Phase 1 - Beginning Your Journey to a Healthier You

Some of the most common injuries to older newbies are shoulder injuries. This is because most adults have tight, stiff, inflexible shoulders. They are rounded forwards from years of sitting at a desk. And when they start off at the gym, one of the first things they do is get on a shoulder press machine which forces their shoulders into positions they can't easily get into. So to compensate, the shoulder rotates and twists into an unnatural position that puts stresses on the shoulder in ways that is not supposed to be stressed. "Hey, see how much I can do - SNAP". If you can't get your shoulder in the correct position for pressing, you will eventually injure it. And even if you don't have an all-at-once SNAP type injury, it will eventually lead to a cumulative stress injury where the shoulder starts to get inflamed and hurt on a regular basis. So, you will stop shoulder pressing and tell everyone you have bad shoulders. NO! You just have a mobility issue that you didn't correct before you started pressing.
Same thing applies to the hips. If you have poor hip mobility or poorly firing glutes and hamstrings, you will NOT be able to squat correctly. You will overstress your knees while squatting, your knees will begin to hurt, and you will tell your friends you can't squat because you have bad knees.

Proper squatting will reduce knee pain for most people. When they begin, almost without exception, my older clients tell me they can't squat because they have bad knees. They ALL eventually squat. All of them. And a funny thing happens. About the time they get to where they squat a bar loaded with their bodyweight, their knee pain goes away - or at least greatly diminishes. There's a reason for this.

Started working with a guy in his 60s. He told me he had bad knees and couldn't squat. In fact, his knees were so bad he had to ice them after work each day because they hurt so much. He had a job where he had to stand all day. His doctor said he had almost no cartilage left in his knees and he was bone on bone. The only thing to fix it was knee replacement surgery. After about year of regular squatting (no this was not a quick miracle), one day he told me that he just realized he hadn't iced his knees in weeks. They had simply quit hurting and he forgot about them. Coincidentally, he was now squatting a bar loaded with roughly his bodyweight. Why is this important? Think about it. To squat a bar loaded to your weight you must lift the weights plus your own body, so the total weight lifted equals two times your bodyweight, meaning each leg is lifting roughly your bodyweight. Well what happens when you are walking and moving about and lift one leg? The supporting leg is now required to hold up your total bodyweight. If the muscles aren't capable of supporting that much weight, then the bones must support it by driving into each other. And if you have no cartilage, that's going to hurt - A LOT! But, if your muscles can hold up the weight, then much of the pressure is taken off the bones and they hurt less. No, you'll never be as pain free as if you had good cartilage, but your pain should be greatly reduced.

If your legs are too weak to support your weight, then your bones will have to support your weight. And that's going to hurt.

Note: I've had two major back injuries from accidents (once in the service and the other from a bicycle crash). In both cases, it was months before I could walk without pain. I have gone on to deadlift just under 500 pounds with zero pain. Strengthening the back goes a long way to reducing back pain. In fact, a lot of older adult's back and knee pains are just the symptoms of weak legs and back.

Flexibility

I believe everyone should take a basic beginner's yoga class. The problem is, they are hard to find. Seriously. Most yoga instructors are like aging rock musicians in concert. They've been playing the same songs for 40 years and they are sick of them - They want to play their new stuff - But, the crowd didn't come to hear their new stuff, they want the old classics that they grew up with and still enjoy hearing. Yoga instructors have the problem. They've been doing cow and dog and warrior forever and they're are bored with them. So even if they're doing a beginner's class, they throw in some poses that beginners just shouldn't do. I went through this with my wife. When we first met, she was having joint stiffness and pain issues, so I wanted her to do basic yoga. Like most people, she didn't want to be instructed by her partner, so I signed us for what was supposed to be a beginner's yoga class. The instructor started off with some basic poses and then the next thing you know, we're doing headstands and feet twisted around our hips. I grabbed the wife and we walked out. This class was an injury waiting to happen. I found another class. The instructor was an older lady and somewhat out of shape. When the class started, she announced that she too was fairly new on her fitness journey and this was her first class teaching as a yoga instructor. She stuck to the basic poses (I don't think the instructor could do much more). She was perfect. She was exactly what my wife needed.

There really is no need to do advanced yoga if your goal is to just be fit and healthy. Stick to the basics. They go a long ways. This is especially true if you are doing yoga in large group sessions. If you want to do advanced yoga, you should consider private instruction - or at least small group sessions where you can get individual instruction.

Phase 1 is about developing both a a physical base and a knowledge base to build on. It consists of a series of skills you must master in order to move on to Phase 2. Each and every skill in this phase is important. I don't believe in wasting people's time and energy having them do things just for the sake of doing them. Each skill is necessary in order for you to do the exercises in Phase 2. If you can't do them, then you risk injury while attempting the exercises in Phase 2. The #1 goal of this program is to prevent injury - BOTH inside and outside of the gym.

While Phase 1 starts with the basics, there are some requirements that must be met before you begin.

• You must be cleared by your physician to begin an exercise program. This is not just a cover-my-ass requirement. Beginning any exercise program carries certain risks and dangers. This program tries to start easy and slowly progress in order to minimize the dangers, but a physical will help determine if you have any underlying health issues that would need to be addressed before starting an exercise program.
• You must be able to lie flat on the floor and then get back up again without assistance. If you are not physically able to do this, then you should work one on one with someone until you can. A lot of the exercises in this program require the ability to do this.
• You must not have any major injuries or mobility issues. It's okay to have some degenerative back and knee issues, and arthritis. Almost all older adults have that, myself included. That's not a problem. But, if you have a severely bulging disc, or a tendon that is hanging on by a thread, those types of problems have to addressed first.