Photo courtesy of Ted Gambordella

Ted Gambordella turns 70 this month, but he isn’t letting that slow him down.

To celebrate his accomplishment, he’s advocating for others to remain physically and mentally fit throughout their lives. He says he has been doing 100 to 200 sit ups a day for decades and calculates that he hits seven million this month.

Gambordella, a Cochran Heights neighbor, is a tenth degree black belt in various martial arts who won U.S. Championships in karate and weapons five times. He says he is in 10 different martial arts Halls of Fame and is the author of 42 books.

He has been teaching self-defense for 54 years and says he taught injury prevention to the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins, as well as to football teams at SMU, Rice, Texas, Oklahoma and LSU. He instructed players to tuck their chins, perfect their breathing and learn how to get hit without getting injured.

As part of his demonstrations over the years, he let volunteers kick him in the groin or hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat while he displayed no pain at all.

Gambordella says that martial arts is the perfect combination for fitness. “It keeps your mind sharp, improves flexibility, focuses on breathing right and keeps muscles strong,” he says. He does mental exercises that include memorizing Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven.”

He found martial arts while growing up in Louisiana. He wanted to find a way to keep his older brothers from beating him up. “After six months of martial arts they never beat me up again,” he says.

Calling himself a “fitness futurist,” Gambordella is concerned about aging in a healthy way. “You have to be prepared,” he says. “You are going to be fit or not. Sooner or later you are going to be older.”

Neighbors can find Gambordella at Lifetime Fitness six days a week. He does a mix of stretching, core work, lifting and aerobic fitness. “If you don’t use your muscles, you lose them,” he says. He advocates healthy eating and doesn’t take steroids.

Gambordella says he is often approached by folks in the gym who say they hope they look as good as he does when they are his age. “Well you don’t look like me now, “ he says he thinks to himself. “You have to keep it and maintain it.”