Category: Senior Fitness

As I am writing this article, my wife Edie and I are half way through our road trip to the Hudson Valley of New York and to Long Island visiting with some old friends. Traveling by car can be fun, but tiring. We see a lot of seniors on the trips.

Besides the driving, being tourists and sightseeing often involves a lot of walking and climbing, too, when you visit any of the historical sites that are abundant in New York’s Hudson Valley. The driving can leave you stiff and uncomfortable and the walking and climbing can leave you exhausted and tired with sore legs and ankles.

The best thing you can do, and the last thing you want to do when you are stiff, sore and tired . . . Is exercise. It doesn’t take a lot, only a few minutes a day in your room. If you keep it simple and don’t overdo it, you’ll feel better immediately and feel better the next day, too.

Paul Harvey, the late dean of radio newscasting was an active senior right up until he died at age 90. He was still broadcasting until about a week before he died. He claimed to travel with twenty pound dumbbells everywhere he went and exercised with them daily. That’s a lot to carry on an airplane and you certainly don’t need to take twenty pound weights with you on your road trips. In fact you don’t need to use any kind of equipment just to get a few minutes of exercise on your trips. All you need is . . . YOU!

Your legs take the biggest beating. While you are driving or riding, your legs are usually stationary. Otherwise you are usually standing, walking or climbing. Here are some thoughts on how to help your body loosen up and stay flexible while being the road warrior tourist. When you get to your hotel or motel room:

• Stretch your ankles. Lie on the floor or in the bed with your legs flat. Flex and contract your feet forward and back twenty or thirty times. Then pretend your ankles are windshield wipers and move them back and forth ten times, rotate them in one direction ten times and then ten times in the other direction. Or a fun way to exercise your ankles is by writing the alphabet by lying on your back, raising one leg at a time and making big letters with your feet and ankles. Then repeat with the other leg.
• Stretch your legs. Lie on the floor or in the bed with your legs flat. Raise one leg straight up overhead and hold it there for ten seconds. Then rotate your leg in a circle as wide as you can five times in each direction getting as much range of motion in all directions as you can. Lower your leg and repeat with the other leg. This elevates your legs, stretches the back of your legs, and loosens your hips as you rotate your legs overhead.
• Loosen your hips. Lie on the floor or in bed with your legs flat. Raise one leg about a foot off the bed and slowly swing it as far as you can in one direction and then back the other direction as far as you can. Do that five times with each leg. Slowly.
• Loosen you lower back and hips. Lie on your back on the floor or in bed with your legs bent around ninety degrees. Lift your hips and lower back off the floor or bed and form a bridge with your shoulders and your feet. Lower your hips to the floor and bend both knees to your chest. Hold your knees with your hands. Lower your knees back to the starting position and repeat for a total of five to ten repetitions.

Those movements/exercises take about ten minutes maximum. If you do them both when you get up and sometime in the evening, you will feel refreshed at the beginning and the end of each day. You don’t need to make a big deal of it. Keep it simple and just do it!

I won’t discuss eating on the road except to say that Edie and I have had three truly outstanding meals on this trip. The first was lunch at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, where some of the best chefs in the world are trained.

The second was a buffet lunch at the Mohonk Mountain House Resort, a magnificent resort out in the boondocks. Look it up online and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a mountain castle out in the middle of nowhere. We worked up an appetite before lunch by hiking up a steep trail to an observation tower far above the resort, looking down on the resort itself. The trail was labeled “steep but pleasant”. Hmm.

The third outstanding meal was at the nondescript Olympic Diner in Kingston, NY where we had a four course dinner that was outstanding and normally enjoyed thoroughly by the locals. Yes I said four course (soup, salad, entrée, and dessert), and yes I said nondescript. The Food TV channel should feature it. These were not lo-calorie or non-fat meals. Oh well, we are on vacation and yes I have been getting my exercise.

Enjoy your next road trip with just a little exercise in the morning or in the evening. It’s truly the pause that refreshes.

Thanks for reading.

I am writing this as my wife and I are traveling up the I-95 corridor to the Hudson Valley of New York State, where we have never been. She is driving. I am amazed by how many people that look a lot older than me, are traveling the I-95 corridor. Of course I-95 is the main North-South route up and down the East Coast and this is the time of year that the “Snowbirds” head for Florida for their six month change of residence to the land of sunshine. But today they should be headed the other direction; they should be going south and we are headed north.

Seniors today are much more capable of driving than even seniors of my parents’ generation. When my father was 70, I was concerned about his driving, but now that I am 74 myself, and I claim to drive just fine, I worried for naught.  My father did fine.  My wife and I know a lot of older folks who walk with care, but drive with ease. We know some who are significantly older than we are,  who aren’t even beginning to think about turning over their keys to their kids. We drive to Cincinnati from the Washington, DC area several times a year. It’s only nine hours but we do it all in one day and arrive refreshed enough to play with the grandkids when we arrive. I should say “used to play” with the grandkids. Now we go and watch our four grandkids, ages 10-17, play soccer, volleyball, basketball, lacrosse or whatever is in season. This is often the same night we get there, and we enjoy the games fully awake and refreshed from the nine hour drive.

There is a lot of controversy about when seniors must turn over the keys. Some say the Government should make the decision based solely on age (expect a one size fits all solution at age 75 if that happens). Some leave it to their own judgment. Sometimes the kids make the decision for us. I know a woman who at 90 kicked and screamed and yelled at her kids as they dug into her purse and grabbed the keys, and I know “young at heart” couples in their 80s and some even in their 90s, who are on the road all the time.

Does it all come down to the old adage about taking care of yourself and staying active physically and mentally?  According to “experts” who study these kinds of things, people who sit on the couch and watch reality TV are much more likely to be “stay at homes” when it comes to travel, and they are far more likely to lose their road warrior skills. Those who are physically active seem to go to more far away places and do more things by car, and retain those “road warrior” skills long past when the others lose theirs.  

My wife and I travel by car a lot. We commented just today that we see more seniors than ever at the rest stops and Service Plazas. Most seem to be enjoying their traveling. We see a lot of shapes and conditions too. And almost without fail, those who exceed the standard weight scales, look like they barely function  as they struggle to climb out of their cars to head inside, while those that are lean, trim and obviously active, move out of their cars with relative ease. I say relative because we all get stiff and a little sore after a long time in the car, but we recover quickly. We pop back in our cars after the pause that refreshes and are ready for another couple of hours of enjoying the trip. The obvious couch potatoes look like traveling another ten miles would be like running a double marathon. Most of the active people stretch and do some bending and twisting and then briskly move on inside. The obvious couch potatoes slouch and shuffle and make it look like the entire process is a major chore.

These are just some observations as we head up I-95 to New York’s Hudson Valley and then on to a reunion of senior friends on Long Island, NY. There will be a lot of driving, but it’s still fun and because we are active and take care of ourselves, we will still be relatively refreshed and ready to the things that tourists do, when we get to each day’s stop.

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for reading.

Can you do a “Turkish Get-Up”? Do you even know what it is? It’s an exercise.  You can check with the search engines online to see various varieties of Turkish Get-Ups. I always thought they were a body builder’s exercise or a heavy duty kettlebell exercise. Kettlebells are like cannon balls with a handle and they are a huge fad in gyms today. People lift 100 pounds or more with one arm doing the Turkish Get-up. But at the gym this morning, I watched one of the Personal Trainers working with a senior lady and got her started doing Turkish Get-ups with no kettlebells or dumbbells or any weight at all. Of course after the trainer demonstrated the move, she said: “no way can I do that!” He said “yes you can” and within ten minutes she was doing them. She was doing them with a bit of difficulty, but she was doing them, and she was excited that she was able to do it. Because she took the time to try the movement, she was finally able to do it after several attempts. She did more than she thought she could. And chances are, when it comes to exercise and moving your body, you too can do more than you think you can.

Last October, I wrote a post about The Five Tibetan Rites. Later, after I had published the post, I created a handout for a workshop that described the exercises, complete with photos of me doing the movements, taken by my wife.  My wife commented that “no way could she ever do those exercises because they would be too hard on her arms and shoulders, as well as the rest of her body. A couple of months later she started taking a class at the gym that included the Five Tibetan Rites. Guess what? Of course. The Five Tibetan Rites are part of each class and she does them nearly flawlessly – something that she was convinced she could never do – until she tried it and did it. Yes, you too can do more than you think you can.

Last week I discussed core and abdominal muscles and linked to a short Ebook with some photos of the body movements and exercises. I admonished readers not to do more than four or five of the exercises during any one session. Why? I felt that doing all ten at one session would be too many at one time and that I didn’t want anyone to get a sore stomach from doing too much. I got this Email later in the week:

Subject: Re: Energy Bite 48 – Your Core, Part 2

Good morning, Bob!

Thanks for your 10 Core and Abdominal Exercises for Seniors Ebook. I just finished doing the exercises, and I did all ten. You did a wonderful job creating the SeniorFlow series! The text was very understandable and the photos clear and helpful. It was a good work out! Thanks, again. Have a great day!

Blessings,
Gertrude

She did more than she thought she could and just kept on going. I saw her later in the week and I asked her if her stomach muscles were sore. “Not a bit” she replied. Where did I see this terrific young lady (she’s a couple of years younger than me so she’s young). Well, it turns out she was fulfilling an item from her “bucket list” (a list of things she wants to do before she moves on to another world). She always wanted to play a piano concert in her church variety show.  But she didn’t know how to play the piano. So she learned. She thought it was probably more than she could do but she decided to give it a shot. She started taking piano lessons and learning to read music a little over a year ago. And there she was, a bit unsure of herself, but she played a mini-concert at her church variety show last week and did a great job. She wasn’t sure she could do it, but she did. Yes, you can do more than you think you can.

The reason I even bring all this up is that as I am creating my new exercise program, SeniorFlow(tm), specifically for active seniors, I am finding that I am being a little too conservative in what I think active seniors can do. Even though I have always preached that we seniors can do a lot more than we think we can, I have been reluctant to include anything I thought might be a little too difficult. So I will be adding things like Turkish Get-ups with no weight and some other movements that I have been a little unsure about including, because now I know that seniors can do more than they think they can. That means me. That means you.

Thank you for reading.