There is a crime being committed against those of us considered senior citizens, in the name of condition and Fitness. All over the country there are reports of weight training being implemented to help seniors gather lost strength, and to stave off and reverse detrimental bone density loss.
I have personally witnessed hundreds of population in their 60's, 70's, 80's, and even 50's, development the rounds straight through the maze of repetitive motion, muscle-isolating machines and free-weights in gyms, condition clubs, and corporeal therapy clinics. I have observed with sadness and compassion whole groups of seniors participating in strength-training classes.
Why sadness and compassion, you may ask? Isn't lack of force the cause of bone density loss in older folks, you may wonder? Didn't those studies prove that the reason the elderly have diminished muscular force and bone density is due to a lack of weight-bearing exercise?
As you read on, step into my CommonSense corner and see if you won't agree the proverbial cart has once again been placed before the horse.
One thing overlooked, yet categorically observed, while watching those with diminished bone-density is that they are inevitably very, to extremely, inflexible.
Many of us struggle to rise from a chair and having to be helped from off the floor. Frailness is categorically part of their condition but something far more crucial lies under this inescapable aspect. It is what has led up to the Frailness and bone-density loss; and it's the foundation of the degeneration of the structure.
The lack of flexibility is the problem here, and not the lack of strength, which is the culprit.
I will prove that in this treatise, and even the most untrained layperson will be able to understand how to treat this condition in others, and how to avoid it themselves, without falling into the trap laid by well-meaning, but misguided therapists.
Understand first that the inescapable stiffening of the body has taken place over a whole lifetime of abuse and neglect.
Unless the skeleton is regularly run straight through a systematic range of motions, the muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and in fact the entire fascial web, will shrink, compress, distort, dehydrate, and become dense. Instead of the tissue resembling a fluffy resilient sponge, it has deteriorated into something akin to beef jerky or gristle.
All muscles, tendons, and ligaments cross joints, attaching bone to bone. If the bones are not moved in such a way as to bring movement straight through the tissue, in a non-stressful fashion, then the above scenario will occur. As the tissue shrinks it pulls the bones closer together compacting the joint. This never happens symmetrically and so the joint is now compressed and distorted.
To the degree that this happens, possibilities of movement are diminished. Added strengthening of the musculature only shortens the muscles Added which leads to Added compression of the joint and greater distortion which in turn decreases movement potential even more. Is this beginning to make sense to you?
The original reason that many senior citizens are spicy around the way they do is not because they are too weak to move otherwise, it's because they are stiff and inflexible!
I've never met anything who would be considered too weak, without them also being fantastically stiff and inflexible as well. And it is a rarity to meet anything who is (self-admittedly) flexible enough.
If you try adding force (i.e.: shrinking and bulking up of the musculature) to an already inflexible and compromised structure you are only adding insult to injury.
There may be an growth in bone-density, but with the effect of cranking the skeleton down tighter and tighter into itself, creating less and less space straight through the joints and hinges of the body. In effect, you will wind up with a human body becoming a statue.
There is a noticeable similarity between the seemingly weak senior population and muscle-bound weight lifters. What is missing from both is free time of movement...flexibility.
How strong does the average man need to be in our society today anyway? We're not running from lions, climbing trees to get our fruit, chasing down deer, or even farming our own food. Again, force is not the issue here, flexibility is.
Physical Fitness is comprised of three parts, these being: Flexibility, Strength, and Endurance; and they should be pursued in this order with flexibility all the time being a part of the process. Working on force and durability with slight or no focus on flexibility is a path important to stiffness, distortion, density, inflexibility, injury, pain, and decrepitude.
Remember this: It is infinitely easier to gain force once you have achieved functional flexibility, than it is to try to become flexible once you have already compromised your structure straight through neglect or force and durability training.
Ignoring flexibility moves you backwards in your quest for fitness. We joke about the well-developed muscleman who can't scratch the back of his head. And I've met extraordinary long distance runners who could not touch their toes, sit cross-legged on the floor, or accomplish a dozen other easy functional flexibility movements.
The weightlifter can lift far heavier weights than I, and the runner could run circles around me, but I wouldn't trade my flexible body for theirs for even a large sum of money. It will be a long and painful process for athletes in that shape to gather the flexibility they've lost, and as a effect most will never gather it.
To the perceptive there are extraordinary examples of this Truth all around. Just listen! No one complains, as they get older, how weak they are becoming, but on everyone's lips is the sad lament of how stiff and sore they have become! Unless you are one of the tiny minority who has somehow learned this lesson, you are, or will become, one of them.
The clarification is easy and effective. As a weak elderly man begins working on their flexibility, not plainly stretching, but a farranging range of petition flexibility habit which is fluid, circular, skeletal range of petition movements, they will be gaining force as an obviously observable side benefit.
After an hour of plainly exploring flexibility movements, anything who is stiff and inflexible will be sweating and breathing heavily because it is a workout for them, cardiovascularly as well as muscularly.
Here's the thing; put a decrepit elderly person, or even a stiff, inflexible young man on a strength-training program and I guarantee they will become stiffer and more inflexible with each passing day. It's mechanically inevitable!
Put that same man on a farranging range of petition flexibility program and they will be gaining force as they gain, or regain, their flexibility lost over time. As they become looser, the body becomes more comfortable to move about in, which leads to an growth in the types and amount of daily activities engaged in, which builds even more functional force and endurance. (Strengthening isolated muscles does not build functional strength). Without flexibility work, strength-training is a dead-end street. (see Functional Strength)
Remember: force is an inescapable by-product of Flexibility and Flexibility is all the time compromised with every bit of force gained by (especially repetitive) exercise.
Add strength-training to your habit only to the degree that it does not compromise your flexibility.
If you will effect this plan then you too may avoid the well-worn path important to becoming a weak, decrepit elderly man with bone-density loss and no hope on the horizon.
I hope you see now how trying to buff up our aging population is only development their unfortunate predicament worse. If they are up to the challenge and truly want to reclaim the flexible, pain-free body they so rightly deserve, please give the right guidance and focus first on the underlying cause of their problem, Inflexibility. Treat the cause and not the symptom.
*Note: I'm not against weight training or durability work. I work out with a total gym, free weights, swimming, etc, but I avow at all times the functional level of flexibility I have attained. I will continue to avow this flexibility even as I engage in activities I know will cause a shortening of muscles that will decrease my flexibility.
It's up to each individual to decide just how flexible they want to be now, next year, or in 10 or 20 years. I have no desire to cross my ankles behind my head but I know I do not want to become like the majority we see around us every day, obviously hurting and getting worse. I make my flexibility work my top priority and then do anything else I select to make time for.
*Do not give up hope if you are elderly and have lost your force and flexibility along the way. The body is very forgiving and I have seen what seem like miracles happen to folks just like you. If you are trying to take operate of your life again and are concerned in your corporeal fitness, then I implore you to start practicing some flexibility work, but first and foremost, flexibility, which begets balance, grace of movement, allowable posture, alignment, comfort, well-being, and free time from pain.
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