Ageing Dynamically is not the same as a fitness program

Recently I travelled out of town to visit my father and his wife. My dad is almost 93 and they live in a suburban style home outside a medium sized Ontario city. They are trying to stay in the house, which is a bone of contention actually, but I won’t go into that here. What I want to tell you about is seeing how difficult it is for them to do tasks that we all take for granted has lit a fire under me to make that part of my work my focus.

We would all love to think we will never be that old person but circumstances are sometimes out of our control. The problem lies in the fact that most people don’t act until they have a huge motivation to do so. If everything is going along ok why change the status quo? Seeing my elders (and clients who have taught me so much about ageing, movement and consequences) makes me realise that although we can’t always guarantee our results, we can do our best to mitigate potential suffering from the consequences of behaviour, and the time to start is now — like the proverb says:

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

If you’ve only ever been taught one way to behave — let’s say one way to sit and eat, or one way to get up and down from a chair, then when you are suddenly faced with the inability to use that particular skill, when you are under pressure, or in an emergency situation (such as a fall) — you simply do not have the skill set to know any other options. If you can’t use that one way, you are literally stuck. You start to lose control over the most basic situations and that is the opposite of empowering (and the beginning of a loss of independence and autonomy). Most people think a loss of mobility is something that “just happens” as we age but I think we can practice so many ways to keep options open and have them as part of our movement repertoire.

I am in a unique situation to not take so many of those movements for granted. I identify many movements that we need to keep as options.

The ability to age “dynamically” — with mobility, strength, function, skills and a large movement repertoire gives you confidence and a positive mindset so that even if some unforeseen (or perhaps expected but not welcome, such as a joint replacement) event takes place you can approach it head on.

I’ll never forget the time a client looked at me sadly and said “this was not supposed to happen.” She did everything “right”- strength training, mobility training, good nutrition, etc., for years, and yet was facing a knee replacement after years of pain. For her this was a foregone conclusion and she’s probably still out there doing all her favourite activities. I realised then though that lifestyle is not the only contributing factor to independence and function.

We’ve been sold the idea that if you are fit and active, you can offset ageing, but fit is not the same as having a large movement skillset. Someone can work out for years and never sit on the ground. When was the last time you sat on the floor for no reason? How many ways can you get down and back up from the floor? How many ways can you crawl?

We know bone density is an issue ageing people have to contend with and is a motivator in our behaviour, but lifting weights is not the only answer, particularly if you are only doing it one or two times a week in a habitual way. Sitting down and getting up many ways uses the legs and arms in all planes of movement, creating a dynamic and ever changing muscle load on the bones. This pulling on bones (through the tendon attachments) triggers the bone to maintain its strength in that area.

A variety of movements in body weight activities is paramount to maintaining a body that can react in many ways to changing variables.