Exercise for the over fifties who have never done it

When two friends of mine, a couple in their middle forties who do not 'do' sport, recounted their experiences of going skiing for the first time, I had to restrain from expressing my feelings of incredulity.
She so bruised her shoulder falling over in the snow outside the ski outfitters on the first day that she never got near the piste. Her husband, the only pupil in the beginners class, was so bruised on that first morning that he never went out again. They left the ski station, fled to their insurance paid doctor who scanned them, blood-tested them, bandaged them and counselled rest for months. And that is it: the sum total of their sporting experience, never, from what I can gather, to be repeated.
When I though about it more I realised I was being a little unfair. I've been a sportsman all my life so far, so aches and pains are quite normal to me. Bruises and sprains were par for every season. Even serious sufferings in remote terrain have a fundamental normality to them. But for those who have never really used their bodies, the muscle aches and joint pains that come from the first days of the most basic of exercises must seem strange and worrying.
if you have never felt a sore calf, then you must probably wonder if you have done something serious when you wake the next day after your first run and you feel can hardly walk with an ache that perhaps doesn't go away for several days. And it's not just pain that can be perplexing but simply sweating. For many who have never really broken into a real hot sweat from exercise, the experience can be unpleasant. Certainly I know those who, even though they do things like walking or swimming, hate to really sweat. The important benefits of aerobic exercise, or merely stretching themselves, always eludes them.
So for those over fifty who are not familiar with exercising and for whom I counsel regular exercise (with the rider that those who reach 60 years of age at more or less their best weight stand a better chance of surviving well in old age than any other group), I now talk them through all the likely experiences, from sweating to muscle and joint aches and pains. We talk about what they are likely to feel and where. What causes these pains and what to do about them. I explain how to gauge their progress day by day and how to form simple achievable but developing targets so that after several months, they can be exercising in a way unimaginable before they started. Most of all, I believe that before we train hard we should aim to extract energy from the environment to boost one's own with Chi Gong and T'ai Chi, rather than in the Western view we must exhaust ourselves in order to build up (!) our stamina.
I point them towards Danny Dryer's pain free Chi Running (chirunning.com)as being one of the best introductions around to the art and the fun of running. But most of all I have to reassure them that aches and pains are pretty normal in the way of things and should not in the general case be thought of as an excuse to give up.