You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘aging’ tag.
Our Aging Bodies: Agility, Not Just Strength
By Shlomo Maital
In this space, I have often written about the importance for the elderly to maintain muscle strength. Sarcopenia, loss of muscle, is rapid and stealthy among those 60 and over, and it’s hard to get it back once it’s gone.
Now, writing in the New York Times, April 5, 2025, Amanda Loudin notes that not only strength but agility is crucial for us golden agers. As we age, our bodies stiffen – but exercise can maintain flexibility. She offers a quick workout to maintain agility; I’ve summarized it below. I’ve tried it – it is effective, not difficult, and seems to do the job.
“Sequence: Complete each drill three times before moving to the next. Start with one minute of rest after each drill and work that down to 30 seconds. For each movement: Do as many repetitions as you can in the time allowed. The goal is to increase your speed.”
Carioca drill Repetitions: 30 seconds in each direction, repeated three times
Standing in place with your knees slightly bent, cross your right foot in front of your left, then bring your left foot out and step sideways. Bring your right foot behind your left, then move your left foot to the left and sideways. Continue each lateral movement for 30 seconds, rest, then switch directions. Ideally you should do this in an open area, but if you have limited space, adapt to what is available.
Ladder drills Repetitions: 30 seconds, repeated three times
Start with a 15-foot chalk line, tape or cord. Quickly step over the line with one foot at a time, bringing both feet to one side before going back across to the other. With each step, move sideways down the line until you reach the end. Turn back to go the opposite way. As you improve, try an agility ladder to do these step-ins/outs while moving forward up and down the ladder.
Figure Eight Drill Repetitions: 20 seconds, repeated three times
Set two dumbbells, cones or yoga blocks 10 to 15 feet apart. Picture the top, bottom and middle of a figure eight in your mind. Run the figure eight, aiming to improve your reaction time on turns and curves. Try switching directions with each set.
Agility Balls Repetitions: 30 seconds, repeated three times
Hold a tennis ball or other small, bouncy ball in front of you near ear level. Drop it and squat down quickly with the goal of catching it in the same hand after it bounces once and starts to come down again. To make this more challenging, toss the ball against a wall and catch it one hand.
Skaters Repetitions: 15 repetitions, repeated three times.
Beginning on your left foot, hop sideways onto the right, then quickly back to the left while gently swinging your arms. Work into a back-and-forth rhythm and focus on a soft landings. As you improve your control and speed, practice staying on one foot for a few seconds before hopping to the other.
Shuttle runs Repetitions: 30 seconds, repeated three times.
On a flat, open space, mark two points about 25 feet apart. Sprint from one to the other, stopping briefly before sprinting back. You can do this by shuffling side to side for more of a challenge, or just run up and back.
Thanks, Amanda. This may save some of us some serious falls.
On Turning 74: How to Age
By Shlomo Maital
On Nov. 10 I will be 74 years old. I celebrated by doing a 74-km. (44 mile) walk during 3 days, from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, with grandchildren and sons and daughter, and Sharona, who joined for at least part of it.
Here are some insights about growing old, for what they are worth.
- Try to do one difficult thing every day… it’s easy to pamper yourself, when you’re a senior citizen, and lots of kind people around you are willing to help. Keep in practice doing things that stretch your mental and physical abilities. That way, at least you won’t slide backward… or will do so more slowly.
- Resist becoming a child. Seniors are forgiven behaviors that adults are not. Resist it. It’s easy to become grumpy and spoiled like a child.
- Treat your body like a faithful old car. You don’t expect a 15-year-old car to run perfectly. You do good maintenance, but not all repairs are worth the pain, time and effort. Same with your body. Fix what you can, live with what you can’t… and don’t spend infinite hours running to doctors, if you can avoid it.
- Remain relevant. That means, make your life meaningful by helping other people whom you love. Do this daily. In little ways, or in big ways. If you do, it means that your life has meaning, and that others care. The key is to be part of a loving community, including family and friends.
- New beginnings – seek them. Seniors tend to be risk averse. Take some chances. Dare. What do you have to lose? Learn new skills, try new things. Try new foods.
- Think positive. Think happy. A happy mind definitely helps create a healthy body. It’s been proven physiologically. Find the bright side. Be an incurable optimist.
- Enjoy every hour, every minute, every day. Find things of beauty, find small (and big) ways to enjoy. Find interesting people, find ways to be with them. Make sure that when you wake, you have strong reasons to get out of bed. If not, well, find some.
- Doing what you love? Keep doing it. Never retire. Bored with what you’re doing? Find something else to do. But — keep doing!!
Is Aging (and Everything) a Matter of Mindfulness?
By Shlomo Maital
Ellen Langer is a Harvard University psychologist who 25 years ago published a landmark book on “Mindfulness” – defined as “”the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present …”. In other words: Being here, in the ‘now’, not in the past, and not in the future.
Lately, attention has returned to her work, with results showing that it can halt ‘aging’ and perhaps even…. cure cancer?
An Oct. 22 New York Times article reports:
“ In one [study], she found that nursing-home residents who had exhibited early stages of memory loss were able to do better on memory tests when they were given incentives to remember — showing that in many cases, indifference was being mistaken for brain deterioration. In another, now considered a classic of social psychology, Langer gave houseplants to two groups of nursing-home residents. She told one group that they were responsible for keeping the plant alive and that they could also make choices about their schedules during the day. She told the other group that the staff would care for the plants, and they were not given any choice in their schedules. Eighteen months later, twice as many subjects in the plant-caring, decision-making group were still alive than in the control group.”
Langer feels that “what [sick] people needed to heal themselves was a psychological “prime” — something that triggered the body to take curative measures all by itself.” In 1981, She tried to show this with a group of older men told to reminisce about what they were like 22 years ago.
“The men in the experimental group were told not merely to reminisce about this earlier era, but to inhabit it — to “make a psychological attempt to be the person they were 22 years ago,” she told the NYT. “We have good reason to believe that if you are successful at this,” Langer told the men, “you will feel as you did in 1959.” From the time they walked through the doors, they were treated as if they were younger. The men were told that they would have to take their belongings upstairs themselves, even if they had to do it one shirt at a time.” The study was called the Counter Clockwise study.
What were the results????
“Each day, as they discussed sports (Johnny Unitas and Wilt Chamberlain) or “current” events (the first U.S. satellite launch) or dissected the movie they just watched (“Anatomy of a Murder,” with Jimmy Stewart), they spoke about these late-’50s artifacts and events in the present tense — one of Langer’s chief priming strategies. Nothing — no mirrors, no modern-day clothing, no photos except portraits of their much younger selves — spoiled the illusion that they had shaken off 22 years.”
“At the end of their stay, the men were tested again. On several measures, they outperformed a control group that came earlier to the monastery but didn’t imagine themselves back into the skin of their younger selves, though they were encouraged to reminisce. They were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller — just as Langer had guessed. Perhaps most improbable, their sight improved. Independent judges said they looked younger. The experimental subjects, Langer told [the NYT reporter], had “put their mind in an earlier time,” and their bodies went along for the ride.”
I’ll soon turn 72. I believe Prof. Langer. I believe that what you believe about your age, your aging, and your body, is close to what is. We seniors do not have to accept what society decrees – that we are retired, irrelevant, marginal, ill, feeble, forgetful and of little use to anyone. It’s time for a Grey Revolution…and Ellen Langer is providing the ammunition.
TIMnovate 