Check this out:  Al Moreno, 62 (and a half, as he insists), does his biannual physical fitness test for the Marine Corps ad maxes the thing out:  20 pull-ups, 100 situps in two minutes, and an amazing 18:30 3-mile run.  Moreno leaves guys one-third his age panting in his dust.

Unsurprisingly, Moreno’s no behemoth; he’s actually fairly compact.  In fact, he’s cut from the same physical cloth as the guys who win American Gladiators week after week:  under six feet, under 175 pounds, somewhere on the ecto-/meso-morph continuum (I know, I talk about that show way too much.  Don’t bother telling me.  I’m the only person I know who does post-game rundowns on it, analyzing the athletic performance of the cop from Cleavland versus that of the stay-at-home Dad from Valpariso.  My poor wife.)

Now, there’s no such thing as a "perfect" body, of course, even among bodies that are generally healthy and athletic.  Within our genetic limits, the body, with its remarkable ability to adapt to accommodate the stresses we place on it, will assume more or less whatever shape we ask it to.  So a javelin thrower’s physique will look and behave differently from that of a marathon runner.

But for everyday use, a physique like Moreno’s approaches optimal:  he’s got enough muscle to do what he needs to do, but he’s not schlepping around 40 pounds of extra beef that might help him if he needed to hoist Volkswagens on a regular basis, but isn’t going to help him much in daily life.

I think everyone, men and women, has a ‘zone’ like this:  muscular but not enormous, lean but not skeletal.  When men get too into exercise, they err in the direction of getting too muscular; when women go crazy they get too skinny.

In my own experience, I tipped out of that zone about a year ago.  I became stronger than ever, but everyday activities started to hurt.  It took a few months of this before I realized that looking cool in the gym and hearing more plates than ever jiggle at the bar’s end was less important to me than being comfortable and feeling physically competent the other 23 hours a day.

It’s a matter of taste, of course, and of personal goals.  But it says something about the ongoing durability of this type of physique that this 62-year old guy not only looks as good as he does but is still functional and healthy enough to perform as well as he does too.

Have a great weekend!