Body and Spirit

Training For Senior Citizens

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Dick Nunez, Jason Maxwell, William Brauer

Home

Series Code: BAS

Program Code: BAS000073


00:01 The following program is designed to demonstrate
00:04 simple workouts that you can use to improve your health.
00:08 Be sure to consult your physician
00:09 before beginning any exercise program.
00:14 Do you think you're too old to start exercising, guess again?
00:18 Stay tune for the how's and why's next on Body & Spirit.
00:51 Hello, I'm Dick Nunez, exercise physiologist
00:53 and principal of Mountain State Leadership Academy
00:55 in Miracle Meadows in West Virginia.
00:57 Welcome to Body & Spirit.
00:59 Today, we're gonna talk about training for senior citizens
01:01 or anybody who might think they're too old.
01:04 Some people think they're too old to exercise
01:06 by the time they're 30 which is very, very sad.
01:09 I met people all throughout my career
01:11 who've had determination to keep going.
01:14 I remember a lady who came to our wellness program one time.
01:17 She was in her 70's and she had a rheumatoid arthritis.
01:20 And she was determined just to sit in a chair
01:22 and do nothing and view Mount Rushmore,
01:24 and get massages and be pampered,
01:26 but she didn't want to exercise.
01:28 Come the second week, an 87-year-old lady came
01:31 and when she got there,
01:32 she was interested in getting a new lifestyle.
01:35 And this 70-year-old lady just watched her
01:37 as she walk up and down the hallway to go exercise.
01:40 And when she'd come back,
01:41 she said, "How's that feel?"
01:43 "Oh it feels wonderful", she would say.
01:45 "It makes me feel like I'm alive again."
01:47 Come the third week, when it was time to exercise,
01:50 the 70-year-old lady finally said,
01:52 "Okay, okay. I'll do it, I'll do it."
01:54 And she finally walked down the hallway,
01:57 went through her exercise and after the final week was over,
02:00 she said, "Oh what a tragic to be stubborn old Irish woman."
02:03 She said, "I wish I would've started this
02:05 when I first got here."
02:06 Yes, great results can be had regardless of what age you are.
02:09 In fact, one of the greatest miracles
02:11 I ever saw was a 73-year-old woman who's in such pain
02:14 she could hardly walk.
02:15 And she came out to our wellness program.
02:17 In two weeks later,
02:18 she was walking six to ten miles a day.
02:20 I've never seen anything like it.
02:22 So great things can happen.
02:23 I think we're ready to get started.
02:25 Helping me out today will be Will and Jason,
02:28 who are both students
02:30 at the Mountain State Leadership Academy.
02:34 Thank you, Will.
02:36 And we're gonna start by sitting down on the chair,
02:38 because often times seniors cannot get around very well.
02:41 And they feel little bit confine,
02:43 so we'll sit down
02:45 and do this in a--in a more of a comfortable manner here.
02:49 We wanna take away any reason
02:50 why somebody would not want to exercise.
02:53 And so we're gonna start by gently warming up.
02:55 Let's put our arms up.
02:56 We're gonna squeeze our elbows together and back out.
03:00 Come together and back out.
03:02 We're just doing a range of motion here.
03:05 We find that senior citizens as they grow older
03:09 or people in general of course.
03:11 But in between the ages of 20 and 70,
03:13 the typical man will lose 40% of his muscle mass
03:17 and 30% of his strength.
03:19 It doesn't have to be that way.
03:20 And unfortunately, the average person over the age of 75,
03:26 one quarter of all men and two-thirds of all women
03:28 can no longer pick up 10 pounds.
03:30 This will make it very difficult for them
03:31 to even carry their own groceries
03:33 or certainly make it adversely impossible
03:35 to pick up a grandchild.
03:37 Okay. Now squeeze in and back out.
03:42 Squeeze in, back out. Squeeze in, back out.
03:48 Okay, now just press the hands here like this
03:51 and you determine how hard you go if you got a sore wrist.
03:54 You don't wanna push that hard or you can do it like this
03:58 if it becomes too difficult to open your hands up.
04:02 The bottom-line is you wanna have a steady pressure,
04:05 so you're feeling it in the chest area.
04:07 So let's keep pressing there.
04:09 We wanna try out some movement to this exercise
04:12 so what we're gonna do is
04:13 we're gonna turn our hands facing out.
04:15 We're gonna keep pressuring on them and go all the way out.
04:18 And then draw them back to our chest again.
04:20 And out, and back in. Out and in.
04:27 Trying to keep the tension on at all times.
04:30 If you have to put your arms down
04:32 and relax for a moment, that's just fine.
04:34 You're not trying to over do it.
04:36 You're simply trying to stimulate the body.
04:39 Exercise should not feel like a death march.
04:43 It should be something you actually enjoy.
04:47 Let's go 10 more like this.
04:50 Obviously as you look at the people that are helping me out,
04:53 you might think that they don't look
04:54 too much like senior citizens
04:55 and that's because they exercise regularly.
04:58 No, really they are,
04:59 they're no more close to being senior citizens,
05:00 they're both teenagers.
05:04 Now if I could introduce one is 76
05:06 and the other one is 77, I really have some going here.
05:11 Okay. Now let's go up.
05:16 Only problem is they'd ask me why I don't look that young.
05:21 And up and down.
05:24 Again if you've to put your arms down, that's fine.
05:29 Up. Keep the pressure on your hands as you're doing it.
05:34 Let's go 10 more.
05:36 And there's two, and three,
05:42 and four, five. Five more.
05:47 Six, and seven, and eight.
05:53 Two more times. Nine, last one and ten.
05:58 Good. All right.
06:00 Now we're gonna just gonna sit back in our chair.
06:01 I'll let you guys sit with back posture
06:03 just this moment. Okay.
06:04 And we're just gonna reach back and stretch the arms.
06:09 Just let it stretch back there.
06:13 We wanna work on a full range of motion.
06:17 Okay. Now let's sit forward and wrap ourselves up
06:20 and try and pull our shoulder blades apart.
06:27 And again we wanna sit back.
06:30 Lay back. Grab the arms back
06:33 so you feel the stretch in your chest.
06:36 You're gonna hold that for 10 more seconds.
06:38 One, two, three, four, five,
06:43 six, seven, eight, nine and ten. Good.
06:48 Now forward and pull the scapula apart.
06:53 Scapula, your shoulder blades in the middle of your back.
06:56 They're one on each side.
07:00 Five more seconds.
07:02 One, two, three, four and five, good.
07:06 Sit back on the chair. All right.
07:09 As senior citizens, it's also very important
07:11 to get a regular breathing going,
07:13 so let's breathe into the nose and out through the mouth.
07:18 Into the nose, out through the mouth.
07:22 One more time. Into the nose, out through the mouth.
07:28 All right. We're gonna do some upper back exercise.
07:30 Just bring our arms up.
07:32 We're gonna drive the elbows back as far as we can.
07:35 Hold that. Press into the chair
07:37 if you can and reach back out.
07:40 Let's go back again, press.
07:43 Think about squeezing your shoulder blades together,
07:47 okay and out. Bring it back.
07:51 Can you feel your shoulder blades, Jason?
07:53 Yes. Will, you're feeling all right?
07:55 Yeah, I feel. Okay, good.
07:57 Now when you come out,
07:58 you wanna try and pull your shoulder blades apart
08:00 as far as possible and bring it back.
08:03 Squeeze hard, you want to flex hard.
08:07 In bodybuilding, when bodybuilders
08:08 flex their muscles,
08:10 it actually is a very strenuous activity
08:12 to contract your muscles as hard as you can
08:14 and just hold it.
08:15 And often times, people loose the ability
08:17 to contract those muscles in the mid back,
08:20 the rhomboids and trapezius
08:22 and some of those muscles back there.
08:24 Reality is we want to keep that ability.
08:26 Okay, reach out. Squeeze back.
08:29 Squeeze it hard. And reach out.
08:33 Let's do five more. Back, squeeze hard.
08:38 And back out. And squeeze.
08:45 Okay, two more. When I say squeeze
08:48 what I'm meaning is to contract
08:49 the muscles as hard as you can.
08:51 We're not talking about squeezing an orange
08:53 or anything like that.
08:55 Squeeze it and hold it,
08:59 and hold it, and hold it,
09:01 keep contracting, keep contracting.
09:04 Five more seconds. One, two, three, four and five.
09:10 We're gonna take our arm up over the head and pull it over.
09:19 And let's hold that for five more seconds.
09:22 One, two, three, four and five and switch.
09:30 Steady pull. Do not wrench on your arm.
09:33 Do not try and go any further
09:35 than what you feel is comfortable.
09:37 Your body will naturally allow you to get more flexible
09:39 as you go but obviously there will be a limit.
09:42 Four, three, two, one, relax.
09:47 Okay, deep breath.
09:50 Into the nose, out through the mouth.
09:53 Into the nose, out through the mouth.
09:57 For some who've been around for a while,
09:58 you might remember Jack LaLanne
10:00 who is a very famous fitness pioneer
10:02 and even now in his mid 80--mid upper 80's,
10:05 he's still exercising on a very regular basis.
10:08 And people often time have asked Jack,
10:10 they said, "Do you feel like
10:12 you've added years to your life?"
10:13 and he said, "I don't know, but I've added life to my years."
10:16 And that's the very important thing.
10:17 And I think if you remember his exercise program,
10:20 he always emphasized proper breathing
10:22 and he'd use that organ,
10:23 then when he breathe in like a booo,
10:25 and then they'd breathe out brooo.
10:27 So that's very important aspect that something
10:29 that's helped to keep Jack LaLanne very fit.
10:31 And he is extremely fit last time I saw him.
10:34 Okay. We're gonna work on the shoulders now.
10:36 You're gonna take your arms at a 90 degree bend.
10:38 We're just gonna lift them up and back.
10:41 And up and back.
10:44 Shoulder areas are extremely important area.
10:46 And what happens often times
10:48 is people get so weak in their shoulder muscles
10:50 that it's difficult for them to do virtually anything.
10:53 Like reaching up into a cupboard
10:54 and trying to feel like take something out,
10:56 or put something away,
10:58 it becomes a very, very difficult task.
11:01 So by strengthening the shoulders back up,
11:03 then it will become much more affective again
11:05 at moving around. It's a very simple exercise.
11:08 You can use some weights if you want.
11:12 For most that are in the senior category though,
11:16 this will be adequate. Now for those at home
11:18 who are not in that category ones
11:20 still gonna get a good hard workout.
11:22 Certainly you're applying to add some extra weights.
11:24 And obviously some of the exercise we do,
11:26 the harder you push, the more you work you get,
11:29 so you determine how hard you're gonna workout.
11:31 Just doing the basic exercises
11:33 will still give you a lot of benefit.
11:36 And let's go 10 more.
11:38 There's one and two, and three,
11:43 four, five, six,
11:50 seven, eight, nine.
11:55 One more time, ten.
11:57 We're gonna hold that for ten seconds.
11:59 Two, three, four, five,
12:03 six, seven, eight, nine. Relax. Okay.
12:09 Let's bring one arm across. Stretch the shoulder.
12:13 Let's hold it for 10 more seconds.
12:15 One, two, three, four, five,
12:20 six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
12:25 Switch. And across.
12:28 One, two, three, four, five,
12:33 six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
12:37 Okay. Into the nose, out through the mouth.
12:42 Again, into the nose, out through the mouth.
12:48 Usually we do the entire upper body
12:51 and now we're going to lower body or abdominal training.
12:54 Today, we're gonna mix it up a little bit,
12:55 because we'll try and let certain muscles rest
12:57 when we go into a different area.
12:59 So our next exercise
13:00 although it's gonna seem fairly simple for you fellows.
13:03 The bottom-line is--is it could be difficult
13:05 for some people out there.
13:07 And that's simple. We're gonna cross our leg, okay.
13:11 Now, we're gonna put it down and cross the other one.
13:14 And we're gonna put it down
13:15 and then cross the other one. Okay.
13:18 And down and cross. And down and cross.
13:23 And down, cross. Good, keep going.
13:28 Now it looks like we just can't find a comfortable position,
13:31 but the reality is this is a very good exercise
13:35 for seniors or for anybody really.
13:41 It just helps you keep that flexibility
13:43 and range of motions allow you to do that.
13:46 You see somebody's trying to pick their leg up
13:48 to cross it over becomes very frustrating.
13:53 And I think we all know that seniors
13:56 like to be able to do their own thing.
13:57 They don't want people back to help them.
14:03 We look like a chorus line, we're in good unison here.
14:08 Okay. Let's go five more each way.
14:10 There's one, and two,
14:17 three, and four,
14:23 and five. Good, okay.
14:26 Into the nose, out through the mouth.
14:31 Into the nose, and out through the mouth.
14:35 Good. Let's pull one leg out
14:38 and we're gonna rotate it in and out.
14:43 It's sad when you see the amount of people
14:46 there in nursing homes simply 'cause of the fact
14:48 they can't take care of themselves anymore.
14:50 And people who have gone into nursing homes
14:52 that gone to a regular exercise program
14:54 have found great results.
14:55 I know the Boston Hebrew Rehabilitative Center
14:57 did a project on people from 87 to 96
15:01 and found fantastic results in their training.
15:04 Some were abandoning their canes
15:06 or getting up out of wheelchairs.
15:07 And some people even were able to go home
15:09 because now they can take care of themselves again.
15:12 Let's go five more. Two, three, four, and five, good.
15:19 Okay, rotate.
15:21 As I've mentioned at the top of the show
15:23 the lady who is 73 that was in extreme pain.
15:26 I have never seen a person
15:29 go from where she was virtually ready
15:32 for a wheelchair to go into walking six to ten miles a day.
15:35 That was absolutely staggering.
15:36 I've never seen anything like it
15:38 in my career as an exercise physiologist.
15:41 Okay, 10 more. One, two,
15:44 three, four, five, six,
15:49 seven, eight, nine, ten, good.
15:53 Now we're gonna do is we're gonna--gonna put our hands
15:57 on the outside of our knees
15:58 and we're gonna spread our legs out,
16:00 and bring it back.
16:03 As people grow older,
16:05 often times they loose the mobility of their hips
16:08 or the hip joint becomes weaker
16:10 because the muscles surrounding that hip joint are now weak.
16:14 Remember we've established the fact on many programs
16:17 that everybody has weak joints.
16:20 A joint is just bone to bone connected by ligaments.
16:23 It's a muscle that gives the strength.
16:28 This is another one where you dictate
16:29 how hard you wanna work.
16:34 Let's go 10 more.
16:37 It's two, and three, four, five,
16:44 six, seven, eight, nine and ten.
16:50 Okay. Now we're gonna do the inside of a thigh.
16:53 We're gonna block, push out.
16:56 This will also work the shoulders
16:57 a little bit as we do this.
17:04 Very important exercise,
17:05 getting those abductor muscle strong.
17:08 And remember,
17:09 one always have balance whenever we work the muscle,
17:11 We want to work antagonistic muscle wear,
17:13 which is the opposite.
17:15 So for the abductors, the opposite will be the adductors
17:18 and that's what we're working now.
17:19 Just as your lower back is the opposite of your abdominal
17:23 or your biceps, they're opposite of your triceps.
17:30 Okay, 10 more.
17:34 Three, four, five, six,
17:39 seven, eight, nine and ten, good.
17:46 All right, deep breath.
17:49 Blow out, deep breath. Blow out.
17:56 One more time, into the nose, out through the mouth.
18:02 Okay, let's go back to arm training.
18:04 We're gonna sit forward and put our arm down
18:07 between our legs here using our inside of our leg
18:10 to be a block for the elbow.
18:12 Grab a hold of your wrist
18:13 and you're gonna curl the arm up and back down.
18:17 We're gonna do 15 repetitions.
18:19 There's three, and four, and five.
18:25 Not too fast, six. Good control.
18:29 All the way down. Keep the elbow into your leg.
18:32 Nine, and ten, and eleven,
18:37 twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
18:42 One more time, fifteen, good.
18:45 Switch over to the other side.
18:46 And curl, and curl, good.
18:52 Full range of motion.
18:54 Four, five, six, seven.
19:02 Palm up.
19:04 There's nine, and ten, eleven,
19:10 twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
19:14 One more time, fifteen, good.
19:17 Okay, shake your arms out. Relax for a moment.
19:23 When you are not in very good shape,
19:25 you wanna make sure
19:26 your pulse rate stays in a reasonable range.
19:29 Every now and then, you might wanna check your heart.
19:31 And I'd advise you to use either your wrist
19:34 between your first couple of tendons
19:36 on your thumb side or use your temple area up here.
19:40 I would not go after the carotid artery.
19:43 A lot of people don't even know where the carotid artery is.
19:45 They just start clutching for their throat
19:46 until they'd feel the pounding of the pulse.
19:49 But they can start putting pressure on that carotid artery
19:51 and especially for somebody who's elderly
19:54 or may have some problem with vascular blockage,
19:57 it wouldn't be a good thing
19:58 to start pushing down on those very vital arteries.
20:01 And also there is an automatic response from the brain
20:04 telling your body that there is pressure on a carotid artery
20:07 and so you might want the heart will actually slow down.
20:10 You're not gonna get totally accurate read anyway.
20:12 So you better off going off your thump side
20:14 or off your temple area
20:16 but the bottom line is when you are exercising
20:19 you should be able to still talk
20:21 maybe not be able to sing,
20:22 but you should be able to talk, I can't sing anyway,
20:24 so it doesn't matter for me.
20:25 But you need to be able to talk
20:27 or you should be able to still carry on a conversation
20:31 and you should still feel okay.
20:34 Let's do the triceps now. Let's press down.
20:41 I do the old prison singing,
20:42 I don't have the key and I'm behind a few bars, so.
20:54 There's ten. Five more,
20:56 eleven, twelve, thirteen,
21:01 fourteen, fifteen. switch over.
21:05 Push down, down, down.
21:12 Again we're keeping the elbow block into the leg,
21:15 trying to get a full extension each time we go down.
21:19 The term muscle down is really quite erroneous,
21:22 people think it's because you get big muscles
21:23 as you muscled out.
21:24 Actually somebody who is elderly
21:26 and doesn't do any exercise,
21:28 they are the ones who truly are becoming muscled out
21:30 'cause they can't move anymore.
21:32 Five more. One, and two,
21:35 and three, and four, and five.
21:39 Now I want you just string your arms back as far as you can
21:45 and lock the arms out with little bit of intensity
21:48 and just hold that contraction your triceps,
21:51 we're gonna hold that for ten seconds.
21:52 One, two, three, four, five,
21:58 six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, good. All right.
22:05 Breathe in into the nose, out through the mouth,
22:10 into the nose, out through the mouth.
22:15 One more time. Into the nose, out through the mouth, good.
22:21 We gonna go back to leg training.
22:23 We're gonna do some leg extension,
22:24 so we're gonna start
22:26 from having our leg out up on the heel.
22:28 We're just gonna go up from there.
22:32 If you want to add resistance through this,
22:35 you can put your other leg over
22:37 and that will give you little more resistance.
22:40 For those at home they have not been exercising
22:43 go ahead and just do it straight out,
22:47 even by just flexing those quadricep muscles
22:49 and don't be afraid to touch them,
22:51 because that will help you
22:52 to actually put your mind where the muscles is.
22:55 There's really been lot of valuable research on,
22:58 it's called the touch technique
22:59 where if you're touching a muscle
23:01 it actually encourages to contract more.
23:04 Can you feel that contracting, Will?
23:06 Good. Jason? Yes.
23:09 Okay, everything still alive in your legs, that's good.
23:14 We can do a lot of repetition on this
23:16 since we're not really using resistance.
23:20 We're gonna do 20 more.
23:22 Two, three, four, five.
23:27 If you do resistance you won't have to do quite so many.
23:30 Eight, nine, ten. Ten more.
23:34 One, two, three, four, five,
23:41 six, seven, eight, nine and ten.
23:47 Now were you able to feel that still,
23:49 Will, in your thigh? Yeah.
23:51 Jason, were you able to feel it? Yeah I can feel it.
23:53 Even though we're not using weight or any resistance,
23:56 we still have a training effect there.
23:58 Let's go up, and up.
24:00 We're gonna do 50 repetitions.
24:03 Help count along with me, Jason,
24:04 just in case I get talking and loose count.
24:07 You can help in put me back on task.
24:09 There is number 10, 11, 12.
24:13 What I've seen those when in training senior citizens,
24:17 I've seen just tremendous progress
24:19 and they actually make gains in far,
24:23 far more abundantly than somebody might think.
24:26 In fact often times they make better gain
24:28 in those that are in their 20s and 30s
24:30 'cause they know their clock is running down
24:32 and they actually put a little more effort into it.
24:34 I always found great joy in training seniors.
24:36 In fact I have a certification as a senior specialist,
24:40 or senior fitness specialist
24:41 from the International Sports Science Association
24:43 'cause I really do enjoy training seniors.
24:46 I've also trained a lot of professional athletes
24:48 and people would say
24:49 don't you just love training those pro-athletes.
24:50 And I say well, yes that's wonderful
24:52 but it's even more gratifying when you take somebody
24:55 who basically has one foot in the grave
24:57 and the other on a banana peel and you help them out.
24:59 They're so appreciative of the efforts you give them.
25:02 Where the pro-athlete
25:03 basically is acting like- they're doing you a favor
25:05 by letting you train them.
25:07 Where we're on, Jason? Little bit over 50.
25:11 See I told you I might get talking.
25:13 All right put the leg out, dig the heel in.
25:17 We're just gonna hold the sitting contraction
25:19 for ten seconds.
25:21 This is working the hamstring area.
25:25 Okay, move your foot about six to eight inches,
25:27 and dig in again.
25:33 And hold it for a few more seconds.
25:36 Now let's put our foot flat down and pull in.
25:41 Holding in there again for ten seconds.
25:43 Three, four, five, six,
25:47 seven, eight, nine, ten.
25:50 Other leg. Dig the heel in.
25:53 One, two, three, four, five,
25:58 six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
26:03 Move it about six to eight inches, dig in.
26:05 One, two, three, four, five,
26:10 six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
26:15 Foot flat, dig in.
26:16 One, two, three, four, five,
26:21 six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, good.
26:27 I want you to put your hands on your abdomen.
26:30 Blow out, crunch down.
26:33 Okay, then push back, push back into the chair.
26:36 Okay, crunch down,
26:38 push your lower back into the chair as you do that.
26:40 Then lay back and push your upper back into the chair.
26:44 Now crunch down, and lay back, push back, good.
26:50 We're gonna do ten more.
26:53 There's one, and two,
27:01 three, four,
27:08 five, six,
27:14 seven, eight,
27:20 nine, one more time. And ten, good.
27:25 All right, I think we're done.
27:27 Thanks a lot, fellows.
27:30 Training for seniors does not have to be difficult.
27:32 In fact it can be quite enjoyable
27:33 and very, very rewarding.
27:35 Get in a regular program
27:36 and see the great things will happen for you.
27:38 But also remember to do it for the right reason.
27:41 Do it for the glory of God.
27:42 The Bible says in Philippians 4:13,
27:45 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
27:48 God bless you and happy exercise
27:51 and we look forward to see you next time.


Home

Revised 2014-12-17