Movement: The Magic Pill

 

OK. I’m going to repeat myself today. It’s hard not to, since I’ve been occupying this space for over 39 years now. You would think that after a while, I would run out of ideas. I worry about that too, but then something happens or a thought pops into my head and here we go.

Let me set the stage for you. I get to my clinic early most days. Some days really early. My desk is simply the countertop on the half wall that separates the clinic from the adjoining gym. I am almost exactly in the center of both.

I choose that. It keeps me in the middle of the rehab center but also makes me available to those people working out in the gym. And it is often the source of ideas for my column.

When we built this facility, we purposely made the space wide open. My concept is that when you walk in the front door of the rehab clinic, you first see others working with physical therapists and athletic trainers, working hard to get better to overcome whatever injury, surgery, or disability that brought you there.

And then, if you look just beyond the clinic, you see a full gym, with people working to stay healthy. It’s a rewarding dynamic. There have been lots of folks through the years that are here for the rehab side that have never darkened the doors of a gym.

What we want them to see is that a gym isn’t such a daunting place after all—that there is a place for everyone. I’ve heard the comment many times “so that’s what the inside of a gym looks like!”

I’ll be the first person to tell you that a gym or fitness center isn’t for everybody. Some people just don’t want to exercise in public. I get that. But regardless of where you choose to get your daily exercise, strength training needs to be a part of it.

Let me back up a moment. I’m often asked “what’s the best exercise?” My answer is most often “the exercise you will do.” There is no secret elixir. There is no magic pill. You have to put effort into it. A walk in the woods is exercise. Biking the Greenbelt is exercise. Yoga is exercise.

Movement is exercise and it’s the one thing I see as a physical therapist that is missing in a lot of people. I remember one time that I was visiting with my mom in the transitional care center. Her roommate had just had a knee replacement.

What sticks in my mind is that the roommate did not want to move. She refused the efforts of the physical therapists to get up and walk. She didn’t want to move her leg because it hurt. She was there, in her words, to “rest and recuperate.”

All this nonsense about moving and exercising just wasn’t what she was there for. What happened? She developed a DVT (blood clot in her leg) and ended up back in the hospital. All she needed was movement.

I know that when I had my own knee replacement several years ago, if we had carpet in our house, I would have worn a path on it. I woke up from surgery moving my knee and working the leg muscles.

Movement. Maybe that’s the magic pill.

Back to the strength training thing. I’ve also said many times that it’s more important to lift weights as you get older than when you’re young. Two big reasons: we lose muscle mass as we age (which means we need to work our muscles) and weight training can lessen the impact of osteoporosis and bone loss that happens as we age.