Fitness After Fifty

Fitness: Are You Really Fit?

You may look great for all of your efforts but when push comes to shove, is your body in good enough shape to run, reach, lift or lunge during your activities of daily living?

Nancy Stedman wrote an article for New Women (September 1999) that touched on this interesting subject.  Peddling madly away on a stationary bike, for example, may not actually prepare you everyday occurrences like climbing stairs if the elevator conks out.  Does lifting weights help you out if you have to carry multiple bags of groceries across a parking lot?  The author’s article addressed real life fitness challenges to determine if you are in as good of shape as you think you are.

If you are truly fit, you can do everything better, especially the routine tasks that you undertake every day.  Unfortunately, many fitness addicts aren’t clued in to this and when tested, some very obvious deficiencies surfaced.  This is partially due to the fact that we tend to do the things that we are good at and skip the rest.  We focus on the muscles that make us look good when we look in the mirror.  Trainers want to us be happy so if we want to do 200 crunches for “fabulous abs,” that is what we will be working on.  The problem is that you don’t realize that you are ignoring the muscles that play a supporting role (like the muscles in the shoulders or back). 

New Women decided to test this theory.  They used four fit-looking women and put them through a series of fitness tests.  They choose a gym rat, a speed walker, a Tae Bo enthusiast and a Yoga student.  Their workouts were evaluated to determine how well these women were equipped to handle real life situations.

They learned that you didn’t have to run a marathon to get in shape.  They learned that overall, the yoga student was the fittest person in the group.  They learned that even professional routines designed by a trainer could have holes.

Because Yoga incorporates balance, flexibility and strength into its routines, the muscles needed for everyday tasks were well incorporated.   All exercise is good, but the moral of the story is that you need to exercise all parts of the body.

Is your exercise program giving you the strength, endurance and energy that you need?  If shopping or any other routine activity such as running for a bus exhausts you, you are not in good enough shape.

Gardener's Yoga (book review)

Veronica d’ Orazio is an avid gardener.  She loves and engages in gardening activities to the point of pain, which if you are a gardener yourself you will understand perfectly.   For years it didn’t occur to her to address the aches and pains associated with the leaning, bending, lifting, hauling and the carrying that you do in order to create the perfect garden.

Veronica loves studying yoga too.  Early on, she used yoga for damage control after the aches and pains of gardening had set in, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that she realized that you could prevent further injury by increasing your strength and flexibility.

She sees gardening as a kind of moving meditation.  Gardener’s Yoga consists of a series of postures for soothing the typical aches and pains associated with gardening.

This general introduction to the study of yoga features 21 positions.  The book is divided into three sections with a series of stretches to do before, during and after gardening.

The first series of seven are to do before you begin gardening.  These poses are done to warm up the spine and prepare the back, hips, legs and knees for a day of gardening. If you are familiar with yoga at all you will recognize names such as the cat-cow pose, downward facing dog, standing forward bends and chest openers. 

Section Two:  Veronica recommends taking a break half way through your gardening to increase your energy and your focus.  The emphasis here is on breathing, balance, and releasing tight muscles with upward reaching hands, tree pose for balance, opening your chest and shoulders and lateral stretches.  The

Garland

poise (deep squat) fosters mobility in the hips while lengthening the spine, seated spinal twist to relieve tension, and a bridge pose which is a gentle back bend.  Doesn’t that make your back feel better already?  Yoga isn’t just about meditation.  You may be more comfortable thinking about is as a gentle therapeutic massage or a chiropractic experience.

Session three:  At the end of your gardening work (you will do these same poses at the end of a yoga class) a gentle series of stretches will help you restore and unwind.  The knee-to-chest pose soothes the back, hips and legs and when you discover the supine twist you will want to do it every morning to alleviate stiffness. Picture the happy baby pose, you just know that will feel good. Partial inversions will reverse the flow of gravity and increase circulation as you stretch your legs up against the wall. Don’t be frightened by the term corpse pose. All you have to stretch out and let your body and mind absorb the benefits of your practice.  If you haven’t already discovered the delights of yoga this is an excellent introduction, and your body will love you for it.

Source:  Gardener’s Yoga (Bend & Stretch, Dig & Grow) by veronica d’orazio (Sasquatch Books 2006)

Portable Exercise Equipment: Yoga Paws

Once you have discovered that exercising actually makes you feel good you know that it isn’t something that you can do one day and not the next.  What happens when you go on vacation or need to travel for business?

Yoga is probably the best exercise in the world for getting the kinks out and relieving tension, so it would be a shame to abandon your routines because you are living in a hotel room. 

The only piece equipment needed for a yoga routine is a mat, but a mat isn’t exactly something that you can fold up to fit in a suitcase, so let us look a little further. 

The Herald (Sunday, March 11, 2007) in the Travel and Leisure section featured an article by Anne Mcdonough, about Yoga Paws which are a convenient substitute for a yoga mat.  Yoga Paws are just that, a pair of hand and foot mitts.  The mitts are made from a unique non-slip material with perorated holes that allow your skin to breath. They are so small that they don’t take up any space in your suitcase, and all you have to do is pull them out, slip them on, and start your workout.

Each Yoga mitt has a little safety belt between the 1^st and 2^nd fingers and between the big toe and little toes.  The paws are as durable and effective as a yoga mat.  They can be used in almost any environment, whether you are indoors or outdoors.

Come on, after watching those yoga videos set in the desert or on the beaches of

Maui

, haven’t you longed to do your stretching routine out of doors. If you can’t do your routines from memory you can pack your video routine or carry an audio cassette with you so that you can do your sun salutation anywhere. Yoga Paws are available through Spoon Sisters (www.spoonsisters.com) or Yoga-Syz (www.yogasyz.com).

Yoga For Back Pain

Health Maintenance becomes a huge issue when you reach fifty and beyond.  You may have noticed that aches and pains that you were able to ignore a few years ago seem to be hanging around on a permanent basis.  So what do you do?  You can ignore it and hope that it will go away on its own or you can see your physician and decide that you are going to have to take an active part in this new relationship with your body.

Back pain has a tendency to not go away on its own.  See your doctor to determine whether your pain is a muscle issue or if there is something more serious going on.  Chances are he will ooh and ahhh and refer you to the Occupational/Physical Therapy department for treatment.  They will demonstrate and give you a handout with exercises that you should do for the rest of your life.  Whether you do them or not will depend on how severe your pain is or how dedicated you are to feeling better.  My husband taped two handouts on our office door two years ago and I've never seen him do any of the exercises.  Does his back still hurt?  Yes it does.

I take a yoga class once or twice a week and think it is the best thing that I do for my body.  Being a nurse, I studied those handouts carefully and then realized that all of the positions illustrated were based on or identical to positions that we do in my yoga class.  Fancy that!

Most people believe that rest is the key to treating a painful back (like that is ever going to happen), but what your back really needs is exercise.  Regular exercise relieves back pain by strengthening and stretching the muscles that support the spine.  Studies show that you can heal your back pain faster and get back to your regular activities after just two days of rest and some gentle stretching.

Yoga is high on the list of exercises recommended for relieving back pain (however, there are some positions that can aggravate existing pain so do not do anything that actually hurts)...the yoga philosophy does not buy into the "no pain no gain" mantra.

Sign up for a yoga class or at the very least acquaint yourself with some of terrific home videos that are on the market.  A class is really fun but be sure that you find one with the world gentle in the descriptions because there are some power yoga classes out there that are really something else.  Let your instructor ease you slowly and carefully through the motions.  Don't be turned off by position names like "corpse" or "cat" or "fish" or "dead bug" (these are some of the best back stretching routines).  Yoga requires that you hold these gentle poses anywhere from 10 to 60 seconds so your aren't rushing to finish up anything here.  Within the pose, certain muscles flex and others stretch.  This promotes relaxation and flexibility of the muscles and joints.  For people with lower back pain, stretching is very important.  www.spine-health.com/topics/conserv/yogaheal/yogaheal02.html and www.solveyourproblem.com/back-pain-relief/exercises_for_back_pain_yoga.shtml

The Other Yoga: Power Yoga

If you like the postures and you like the stretches, but don’t quite feel like you’ve had a ‘real’ workout unless you work up a sweat, you might want to consider a power yoga class.

My first experience with a ‘real’ yoga class was an eye opener.  Yes, the postures were the same, the stretches were the same and the breathing was the same, but after seven quick Sun Salutations as a warm-up, I was indeed warm all over.

So, what is Power Yoga?  Power Yoga is a moving, breathing, flowing yoga routine designed to get your heart rate up and your muscles moving.  The traditional poses are tied together to affect different parts of your body with an entire routine.

Power Yoga is based on movement.  It is about movement.  It is a series of poses and counter poses.  Each pose sets up the next one; it starts with movement and then works toward a smooth and gentle rhythm.

Traditional yoga works specific areas of the body and holds each pose for a certain length of time in order to strengthen specific areas of the body.  Power Yoga strings these poses together to bring about the natural, innate power of movement to the body.  If you like to test your limits and push yourself, these classes might be for you.

You will want to start with a traditional class in order to increase your strength and flexibility as well as familiarize yourself with the various postures.  The slower pace (take my word for this) is more conducive to learning the difference between a crow and a tiger or a tree, for that matter.

If you are eager to push on you will be gratified to learn that you don’t need years of doing it this way first.  With training, the body can find the right positions without learning to hold them for extended periods of time.

The first step is learning the basic repertoire of poses and routines.  Then practice them until they are second nature. Rodney Yee has an excellent series of video tapes focusing on stamina, flexibility and strengthening that are easy enough for a beginner, but challenging enough for an advanced workout.   

Start slowly.  Listen to your body and don’t do anything that is too difficult for you.  An instructor will introduce you to easier modifications and a slow progression until you are ready to advance into more difficult positions.  You will get there soon enough.  Proceed at your own pace, and realize that yoga is not a competition.

Source:  The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Power Yoga by Geo Takoma