Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

Walking Group Safety for Retirement Communities: Have Fun and Be Safe!

HarrogateBelieve it or not, warm weather has arrived in some parts of the country, and is quickly approaching in others. As the sun peeks out from behind the clouds and nature begins to call, many older adults will be heading out the door for a walk outside. This is a very good thing, and should be encouraged for most people. Some retirement communities may even establish walking groups, which can be an extremely rewarding and fun activity for everyone.

If you plan to start, or join, a walking group near you, this blog is for you! Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you prepare to walk.

Prescreening

If you are responsible for heading up a walking group, keep prescreening in mind. Walking, like any form of exercise, does carry risk. Prescreening is a great tool used in all fitness programs to ensure participant safety, identify risk, and reduce liability of fitness professionals. It is very likely that most people who will want to participate in your walking group will have already been screened during their membership application, and are good to go. However, it is important to make sure everyone in your group has been prescreened and understands the risks involved in exercise prior to joining. This is the first step toward protecting others and yourself.

Plan Ahead

Before you embark on your first walk as a group, make sure everyone knows where you’re going. If you’re the group leader, be sure to go over the route with your participants before you leave. If you’re a participating member of the walking group, be sure to ask where you’re headed if you don’t already know. By sharing the route with all participants, you’re reducing the chances of anyone getting lost along the way. As the leader, you should also share your planned route with someone who will not be joining you. This way, in the event of an emergency, your group will be accounted for.

Don’t Go Empty-handed

Speaking of emergencies, they do happen. Walking is very safe for most people, but health and safety issues can arise quickly. In these cases, it would serve yourself and your group to be prepared. I recommend taking a few important things with you on a walk. If you are a member of the walking group, make sure to bring weather-appropriate clothing, water, and a cell phone with emergency numbers easily accessible. If you are leading the group, I recommend bringing the following:

  • Water for yourself
  • Extra water for others
  • A cell phone
  • Emergency phone numbers
  • A map of your route
  • A first-aid kit
  • A light folding chair

That last one may sound strange, but it is important for anyone experiencing a health issue or needing to rest on the trail to have the option of sitting down. Benches may not always be available in an emergency situation, so bringing another seating option along with you is a good idea.

Walking groups are a wonderful way to experience nature when the weather finally lightens up. Whether you are leading the group or joining it, be sure to take some precautions. By making sure everyone in your group has been prescreened, you make the walk safer for yourself and others. Planning and sharing your route before you leave reduces the chances of navigation issues, and ensures that your whereabouts are well known. Finally, by bringing along a few key items on your walk, you’ll be much more prepared for an emergency if it should arise. All of this together will make your walking group experience safer and more fun. Enjoy your walk!

Interested in how NIFS can help your community improve your fitness program?  See how we helped a client turn their program around, click below.

How we improved an already successful fitness program

Topics: senior wellness prescreening tools safety senior living activities starting a walking program

Should We Still Use BMI and Body Composition in Corporate Fitness?

GettyImages-844045822.jpgFor years, fitness professionals have been trained to use Body Mass Index (BMI) as a prescreening tool when individuals join a fitness program. It was part of the recommendations by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) for evaluating health risks; tobacco use, cholesterol profile, and family history for cardiovascular disease were also part of that process. In 2015, the ACSM updated their guidelines, and guess what? No BMI screening was included.

(Find out more about the changes to exercise prescreening in this FAQ.)

Why Is BMI No Longer a Screening Tool?

The changes to the ACSM guidelines were positioned largely around decreasing barriers for individuals to start an exercise program. After years of research, what they found was that BMI was not a driver of cardiovascular events during exercise. Anecdotally, I can say from experience that I had a lot of (sometimes angry) individuals wanting to join the corporate fitness center who needed a medical release because their BMI was "too high" and they had one other risk factor, such as not knowing their cholesterol or current tobacco use. So for our staff and their members in corporate fitness environments across the country, I thought this was a positive change.

But it leaves me wondering if we should be looking at BMI at all. There's a lot of back and forth in the wellness community about the "value" of BMI. The screening tool was always meant to be a field test to determine appropriateness of weight for a given height. And truly, it's an easy measure to determine; there are BMI calculators all over the internet. But that may be the end of its utility as a screening tool. There are a lot of questions about how meaningful the information really is to either the individual being assessed or the practitioner with whom they're working.

If We Don't Use BMI, What Should We Use?

This is something of a loaded question and points to our cultural obsession with "healthy" body weight. Do we need to screen for fatness? What's the value in those figures? Certainly measuring percent body fat or circumference might provide more meaningful ways to track an individual's desire to lose weight. But there are caveats on providing that information, too. Our staff members are providing those measures as field tests in our clients' corporate fitness centers, and the accuracy can be questionable, particularly for body fat assessed by skinfold testing.

We have a responsibility in our clients' fitness center environments to help the members live well in the ways that are meaningful to each individual. That might mean helping someone work on gradual, healthy weight loss. It might also mean working with someone to help them learn to appreciate the difference between feeling good when they move their body and feeling bad when they step on the scale.

The goal for our staff is to help the members they serve improve their health in all the ways that are articulated. When tools like BMI are so limiting (and potentially harmful to the psyche), we have to take a hard look at whether those tools are helping us achieve that goal. With so many other fantastic programs in our books to help people move more, try new areas of healthy living, and even remember what it felt like to play at recess, I think we have just what we need to create positive, successful, healthy environments for our corporate and senior living clients.

Check out our creative and effective programming to help keep your members active.

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Topics: weight loss BMI body composition senior fitness healthy living prescreening tools corporate fitness center risk factors

Under Fire: Exercise Pre-Screening Tool Being Questioned

I’ll be honest – I’m a little bit in shock from an article I read the other day on Medscape (you may be required to create a log in to view the article) that summarized a report from the January 13, 2014 issue of Circulation.  The article called into question one of those foundational truths in our industry that has been integral to how NIFS does business. 

Authors of this report, from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), are questioning the effectiveness of (and therefore the need for) a prescreening tool – a medical clearance form for individuals before they begin an exercise program.  Their position is based on two concerns:

  1. Prescreening tools are sending 90% of individuals to see their physician before they being an exercise regimen.  And,
  2. The demand on the health care system seems to be an undue burden for a relatively safe undertaking such as exercise. 

I take issue with both of these so-named concerns. 

Prescreening tools “catch” too many people. 

From the angle that the extra step of needing to get physician clearance limits an individual’s likelihood of engaging in exercise at all, I see their point.  Additional barriers are not needed.  We don’t have enough people meeting minimum exercise requirements as it is.  Why would we establish an additional barrier?  But I’m unconvinced that eliminating this tool is the answer.

overweight businessman BP resized 600Honestly, our staff run into this all the time.  Anyone who has ever managed a fitness program with a policy in place that requires a medical release for individuals with specific health risks before they can participate knows how many would-be exercisers get disgusted with that policy and thus never return to join your program.  I get it, it’s frustrating. 

But that screening tool is there for a reason.

If you need the clearance before you can participate, as identified by American College of Sports Medicine’s (ACSM) risk stratification criteria, there’s a good chance you have multiple risk factors that indicate your treating physician should know about your plans to engage in exercise before you start a program.  Exercise is a powerful tool to improve an individual’s health and embarking on a training regimen should be taken no less seriously than changing your medication.  Medication carries health risks, and so does exercise. 

The ACSM risk stratification criteria aren’t just pulled from some random list of health circumstances that the ACSM didn’t like.  The criteria are grounded in science that tells us if an individual presents with risk X and risk Y, they are in a precarious enough position health-wise, that it’s best if they get clearance from their physician before they start an exercise program. 

I would argue that in most instances, if the individual is really at risk, they should be in regular communication with a physician anyway, and getting the clearance from that doctor should not be a barrier.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of adults living under gigantic rocks assuming that just because they don’t feel bad, they must not have health risks. 

Perhaps the health care system could help us address this with a more preventive and less reactive approach to patient care.

There’s a crystal clear line here that is not to be crossed in my opinion.  If an individual wants to start exercising, there is a really strong chance that a basic walking and stretching regimen will be safe, and, if adhered to, potentially effective at improving the individual’s health.  No medical clearance needed.  But, if the individual wants advice from an exercise specialist about a customized exercise program that’s tailored around his needs and goals, that specialist has every right and in fact, a professional responsibility, to require medical clearance if certain health risks are present. 

Some of that is about managing risk and establishing quality practices that adhere to industry standards.  But it’s also about making sure that the exercise specialist has all the information she can get about the member before she crafts an individual exercise program for that person.  The program is more tailored and likely to be more successful when all of the information is available.

The authors in the report are ready to throw out that layer of information and protection for an exercise specialist so that the health care system can be unburdened. Interesting.

Prescreening tools place an undue burden on the health care system.

At the practitioner level, we’ve heard this loud and clear for years. 

Countless times we’ve sent willing individuals in pursuit of medical clearance only to be told they must make an appointment with the office before the doctor will fill out the form.  One co-pay and eight weeks later, we might get the individual back with a medical release that states nothing specific and that fully releases the individual to exercise with no restrictions.  Seems like a wasted eight weeks and $25.00.

On the high risk end of the spectrum, I’ve had individuals with complicated heart conditions including multiple medications, recent surgeries, and other health concerns return to me with a “no restrictions” signature from their treating physician.  Either the form was forged or the doctor didn’t pause to thoughtfully engage the patient in a brief discussion about forging ahead with an exercise program.  Can you say missed opportunity?

I can think of some ways to ‘unburden’ the system:

  • How about in the truly uncomplicated cases, the chart gets reviewed without the office visit and the form gets signed without the office visit.  If the MD isn’t going to put thought into the recommendations anyway, then why require the office visit?
  • What if the MD sat down beside her patient with a complicated medical history who wanted to exercise, and had a good discussion with him, about risks, rewards, limits related to exercise?  She could thoughtfully (although briefly…I do want to be sensitive to the substantial case load of patients who need to be treated reactively) fill out the medical clearance form, and if the conversation with the patient was meaningful, and the form was well completed, there’s a strong chance that the exercise specialist working with that patient will play an important role in un-complicating that individual’s health.  Thus, fewer office visits, less medication, less complicated care to manage, and poof! Healthcare system unburdened.

This isn’t an easy issue to unpack – there are complicating factors and nuances that dictate specific circumstances.  But a recommendation to take away a tool that is central to an exercise specialist’s work with an individual is short-sighted and incomplete. 

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Topics: exercise health and wellness prescreening tools