Exercise

A Call to Arms

Being flexible is more than being able to cope with a change in plans. It is also being able to move through your life with fewer limitations.

I’ve been doing yoga for almost as long as I’ve been doing CrossFit. Thanks Cindy. There are many different kinds of yoga and I’ve taken many different types of classes for this particular discipline. I’ve done chair yoga and yoga for seniors but in my heart of hearts I prefer yin yoga, holding poses for minutes at time. All of them have benefits for a more flexible body under your precise control. These are stretches come from yoga.

We don’t really think much about our body movements until we try to do something that used to come naturally and find we can no longer just blithely do it. So today, I want to move through some arm movements.

Hold your left arm straight out in front of you at shoulder height with your palm up. Now take you right hand and gently pull your left hand downward. Then bend your left hand upward so your palm is facing your face and pull your whole hand forward, not just the fingers. Repeat with the other arm. When your hand is pulled downward, you should feel a gently stretching of the muscles along the inside or top of your arm. When up pull your hand toward your face, you should feel the pull on the outside or bottom or your arm.

Holding the arms at shoulder height for an extended time will also be an adventure. They get tired up there, but we can do hard things. Another thing we seldom think about is our grip strength – until we try to open a bottle or something. Clenching your fist tightly (without digging your nails into your palms) and then releasing and splaying your fingers wide not only involves your hands, but your forearms as well. You might feel different parts of your forearm activating with the clench part and the splayed part.

To work on coordination, rapidly touch each finger to your thumb. You can start pointer to pinkie finger or the other way or even go back and forth. Go as fast as you can maintain the touch for each finger.

The video is probably far more helpful for this one than my trying to explain it with words.

Today’s workout:
2-3 times
extend left arm with palm up, use right had to move hand down for 10 seconds, then up for ten second
extend right arm with palm up, use left had to move hand down for 10 seconds, then up for ten second
keep arms extended, palms down facing down and then lift hands
8 clench and stretch both hands
8 finger touches to thumb both hand
8 jumping jacks (jumping, step out, or seated)

Have fun and
Stay balanced.

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Step Right Up

Here’s another bit of risky business. Today we will work with step ups. This entails stepping up on a raised platform or riser. It can be done on a staircase as well as with the fancy box stuff. It can also be done on lower rises. What needs to be considered no matter what you are using is not falling over. If you are on a staircase, you will have walls on either side with which you can balance yourself if you need it. If you are using something else, make sure you are either stable enough or near some object you can use to balance yourself if you get wobbly – such as a counter or wall.

When stepping up, the leg that is placed first will do the pulling up while the leg that remains on the floor at first will do the pushing up part. This means you want to switch legs to work both sides equally. Fun fact: if you always lead with the same leg, and if you do enough of these for one workout, one half of your butt hurts. It is an astounding feeling that I do not recommend. Switching legs means your glutes and quads work half the time and your calf works half the time.

If this is not available to you yet, you can do toe taps where you take your “lead foot” and tap the top of the stair/platform/dictionary/other book – whatever you are using to have a bit of a platform (those last things are NOT recommended for actually stepping on). You want something at least an inch high and up to as high as you are brave enough to do. After tapping the top, put your foot back on the floor and reset your balance. Always have something available with which to balance yourself it you need it. If you don’t need it – great. But if you do, you need it now. So have it available.

The entire movement should be made with you standing tall, chest up. You don’t really need to watch your feet. They are going to go where you move them. You do want to make sure your are clearing the height of your platform.

If you are using a stair or step, the goal is to bring one foot up, the other to meet it, and stand tall when both feet are together on the platform. You then use the same foot you started with to step backwards and back down to the ground. So if you put your right foot up first you will be pulling with the right leg, pushing off with your left foot that will then meet you on the platform. Rise until you are standing tall. Then step the right foot back down to the floor and follow with the left leg. TL;DR – right, left, right, left.

These are not just for strength and balance work, but they are actually cardio as well. They do take skill and power. Use walls, counters, or whatever is available to help with all three of those tasks as needed.

Today’s workout:
2-3 sets
3-5 step ups (or toe taps) with right foot first
3-5 step ups (or toe taps) with left foot first
5-7 bilateral DB curls with or without weights
rest as needed

Step ups are the goal, toe taps are the step to step ups. I watch a health YouTube channel out of Canada. Two doctors talk about all things health related. It’s called Talking with Docs. At the end of each video, Dr. Paul Zalzal says, “Remember, you are in charge of your own health.” He’s correct. You are the person to choose which scaling option, what the amount you want to do is going to be, and how much fun you have doing it. Workouts should be challenging without being dangerous. They should be fun and not daunting. They should make your proud of yourself when you finish. The workout I write is a guide, not a commandment. And I want you to be amazed at yourself when you are done.

Stay balanced.

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Staying Balanced

As we age, things change. Some things actually get better. Other things, not so much. Balance is one of the things that can slowly ebb away. Keeping is always easier than regaining. But time has been marching on for billions of years now and that’s hard to ignore.

Some of the reasons we have difficulty maintaining our balance as we age:

Vestibular or inner ear changes. Your inner ear is delicately designed with three different tubules that are lined with teeny tiny hairs. The hairs are attached to nerves that send signals to your brain letting you know if you are upright, horizontal, or leaning in any direction. And with age, both the number of hairs and the nerves diminish. This makes balancing more of a challenge, but it can be overcome.

Proprioception, or where your body is in three dimensional space is also affected by aging. You have sensors throughout your muscles, tendons, and ligaments that send messages to your brain about where in the world you are. These decrease with age. Poor Carmen Sandiego.

Vision also changes with age and our ability to see in darker environments is especially affected. Limited visual cues affect our balance.

Musculoskeletal changes also inhibit your ability to stay upright. This is where we have been concentrating our efforts to date. Strengthening your core helps to manage everything else. Having strong legs will naturally keep you able to stand up better. Working on strength training is important. While non-resistance (no extra weights) exercises such as walking are good for you, adding resistance or weight training is even better.

Neurological changes can also inhibit reaction times. In earlier days, if you started to fall or trip, you had faster reaction times in which to catch yourself before tumbling over. There are little mind games to play that help with this and we can discuss them at a later date.

Today’s project is to work on overall balancing by bringing many of these various factors together. There are three separate movements we will be working on.

First, make sure you have support available. If you start to wobble, there needs to be a way to catch yourself before you fall over. Standing next to a kitchen counter would work well. You won’t need a death grip, but a soft touch might be quite helpful.

We will start with heel to toe standing. One leg is in front of the other and your eyes should be focused off in the distance. We are not spending this time marveling at our awesome shoes. After accumulating 20 seconds, switch the lead foot and repeat.

The next task is to stand on one foot. Again, keep your eyes focused on some point in the distance at about eye level or simply watch your timer but don’t watch your feet. You may need to touch the wall, counter top, or whatever you are using as a balancing adjunct. You may even need to put your foot down. Both are fine. Accumulate 15 seconds and then switch feet and repeat.

The last task is to play Mother May I from our childhoods and take 8 baby steps. Again, eyes up and focused on some distant point, and heel to toe steps forward and then 8 baby steps backwards. This may be quite wobbly so if you have that PVC pipe handy, you can use it as a cane or support if you need it. You can also walk close to your kitchen counter.

When I talk about accumulating time in a pose I’m saying that if you stand for 7 seconds and then touch or put your foot down, you have 13 seconds to go. You don’t start from the beginning again. So any combination that equals 20 seconds is the goal. Use the timer on your phone and really measure the time. So, 7+8+5 will equal 20 and that’s the goal. Eventually, you will (with practice) get to 20 consecutive seconds. But we start where we are.

Today’s workout:
2-3x
Accumulate 20 second in a heel to toe stand with right foot in front
Accumulate 20 second in a heel to toe stand with left foot in front
Accumulate 15 seconds of standing on right foot
Accumulate 15 seconds of standing on left foot
8 baby steps forward
8 baby steps backward
Rest as needed

I found these progressive steps for balance a couple years ago and have been working on this steadily. When I began I was wobbling all over the place. With practice I have gotten much more stable and confident in my ability to stand upright. My wobble is much less and I can compensate for it more easily. As a side effect, you will find that when your balance becomes less precarious, your walking stride will become stronger and less like the old person shuffle that can creep up on you if you don’t work to hold it at bay.

Stay balanced.

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It’s Hammer Time

Jumping jacks are a great cardio exercise. They also entail full body ROM. They are able to be done in a contained space, unlike running which needs abundant room. Before I tell you about scaling options I want to have a bit of a philosophical moment.

“I can’t” is defeated and sad. “Not available to me – yet” is promising and hopeful. Things that are not available to you – yet, can or will become available later when and if you keep practicing. There is no magic to this. It is simply consistency over time. With that consistent effort, you build strength, balance, and most importantly – confidence. You can do more than you think you can even now, but so much more will become available to you later. Please don’t say “I can’t” because you are better than that.

If jumping jacks are not available to you at this time, they can be done by standing in place and moving your arms as in a standard jumping jack but only stepping sideways first with one leg and on the next rep, use the other leg. If your balance is such that you are not confident (yet) with this movement, you can do them seated. There are always scaling options.

We did curls last week, but this week I would like to introduce another sort of curl. Hammer curls activate different muscles. With the palms facing up, the biceps is targeted. But with hammer curls the palms face each other or inward and this activates a larger muscle in the upper arm and also a muscle in the lower arm. That makes these “easier” or at least different.

Like the curls from last week, they can be done with or without weights and either standing or sitting. If using a weight, use a dumbbell or DB substitute, such as the cans. If you could do a curl with a can of tomato paste, you can do a hammer curl with a can of soup or even a can of vegetables. I use a metal water bottle and filled to it’s capacity, it weighs in at 1.6 pounds. This type of weight is also possible.

The movement for hammer curls should be smooth with control of the arm both up and back to the resting position, fully relaxed next to your thigh/hip. Control should be maintained for the entire movement and not just lifting and then flop back down. Keep the muscles engaged throughout.

As always we start every workout standing tall, chest up, shoulders back while keeping the core engaged to avoid swaying like a balloon in a stiff breeze. We are working for stability.

Today’s workout:
2-3 sets
10 jumping jacks
5 hammer curls per arm (all on the left and then all on the right)
rest as needed

Remember to have as much fun as you can. What is not available to you today will become available with consistent practice. You will amaze yourself as you keep moving forward. The pace is slow at the beginning, but as you move into this regimen, it picks up more quickly. And then – you can do the things! And that is simply awesome.

Stay balanced.

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Dummy!

There are a few different types of dumbbell (DB) curls. Standard curls are holding the DB in a relaxed grip with your palms facing away from your body. Then move it upward in a smooth arc toward the shoulder on the same side. Then lower the DB back to the relaxed and resting position. This movement is for the arms and your body shouldn’t be swaying with the DB.

It is also possible to do this with no weights at all. The position and movement is the same. Hands open and bring them up to the shoulder and at the top of the movement, squeeze the muscles in your upper arm. Like you would do if you showing off the muscles that will start developing when you continue your practice.

They can be done from a standing position (stand tall, tuck your butt, chest up, shoulders squared) or from a seated position (again with chest up, straightened back, and squared shoulders). If you find yourself swaying in the standing position you can lower the weight so you don’t need to engage your torso in the movement, or sit down on a seat without arms.

That’s a basic curl but there are many different things you can do with this basic movement and some will be discussed at a later time.

If you don’t have any DBs handy, you can do this with cans. You can fill or partially fill a plastic gallon water or milk container. There are some options. I’ve tried multiple cans in a plastic bag with less than stellar results.

If you are looking at buying some DBs I have some suggestions. They come coated with rubber, vinyl, or neoprene. These have some advantages. They protect surfaces and have a good grip. The metal ones come with a smooth or roughened grip. Each has an advantage – the smooth doesn’t scratch up your hands if you have delicate skin and the roughened grip lessens slip. The head, or weight part, of a DB can be round or hexagonal. I have no idea what the advantage of the round head is. I would highly suggest you get a hex head because there are things to do with a DB that include not rolling around as you use it.

I also own some plastic filled with what I assume is sand DBs.

A DB weight can range from 1 pound to ludicrously heavy. If you are wanting to buy some equipment, I would recommend you try stuff out in person. Walmart or Dick’s Sporting Goods have lots of equipment on the shelves where you can try out different weights. You don’t want to purchase something so light it is meaningless but you also don’t want something so heavy you can use it – yet.

Yet – that is both wonderful and less than wonderful. If you persist, you get better. And then you want bigger weights to work with. Each workout should begin with a warm-up session to get your body ready to do hard things. Once you have gotten stronger, you can always use your lighter weights as part of your warm-up routine.

If you have access to a gym though a program such as Silver Sneakers or Renew Active, where gym memberships are paid for by insurance companies (and they do this because we are cheaper when we are healthy, not for altruism), you can go there and use their equipment without having to buy anything. Many insurance companies offer this perk. This is available to people over the age of 65 and for some with disabilities. It is something to look into if you are interested in having access to a full range of equipment.

Crunch Fitness has a basic membership for $10 a month while Planet Fitness starts at $15. Your local YMCA may also have a program you would find helpful. Having said that – do NOT sign up for any membership that costs money until you find out if you really enjoy the struggle and will use whatever you buy. The benefits are there only if you actually use it.

As always, the key is to
Stay balanced.

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Shoulders

Head, shoulders, knees, and toes (knees and toes). There are two and only two ball-and-socket joints in the human body. They are the shoulders and hips. This type of joint allows for free movement across several planes. In the shoulder, the ball part in the end of the humerus which sits the socket of the acetabulum. This arrangement means your shoulder loses a bit of stability in order to extend range of motion (ROM).

Since that is the way we are built, utilizing the full range of motion means we are getting the best bang for our buck. Dislocates and pass-throughs are a way to facilitate that full ROM. Your shoulder is going through all the planes of motion with the ease of a PVC twirling around.

Why? This is a warm-up exercise to prepare for load. By going through the full ROM movements, you are preparing your muscles for greater use. You are also reminding your muscles that we used to be able to do this with ease and with practice, we can again. Warm-up movements allow your body to acclimate to the stressors of exercise, prepare for load later, and get your heart in gear for a greater challenge.

Having full ROM in your shoulders allows for greater arm movement, but also stabilizes your shoulder for reaching and your arms for pulling or pushing. Having a strong shoulder girdle makes getting up off the ground easier. You would think it was all legs. You would be wrong.

Story time: My son is a personal coach, used to own a CrossFit gym, and is a firefighter. One of his company’s stations is right outside a Sun City. While assigned at that firehouse, he spends a lot of time picking up old people. Many falls occur in the bathroom and we are usually not at our most dignified in that room. While he is a kind and generous man who can help the fallen, he doesn’t want his parents in that situation. He programs our workouts to keep us upright, but also to get us back to upright should the worst happen.

I complained about all the arm work because my bench press just sucks. I feel weak and hopeless because my brain wants to move more weight than my spaghetti arms can handle. So I whined. “Why all the arm stuff?” He answered that I was not going to defy gravity and magically rise from the floor without the ability to push myself up. It’s not all legs. You need your arms.

I still hate bench presses. I do them with sadness in my heart. I don’t feel that way with dumbbell bench presses which makes no sense, but as we go through our fitness journey, we must realize that not everything can be explained with words.

Shoulders are important because they are the connection to the arms. Strong arms, good core strength, and determination is what is going to get me and you into a position so we can rise like a phoenix from the ashes if we are ever flat out on the floor.

Did you realize how important arms are to getting up off the floor?

Stay balanced.

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Introduction

Getting old is a gift denied to many. Being old is a pain in the butt. There are so many things of the before times that are no longer in the here and now. The memories, distorted and altered by time, remain clearer than the blurry vision of what is yet to come. It’s a mess. A big mess.

I’ve been struggling with all this existential stuff post-retirement. Here are some of the things I’ve learned.

Life is easier in a healthy body.

It’s not as difficult as one might think to get a healthy body.

Move more.

Eat real food.

Activity is good at any age. We weren’t built for a sedentary life of ease. We weren’t built for chairs and screens. We were built to warily move across the savanna looking for scarce food. We survived through interdependence with our clan or group or extended family. We usually died young of deprivations.

Today we live long and depending on our choices, we prosper. Those choices can be as difficult or as easy as habits dictate. Making a routine is one way to limit the need for choices to be made second by second. Building habits of movement and healthy eating can improve life outcomes. Luck helps as well.

There are things we each can do to better our chances of a healthy old age. Some of them depend on the choices made half a century ago. Having been a healthy adult for the entire time will give you a better starting point than if you are trying to drastically improve your overall condition in old age. But none of us can go back in time and change what we did. And even having made the “right” choices decades ago doesn’t guarantee anything. Life is, after all, a crap shoot. All we can do is improve the odds.

I was the score keeper for a CrossFit Games event my son’s gym was sponsoring. It all looked so amazing. The athletes were doing such wonderful things. I wanted to do that, too. But I was already old and had never done anything at all like what I was seeing. I wished for something. But I did nothing. This does not work. Ever.

The next year, I was once again the scorekeeper and not the doer of any deeds. I was simply a year older. I had always been active, playing racquetball for years and other group activities such as Curves or water aerobic classes. But all this moving weights around and hanging from bars and flipping tires! It was all so beyond my experience.

My son found a local-to-me CrossFit gym. I walked in on a Saturday for a free trial class. I couldn’t finish the class. I cried. The coach said if I was willing to work, they were willing to work with me. I wished I could do all the things. So instead of just continuing with the wishing part, I decided to go with the doing part. I was 59 years old at the time.

When I began this foray into gym life, I could do … nothing. Not a thing. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and no idea how to get my body to do it. I had no stamina – still a problem for me, and next to no actual strength – I’m pretty dang strong now. What I had was determination and grit and a willingness to try. I also came home and cried frequently. It was never enough to keep me from going back. I went. Religiously. Regularly. And eventually I got better at it.

My biggest mistake when I began this journey was comparison. I was not only comparing my old-enough-to-be-their-mother self, but sometimes my old-enough-to-be-their-grandmother self. I was not taking into account my own situation and limitations. I wanted to be like the cool kids who could do the things spectacularly. I never got to the spectacular point. But I was always there and doing the best I could with the body I had to work with. It was seldom pretty. But it was always awesome. I was doing things I never thought I could.

Fitness comes in many forms. There are exercises that are just crazy. There are pieces of equipment that are terrifying. There is no reason to worry about those things. There are loads of exercises that are available to beginners and equipment isn’t even always used. There is a way for the determined. You have to choose to be determined.

What I have become is expert in failing forward. I try and do not, as Yoda might say. And then I keep trying until I do. That is the entire secret. If you can find the strength of will to allow yourself to be a beginner and fail and fail and fail again, you can eventually become not just adequate, but pleasantly capable. It is surprising when you realize it has happened. It’s a gradual process until one day you find you just did it. Amazingly satisfying.

I would love to share some of my insights from over 13 years of gym life. There were pitfalls that may be unavoidable, but I have some idea of how to skirt around them without completely falling in. Health isn’t just about exercise, it includes many other aspects, one of the most easy to control for, is what you eat. I have clues for that as well. I have an intention of sharing my “wisdom” such as it is. If you are interested, please follow along.

Stay balanced.