Active Aging: Fitness Tips for Older Adults

Health and wellness are important at every age and exercise is a piece of that. For older adults, fitness can help lead a better and more active life. We’re breaking it down to the basics when it comes to fitness tips for older adults, the benefits of exercise and healthy habits, and the long-term impacts of fitness on health. We’re covering everything from how frequently and intensely you should exercise to making exercise an enjoyable habit and more. 

Chapters

• 3:54 How many minutes a day or week should an older adult exercise?
• 5:52 How intense should exercise be for older adults?
• 7:55 Are there any exercises older adults should avoid doing?
• 9:05 What are the benefits of balance exercises for older adults?
• 10:37 What types of exercises should older adults do? What are some of the best exercises for seniors?
• 16:45 What are the benefits of exercise for older adults? How does exercise support mental health and brain health?

Transcript

0:06

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Senior Living Today. With us today is Matthew Allen, Wellness Coordinator at Springfield Masonic Community, and Leta Turnbaugh, Life Enrichment Wellness Coordinator at Western Reserve Masonic Community. I'm so pleased to have both of you with us here today. So thank you for joining me. Let's go ahead and start by having each of you introduce yourselves to our listeners, because I know this is your first time on our podcast. And just tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came to work at the Ohio Masonic communities. Matthew, would you like to start? Yeah. Thank you for having me. 12 years ago, I was working for a therapy company at the Springfield Masonic Campus, and I just loved the residents, loved the campus, and 11 years ago, they had a job opening for a wellness coordinator. So I made the transition. I'm a physical therapist assistant. Being a wellness coordinator, we don't do therapy in the wellness center. We do not treat dysfunction or things like that. However, one of the things I noticed when I came to the campus was that so many of the resident struggles didn't seem to stem from one event or particular diagnosis. It was general deconditioning just being grossly out of shape. So I thought with this job and transitioning, trying to engage our residents and keep them active, that I could do a lot of good and I've been doing it 11 years and I love it. Well, that's amazing and we're so happy to have you a part of the team at SMC. Leta, would you like to go next and tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. Thank you. My story is a little different. I've been on the Western Reserve campus for 21 years. Certified athletic trainer with a master's in exercise physiology. My early career was traveling with sports teams, working at high schools. Working in the clinic during the day with rehab processes. Treating injuries that occurred the previous night. With our high school athletes, it was a lot of traveling. Through three different counties. I at the time that I had my daughter, I decided that that really was not a great fit. Like being in a clinic all day and then working evenings in the high school and started looking for something closer to home and a little bit more accommodating. When I found the job with Western Reserve, initially I was a contracted employee that was hired through Springfield Community Hospital, and that was in 2003. And then in 2015, the Masonic homes picked me up as, a full time employee. A lot of the principles are the same as what I was doing with the athletes or early on. We're just slowing it down a little bit and breaking it down to basics. Well, given both of your backgrounds, I think you are the perfect guests for today's podcast. So regardless of our age, you know, everyone wants to remain healthy. And today we're going to talk about fitness tips for older adults, the better habits of exercise, and healthy habits, as well as the long term impacts that has on our health. So I think one of the things that people want to know is how many minutes per day per week should we be exercising? What are your recommendations on that? I'm sure it varies a little bit for everybody, but what are your thoughts? And it does. But the CDC recommends 150 minutes a week of aerobic activity. They also recommend at least two days a week of strengthening or strength improvement activities. And then, of course, balance improving activities. You know, almost, as much as you can. So try to follow those guidelines. More often. Can be better. But that's the general rule. So when we try to set up programing here at SMC, we're trying to help our residents achieve those goals. We offer wellness classes in the morning and in the afternoon, three days a week, that combine 20 minutes of strengthening with 20 minutes of aerobic activity. And then we finish with some flexibility and balance exercises at the end, all designed just to keep our residents active. So it's a good it's a good. It's not the total package of it's not going to cover everything. We encourage a lot of self work as well. But that's a good starting line a good basis. I agree with that. I follow those guidelines, but I also like to tell my residents that, more movement, less sitting regardless of time and intensity. Adding little things to their day like parking further away, taking time to play with the grandkids. If you can take the stairs. Even working in a circuit, like just breaking exercises up into a circuit of flexibility and strength training and aerobic training. Leta, something you just mentioned that I actually want to touch on is the intensity level. That's something that we hear a lot when we're talking about building out an exercise routine. And I would assume that this definitely varies based on the person's health and mobility capabilities. So what do you recommend for intensity level and exercise for older adults? Well, we do have our rules of thumb. That we've been taught where you want to work towards a target heart rate, which would basically be 220 minus the person's age, which would be equivalent to their max heart rate that they never want to exceed. And based on their current, fitness level, we would multiply that by 60, 70, or 80% to have a target heart rate when working out aerobically. For the majority of our residents, all of them have barriers to exercise so that, you know, may not be something that we can do consistently because they have pain, they have fear of falling and injury. Sometimes they're just depressed and, don't feel like they can socially connect with the people in the exercise room. So sometimes maybe it's just starting out small and progressing from there. It may just be a 5 to 10 minute start of aerobic capacity, and adding a little each day until they become more comfortable, less fearful, and understand that this can be a habit and something that they can enjoy. And then, with strength training, you know, there is the rule of thumb where you want to do like a one rep max and then take a percentage of that as a starting point. But with the residents I lean more towards what can a resident do comfortably for at least ten repetitions? Most find that starting weight and progress from there. It may be one set of exercises of ten reps and then gradually progress to two sets, three sets, adding repetitions. And then. Are there any exercises that you would suggest older adults should avoid doing? Well before starting any exercise routine, you should consult your physician and get their advice on things for your particular history or medical history. We, at the Wellness Center, because we are not a medical entity, we don't dive into an individual's medical history and their background. These are things that they really need to have a conversation with their doctor. And although it is rare for a doctor to say things like, you shouldn't exercise or you shouldn't do this or that, there are those cases of particular diagnosis where they will. So that's why it's so important to have that conversation. Touching on something that Leta had said, a lot of that is comfort level. And we do see a lot of residents who have something; pain in a joint or things. We have to kind of monitor that and have them do the best that they can. So let's, start by talking about balance. I know this was something that was brought up earlier, and it's a common problem for older adults. And I've read that trying to do exercises when your balance is compromised can be difficult. But I've also read that certain exercises can actually help to improve someone's balance. So what are some of the benefits balance exercises can have for older adults? I think one of the big ones is that the more balanced a person is, the more secure they're going to feel, the more able they're going to be able to perform their daily living activities. Their confidence levels are going to increase and therefore they're going to be more active, even socially, like going to outings, participating in the wellness center, walking the campus and socializing with their friends. Yeah. Balance activities are a very important thing for people 65 and older to do. A lot of the things that we did when we were younger, we get away from, we do less activities that involve lateral motion and things like that. So balance exercises are very important to try to keep our skills sharp and help prevent falls. Yeah, I think fall prevention is one of the big things we hear about for older adults. And balance exercises can really, really help with that. Would you guys mind sharing some of the like the exercises that you utilize at your campus with, older adults and what you think some of the best exercises for seniors are? Oh, the one of the best exercises that we do are trying to strengthen lower body strengthening, specifically, a lot of quad work and things like slow sit down. We all talk about the sit to stand, but sitting down slowly over, like a six count and doing that for ten repetitions. That's a great exercise. With balance exercises there's a wide variety, from walking with head turns to single leg stands to standing with a reduced base of support, and limiting vision or closing your eyes. More advanced things about limiting proprioception, meaning the sensation. So standing on foam and things like that. These are very common balance improvement activities to do. I used to have a lot of classes, I used to teach tai chi balance class, even in, like, rock and sock. Basically boxing. Had seated aerobics, had a dance class, line dancing, had a strengthening class. What I found was they were not as effective for our residents. I had a flexibility and meditation class, so I'd have residents who came to that class only. We stretch or we meditate, and then they're going, oh, yeah, I exercise. I'm getting everything that I want because I go to meditation class. Right. You know? So I kind of did away with all the themes and I found the best programing that seems to be the most productive is just calling it a wellness class, but then encompassing everything. You know, we do 20 minutes of strengthening with dumbbells and ankle weights. We do 20 minutes of aerobic activity. We have tall, tall backed, heavy chairs where you can take the class from a seated or standing position. So it's all inclusive. All our residents can come. And if they are standing, which is encouraged, you know, to for the better bone density and all that. They walk behind their chair. So they got a wall behind them and a heavy high back chair in front of them. And we're basically dancing, but they can hang on to their chair or try to stay close to it for safety. But dancing as a aerobic activity or just dance moves, really has worked out well combined after strengthening. And then at the end of class, we'll do balance and a few balance and flexibility exercises. By putting it all together in a one hour class like that. I've just found that it works the best. Right. They're getting a wide variety of everything. The big things, the big takeaways are the fact that the classes are all inclusive, that when you mentioned the intensity level and encourage everyone to make sure that they feel like they did good work, but the intensity level of the class should never be too hard. It should never be too easy because the individual person is setting their own intensity. Do you want the class to be really hard? Make big motions and move really fast. If you want it to be really easy, make little motions and move really slow. And so you do what's right for you and everybody does that based on them. And the other fact that there should be no pain with exercise. So, you know, these are the really important principles that we try to get out. So that's the programing that I'm running right now. I've changed it a lot over the years and trying this and that but this really seems to be the best fit here. Again, it is one of the reasons that I wanted to make the transition to this job. Thinking that I could do some good was seeing that a lot of the residents just being out of shape, or their struggles were resulting from general deconditioning not a particular event or diagnosis. So anything to keep our our seniors, you know, active aging is something that is just so important. Anything we can do to keep them engaged is really wonderful. I would agree. One of the nice things at Western Reserve is that we have parallel bars in our fitness area. We're able to utilize those bars to give the residents a sense of security to, perform some of those exercises that Matthew was referring to, you know, single leg stances, tandem walking, unstable surfaces. They'll have an increased sense of security there. We also do classes in Tai-chi and Yoga to work on weight shifting and narrow bases of support. Single leg stances; holding poses; working on that lower leg strength. And one other nice benefit we have is that our in-house therapy team once a month will do a balance assessment where they're doing different tests on whether or not a person can stand with their eyes closed, can they do the single leg stance? Can they get up from a chair and walk across the room and come back and sit down. If any of those tests, you know, show that they need improvement, then they'll either work on them in physical therapy one on one, or refer them down here where we can work on some of those balance exercises. So we have talked about how regular exercise routines can have major benefits for someone's physical health, but they can also have benefits for both mental and brain health. So what are some of the main benefits that you can share with our listeners that you either see in the residents that you're working with or, just for older adults in general who implement a weekly exercise routine. Well, I think first of all, anything that's good for your heart is good for your brain. So increasing blood flow to the brain is going to increase oxygen and nutrients to the brain, which is going to increase our cognitive capacity. Beyond that, just socialization, getting the residents in the room to socialize with others and not being so isolated, is one of the, the major benefits, having conversations with people. Yeah, I completely agree. The social element is often, I think, taken for granted, but it is so important. There is so much fun that happens here on campus while the residents are engaged in varieties of activity. The fun and the socialization, fighting off things like depression, but also eliciting great responses like trying to counteract sedentary lifestyles, something that makes it much more enjoyable to come and do physical activity, being amongst peers and, and all of that. It's so important. Well, it was such a pleasure having you both with us today. Thank you for sharing fitness tips for older adults and discussing some of the health benefits that incorporating physical activity into your daily routine can have, especially as we age. As always, for our listeners, be sure to like and subscribe to the Senior Living Today podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts so that you never miss a new episode. And we will be back again with a new episode in two weeks.