The Importance of Exercise As We Age: Let's Get Started!

This year’s summer reading campaign – “On Your Mark, Get Set, Read!” – challenges us to exercise our minds and bodies for improved overall fitness. In this vein, Mike Boulos, a staff therapist at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center in Bedminster, will speak at Bernardsville Public Library on Thursday, July 21 at 7:00 pm about the effects of age on our bodies and how exercise can counteract those effects. He will review simple ways to get started with an exercise program and what the minimum goal for exercise should be.

Mr. Boulos is a graduate of Ohio State University where he earned his Physical Therapy degree. He was led into physical therapy when he was participating in triathlons. He has 24 years of orthopedic experience and continues to exercise on a regular basis. While working for the nation's largest provider of rehabilitation services, he has been a clinical coordinator, an administrator, a regional insurance clinical liaison, and a center manager.

When discussing his lecture, Mr. Boulos quoted Richard Steele, “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body,” and, as far as summer reading goes, adults are encouraged to beef up their reading habits during the summer months. At the library, there's a chance to enter a drawing for prizes each time they check out three or more books or book CDs. This year, three fabulous prizes will be awarded to adult participants at the end of the summer, with the top prize being a Fitbit. Need reading ideas? Look for book displays throughout the library promoting the theme of reading fitness and get inspired. "Ask the Book Jar" also sits on the Circulation Desk with book titles on slips of paper color-coded by genre.

There is no charge to attend the program on exercise, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.