirties to get in shape and loves it. He rides a ton post retirement and rode me off his wheel a couple times last year.
A bit of church basketball in his 30 and early 40, but then stopped for some unknown reason when I was around 10.
My grandfather was always moving and working until the day he died.
My father on the other hand has retired and basically turned into a lazy slob. It’s heart breaking.
My dad was a high school football superstar and a scratch golfer. He ultimately discovered alcohol at an early age and ended up dropping out of high school with scholarship offers on the table. He eventually stumbled into a military recruiters office and joined the Air Force where he discovered running. I remember as a kid we would go out and while he ran I rode my bmx bike. He tells stories about how he got so addicted to running that he would start with no set number in mind but just ran until he got tired with his longest run being in the 20 mile range.
Now dad is 74 and other than suffering from dementia he takes no prescription meds and stands at about 5’ 7” and 165lbs (170cm and 74kg).