An Old Friend Shares a Secret Workout

As you will see, Pat Cunneen understands the progressive resistance exercise concept. His plan follows:

Easy Exercise for People Over 70

(You do not need expensive equipment)

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.

With a 5 pound potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute and then relax. Each day you will find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10 pound potato sacks, then try 50 pound potato sacks, then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100 pound potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I'm at this level.)

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks.

On the serious side, Pat, in his seventies, still competes in triathlons.

Stop the Presses!

According to Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard, in a very important way our brains may be improving with age. Excluding diseases such as Alzheimer's, Carson suggests that forgetting where you left your car keys or people's names at a party may be good not bad. Can it be so? You're probably a skeptic. I don't blame you if you are. But it's worth checking out the story, don't you think? Go to: Older Brain may Really Be a Wiser Brain. Hey, I bet you knew it all the time!

Gym Equipment Dangers Lurking

I dodged colds and the flu the past winter season. Of course summer colds happen too. But there are fewer of them going around. So how did I get so lucky?

Though not 100 percent perfect, pneumonia and flu shots offer pretty good protection. I recommend them. Colds are a different matter, and there are all kinds of myths about them. Even today, many people think you get a cold by being cold. You don’t.

You catch colds from rhinoviruses entering your body through your eyes or nose. Shake hands with someone with the virus, then rub your eye or nose with your hand . . . and welcome to seven days of congestion, sneezing, and feeling lousy.

Some people think Echinacea and other herbal stuff strengthens their immune system and will ward off the viruses? I’m a skeptic, but to each his own. Most of what I read these days (from medical people not charlatans) is that the best known cold preventative is frequent hand washing and keeping your hands off your face.

A 2006 study in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine found rhinoviruses on 63 percent of gym equipment at fitness centers they tested. Further, they found that disinfecting the equipment twice a day didn’t do anything to reduce the virus count. My advice is to train yourself not to touch your face between exercise sets, since most colds are transmitted through hand to nose contact. Then wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water after your workout – and before touching your face. And how about those workout gloves you wear? The gym’s bugs love ‘em. They provide nice warm and sweaty conditions for viruses. Keep those babies away from your face.

Eating Out: A Stroke of Genius

The people at Wellsphere have come up with a great new service, one of those neat items that makes you wonder: “Why didn’t someone think of this before?"

Here’s the deal: Restaurant chains, for the most part, are fighting legislation that would require them to show the nutritional information of their dishes. Eventually, they may lose the battle, but you don’t have to wait for that to happen.

Wellternatives – a new free healthy eating service recommends healthy alternatives for your favorite dishes at hundreds of thousands of chain restaurants. They designed it so that anyone can use a cell phone to receive suggested ‘Wellternatives’ along with calorie and nutrition information. It’s free. It’s quick. It's fun and easy to use, and works from any cell phone! They also added Wellternatives to their website, along with complete menu listings and ratings.

I just tried it myself and it worked like a charm. I typed in “Chili’s burger” and immediately the nutrition data popped up, along with a healthier alternative on the same Chili's menu. Wow! It’s a great service. Give it a try with your cell phone by sending a text to 878787 with the word ‘diet’ followed by the name of the chain restaurant and menu item, or visit Wellernatives on the web.

Fat but Fit?

There have been recent news accounts of people being overweight (read fat) but still being fit. By fit, let's assume it means the overweight subjects had healthy cardiovascular systems and adequate muscle -- in spite of their excess. And that they were no more likely to contract heart disease, diabetes, etc., than leaner people.

You have to wonder: Just how fat were the test subjects? And exactly how fit were they? Because at some point in being overweight, it is impossible to be what any reasonable person would define as fit or healthy.

The whole "Fat but Fit" concept sounds a little goofy to me. And it may be that researchers have already found signs of it being invalid. Check it out here.

The Red Bull Express

While waiting in line at a store checkout a few days ago, I entertained myself by snooping at what the shoppers if front of me were buying. One young woman had five or six kinds of candy bars and several cans of Red Bull on the conveyor belt. I cringed at the thought of all that candy bar sugar but had no idea what was in Red Bull.

Then yesterday I read a report about Red Bull having something to do with someone's death. I got curious. What is in that stuff anyway? Here’s a description from one report: “It contains caffeine, vitamins, and sugar which, the company claims, kick-starts the body's metabolism and keeps people alert.” Well, who could object to being alert?

I also learned that many people mix Red Bull with alcohol. That RB and vodka is popular. Not sure how that combo works out on the alertness scale. It is also common, from what I read, for Red Bull drinkers to also drink lots of coffee along with it. That sounds like caffeine overkill, to say the least; still I have no idea whether Red Bull is actually responsible for anyone’s death. However, I thought back to the woman at the checkout with all her candy bars and Red Bull drinks. Imagine what that blast of sugar and caffeine must have done to her blood sugar and jangled nerves. She'd be alert alright!

France has banned Red Bull. And the European Commission (EC) challenged France's ban after manufacturers complained it was inhibiting imports. You can read about that here. I don't know enough about the ban to express an opinion. But personally, I wouldn't touch the stuff.

Smart Training for Seniors

I subscribe to several health, fitness, and bodybuilding newsletters and read as much as possible about trends in those fields. I sort through the information looking for things that might be applicable to senior fitness. Some of the material is useful but, generally speaking, much of it not suited for people over 50.

Why is that?

Generally, around age 50 (the year we all become eligible to join AARP, coincidentally), we should approach exercise and training differently than we might have 10 or 20 years earlier. Though proper training will keep us fit and strong for the years to come — at the same time our bodies will not tolerate some of the kinds of training that might have been beneficial during our 20s, 30s, or even into our 40s.

One example that comes to mind is beginning trainees who try to do too much too soon. While most resistance training exercises and cardiovascular activities may be fundamentally the same at almost any age, workout duration and intensity should be scaled back in accordance with age. I realize this probably seems almost too obvious to mention, but you might be surprised at how many beginners ignore or deny it.

And it is not only beginners who should recognize the age factor. Even many longtime trainees often continue such practices as regular all-out effort, maximum poundage, low-rep weight training. I wouldn’t suggest an exact age for modifying that sort of training. But there is no getting around the fact that 50-, 60- or 70-year old tendons and ligaments cannot handle the same stresses they could at 20 or 30. At some point, higher repetitions with more moderate weights are probably a better way to go, even for those who are in top shape and have been training for most of their adult lives.

Don’t equate this with babying yourself. Beginners should know that progressive resistance training concepts have remained the same since the time of Milo. You begin with manageable weight and repetitions and gradually add to them. Progressive cardiovascular exercise works in much the same way. A 20- or 30-year old beginner may start training and many times be at full speed and intensity in a very short period of time. At 50, or older, acceleration should be more gradual.

Overuse injuries are common and most are avoidable. Respecting your tendons and ligaments as you grow older is one way of staying out of trouble. Short warm ups before training are a small investment that pays big dividends. Replacing low-rep maximum effort movements with respectable but moderate poundage and somewhat higher repetitions means you’ll likely avoid overuse injuries and will remain fit and strong a heck of a lot longer.