I Didn't Start Working Out Until I Turned 70

Owen used his experience to write a book called Just Move! A New Approach to Fitness After 50, in which he details how older adults can safely get off the couch and add more movement to their lives.

- By Charlotte Hilton Andersen

ON JAMES OWEN’S 70TH birthday, he saw a video of himself hunched over and shuffling up to the podium where he was giving a talk. “I looked like an old man,” says Owen, who built a successful career on Wall Street. Even worse, he felt like an old man.

He was about 25 pounds overweight and had chronic trouble with his back, knees, and shoulders. But instead of giving in to age, Owen decided to set an ambitious five-year goal: He wanted to be pain-free, and he decided the way to get there was through exercise—even though at the time he couldn’t do a single push-up.