Please pardon the errors, this was transcribed by a computer… gotta love artificial intelligence!
Rudd Crawford: [00:00:00]

My name is Rudd Crawford. I'm 80 years old and you are listening to the over 50 health and wellness show.

Kevin English: [00:00:17] What does it mean to live life out on the edge? To live outside the mainstream to not conform to society's norms. What is that experience like? Is it lonely? Scary. Or is it exciting and fulfilling? Hello and welcome to the over 50 health and wellness show. I'm your host, Kevin English. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. And I've created this podcast to explore the topics that are vital for healthy aging.

Join me each week, as we have conversations with fascinating men and women to share information and ideas about how to become the strongest, healthiest versions of ourselves. My guest this week is Rudd Crawford. Rudd is an 80 year old who decided at age 72 to start bodybuilding. But that's only a small part of what makes Rudd fascinating.

Rudd has lived his entire life on the edges of mainstream culture for as long as he can remember.

Rudd Crawford: [00:01:13] One of the things that was a big event, one of the big, big events in my life was hearing the Bach fifth Brandenburg concerto on a recording when I was about four and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

And I, it was like, it rewired my head right away. I had, I had no self perception about you know, what it meant or anything like that, but it was terribly important and terribly wonderful. And if I'd had the words for it. It would have been simply saying, I, I like this planet. I want to, I want to live here.

I want some more of this. And in fact, I've had lots more of it all my life, serious music Bach in particular, but it's been a major thread throughout my whole life.

Okay. So one of Rod's earliest memories is hearing Bach's fifth Brandenburg concerto when he was only four years old and it obviously made a deep lasting impression on him. I asked him how he came to be exposed to this music at such an early age.

Rudd Crawford: [00:02:32] Okay. the particular story was that I was about four. This is 1944 and the war was on My dad was a school principal. So he was at school one afternoon and my mom had a friend named Sally who wanted to come over and talk,

but they had to do something with me. So Sally brought over a little portable record player turntable, and a stack of record stories that we all listened to as kids, little orally and Toby the tuba.

And she's, I can't remember all the rest of them, big John and Sparky. And they set me up in bed and the turn table was right next to my bedside. So off, they went to have their conversation. And I started playing down through these stories, record stories which didn't take a terribly long time.

But I did, and there was something else at the bottom of the stack that didn't look interesting at all. And so when I got through the story part and they were still talking, I just started over and went all the way through all the, Record stories again and got them done for the second time.

And so finally, and I can remember this feeling of absolute tedium and boredom, and I pulled out the bottom record in the stack. And put it on. And it was the Bush recording of the fifth Brandenburg with Rudolph circuit playing it on the piano. I mean, it was written for harpsichord, but nobody was doing that back then.

And that was the moment that was, that was the moment. It was it was right there and I think I listened. I probably just kept listening to that over and over and over again until they finally got through talking. Interesting irony is that 20, 22 or 23 years later, I'm married to harpsichord is who has performed it.

Kevin English: [00:04:32] So Rudd has had a defining moment, very early in his life. He'll go on to major in both music and mathematics. I asked Rudd to talk about his early school years.

Rudd Crawford: [00:04:44] Well, let's see. Throughout elementary school, gym classes were mostly team sports. I couldn't hit her. I couldn't hit a baseball. You know, I was nervous. I was very nervous about being on a sports team with the other boys. I didn't want to hang around with them. Back to kindergarten when they'd all be over in the corner

of the big room playing with blocks and trucks and carrying out and making a lot of noise and arguing and so forth. I, I was over in the crafts corner of the room, making things happy. And then through elementary school The same thing. Gym class, physical education class. I didn't like it. By the time we got to high school and there were parts of the year about gymnastics and so forth I did like that.

I really did. And I was, you know, I could do it. It was, it was fun. And I was always on my bicycle back and forth. Around town or, wherever. My dad was very fit. he was a track star in college and was lean and fit all his life. And so there was that very good influence on me.

I mean, he was terrific. He taught us how to swim in a pond on Martha's vineyard. He, he taught us how to do the doggy paddle, my brother and me, and I remember, I guess this was a character trait, but he, he put two stakes sticking up in the pond. I dunno, 55 feet apart, something like that.

And he, once we could do this, he said, okay, I want you to swim from this stake down to the other one. So I did. And then when I got there, I just turned right around and swam back, which he had not expected. So there was always this kind of edge, you know, we'll go a little farther and go a little beyond and finding ways to do that.

finding ways to be out there on the, on the edge of something. I was out on the edge of my kindergarden class when I was making stuff up I've certainly been somewhat on the edge of mainstream. Well, that's, I won't say that since I was thinking about the old haunts Sebastian box stuff.

It's not. It's not pop tunes, you know? , but so there's, there's this sort of thing of I'm going to go my own way and push myself whether it's physically or mentally, I took all the hard courses in college and grad school for that matter. And, and just did it, you know, because why not?

Kevin English: [00:07:11] Okay. That, yeah. That's interesting. So where do you think that came from? It sounds like it's an intrinsic motivation, right? It doesn't sound like you're being pushed externally, say by your father or some other force. This is coming from within. Where, where do you think at that young age that desire, or that need to push yourself came from

Rudd Crawford: [00:07:34] I liked it then. I just liked it. I liked when I was riding my bike home from fifth and sixth grades, I like riding up the steep Hill when I could've avoided it. I could've, I could've gone around the other way. I wanted to, I wanted something about the edge and the feeling of being different, a feeling of being out on the edge of something, looking back maybe, and I don't know.

I mean, it's just, that's just me. It's just, just, just how I've been. I knew that I was going to be a school teacher. And so in all the way through college, I was doing mathematics and music. And I didn't know whether I was going to be a band leader or a math teacher. And finally realized that it was going to be better, made more sense to do math for a job and, and music for fun.

So I went onto grad school and got a master's in math at Dartmouth and my dad didn't quite get it. And he thought I ought to just get a teaching credential and start teaching. And he said, you, you know, you already know more than the kids know. And I said, no, but I need to know more, more than they know than I know.

And so I did, you know, and it was two very hard years of, work up there in the New Hampshire wilderness. And then I went right on down. I didn't, I didn't want to stop there.

I went right on down to Cambridge and to the master of arts and teaching program at Harvard. And once again, my dad, I had been lying. This is back to high school age. Now I'd been lying on the floor in our living room with the big national geographic Atlas open and I was leafing through it and I came to the big, beautiful two-page spread of the Boston area.

And that's, it's a gorgeous map and there was all this stuff, you know, the old Ironsides in the freedom trail and Harvard and MIT and Wellesley and seventy-five colleges and universities there. And I said to my dad, what about Harvard? What do you think? And he said, man, it's a rich man at school. And so I went, you know, this is now years later, 10 years later or whatever, I went there.

And I'm on a scholarship by the way. And I actually went all the way through the whole doctoral program.

Then I did all that doctoral work, you know, all that stuff, but I knew I was going to teach kids, people who go through all that kind of a program are usually at state level math, coordinating kinds of things.

And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to work with kids and I used, Oh, you use the stuff I've learned.

Kevin English: [00:10:21] That's fantastic. So what did you get your, your doctorate degree in? Was it an education

Rudd Crawford: [00:10:27] It was, it was mathematical education

Kevin English: [00:10:29] mathematical education? Fantastic.

Rudd Crawford: [00:10:32] the Harvard ed school.

Kevin English: [00:10:33] And so I suppose you're still keeping with your theme of being out there at the edge. You know, that you want to teach children and, and you're still pushing yourself in one of the most prestigious universities in the world to get this. What I would imagine would be a very difficult degree.

So I think that certainly jives with what we've heard so far now, while you were at university, what was your activity level like? Were you doing any kind of physical

Rudd Crawford: [00:10:59] Yeah, all the way, all the way through, through college. I took a gym course every single semester that I was in as an undergraduate, whether it was badminton or modern dance or whatever else, but, you know, I, I just kept doing that because otherwise you're just sitting all the time and didn't need it.

So, so yeah, I kept doing that. At Dartmouth I'd go swimming frequently. Take a, take a break from studying and go swimming at Harvard. It kind of dropped. I kind of had to, I was, I was really working hard and running around a lot and, and doing this and doing that and so forth. So I didn't really do much of anything in the way of formal physical activity.

And then when I started teaching, that was, that was hard enough and it was wonderful, but, but I didn't, make the space for systematic exercise, as much as I could have. However, I started riding my bike to work. When we lived, we lived, we stayed back in Boston for awhile and, and I started riding my bike to work in Roxbury and

that was the beginning of riding my bike to work every day for 40 years. Right up until I retired in Oh five. So there was that every single day rain or shine or whatever. And it really felt good and it actually felt so good to ride my bike to school and feel, feel what the planet was like to feel what it.

feel was happening with the air and the sounds and the smells. And it gave me a kind of a framework for how the day was going to go. Funny, funny, kind of a thing, but I did.

Kevin English: [00:12:54] Rudd makes a very interesting observation here. Riding a bike to work every day certainly would give one a certain connectedness to the natural world that most of us probably don't get, especially in modern times. So much of our lives are spent indoors. And most of us aren't commuting on bicycles or walking. And unfortunately for a lot of people,

The only outdoor time we might get could be on the weekends. But weekdays might just be transiting to, and from our cars.

So before we go on and talk about Rudd's fitness journey after his university years, let's back up to another defining moment in Rudd's life.

Rudd Crawford: [00:13:34] let me back up though. Kevin, because something big happened as really as big as the box story. When I was 13, I was a skinny kid. I was, I was not a weakling, but I was probably 98 pounds and, and tall and skinny. And I was flipping through an issue of popular mechanics magazine when I was 13.

And they used to have pages and pages and pages of ads at the beginning of that magazine of, you know, how to fix your muffler, or you could become a lawyer or, by some dumbbells and so on. So I came to a Charles Atlas bodybuilding ad, and I was really taken with that. He just seems so

supportive and helpful and warm. And I thought, wow, you know, this is pretty cool. And you could write away for this dynamic training or something like that? We had some program knew right away for it. We didn't have any money and I didn't do it, but I flagged it in my mind. And then a few pages later, there was another picture

of a bodybuilder and I wish I knew his name, but he was, he was really fabulously well muscled, and it was a picture of him wearing a black g-string and I'd never seen muscles like that. And I'd never seen a black g-string or in any kind of juice drinks, and something else happened inside. It was a transformative moment for me of my guts really started churning and it wasn't that I wanted

to be like him, but he, he was saying, you want me? You want to have me? And that was the beginning of a long, long time long. Well it I'd been, I'd been raised, you know, marriage, kids, whatever, the whole thing, the standard middle-class American family. And so this, this turmoil in my guts when I saw that picture and my

immediate fascination with other muscular man was, I didn't know what to do with it. It was like a pebble in my shoe. It was just there. And it didn't stop me from walking the path that I was supposed to walk, but, but there it was. And it wasn't until I was 40 that I began to realize that, you know what, you're gay.

And it was after I was married. It was after we had our first child, all that stuff, but that's when it all surfaced. And so the interest in muscle and the interest in bodybuilding and the interest in weights started really when I was 13, but I couldn't do anything about it. I told my mom that I wanted to

to be lifting weights. And she basically said, he's a nice people don't do that. And so that was that, you know, I was under her spell. And so I didn't, and after we were married for a while, my, my wife, Lisa I told her that story about what my mom had said about lifting weights and my wife, she has went roaring right off the Sears Roebuck and bought me a set of, you know, those old red, white, and blue weights on a barbell.

And, you know, and then I started working out with a friend. Casually, you know, it was fun to do.

Okay. So to pick up to jump ahead I'll, I'll deal with the gay part now because, because I've at age 40, I began to realize, yeah, this is, this is really the real thing. And it was at age 50. I came out to my wife and we worked that through we're still married. We're coming up on 55 years of marriage in June.

And It's a fantastic relationship. my dad had told me when I was a kid, he said, when you, when you get married, you want to marry somebody who's pleasant and nice and smarter than hell. And that's exactly what I did. She's. We're each, each one of us is smarter than the other one. And and it's it's a really fantastic partnership and she is a terrific musician and all of that professional musician.

So now to jump ahead,

it was a 50 when I, after having worked on it myself for 10 years, really I came out to my wife and told her, and it was it was scary. It was really scary cause we didn't know. But we worked that through because the relationship that we have is so amazing and mutually supportive and we're crazy about each other and you know, we've raised two great kids now and, I had no desire to go looking for a permanent kind of a boyfriend or anything like that.

So we, kept going and when I was 50. That was 1990. And here we are 20, some years later, I'm still going strong and It's all good. You know I have a good group of friends in the Cleveland gay men's community. And being gay is so interesting because it's another kind of an edge.

It's another edge that, as a gay man, I am tuned differently. I'm wired up differently and I run a different kind of energy, which is what is the essence really of being gay? It's same sex attraction is one thing. Yes, but, but that's only part of it. It's the idea that we are simply running on a different kind of energy and typically

we are on the edge of mainstream society, looking and observing and contributing and all of that. So all of this ways that I was kind of a loner and different, when I was a kid, it all clicks, it all clicks. And my wife and I We have no secrets in the world. I'm out, she knows I'm out. She expects everybody to know.

She will tell people if I don't. And it's sort of the idea that you can, you can arrange a marriage anyway, you want, you know, and that's what we've done. The kids are great. All of it. So, so I'm happy and I'm because of being Part of my being a gay man is that I'm very vain.

And so the bodybuilding is, is perfect.

Kevin English: [00:20:09] all right. So we're certainly going to follow up on

Rudd Crawford: [00:20:11] I look

in the mirror you know and then and like I see.

Kevin English: [00:20:15] There you go. Okay. Well, let's back up a little bit. Cause you had mentioned that you realize you were gay at age 40 and then a decade later you come out to your wife and I think the way you put it as you had some work to do on yourself.

And you've mentioned that I'm sure that was a scary moment, To come out to your wife, what was the catalyst that, what made you decide that now is the time.

Rudd Crawford: [00:20:40] Okay.

yeah.

And by the way, I was not I was not fooling around with men or anything. I was really good about my marriage vows and was serious about that. So it was when I was 50, that was when rock Hudson died of AIDS. And that was a big shocker because he was this big hunky leading man, you know all the rest of that. And all of a sudden he turned out he was dying of, of AIDS early on. And there was a film made about that documentary.

And I don't usually watch television at all. It's another way I'm on the edge of things. but I said, you know, I said, I want to, I think I want to watch this film. And Lisa said, well, I'll watch it with you. And so we watched it and it was, if it doesn't pull any punches you know, it was, it was.

That it wasn't even really R rated, but it was, you knew what, you know, you saw a lot and at the end she just looked at me and she said, how come you wanted to see that film?

That was it. Then I said, well, there's, there's something about me in that movie. And that touched off a year of really solid counseling work. And once, she was convinced that a I had no intention of leaving and B I was not playing around with guys behind her back. She was fine with it. No, an interesting sidebar on this.

Which she might or might not bring up, but she, but it's true. We, we moved to Oberlin in 1973, when she was hired as the harpsichord professor at the Oberlin conservatory. She is she's way out there on that edge, you know, she's, she's as good as it gets. You can check her CDs if you want to on Amazon.

But the, the musical populous of the Overland conservatory. There was a lot of gay kids there, a lot of gay musicians and she's taught them and likes them and their friends and all the rest of that stuff. So it's a very gay, friendly school and it's a very gay, friendly town. So it was, that was something that made it easy.

And that was, that was another nice piece.

Kevin English: [00:23:09] So she had already had a lot of exposure to that community and that culture, it sounds like which may factored into her eventual acceptance. And you had mentioned that it took a year of counseling and I'm imagining that's for both of you. To kind of work through that and do your points, you did work through that.

You have worked through that. That was 30 years ago, right. And you're still going strong. That's fantastic. All right. So picking up in our story then where we left off you, how did she say it? You said that being a gay man, you're, you're vain. You like to look in the mirror and like, what you see, looking back, you had mentioned to your wife, Lisa, that story about the Charles Atlas and your mom's kind of, poo-pooing the idea of, out and she brushed right out and bought you a barbell, one of the Sears and Roebuck barbells, and you kind of casually started working out with a friend, where does the working out, does that continue into later years or when does that become important?

Rudd Crawford: [00:24:06] much on and off, I mean, , in Oberlin, we, moved around It's a small town and we moved and lived, lived in different houses. . But along the way with all those moves, I think I just gave them all. I gave the weights away to somebody and it wasn't doing it until I retired in Oh five.

Then I got as I say it. You know, a home gym that had, a little more possibilities than just a weight bench. And then started, it was fantasy face it, you know, I'm going to be huge. I'm going to be Charles Atlas. I'm going to be that guy in the magazine. I know if I hold my, if I get the lighting just right, you know but then it was, it was when I met Leo in eight, eight or nine years ago now.

And he's very good. He's very big and he's very smart and he's been weightlifting all his life really. So he knew how to get me going. and as I say, I've, really loved it. And I don't know whether you want me to name the group on Facebook that is the one that I'm really liking the way they go at things.

It's a group on Facebook and it's called abbreviated training. Abbreviated training and it's run by a guy named Chris Don lawn who's in England. And the whole idea about it is that almost all weightlifting programs involve a lot of over-training.

That you're doing, you're doing much more than you need to do for health and for growth and for strength. And so his advice is train twice a week at most. In a, in a workout, you're going to do a couple of compound exercises like deadlifts or dips or squats. And you can add in a couple of your own that you want to do, like biceps or triceps, that kind of thing.

And you're going to do a total of one, two, three, four, five different exercises in the workout. And for each one, you're going to do two sets and you're going to put really heavyweights on. And for the two sets, supposing it's bicep curls, let's say, and you put heavy weights on and you work out until in those two sets, one set and then rest in between.

And then another set, when you can get up to eight reps. Then you put one more pound on the weight and that's what you do next week. When you get back to that workout again, you do the same exercises for years. Adding a little bit of weight every time and you get stronger and stronger and you're not wasting time.

trying this out and trying that out. and it's remarkable. It's really remarkable. And that's, you know, that's how I put on two inches on my chest since. Since January really? But wow. And then an important component is rest lots and lots of rest.

Rest in between sets, rest in between workouts. Sleep, and then up your protein, you know, whey protein or food, protein or whatever, but get a big chunk of protein coming into you every day and a lot of rests. And then on Sunday you might do a workout. That's going to focus on chests. And Thursday, you're going to do the other workout for the week.

That'll focus on arms, which is of course what I'm mostly interested in. And then you're back on Sunday, again, you're back to chest and so forth. So it's something that, an hour max, twice a week, really hard work for short spurts, man. That's terrific. And he's got Well, it's a big group.

It's growing fast. People are hearing about this. I don't know how long it's been in there existence, but people are hearing about it. And, and it's a good forum. People write in with questions. he's right there with a lot of good advice. there's books that you can read about it.

Et cetera, that he'll mention So it's a community, you know, it's a, it's a community that's once again, it's on the edge of the weightlifting world.

Kevin English: [00:28:33] Okay. So there's, there's a lot of trees, additional advice in there that I hear. You're a, you're doing compound lifts, right? You're doing, you're working with heavyweights, not lightweights and high reps.

You're doing heavyweights low reps. There's a prioritization of, of progressive overload. You had mentioned once you get up to eight reps, you're going to add some weight and I would imagine then the reps will go down and you're going to work that until you get back up to your, to your survey again, and then so on and so forth.

So there's that progressive overload. There's the prioritization of protein. Certainly need protein in order to build muscle. And you also did a really good job of talking about the criticality of recovery. Right? You mentioned that, yeah, you got to rest between sets. You certainly need your time off in between workouts to recover.

And then sleep is one of the most anabolic substances known to man. That's, that's the magic bullet really for recovery as far as I'm concerned. But what's really kind of unique there is that you're getting this sort of, I don't know, for lack of a better term, this minimum effective dose. Of training, To your point, a lot of programming is too much. It's over-training and especially as individuals over 50, over 60, over 70, over 80 we're not able to recover from workouts the way say somebody in their, you know, their teens or their twenties certainly could. So I think that that's, that's fascinating and certainly it's effective.

I'll point folks in the show notes to your Facebook so they can go up and kind of have a look at what you've done here in, into your seventies and eighties, you look fantastic. Clearly what you're doing is working. So talk to us a little bit about, you had mentioned nutrition and adding the protein.

what does a typical day of eating look
Rudd Crawford: [00:30:21] Hm.

Waking up, getting up, getting myself out of bed at seven 30 or so in the morning, a big protein shake and morning tea and email and all that for awhile. Then by eight 30 or so going upstairs breakfast is oatmeal with a lot of raisins and walnuts and No at the moment, whole milk. That's part of what's being recommended.

Which, well, I don't know. I've got to do something about this belly, so that made the milk thing may change, but anyway, that's oatmeal. That's it is oatmeal, more tea, maybe. Lunch is a second protein shake with. Not much else in English muffin country bread, peanut butter jam on that afternoon snack of half a cup of cottage cheese, or beef jerky, something like that in the middle of the afternoon.

Happy hour at before dinner. And then We'd cook a lot. My wife has a terrific cook. She has a whole wall of cookbooks that she reads. She reads them like novels and, and so there's always something new coming along that is fresh ingredients and great recipes, middle Eastern stuff. Sometimes red meat, some, a lot of fish when we can get it.

Sometimes veggie dishes, chickpeas, and so forth so that it's not you know, it's not like red meat, protein. All the time. And so that's it. And then, I have thought about a third protein shake in the evening, but I'm usually,

Kevin English: [00:32:05] Yeah. Well, what I hear there, what's striking about the way you describe a typical day of eating is that I heard almost all whole foods. I mean, you mentioned beef jerky, and certainly protein shakes. You can make a case for that being a processed food, but it sounds like a heavy reliance on whole foods,

Rudd Crawford: [00:32:24] whey protein, which I think is pretty

Kevin English: [00:32:27] Right. You could, we could argue that that's a food, right? Yeah. As opposed to a highly processed, it's certainly not a highly processed food. Now, do you track calories or track macros or anything like that?

Rudd Crawford: [00:32:40] I did for a little while only in terms of trying to get enough protein, that whole formula about a gram of protein for a body per pound of body weight.

So once I, Found out that I was eating roughly. Enough protein. I was up to 120 grams of protein a day, something like that. I said, okay, that's enough. I'm not going to mess with it anymore.

I think I'm in the ballpark the same thing with calories as it it seemed as if I was doing it about right. What I'm thinking, I'm doing this, this crystal Allen, who's the head of this group. And I said, okay, rod, you're right. You're on a six month experiment to see what happens. And that's going to end on my birthday when I turned 81 in may.

And at that point, I'll take an assessment and maybe really want to go on a diet and lose some belly fat and hopefully keep your muscle well. but that's it. I'm not obsessive about it. I'm not obsessive in this. I'm obsessive about how I look, of course, but, but I'm not obsessive about how I eat, affect how I look, you know, I just think I'm going to get looking better anyway.

So let it go like

Kevin English: [00:33:55] Right, right. Yeah. And I I think that that's a pretty common experience. A lot of people find it odious to track calories, track macros. But I feel like everybody should do it at least for a period of time. To your point, you mentioned that You didn't know how many calories you were eating, you weren't sure how much protein getting.

And people often grossly underestimate the amount of protein or even the amount of total calories they take in for a day. So I certainly would encourage everybody to spend some time, even if it's only just a couple of weeks in that practice of weighing and measuring your food and Tracking it, putting it in.

You know, there's plenty of apps out there that make that pretty easy these days, but it just gives you an awareness to what you're eating, how much of the macronutrients and by macronutrients, we the protein the carbohydrates and the fats and what those percentages are And it also gives you a baseline to experiment from what happens If I add more protein how do I feel What happens if I up my carbs or shrink them How do I feel it, et cetera. So I think that's a wonderful, wonderful thing for folks to do.

Rudd Crawford: [00:34:56] Well, I think, I think I say one of my birthday comes in and we do an assessment about where I'm at. That'll be the time to make some changes maybe in and keep exploring. Keep, keep playing. It's play face it.

Kevin English: [00:35:10] It is, that's a great way of putting it. Well, it is. And I think all fitness endeavors, we should think of them more as journeys than destinations you're don't arrive. Right. I mean, there were people, you know, athletes that have specific sporting events or I'm thinking of you know, if you're a bodybuilder and you have a show, then certainly that's, that's a milestone along the way of this journey, but it's.

Things like nutrition and fitness. I love that, that you described that as play. Cause it kind of is right. What happens if I do this? Let's just see. So it's yeah, I think that's great fun. Well, it sounds like you've been, you've been dialed in as a pair to say with the weightlifting, et cetera, for the last, what?

Six or seven years.

Rudd Crawford: [00:35:54] eight or nine really?

Kevin English: [00:35:55] Yeah. Eight or nine years. Okay. So what keeps you motivated? What keeps you going?

Rudd Crawford: [00:36:03] Well, the mirror, of course, but also it really feels good. You know, it's at this level of working out, I'm eager to get started. I'm enjoying the interplay of hard hard work for a few minutes and then rest for a few minutes. And I'm enjoying the afterwards. I mean, I'm not, I'm not all I'm quivering and trembling and out of breath and sweating and all that.

You know it feels good right away. So I actually enjoy the process and I also enjoy the structure that it gives to my week. You know, That I know that these are the things because I'm retired. so I need, to make a structure and, so this is a good part of that structure.

There's other, there's other parts of it too. I'm still doing, I'm still doing a lot of mathematics stuff. And, and so there's that going on also, and singing in groups, it's kind of wiped out by the pandemic, but we'll get back to that.

Kevin English: [00:37:10] yeah. Yeah. Hope hopefully soon. And for folks listening to this podcast, recording in the future, we're recording this towards the end of March in 2021. So we're all very hopeful that we're somewhere near the end of this crazy COVID pandemic times. That's for sure. So. How has fitness, this kind of fitness lifestyle, this bodybuilding lifestyle.

How has that bled over into other areas of your life? Or has it.

Rudd Crawford: [00:37:38] Oh, that's a question that requires thought. It's the edginess, you know, it's the edginess. I was, I was totally asynchronous as a school teacher. I did things differently from everybody else. And and with great effect, so that, that the, the edginess of not accepting, not accepting much of anything really And that is part of what happens when you have a Harvard degree, is that you've learned how to write your own materials.

You've learned what's good and what's not good. You've learned not to take much of anything at face value. And so I guess that's the start of an answer. As far as my professional life is concerned I started giving my kids. Brain teaser problems along with their regular math lessons that were outrageous.

I mean, they would be, they would be things where I would say you're going to get this or not, you know, sometimes I'd give them a problem and I'd say, I can't do this, but if I'm, if I'm the best problem solver in our school, then we're in trouble. That kind of stuff, you know, just continually just being right there for him, you know sample problem would be all right.

Give me two numbers. I see your pulse rate going up, give me two numbers that multiply together to get a hundred. Oh, okay. 10 times 10. Good. Give me two numbers that multiply together to get a million. Let me think a minute in a, well, it could be. Two times 500,000, you know, something like that.

Okay. Now what I really want you to do is I want you to give me two numbers that multiply to get a million and neither number has a zero in it.

Kevin English: [00:39:35] well, yeah, that's a little different

Rudd Crawford: [00:39:37] then you have to dig and that's the whole thing is that you want to, I want to put the kids on edge so that they're in uncharted territory and they have to step back.

and we did that for years and years, and that's, that's turned into now a website of these problems that begin with easy picture problems for kids and go all the way up into the foothills of calculus. And it's a website that's got, it's got 700 problems in it and it's going to get launched pretty soon.

So this is really coming to fruition and yeah, I'm glad I I'm planning on being around when it launches.

Kevin English: [00:40:17] fantastic. Yeah. I bet you will be all right. Well, and that brings me nicely to my next question. I was going to ask you what's next for you? So it sounds like certainly that's something coming up. is on the horizon for you?

Rudd Crawford: [00:40:30] okay.  A couple of things. Number one on the very near horizon in the present my wife. Is retired from Oberlin, but she just got head hunted a couple of years ago. And now she's teaching remotely at the Eastman school of music in Rochester, New York. And that is huge. Huge work. And so I'm making it part of my day and week to be there, to listen and help with stuff and back her up and make sure that it goes well.

Cause she's loving it and she's fabulous at it. And so to be support system for her for now there's that that's ongoing now for awhile. One thing we love our house. It's right on the Creek that goes right by here. And we want to stay in our house right on through. And so one big plan is to reconfigure the house.

So that the two of us can live in a little bit less of the space and then have an apartment in there for somebody to be in the house with us. And we're not exactly sure. Just In what capacity, but just not to be alone in the house, we think that's probably a good idea. So there's that. And we want to do that really well.

You know, we want this to be because we love the house and we want it to be. Better than it was not just constricted and, you know, in squeezing ourselves into a smaller space, but do it in a way that respects the house itself and so on. And so there's, there's that kind of a project. We want to do a lot more travel if we can.

You know, not looking so good right now, but, Well, we like Europe. I have family on the West coast that I like to go see. There's that of, so that there's the whole adventure of, if things open up again. Take advantage of it, you

Kevin English: [00:42:26] Take advantage of that.

Rudd Crawford: [00:42:27] let's, let's go for it. Our kids are fascinating.

One of them are younger. One is a school teacher in Brooklyn, New York in a public high school doing terrific stuff, loving it. Our older daughter is a graphic artist who currently is designing. Doing a lot of the design work at vanity fair magazine. And she's good. So just attracting those two is fun.

And too. See what comes along. I mean, that's one of the nice things about retirement is that you never know what and, and to be busy on Facebook. My former students are all there and we're Facebook friends and things come along, things happen.

So that, I think that for me, it's a combination of getting a bright idea and saying, Oh, I want to work on this. Let's go. And on the other hand, Reacting and responding and supporting other things that are coming along, you know, and to be sort of in a place, you know, the face Facebook and the internet are, it's like living by a river where these things come by you all the time and you decide if you want to grab one and do something with it or not.

Kevin English: [00:43:38] Yeah, that's, that's an interesting analogy. The kind of the whole social media as a, as a river and being careful you don't drown and just selectively grabbing things here and there. like that. I might use that myself. Well, rod you've obviously you've led a very rich and vibrant life. You are leading a very rich and vibrant life and as we're wrapping up here, can you talk a little bit about how

fitness plays into your life today and keeping that lifestyle, right? I mean, you're energetic, you're vibrant. you're full of life. You're exuding this competence and competence. You're talking about these projects. you've got this appreciation of so many different things in your life.

How has being in shaped helped you or is, is it helping you as you kind of track into these, into these next stages of your life?

Rudd Crawford: [00:44:35] That's interesting because it kind of comes in fits and starts. Throughout my life. If there's been some kind of a medical thing or rising symptoms say like is not, if I just don't pay any attention to it, it goes away.

So You know, there's maintaining a sense of purpose, newness, purposefulness, but at the same time accepting reality of things that are, you know and our younger daughter, her younger daughter says, you know, if you come, if you become completely a vegetable in your, in bed all the time and comatose, what are we going to do with you?

She doesn't beat around the Bush. And well there's Bach there's my headphones. You know, don't play me NPR podcasts that invite political action because I won't be able to do anything about it. And, and I'm always twitching my toe to the music. That's in my head. I have a jukebox in my head anyway.

So as long as you see my toe twitching, you know that I'm still there. And we'll see, we'll just, we'll just see, but to have a kind of a balance between hypochondria on the one hand of, the minute I feel a twinge or in anything you're rushing off to the doctor to see about it, because usually they'd take care of themselves, but on the other hand and this is where my wife is such a help when to dig in and, and take action.

No.

Kevin English: [00:46:10] Yeah. So, no, that's, well said, right? I mean, there are some, there are certain realities to aging and I suppose us taking action where we can take action, And trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle as we age so that we can age as gracefully as possible, as opposed to, as kind of the best we can do.

Right.

Rudd Crawford: [00:46:28] there's a terrific book that I would like to recommend It's called being mortal. And the author is a guy named Otto Gawande, ATU, L a G a w a N D a. I believe he's a medical doctor. Mass general hospital. But it's about how to have a vibrant old age and to insist that if you're going into assisted living, that you get to do it your way and not their way.

You know, if you want to skip breakfast, you skip breakfast. And if you want to snack in the middle of the morning, get them to get you one, that kind of stuff, It's, it's not about them. It's about you. It's a terrific book. and then to be able to reflect on stuff. I did, I, my brother and my dad and I hiked the John Muir trail in the Sierra when I was college age, I'll never do that again, but I did it, that kind of thing.

So to, to have a good backlog of stuff to muse on in the middle of the night when I wake up, you know,

Kevin English: [00:47:36] That goes back to you having led this rich and vibrant life. And certainly certainly sounds like you have so, and I'll, I'll make sure I drop that book into the show notes too. So folks look that up as well. Well, Rudd is we're wrapping up. How would you like people to connect with you?

What's the best way.

Rudd Crawford: [00:47:54] Well, email, I suppose, is the best. My email address,

it's R U D D a c@hotmail.com. And to put something in the subject line so I know what it's about?

So I know that you're coming at me from this, you know, and it can be about anything. I mean, it can be the fitness thing. It can be the gay thing that can be Johann, Sebastian Bach. It can be the harpsichord whatever, but, but sure. Why not?

Kevin English: [00:48:24] People can reach out to you there. And I know you're active on Facebook as well as that an appropriate way for folks to connect with you as well.

Rudd Crawford: [00:48:30] I guess so sure. Why not?

Kevin English: [00:48:33] Okay, well, I want to thank you so much for taking your time and coming on the show and sharing your incredible journey with us. You're a fantastic ambassador of healthy aging and you look great and I wish you all the best in all your future endeavors.

Rudd Crawford: [00:48:52] thank you, sir.