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Seniors want more than just exercise. They want the mobility, the strength, and the energy that exercise gives them.  They want the freedom to move their bodies the way nature intended, so they can do what their bodies were made to do.

They don’t want to be bored with the typical one muscle at a time exercises that they see at the gym, and they don’t want to have to use awkward and often dangerous equipment that you buy from infomercials on late night TV.

Many seniors don’t want to take the time to go to the gym and be around all the muscle, sweat, and perfect bodies.

Seniors want a method of exercise that will eliminate the drudgery, will provide a full body regimen, and add a little pizazz and excitement to their day, along with a feeling of accomplishment and new-found personal energy.

So, what if there were an exercise method that seniors would look forward to doing?

What if there were an exercise program that:

• Exercises more than one major muscle at a time. A total body regimen with little to no impact to your joints.
• Combines several muscle groups into a few short series or combinations of movements, instead of the “reps and sets” you do with the traditional exercise program.
• Is adaptable and scalable to your current level of fitness, even if you haven’t moved much in years.
• Contains some “theatrics” or “show business” so that you could brag and say (to yourself) “look at me”, or “look at what I can do.”
• Do at home.
• Teaches you to get up and down from the floor simply, comfortably, and nearly effortlessly, even though you may be having difficulty now.
• Builds strength, mobility, and personal energy to levels you haven’t seen in a long time.
• . . . And much, much, more

It’s not here yet, but it’s coming soon:  Enter SeniorFlow™, an all new Health, Fitness and Personal Energy method for Active Men and Women over Sixty. This method is designed specifically for seniors from the ground up, and is the next step in the evolution of natural movement to provide you with strength, mobility, utility and functionality, all in one series and combination of movements.

SeniorFlow™ has been in the making for many years, but it took a hospital stay to make me realize how much a method like this is needed in the active senior community.

SeniorFlow™ is not boring exercise. This is natural movement . . . the way nature intended.

SeniorFlow™ is an all new paradigm in exercise and movement for seniors that has never been seen in the senior exercise community before.

SeniorFlow™ features individual movements and combinations that are influenced by MovNat, Ginastica Natural, MMA (Yes I said MMA, that’s Mixed Martial Arts), Feldenkrais, Pilates, and Modern Dance (a la Martha Graham), as well as natural, basic animal type movements combining strength and grace.

You won’t even realize the parts of your body that are benefiting from the movements and combinations because the weight of your own body will provide all the resistance you need to build the strength and mobility you want and need.

These movements will help you perform the basic functional movements you need to be able to do the most basic tasks of a normal life. Long before you reach age 60, your body is starting to physically decay in a way that saps your strength, allows your bones to become brittle, slows your circulation, reduces your breathing capacity, and starts you on the downward spiral that comes with age. I hope you’re ready to stop that downward spiral from happening.

Does this sound like a late night infomercial? I suppose in a way it is. It’s a promotion for a new way for seniors to move their bodies that uses:

• Bodyweight shifting
• Gravity
• Momentum
• Center of gravity adjustment, weight and balance
• Leverage
• Full body movement
• . . . And much, much more

There are programs and methodologies out there that are similar in some respects to SeniorFlow™, but they are geared to a much younger and more agile crowd, and are typically not scalable to differing fitness levels. These SeniorFlow™ movements will give you the mobility of a much younger person.

This SeniorFlow™ method is evolving. Over the next several months, I will be refining and fine-tuning it on seniors like yourself who really want the physical mobility and energy of youth. You can be one of them when the program is ready.

Look for it soon.

Thanks for reading.

The question is, do you need special equipment for a decent exercise program. The answer is simple: Yes and No. Yes, you can go running or walking and all you need is a pair of decent shoes. But is running or walking enough exercise? If you read last week’s article, you already know it’s not. In fact as I said, if you are a senior and you are not training for a 5 or 10K event, or are not a master’s runner, you probably shouldn’t be running in the first place. Why not? Primarily because of the stress on your aging joints and other infrastructure. No matter how physically conditioned you are, if you do a lot of running, your knees, ankles and feet take a tremendous beating. I don’t recall the exact amount of force that you put on your feet, ankles and knees when you run, but I do recall that it is far more than the average senior can easily deal with, without injury.

But beyond walking, what else should you be doing. For most seniors, the goal is mobility and functionality. This includes the ability to completely control your body during exercise. This can require a great deal of strength. Functionality is the ability to use your body to do the things you need to do: carry groceries and put them away, lift your infant grandchild, smoothly and easily get in and out of a car (both driver’s side and passenger side). It means the ability to push, pull, lift, carry, bend and twist, and balance. It means being able to move your body easily and smoothly, with complete physical control of what you are doing.

And that requires more than sitting on the couch all evening watching TV or playing on your computer or smartphone, even after a walk.

So what sort of equipment do you need to get the kind of exercise and movement your body requires to be mobile and functional? Let’s start with the equipment you see on late night TV infomercials. Do you need it? NO! The only exercise equipment I found on TV that I liked was the old time “ab wheel” and there is a much better way to get the benefit of the same movement that doesn’t require any equipment.

In fact, your body is the best exercise equipment of all. If you really want to, you can get all the benefits of most any equipment available on the market by just using your own body and bodyweight. And the nice thing about your own bodyweight is that you can easily make adjustments in resistance just by changing the position of your body. For example, you can vary the way you do push-ups from nearly standing and pushing against a door frame or a wall, to the basic prone push-up on your toes or on your knees, all the way to the handstand push-up (more than we’ll ever need to do). The point is the difficulty of the movement can be changed simply by changing the leverage of your own bodyweight. I’ll go into bodyweight exercise in another article, but to answer the question I posed at the beginning, you can get all the resistance exercise you need with just your own bodyweight.

The reality is, though, that often it is more useful to use some sort of resistance equipment. My personal recommendation is to use free weights and exercise bands. You can do just about any exercises you will ever need with just those two simple add ons to your own bodyweight. Sometimes I personally use the suspension training systems such as the TRX system (at the gym) or the Rip-60 (at home or on trips), but these are luxuries rather than necessities.

For me, free weights and exercise bands work fine. I suggest light dumbbells of 3, 5,10 and maybe 15 pounds each. You can buy them at Target, Sports Authority, or other big box or sports equipment stores. Use them for simple resistance exercises for your upper body, mostly your arms, legs, shoulders and back muscles. For the beginning exerciser, you can use soup cans to do most any movement you can do with a dumbbell.

Resistance bands come in several forms. You can buy them with handles or you can buy bands that look like oversize ribbons (wide bands, normally without handles). They come in various resistance settings identified by different colored bands: easy, moderate and hard, and are often sold as packages. Since one size doesn’t always fit all, I recommend the bands that come in packages of three, with varying resistance.

That’s it. That’s all you need. If you belong to a gym or a health club, you’ll normally find all of the equipment you’ll ever need. If you choose to move your body at home, it’s really not expensive to pick up resistance bands and a couple of dumbbells. And of course, best of all, you can use your own bodyweight to get most of the resistance you will ever need.

If you’re a senior body builder or a strength athlete, then by all means lift heavy weights. That’s what you do. But if you’re a typical senior seeking to upgrade your mobility, strength and functionality, a couple of dumbbells, resistance bands and your own body are all you’ll ever need.  And don’t forget to walk.

Thanks for reading.

For seniors, walking is one of the best exercises we can do, as long as we do strength and mobility exercises as well. There are lots of favorable aspects of walking. My wife, Edie, and I have walked for years on the beautiful trails here in Reston, Virginia. We see dear, owls, foxes and other wildlife. We walk in the woods so it is not as brutally hot here in the Washington, DC summers as it would be if we were in the open, There is plenty to see, the trails are beautifully laid out, and are well kept up by the community association. Many cities and towns now have walking and biking trails that people can easily get to and enjoy.

But even without beautiful pathways, there are plenty of areas to walk. When you walk, most of your body parts get exercise. You are moving. You are putting extra weight on your legs. You are making your lungs work more efficiently and your heart rate rises. Unless you limit your walking to a treadmill at the gym or in your home, you are outside long enough to get some good air (even if you walk on the side of the road, your body works as a filter), and some sunshine. A good pace for seniors is 3 to 4 miles per hour. There are some great FREE mobile phone Pedometer apps that will give you time, distance, rate of speed and a lot of other useful information about your walking, plus some will give you a map of the route you walked. There are upgrades to most of the pedometer apps, but I can’t think of anything a normal senior would want as an upgrade. I suppose if you are training for a Marathon you might want something more.

How long should you walk. If you walk at a three mile per hour pace, which is a good pace for seniors, you will walk two miles in forty minutes. That’s a good walk for a senior. My wife and I walked for forty five minutes most afternoons. Post surgery, I am up to 1.9 miles at 3.5 miles per hour for around 35 minutes a day (and some of that is up and down hills). And I started doing that at the end of five weeks following the surgery.

Don’t start at three miles per hour. Just like any other exercise, you need to build up to it. If you are a normal weight and in decent health you should be able to work up to speed pretty fast. If you are overweight, or have some health issues, start more slowly and progress slowly. Take your time and once again, listen to your body, it will tell you how you are doing. One caveat: if you are just starting out, don’t stray too far from your starting point. Work in circles rather than going out in a straight line. Going away from the starting point may seem easy, but remember it is a long way back to the barn on the return trip and it won’t be as easy as going out was.

Walking by itself is not complete exercise. You still need to do some real weight bearing or resistance exercises as part of an overall exercise program, but walking is a wonderful way to get a huge number of benefits of exercise. Remember the adage that the best exercises are the ones you do, so even if walking is all you do, you are at least moving your body the way nature intended.

Here are some thoughts on walking:

• Walk, don’t run.  Seniors don’t have any business running, unless they are training for a 5/10K, etc., or are master’s athletes. Why not? Mostly because of the stress on knee and hip joints. If you are out of balance, favoring one leg or the other can result in pain.
• Walking can be done by most anyone, including those on a walker.
• Treadmills are boring. Outside is nice. Dress for the weather. Carry ID and water. Don’t overdo it in the heat (it’s Summer)

What are the major benefits of walking?

• Improved circulation
• Weight bearing exercise can strengthen bone structure
• Joint lubrication
• Cardio benefits if you walk fast enough.
• Many overall physical and mental health benefits.

Don’t count on walking as a cure for obesity or being overweight. It will help, of course. The main way to lose weight starts at the dinner table. There are a lot of other claims for the benefits of walking. Some claim that walking will help eliminate disease, will cure the inflammation in joints, will ease Type Two Diabetes, and on and on. This may be true, I don’t know. What I do know is that walking will help keep your joints lubricated, increase your heart rate and your breathing rate, and overall, will make you feel better overall over time. That’s the real benefit.

Finally, walking is truly heart healthy. It’s the first thing they had me doing after my heart surgery and walking is recommended as the number one exercise for recovery. I’m walking 2 miles a day at a 3 plus miles per hour pace, and I’m just finished with week six of the recovery period and I walk 2 miles in 40 minutes on the pathway system in the woods here in Reston, VA. It seems to work for me. Since I really got into the more extended walking, I started feeling better almost exponentially the last several weeks.  It works.  Give walking a try.

Thanks for reading.