Unlocking the Secrets to Aging Gracefully

Aging is an inevitable part of life, but it doesn't mean we must surrender to its effects without a fight. We have a choice in how we age; one powerful way to make that choice is through functional training. 

In this blog post, we'll define functional training and review its importance in mitigating the physiological effects of aging and how it can help you maintain the energy and vitality of someone years younger. Whether you're new to the concept of muscle fitness or looking to enhance your existing routine, this guide will provide valuable insights into aging gracefully.

What is functional training?

As we journey through the inevitable aging process, we face a crucial decision: 

1) accept it and let nature take its course, or 

2) fight it. 

The right exercise program can be a formidable ally in the battle against aging. It can deliver numerous benefits that minimize the physical toll of aging, allowing us to maintain the vigor and vitality of our younger selves. And functional training plays a role. Functional training is a type of exercise designed to train the body for activities of daily living. 

The functional training approach

Functional training is evolving, and exercising as we age can empower us with the strength and energy needed to fully enjoy life's activities and prepare for a healthier future. Instead of obsessing over the mirror and the scale, it's time to prioritize overall physical fitness. Every workout can be a magic pill that extends your life's length and quality.

To help make it easier for you to get started with functional training, we’ve included links to some of our favorite tools and equipment. 

1. Mobility and Flexibility Training - Mobility and flexibility training focus on coordinating body movements through space. This helps prevent common musculoskeletal injuries associated with aging, such as sore knees, aching backs, and general discomfort. By incorporating mobility training, you'll keep your muscles and joints healthy and mobile, paving the way for an active lifestyle as you age.

2. Strength and Power Training - Aging often leads to muscle mass loss and decreased functional muscle capacity. Strength training is the key to combating this age-related muscle atrophy. Additionally, power training enhances your muscle's ability to generate force quickly, which is essential for daily activities and preventing falls. Both strength and power are crucial for healthy aging.

Foundational Movement Patterns 

There are six foundational patterns of movement for mobility training and strength/power training. Whether doing mobility training or strength/power training, focus on these principal movement types:

• Hip Hinge – Hinge at the hip with both feet planted. The movement begins from the hip and has little involvement from the knees. Think of picking up a large empty box from the floor and bending from the hip instead of at the knees.

• Squat – both feet planted, movement begins at the hips but includes bending and straightening the knees. Think of lifting a box up off the floor with your legs.

• Single Leg patterns – It could mean exercises balancing on one leg at a time or having one foot in front of the other but still shoulder distance apart. Many lower body exercises can be done from this stance.

• Push – Pushing an object away from your body – either forward or overhead. Think of a plank, bench press, or pushup.

• Pull – Pulling an object towards you – either forward or overhead. Think of a pull-up or tug-of-war.

• Rotation – Rotation movements combine pulling and pushing motions involving both upper and lower body segments, where the pelvis rotates. Think of the action of chopping wood or an overhand serve in tennis, where your arms or upper body cross the plane of the front of the body.

Start Your Journey with Mobility Training

Incorporating these movement patterns into your training regimen is essential for achieving a well-rounded and functional capacity as you age.

Begin your fitness journey by prioritizing mobility training. This foundational step ensures you develop balanced physical abilities and functional capacity, setting the stage for a healthier and more active life as you age.

Mobility training should be a fundamental part of your routine, encompassing activities like stretching and connective tissue work with tools such as foam rollers, therapy balls, stability balls, and therapy bands. Three effective approaches to integrating mobility training into your regimen are bedtime stretches, Pilates, gentle yoga, and incorporating the use of props. These practices enhance mobility and provide a dual benefit by simultaneously strengthening your body. Whether you're new to exercise or an experienced enthusiast, these methods suit everyone.

Consistency matters. Even when a full workout seems daunting, allocating some time to mobility work, especially through stretching, is crucial. This effort contributes to preserving your muscles' and joints' health and flexibility. You'll be surprised at how spending as little as 15 minutes each day or incorporating brief stretch breaks into your daily routine can significantly affect your movement patterns and overall physical skills. Journaling your activity and scheduling it into your calendar is an excellent way to help you kickstart a new behavior. 

Once you've established a solid foundation in mobility, it's time to incorporate strength and power training.

Level up with Strength and Power Training

After establishing a solid foundation in mobility, it's time to take your fitness journey to the next level by introducing strength and power training into your routine.

Unleash the Benefits of Strength Training: Strength training offers many advantages, especially for midlife women. Notably, the results become apparent relatively quickly, with nearly any exercise involving weights or just your body weight leading to noticeable improvements in strength. The beauty of strength training lies in its versatility, providing you with a diverse range of workout options to keep your routine fresh and engaging.

Crafting Your Strength Routine: Begin your strength journey by incorporating strengthening exercises into your routine at least twice a week. Gradually, as your strength improves, consider increasing your training frequency to three or four sessions per week. You can kickstart your journey with bodyweight exercises. Still, as you progress, you may want to use various equipment like dumbbells, resistance bands, gym machines, or even barbells and heavier weights.

Dive into Specific Strength Patterns: For midlife women, it's crucial to include specific strength patterns in your training regimen. You can either integrate some of these patterns into each workout session or dedicate specific days to focus on each pattern individually. This adaptability ensures that you can maintain high motivation levels and continually challenge yourself as you become a healthier and stronger version of yourself.

• Unilateral Training: Unilateral training involves using only one arm or leg during an exercise. This type of training enhances the strength of the specific limb being worked and has an interesting side effect: research indicates that it can boost the strength of the opposite limb. Additionally, unilateral training contributes to core strength, stabilizing the spine and pelvis. This helps prevent muscle imbalances and enhances overall stability, vital for maintaining a healthy body as we age. The rationale behind this approach is rooted in the fact that many of our daily movements primarily engage one arm or leg at a time. Unilateral training exercises are often performed using dumbbells or kettlebells.

• Resistance Training: While all the discussed exercises contribute to strength improvement, resistance training takes a more intense approach. It focuses on using heavier weights and simultaneously engages the entire body or both limbs. For example, exercises like squatting with a weighted bar or performing bench presses fall under this category. The primary objective of resistance training is to develop the capability to lift heavier objects, thereby increasing overall strength. To achieve this goal, working with heavier weights is essential.

• Power Training: Power training is an often overlooked aspect of fitness, particularly for midlife women. Our bodies contain different muscle fibers, including slow-twitch and fast-twitch fibers. Fast-twitch fibers are responsible for explosive movements and are critical in enhancing the resilience of elastic tissues and ligaments. These areas are commonly associated with injuries and muscle strains. Unfortunately, age-related muscle loss often leads to a decline in fast-twitch fibers. These fibers are essential for preventing falls or reacting quickly, such as jumping out of obstacles or even leaping over small obstacles like puddles. Incorporating explosive movements into your routine can stimulate the development of these fast-twitch muscle fibers. Starting with small activities like brief bouts of skipping, hopping from one foot to the other, or even hopscotch can be an excellent starting point. Gradually progress to more challenging activities, such as jumping onto a box or platform or engaging in medicine ball slams or throws, possibly with a workout partner. Incorporating power training can enhance your ability to react swiftly and effectively, which is especially valuable as you age.

The Importance of Muscle Fitness

Just as aerobic exercise enhances heart health, muscle fitness exercises strengthen and improve skeletal muscles, enhancing your ability to move. Studies show that adults who engage in twice-weekly strength training reduce their mortality risk. Beyond health benefits, functional training adds quality to your years, ensuring you can enjoy your favorite activities for longer.

Aging may be inevitable, but how we age is within our control. Embrace functional training as a powerful tool to age gracefully, maintain vitality, and enjoy life fully. Incorporating mobility, strength, and power training into your routine will unlock the secrets to healthy aging. 

For more information and sample exercises, check out "Ageless Intensity" by Pete McCall, a valuable resource on this transformative journey. Embrace the 'silver bullet' of movement and enhance your cognitive function while adding quality to your years.

Why Physical Activity is Important as We Age

We know that physical activity and exercise are essential. Physical Activity is one of the most important things we can do for our overall health. Yet, for many of us, we have the same type of relationship with exercise that we do with fad diets.

We try it, and we may even try the latest exercise trend, yet less than half of the people who start an exercise program stick with it for more than six months.  

The benefits of exercise and activity are clear. Anyone who is physically able should accumulate 150 minutes of moderate physical activity every week, and half as much if that activity is intense.

In 2018, the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans were updated to recommend how much adults should move. It includes a review of movement, sitting, and health science.

It’s difficult to shift through the information on how much exercise is enough. How hard does exercise have to be to count? Do you have to do 30 minutes all at once for five days a week? Is it even worth the effort to do less? The most straightforward answer to these questions is moving more and sitting less. Continue to do that consistently, and you will reap the health benefits.

Research shows middle-aged and older adults spend an average of 8.5 to 10.5 hours a day sedentary. Compared with their more active peers, this inactive group had higher mortality rates.

The most important thing you can do is to get off the couch. The most significant health benefits come from spending less time being sedentary and more time being physically active. We spend most of our free time sitting. Many of us work at a desk in front of a computer. Since the pandemic, we sit even more. We transition from our desk chairs to spending our evenings in front of a screen or reading a book. We drive to do our errands, pick the closest parking spot to the door, use drive-thru windows, and meet friends for dinner and sit.

Even kids, the most active segment of the population, have dramatically increased the amount of time they spend being sedentary.

Many who do structured exercise each day with a run, walk, or other cardiovascular (cardio) activity are sedentary for the remainder of the day.

An inactive lifestyle has many adverse effects on your health. You burn fewer calories, contributing to a loss of muscle strength contributing to weight gain. Your bones grow weaker and lose mineral content. Your metabolism changes and your body won’t break down fats and sugars. When this happens, it causes inflammation and poor immune function.

Those health effects from inactivity ultimately lead to the diseases that midlife women experience with age leading to more and more inactivity.  Lack of physical activity can contribute significantly to an inability to live independently and have a high quality of life as we age. 

It’s time to get honest about getting active and find ways to be active throughout your day. Get bite-sized activity ‘snacks’ spread throughout each day. These snacks are essential whether you’re doing a 30-minute brisk walking session or similar activity five times a week or are a couch potato.

If you are a yo-yo exerciser, primarily sedentary, or a somewhat inactive exerciser, try building a foundation of daily physical activity. Move more and sit less throughout the day, and you may find yourself moving into a daily exercise program you can sustain as a regular habit.

By incorporating activity snacks, you may enjoy counting steps and find that you can accumulate the number of steps to improve your health.  Newer research indicates the optimal step count for people younger than 60 is about 8,000 to 10,000 a day and 6,000 to 8,000 for those 60 and older. You may even accumulate the 150 minutes of moderate physical activity recommended each week without even realizing it. 

What do these activity snacks look like? Check out the ideas below. It’s easier and more fun than you might imagine incorporating small chunks of activity throughout the day. Start by using these ideas, and then create your own.

• Take a break from sitting. Get up, stand, or move for at least 10 minutes every hour. Set a timer as a reminder. 

• Have shorter meetings. Shorten meetings to 25 or 50 minutes and use the extra time to move.

• Walk one flight up, two flights down. Always take the stairs whenever possible, even if you only start with one or two flights.

• Walk the dog. Rather than let your dog out into the yard, take them for a walk. It’s an excellent activity for both of you!

• Park farther away. Take a parking spot farther away from the door and walk when driving to errands. It’s easier to find a spot, and there will be less traffic further away.

• Find every opportunity to walk. Walk around during phone calls. Walk rather than sit in a coffee shop. Get up during TV commercials. Walk during breaks at sporting events.

• Schedule an active gathering. When getting together with family and friends, have it centered around activity. Hike, take a scenic walk or even play Pickleball.

• Play more. If you have grandkids or even older children, find a way to incorporate more play into your day. It’s a fun way to spend quality time with them, and it models active behavior for them.

• Walk to do your errands. Walk to the grocery store, pick up dry cleaning, or the bank.

• Use a standing desk. The more time spent standing rather than sitting or reclining (other than sleeping), the better. Meet or work standing up.

• Do yard work or garden. Weeding, watering, or tending a garden or yard is a fun way to be outdoors and get activity.

• Stretch every day. If daily exercise is a struggle, do a daily stretch as a way to stay flexible while adding more physical activity.

Are you looking for even more ideas? Download Rumblings’ 40 free tips for incorporating more movement in your day as part of our Move in May Challenge, or read our blog post on ways to move more and sit less in midlife.

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Go Inward: Find Calm in Chaos

The benefits of meditation manifest through practice.

We have all heard about the benefits of meditation. Quieting your mind and going inward can improve stress, anxiety, sleep, attention, self awareness, age-related memory loss, mood, and compassion. However, for many women sitting still with themselves isn’t easy.  We are too busy or cannot quiet our minds. 

We invited Sydney Holly, owner of Kula Yoga in Minneapolis, to share tips and techniques for going inward during a Rumblings community virtual event. She didn’t disappoint. During the session, we learned the value of daily practice for cultivating self acceptance and calmness as we moved through meditation together. 

If you weren’t able to attend in person, or did attend and want to be reminded of her wisdom, we summarized and condensed Sydney’s advice for finding calm in the midst of chaos into the key takeaways below. 

There is value in coming together in community. 

For those of you who don't know, the word Kula actually means community. When Sydney first had the opportunity to take over yoga space from a previous owner, she hesitated because she wasn’t a business person and owning a studio didn’t appeal to her. However, what did appeal to her was the idea of community. She wanted to maintain the existing community and to teach so she eventually said yes to the offer, but decided the studio name had to be different. Because she felt like she was in this together with her students, the name became Kula.  

“I feel like that's exactly what Karyn and Rebecca are putting together (with Rumblings)— ways for people to find community.” 

Sydney Holly, owner Kula Yoga

Community has been important since human beings have been in existence. We create our own sisterhood and that sisterhood gives us much needed buoyancy. 

The benefits of meditation manifest through practice.

For Sydney, there is no separation between the meditative and physical practices of yoga.  As we move, we work through some of the more esoteric kinds of yoga philosophies so that we can really be in ourselves. When you watch babies and children play they don't stop to contemplate or think, right? They don't wait for everything to slow down. Instead, they're finding joy being in their routine and in their movement.

If you don't have a yoga mat, that's fine. If you don’t have yoga clothes, it doesn’t matter. Take the pressure off yourself. Often, something that comes along with meditation is the pressure to be “good at it”. There is a similar pressure with yoga. The truth is, there's no such thing as being good at meditating or good at yoga. Just being is the important part.

Remember that the meditation benefits aren’t just a theory. The benefits manifest in practice. Invite the healing prana, that healing breath, into every cell of your being while you practice. Your mantra is the sound of the breath going in and out through the nose.

“Do your practice and all is coming.”

Sri K. Pattabi Jois, Founder of Ashtanga Yoga

As women we question ourselves, right? And, we spend time really wondering and wondering and wondering. The more time you spend on your mat— in yoga, in Asana, in meditation—the more the answers are revealed because you already have them all inside of you. 

As human beings, we tend to get stuck in our heads. Yogis call this the Vritti or the chatter of the mind. As human beings, we want to live in our soul. Our Ātman is our inner self, spirit, or soul. The idea is to get to our inner essence and to tap into the subtle form of radiance, health, immunity, and longevity within ourselves. 

Wholehearted living means total, complete, and radical self compassion and self love. 

With each yoga practice, it is important to set an intention. We call it Sankalpa, which translates to seed of intent or a positive thought that we want to manifest in the world, a promise we make to ourselves. That sounds really nice, doesn't it? You plant a seed. You have an intention. You water it every day. You give it some sunshine. You love it. Then it flourishes and you're living the life of your dreams. 

If it were only that easy. Along with our Sankalpa—our seed of intent— is all of the work it takes to nurse that state of intent. The tricky part is that in conjunction with the light there's the darkness—Vikalpa, the shadow side of your intention. In yoga we're not working with good, or bad, but instead yin and yang. The union of opposites yields wholeness. 

“Wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’ It’s going to bed at night thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”  

Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Wholeheartedness means total, complete, and radical self compassion and self love. You can't just say to yourself you are ok if you are at 90% right now in your self compassion and self love. It must be 100% - accepting that the Vikalpa goes along with the Sankalpa in the way that we actually get to manifest more intentional living. The Vikalpa might show up as a distraction, dreaming, an excuse, negative self talk, or as really punishing behavior —as in who do I think I am that I know how to meditate or how selfish I am  to practice. Total complete radical 100% self acceptance and self love is what invites us to then say to ourselves, that this is just part of the process. This is the way it goes. 

“We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.” 

Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is a wonderful Buddhist monk. She talks a lot about the middle way. The middle way is the yoga path. The yogi practices the middle way because extremes - the highs and lows or the likes and dislikes - only feed your ego. Then your ego starts to become a limiting factor for your freedom. 

Your freedom is where the joy happens—that's where the manifestation of the life you really want happens, because you're able to not only remember who you are, but you're able to remember that your journey is what makes you who you are. The journey is part of your whole hearted existence -  it is100% radical, complete self love and self acceptance. 

“Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to change? It's probably because you're missing one key ingredient—self compassion. Usually we try to make change in our lives by pushing ourselves, judging ourselves, and then beating ourselves up when we don't succeed. But science shows that shame shuts down the learning centers of the brain. What this means is that every time we judge ourselves, we are robbing ourselves of the very resources we need to change and live a happier life. The surprising solution is self compassion. When you treat yourself with kindness, you turn on the learning centers of the brain and give yourself the resources you need to change. This is what leads us to greater calm, clarity and joy.” 

Shauna Shapiro, PhD

Yoga is a tool that can lead us on a different path. 

That's why even a really brief, gentle breathing, and movement can shift you. It can bring up feelings of frustration and maybe a little uncertainty. But, it definitely pulled you into the moment. 

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” 

Viktor Frankl 

Think about your yoga or meditation practice as a pause. Our world is beyond uncertain right now. Our trust levels are super low. The middle way is to be able to say I know who I am authentically. The gritty chatter of my mind does not define me. 

Make a commitment to start practicing.

Just start. Choose something that fits into the routine you already have. Everyone wakes up and goes to bed. Take two minutes before you get out of bed, pull your knees to your chest, take three deep breaths, and say good morning. I am here. I am grateful. I am worthy. I am evolving. I am compassionate. 

If you don't feel like meditation is for you or you feel inauthentic doing it, keep practicing. It's ok not to feel connected with the practice right away. It doesn't mean you'll continue to feel that way. The more you practice. The more important your yoga becomes in your life and yet the less seriously you take it. Just show up. 

On December 6, a group of women showed up and let our practice work its magic on us. We practiced radical, complete, and whole hearted self love and self acceptance. As we did that, we affirmed who we are, where we are, and what's important to us.  

Our practice isn’t done, the more you begin to be still with yourself and move, you will intuitively begin to trust yourself.