There are lots of ways to increase your physical activity. Exercising at home is just one of them, and we feature it here because it’s within the reach of most older people. Or, you might decide to follow Phyllis Wendahl’s example, instead, and do something different.
Ms. Wendahl is 85 years old and lives in the small town of Bothell, Washington. On the phone, she sounds much younger. She is a widow and lives on her Social Security income, and, like many older adults, she won’t let her kids spoil her as much as they would like to. She would rather do things on her own.
That’s why, when she was scouting around for a fitness club where she could use strength-building equipment, she bargained the owner down to a monthly fee that she felt she could afford — $25 a month for unlimited use.
“Look, I know that not everybody is as bold as I am about that kind of thing,” Ms. Wendahl told us. Nonetheless, she has some advice for older adults who are thinking about going to a fitness center: “They don’t need to feel self-conscious about going to the club. The owner of my club holds me up as an example now.”
Ms. Wendahl said that she has always been active, but never as much as she is now. She began doing aerobic exercises in her 70s, moved on to water aerobics, and most recently to strength-building and stretching 3 times a week. She lives on her own and drives herself wherever she needs to go. After 6 months of endurance and strength exercises, measurements showed that Ms. Wendahl was able to perform household tasks — carrying groceries, making her bed, and transferring laundry — more quickly. She could also carry more weight.
“It has just done me a world of good,” she said of her physically active lifestyle. “My family is so thrilled and proud of me,” she added.
She wants older adults who read this book to know that, when it comes to exercise and physical activity, “there’s always something within someone’s capabilities. There’s no reason older people need to be sitting in a rocking chair.”
How Hard Should I Exercise?We can’t tell you exactly how many pounds to lift or how steep a hill you should climb to reach a moderate or vigorous level of exercise, because what is easy for one person might be strenuous for another. It’s different for different people.
We can, however, provide some advice based on scientific research: Listen to your body. The level of effort you feel you are putting into an activity is likely to agree with actual physical measurements. In other words, if your body tells you that the exercise you are doing is moderate, measurements of how hard your heart is working would probably show that it really is working at a moderate level. During moderate activity, for instance, you can sense that you are challenging yourself but that you aren’t near your limit.
One way you can estimate how hard to work is by using the Borg Category Rating Scale. It was named after Gunnar Borg, the scientist who developed it. The numbers on the left of the scale don’t indicate how many times or how many minutes you should do an activity; they help you describe how hard you feel you are working.
For endurance activities, you should gradually work your way up to level 13 — the feeling that you are working at a somewhat hard level. Some people might feel that way when they are walking on flat ground; others might feel that way when they are jogging up a hill. Both are right. Only you know how hard your exercise feels to you.
Strength exercises are higher on the Borg scale. Gradually work your way up to level 15 to 17 — hard to very hard — to build muscle effectively. You can tell how hard an effort you are making by comparing it to your maximum effort. How hard does your current effort feel compared to when you are lifting the heaviest weight you can lift? Once you start exerting more than a moderate amount of effort in your muscle-building exercises, your strength is likely to increase quickly.
As your body adapts and you become more fit, you can gradually keep making your activities more challenging. You might find, for example, that walking on a flat surface used to feel like you were working at level 13 on the Borg scale, but now you have to walk up a mild hill to feel like you are working at level 13. Later, you might find that you need to walk up an even steeper slope to feel that you are working at level 13.
The Borg scale is simple to use. But if your level of effort doesn’t match the numbers you see on the Borg scale — for example, if you think you are doing the exercises correctly, but you aren’t progressing or you are exhausted by your effort — check with a fitness professional. These experts are likely to understand the science that went into developing the Borg scale, and they can teach you how to match your level of effort with the right number on the scale.
Here are some points to keep in mind as you begin increasing your activity:
Endurance exercises are any activity — walking, jogging, swimming, raking — that increases your heart rate and breathing for an extended period of time.
How Much, How Often
Safety
ProgressingWhen you are ready to progress, build up the amount of time you spend doing endurance activities first; then build up the difficulty of your activities later. Example: First, gradually increase your time to 30 minutes over several days to weeks (or even months, depending on your condition) by walking longer distances, then start walking up steeper hills or walking more briskly.
Tips on How to Gauge Your EffortHere are some informal guidelines you can use to estimate how much effort you are putting into your endurance activities.
Examples of Endurance ActivitiesExamples of activities that are moderate for the average older adult are listed below.
Moderate:
The following are examples of vigorous activities.
Vigorous:
Even very small changes in muscle size can make a big difference in strength, especially in people who already have lost a lot of muscle. An increase in muscle that’s not even visible to the eye can be all it takes to improve your ability to do things like get up from a chair or climb stairs.
Your muscles are active even when you are sleeping. Their cells are still doing the routine activities they need to do to stay alive. This work is called metabolism, and it uses up calories. That can help keep your weight in check, even when you are asleep!
About Strength ExercisesTo do most of the following strength exercises, you need to lift or push weights, and gradually you need to increase the amount of weight you use. You can use the hand and ankle weights sold in sporting-goods stores, or you can use things like emptied milk jugs filled with sand or water, or socks filled with beans and tied shut at the ends.
There are many alternatives to the exercises shown here. For example, you can buy a resistance band (it looks like a giant rubber band, and stretching it helps build muscle) at a sporting-goods store to do other types of strength exercises. Or you can use the special strength-training equipment at a fitness center.
How Muscles WorkWhat makes your muscles look bigger when you flex them - when you "make a muscle" with your biceps, for example?
Muscle cells contain long strands of protein lying next to each other. When you want your muscles to move, your brain signals your nerves to stimulate them. A chemical reaction in your muscles follows, causing the long strands of protein to slide toward and over each other, shortening the length of your muscle cells. When you "make a muscle" and you see your muscle bunch up and bulge, you are actually watching it shorten as the protein strands slide over each other.
When you do challenging muscle-building exercises on a regular basis, the bundles of protein strands inside your muscle cells grow bigger.
Practice Sitting Straight Sit or stand with your shoulders back, but not pinched, and hold this position while you take slow, deep breaths. You can do this anytime.
Progressing
Sarcopenia: A Word You Are Likely to Hear More AboutWe know that muscle-building exercises can improve strength in most older adults, but many questions remain about muscle loss and aging. Researchers want to know, for example, if factors other than a sedentary lifestyle contribute to muscle loss. Does age itself cause changes in the muscles of older people? Is muscle loss related to changes in hormones or nutrition? The answers to these questions may lead to ways of helping us keep our strength as we age.
In this book, we use the word "frailty" to describe the loss of muscle and strength often seen in older people, because it's a word that most people are familiar with. However, a better word to use is "sarcopenia" (pronounced sar - ko - PEEN - ya). It means not only the loss of muscle and strength but also the decreased quality of muscle tissue often seen in older adults. You are likely to hear more about sarcopenia in the future since it's a very active area of research.
Examples of Strength Exercises | Examples of Strength/Balance Exercises | Examples of Stretching Exercises
Endurance
Strength
Balance
Stretching
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