There’s absolutely no need to torture your body into the shape you want. Isometric exercise is effective, safe and perfect for all ages and all body types – even for those who face certain physical limitations.
Whoever came up with the sayings, “No pain, no gain!” and “Feel the burn!” may have been a marketing genius – but he or she certainly didn’t trouble themselves to educate the public with the truth about effective exercise to achieve a fit, healthy body. All they were focused on was selling gym memberships and/or expensive equipment to people who were freaked out about the shape they were in.
The truth is that effective exercise doesn’t have to wear you out and leave you practically crawling on the floor from the pain of over-extended, burning, protesting muscles. In fact, if you aren’t familiar with fitness equipment or the intricacies of the routines performed on them, you easily could injure yourself, sometimes causing lasting damage to your body.
Fitness doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg, either. For the low price of an isometric exercise training DVD, you’ll have all you need to get in shape – and stay in shape – without the expense of gym memberships, special clothing or special equipment.
Isometric exercise offers a safe alternative for all age groups to the tortures of excruciating gym workouts, and it’s every bit as effective – maybe even more effective, since you won’t be in so much pain that the very thought of continuing the workouts makes you want to toss in the towel and give up. The exercises are so simple and gentle that anyone can do them, too – regardless of age or what condition your body is currently in. Since many isometric exercise can even be done while sitting down, they are appropriate and effective for those with physical limitations, as well.
In an isometric exercise, you hold muscle resistance at a specified tension point, so you’re not stretching the muscle; it’s the increased tension that does the job. The longer you hold the position, the more intensely you’re working that muscle. But you aren’t torturing it; you aren’t stretching it to the point of pain or burn – you’re simply using it, as nature designed it to be used.
That’s why isometrics is so well suited to all exercise groups of all ages and levels of fitness. Everything about it is natural, simple, easy and without danger or pain. There’s nothing “magical” about it, of course. You do have to actually do the exercises on a regular basis – but since they take just ten minutes, are easily integrated into the chores and activities of daily life, and can even be done while sitting down, there’s nothing to discourage you. In fact, when you see how quickly you start to feel and look more fit, toned and healthy, you’ll be encouraged to do the isometrics more and more.
Whether you’ve never exercised before or have done so regularly in the past … whether you’re eight or eighty … whether you’re already somewhat fit or are a true, lumpy couch potato, a focused program of isometric exercise found on an instructional DVD is your best bet for getting and staying fit without enduring needless pain and expense.
Owner of IsoBreathing Inc. and creator of IsoBreathing(R) Ellen has been teaching life style and fitness over 20 years and is a certified fitness practitioner and personal trainer. Find out about Isometric Exercise, Weight Loss Exercise or buy her Exercise DVD – visit http://www.isobreathing.com.
www.successinaging.tv, Di Patterson, Alzheimers disease issues, Healthy Aging, Healthy Living, Active Living, Growing Old, Senior Fitness, Senior Active Lifestyle, Gero-Nation, Healthy Grandparents, Senior Health and Nutrition, Study of Aging, Geriatrics, Professional Gerontologist, http
Holiday shopping for your parents or grandparents doesn’t have to be stressful! In my quest to deliver the best of the net to adults 50 years old and better, I’ve come across great holiday gifts for the boomers and seniors in your family! From the latest in non-stick baking and interactive gaming to gift ideas that protect, serve and pamper, I can help you find holiday gifts that are sure to bring comfort and joy to the special boomers and seniors in your life!
Software for her computer. She might enjoy a great game or two. Bridge, anyone? I recommend the Bridge Baron. But make sure the program your choose is compatible with her PC or Mac.
Paper shredder. This practical and relatively inexpensive gift will help protect her from identity theft by ensuring that all of her important documents (credit card numbers, signatures, bank information) are disposed of safely.
Fun and fitness on the Nintendo Wii. Play tennis, baseball, golf, bowling and boxing on this unique interactive gaming system. The Wii Fit offers ageless fun and entertainment including lessons on yoga, balance, and strength. Plus, it’s great for when the grandkids and great-grandkids come over.
Over-the-bed table on casters. Mom can comfortably have her morning coffee and newspaper (or crossword puzzle) in bed.
A funky new tote. Use it for shopping and do your part to save the earth by sparing plastic bags. I’ve found some fashionable handmade bags on Etsy.com.
Donation to a charity in her honor. JustGive.org provides an easy and secure way to support your favorite charities during the holidays.
Baker’s Edge brownie pan. This nonstick baking pan adds two extra crunchy (not burnt or gooey) edges to each serving. And it’s a really cool gift if you want mom to make YOU brownies!
Swivel seats for the car. With a turntable base, this lightweight and portable seat makes getting into and out of the car easier and helps prevent any unnecessary straining of the back and hips.
Towel warmers. What could be better after a hot shower than a toasty towel awaiting you?
Floor standing magnifier lamp. When vision isn’t what it used to be, you can “see” your puzzles, books, and needlework effortlessly.
Susan Levine is a boomer web entrepreneur and founder of www.50somethinginfo.com, a human-powered vertical search engine dedicated to delivering the best of the net to adults (both men and women) 50 years old and better. Discover more great Boomer sites and tips for senior living at http://50somethinginfo.blogspot.com/
Most of us know the healthy benefits to exercise, and how it can improve many aspects of our life. Anyone can tell you to get moving because it’s good for you; and you’d believe it and take it as gospel truth because it is the truth. But what exactly are these benefits to exercise, and why should you really give it the time of day?
Benefit to Exercise # 1: Body
A very compelling reason for you to haul yourself up from your sedentary existence is that, with being overweight or obese, comes greater risk for a host of other health problems like heart disease and diabetes.
Here’s the unpleasant news for the fat-bellied ones – recent studies have also uncovered an undeniable link between your growing waistline and the threat of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or NHL, a potentially fatal form of cancer that takes root in the immune system.
Translation: beer belly — bad. If that doesn’t motivate you to get moving religiously every morning, I don’t know what will. Maintaining an active lifestyle boosts the immune system, thus helping to keep harmful diseases at bay.
Benefit to Exercise # 2: Mind
Not only will your body reap the benefits to exercise, but your mind will be thankful for it as well. Studies have revealed that exercise can enhance your brainpower. It enhances memory and learning, heightens alertness, helps us think more clearly, and improves specific cognitive functioning in seniors.
One valid explanation for the latter could be that after an aerobic workout, the heart is able to pump more efficiently and the blood is able to carry more oxygen, which the heart then sends through certain areas of the brain in a rush.
Benefit to Exercise # 3: Soul
Tests consistently show that hearty doses of physical activity help improve mood and likewise relieve depression and anxiety. Experts have found that exercise triggers the release of certain chemicals in the brain, like dopamine, norepinephrine, and endorphins, all of which are our natural, built-in antidepressants. This explains why we tend to get a high out of working out and we feel good about ourselves after each grueling training session.
Benefit to Exercise # 4: Social Support
And let’s not forget, exercising is also a great way to make new friends, as well as an opportunity to bond with old ones. The social support you get from engaging in group training or even a sport is good for your emotional well-being and can add significantly to your sense of accomplishment and happiness. There’s nothing like some healthy competition to get you in the groove.
Whether it is dancing, cycling, walking, mountain climbing, or even something as simple as breathing, exercise can and should be incorporated into your daily life. If you can make time for TV, you can make time for exercise. Coupled with the proper diet and nutrition, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t realize these benefits to exercise and live a longer and healthier life.
www.successinaging.tv, Di Patterson, Baby Boomer Issues, Healthy Aging, Healthy Living, Active Living, Growing Old, Senior Fitness, Senior Active Lifestyle, Gero-Nation, Healthy Grandparents, Senior Health and Nutrition, Study of Aging, Geriatrics, Professional Gerontologist, http
Retired people normally become less active as they get older. Most of us spend more time sitting and eat more after we retire from our everyday job. Retirement itself becomes a new career and if we want to enjoy it, we have to approach it like we would a new job. Staying physically fit and exercising is an important part of that. Good health is probably the first requirement to having a successful retirement. If our health is not good, nothing else matters.
USA Today reported recently that millions of overweight baby boomers are on a fast track to becoming disabled senior citizens. I’m not anxious to join that group and there is help available. But, the problem is how and where do we get the exercise we need to lose excess weight and improve our health. Most of us don’t want to join a health club or gym. Some of us aren’t interested in golf. So that leaves us to other devices.
There are programs being pushed at us from every day and there are many different types of exercise equipment being pushed by celebrities, that can be used to improve your general health. Stationary bikes, treadmills, stair climbers and rowing machines can be used to get a good cardio-vascular workout. All it takes is about thirty minutes a day, three days a week (This sounds like a commercial, doesn’t it).
If you are reluctant to go out of your home to exercise, there are some game consoles that attach to your television that can be used to get exercise and have fun by participating in sports without leaving the comfort of your home. The latest one (and a good one) is the Wii console by Nintendo. There are a lot of favorable reviews about this game. If you want an expert’s opinion, ask your children or grandchildren.
One of the latest games to come on the market is the Wii Sports Resort. The Sports Resort was released in July 2009 and has become one of the most popular Wii games. If you’ve never played a Wii console game, you don’t know what you’re missing and there are a few things about a Wii that you might not know.
1. Wii Sports games are already in the box with the Wii console. You don’t have to buy extra games to get started using your Wii. You can learn how to use your Wii and experience baseball, tennis, bowling, golfing, and boxing before spending a dime for more games or add-ons!
2. You can get a workout while you play and have fun while you workout learning how to play the games. You don’t have to pay for a membership to a gym that might cost even than the Wii. When you exercise with the Wii, you sweat and build muscle tone while playing and having fun with sports games that are just as involved as regular sports.
3. You can have fun with more than one player instead of waiting for your turn. You can hook up more remotes to the Wii and several people can compete at the same time.
The Wii Sports Resort is rapidly becoming a must-have game for Wii owners and it will be a popular item for Christmas. If you have considered the Wii Sports Resort as a Christmas gift or as an exercise system for yourself shop early.
If history repeats itself, the stores will run out of stock long before the Christmas rush is over.
Marshall Crum enjoys writing articles about health, fitness and other subjects that interest him. He offers information for people who are looking for ways to improve their health and look and feel better about themselves. Exercise and being fit in retirement has become more important (just to enjoy retirement) and there are some new items on the market that make it easier than ever. Visit his website to see what he’s up to.
There is an entirely new field of scientific discovery emerging termed “Cognitive or Brain Fitness”.
Train the Brain
Currently attention in “training the brain” is centered on the older adult. No target group is more diverse in terms of psychological and physical function, and has the most to gain (by offsetting age and inactivity-related decline).
Key concerns include brain alertness and memory.
Exercise helps generate new brain cells, even in the aging brain. Starting an exercise program early in life is an effective way to lower the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease later in life.
As little as three hours a week of brisk walking has been shown to halt, and even reverse, the brain shrinkage that starts in a person’s 40s, especially in the regions responsible for memory and higher cognition.
Exercise improves learning through increased blood supply and growth hormones. Exercise is an anti-depressant by reducing stress and promoting neurogenesis. Enrichment initiated at any age can significantly improve memory function, but is most beneficial when started young.
Evolving from “use it or lose it” to “use it and improve it”
Conversely, science is also discovering that “mental workouts” are the key to expanding your neural systems and making them more communicative. This means you can alter the physical makeup of your brain by training it. Every time we learn a new skill, concept or fact, we change the physical composition of our brains (its “neuroplasticity”).
The more “cognitively fit” you are, the better equipped you are to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change.
By regarding the brain’s alertness as the result of cognitive fitness, it can be seen that cognition (thinking + performance) is really a set of skills that we can train systematically.
Effectively, we can cultivate our own neuronal networks.
Individuals who lead mentally stimulating lives, through education, occupation and leisure activities, have reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s symptoms.
So if expertise is developed through practice, the practice that has the best results is repetition with increased difficulty.
Maintaining brain fitness then requires a change from our normal and mostly automatic ways of doing things.
It becomes a challenging and lifelong process of nurturing new brain cells and neural networks. Our experiences literally shape our brains, and vice versa.
Given too that wisdom strengthens with age (attentional control is one of the last cognitive abilities to develop in normal brain development), cognitive fitness could change the way society views ageing and what it means to be “old”.
Whilst metal stimulation is a good thing, too much may not be!
Studies suggest that neurons are adversely affected by stress as well as a lack of stimulation. Neurotoxins may be hampered in their ability to form new patterns of connectivity and may lose synaptic connections. This reduction in new cell creation, due to chronic stress, affects brain effectiveness.
Hence reducing stress, and the stress hormones, in your system is critical to your brain fitness and overall wellbeing. Prolonged exposure to the adrenal steroid hormones like cortisol, released during the stress response, can damage the brain by blocking the formation of new neurons.
Older neurons can be regenerated with learning and environmental stimulation, but while short-term stress may improve attention and memory, chronic stress leads indirectly to cell death and hampers our ability to make changes and be creative enough to even think of possible changes to reduce the stress.
Notice today how creativity is shrivelling and mistakes are multiplying? To inoculate yourself against this epidemic, regularly replenish your personal energy through restorative rituals and brief breaks throughout your day.
Relaxation classes through meditation, tai chi, yoga, or other techniques can lower blood pressure, slow respiration, slow metabolism, and release muscle tension.
Plus the human brain is a social brain. We are born into a social system, learn in social systems, and age in social systems.
Socially-orientated classes and networks can help foster trust, support, and relaxation, which are important for both mental stimulation and stress reduction.
“It’s never too late” and “never too early”
Cognitive fitness is not only about seniors or about memory. The race is now on to discover mental and physical disciplines that can help busy executives sustain their ability to lead despite increasing demands on their time and energy.
People of all ages can benefit from a variety of regular brain exercises. Clearly exercising our brains systematically is as important as exercising our bodies.
Plus there’s a ripple effect. Whilst attention is currently being placed on seniors for memory and mental agility etc, what is being learned also has relevance for stressed-out executives, gameboy-addicted kids, and the mentally ill.
Ironically, in maximising the physical and mental agility of kids through to executives, the benefits get passed upwards as these same individuals transform into more able functioning “seniors” than their inactive “dogmatic” peers.
To sum up, the astute amongst you will have recognised XX1C fitness as 21st Century Fitness, where mind + body exercise really comes of age.
Falls among the elderly are a very serious problem. The Center for Disease Control reports that more than one third of adults over 65 years of age fall each year. According to a 2004 study by the California Department of Public Health, there were 25,150 falls which resulted in hospitalizations in Los Angeles and Orange Counties alone. Each of these hospitalizations cost an average of $40,000 to $43,000.
Falls can often lead to fractures, and are the leading cause of injury deaths. Surprisingly, more than half of all falls in older adults happen inside the home, with stairwells, living rooms and bedrooms being the most common locations.
If you know a senior who has fallen, you probably know how long-lasting the pain, loss of mobility, and other side effects can be. Falls can lead to decreased mobility and independence, which can then lead to admission to a nursing home or long-term care facility. For those of us committed to Aging in Place, preventing falls is crucial. Fall prevention can’t be overdone.
Fall Prevention
So what can be done to prevent falls? According to the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence (www.stopfalls.org), successful fall prevention involves three areas: balance and strength, medical management, and environmental (home) modifications.
Balance, Strength and Physical Activity
Balance exercises can be adjusted according to an individual’s abilities. Ask your primary physician for exercise suggestions. One simple exercise you can do is a Single Leg Stance. It doesn’t require any special equipment. Start by standing behind a chair and holding on to it with your hands. Then slowly lift one leg up and hold in that position for 5 seconds. Bring your leg down, and switch sides. You can increase the difficulty of this exercise by holding the position for longer stretches, or by holding onto the chair with just one hand.
Medical Management
Taking multiple medications can put one at risk for falling. Especially if you are under the care of multiple physicians, be sure to keep a complete, up-to-date list of all the medications you are taking. Bring this list with you to your next doctor’s appointment and ask your doctor about how these medications might interact with one another. You should also mention any other therapeutic substances you are taking without a prescription. Also, tell your doctor about any medications that make you sleepy or dizzy. Just as important, have your vision checked yearly and get adequate glasses whenever your prescription changes.
Environmental (Home) Modifications
There are lots of common sense precautions one can take to make a home safer. For example, make sure all area rugs have a non-slip backing or are removed from any walking path within the home. Since many falls occur in the bedroom, install a nightlight to illuminate the floor at night. Some night lights activate themselves in the dark.
Stairs should be of special concern. Install handrails on both sides of every stairwell, and make sure the stairwell is well-lit. Also, fix any loose or uneven steps. Anyone can trip on uneven pavement, and the hard edges in steps can make a fall particularly painful.
Next Steps
If you would like more information about fall prevention and home safety, you can contact the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence. Our agency can also provide you with a thorough home safety checklist you can use. For assistance in obtaining home safety equipment, contact the Convalescent Aid Society (CAS), which provides free equipment on loan throughout the San Gabriel Valley. If you live outside that area, they can also suggest resources in your neighborhood.
Falls happen when least expected and the consequences are very serious. Take action today. A fall prevention program is one of the cheapest things you can do to protect yourself against injury.
Michelle Rojas MS MBA is a Senior Care and Home Care Expert, and the owner of Orange Grove Home Care. She can be reached at michelle.rojas@oghomecare.com. Please visit her website at http://www.oghomecare.com.