Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

The weather is warming up a little more each week, so that means it’s the season for swimsuits and tank tops! Even though many people exercise hard for the first half of the year to prepare for “swimsuit season,” many people tend to let their workouts take a vacation as well during the summer. Some easy ways to squeeze in exercise during the summer months are to take a walk outside, take the kids to a pool and play with them in the water, plan a vacation that involves activity such as hiking or canoeing, or walk or bike to your favorite restaurant instead of driving.

As you are getting those arms summer-ready, remember that when toning and shaping of muscles is the goal, strength exercises should be done in addition to a weekly cardio routine. Performing both cardio and strength exercises will help eliminate excess body fat while sculpting lean muscle. Here are some specific toning exercises for the shoulders, biceps and triceps that can be done anywhere. If you don’t own dumbbells at home or aren't able to make it to your corporate fitness center, you can use water bottles, cans or anything that can be easily held and is light-medium weight. Complete the following exercises striving for 10-15 repetitions, 2-3 sets.

1. Basic push-ups (on toes or knees)

2. Alternating lateral/frontal raise

3. Overhead tricep extension

4. Bicep curls

5. Shoulder press

6. Dips

Gardening and lawn work are not only good for cultivating healthy and delicious food and beautiful landscaping, but they are great ways to stay active. Think about all the tools that are used for gardening and yard work: rakes, hoes, wheelbarrows, clippers, shovels, watering cans, and many more. The use of these tools requires the work of all major muscle groups, including your legs, arms, buttocks, stomach, neck, and back.

Treat Gardening Like a Workout

Like any workout, you should always begin with a warm-up. Start with light tasks and work your way up to the heavier, more strenuous activities. For example, start by walking around your lawn or garden, thinking about your plan of action for your project. This will give you a light warm-up, while stimulating your brain at the same time. Remember, make sure you are wearing the appropriate clothing, including a hat and sunscreen.

After the warm-up, begin to gather all of your tools from the shed. You can now start digging, setting plants, carrying water, weeding, pruning, and mowing. All of these activities will increase your heart rate and tone your body. Make sure to take frequent water breaks so that you will not become dehydrated. Once you are done with your beautiful masterpiece, don’t forget to cool down. Take a slow walk around your lawn or garden and admire the hard work you have done.

Gardening Workout Reminders

There are a few important points to remember before and during your workout.

• If you are new to gardening or your body is not used to strenuous activities, you may need to break your workout into smaller sessions.
• When you lift heavy objects, always lift with your legs. If you need assistance with heavy objects, ask for help.

If You Don't Have a Yard but Still Want to Garden or Be Outdoors

If you do not have a large landscaping or gardening area, you can pot flowers or different kinds of herbs and vegetables for your porch or deck. You will still be working your muscles by adding dirt to the pots, digging holes for the plants, and also from the upkeep of weeding and watering the plants regularly.

If gardening is not an interest to you and you would like to get exercise outside, try walking around your neighborhood with a group of friends to admire other landscaping and gardens. You could even take a trash bag and clean up your neighborhood. You will be exercising and helping the environment at the same time! There are many ways to stay active, so make being healthy, fun!

People always ask me, "what's your secret?" and I laugh and tell them it's no secret. Thanks to a huge lifestyle change and the wonderful support system of work buddies, friends, and The Body Shop (onsite corporate fitness center) and its staff I have lost almost 100lbs, maybe more.

A couple of years ago, the girls I ate lunch with every day decided to lose weight. I had been down this path before and was not excited. I hadn't weighed myself in well over a year and had no intention of starting. Because my friends were doing it, and I didn't want to eat lunch alone, I gave a half hearted effort. I decided to stop drinking regular soda and participate in whatever physical activity they did. And that is exactly what I did and miraculously my clothes started getting bigger. We were just walking on the treadmill or outside at our lunch time and giving up soda and I could see results.

As the initial loss, whatever it was, had slowed because the changes I made were only mild, and as I saw my friends who were already participating in Weight Watchers begin to lose more rapidly, I wanted to make bigger changes too. So I had to finally weigh myself. By this time, I had started at a size 24 and was now in a 22, and some 20's, but still hadn't stepped on a scale. When I finally did I weighed 238 lbs. I cried the entire day, and thought how did I let myself go this far? And so I began to count calories, and changing everything about my life. Eventually through regular physical activity, tracking what I ate and counting calories, I have made huge changes. It's still a struggle every single day, but when I fall off the wagon, I start again immediately and you know what, the struggle is worth it. I have zero health issues and I can keep up with my kids. I look like a different person and I feel like a different person, a happier, much healthier person.

What struggles have you overcome to achieve a healthier lifestyle?

Getting bored with the same old workout? Out of habit, do you get on the same cardio machine because it’s what you always do? Not sure what to do to get over the plateau and start seeing results again? I’ve created this cardio workout to help guide you to trying new things. More than likely you’re not pushing yourself hard enough by doing the same cardio workout. The body gets in a routine just like you do, it’s time to change it up and keep the body guessing what is next. You will be surprised what your body can do and how good you will feel afterwards! Watch the short video for guidance, give it a try, and let me know what you think….

• Slide and glide back & forth for 1 minute to warm up
• Light jog (stationary if need be) for 1 minute
• High knee runs (stationary if need be) for 1 minute – be sure to use arms
• Rest 30 seconds
• Jump rope (don’t have a rope? pretend if need be – see video) for 2 minutes
• 30 seconds feet together
• 30 seconds right foot only
• 30 seconds left foot only
• 30 seconds feet together
• Using dumbbells, quick squat press for 1 minute
• Traveling broad jumps for 1 minute
• Rest 1 minute
• Jump rope for 2 minutes
• 30 seconds feet together
• 30 seconds right foot only
• 30 seconds left foot only
• 30 seconds feet together
• Burpees for 1 minute (see video for modifications)
• Squat hops for 1 minute
• Rest 1 minute
• High knee runs (stationary if need be) for 1 minute – be sure to use arms
• Jump rope for 2 minutes
• 30 seconds feet together
• 30 seconds right foot only
• 30 seconds left foot only
• 30 seconds feet together
• Burpees for 1 minute (see video for modifications)
• Slide and glide back & forth for 1 minute to cool down.
• Haven’t had enough yet? Repeat the workout or start from the bottom and work your way back to the start!
• Last but not least, have fun trying something new! Your body will thank you for it!

Being in the fitness field, we hear excuse after excuse as to why people skip exercising. It’s not that we aren’t interested in your life and stressors, but we do not want you to feel obligated to explain yourself. Life happens, as any understanding person should know, and sometimes we just can’t do it all.

But don’t think you’re off the hook from exercising. The reasoning behind your skipping out is important. I always tell the apologetic exercisers that it’s okay to miss a day, as long as they weren’t sitting on the couch eating ice cream right out of the container or sulking in bed. However, if you were doing something along the lines of getting together with friends, cheering on your child at a ball game, volunteering in the community, or organizing and cleaning your home, missing a workout is not the end of the world.

There is much more to wellness than exercise and diet, and it is important to keep a balance between all of the components to ensure optimal health. Seven defined dimensions of wellness are integrated and work together to help create who we are. If one of them is out of balance, it can infringe on the other dimensions that contribute to creating a “whole you.”

Take some time to analyze the following dimensions in your life:

• Spiritual: The development of a strong sense of values, ethics, and morals. It is the feeling that there is meaning in life, which may or may not have a religious inference.
• Intellectual: The ability to effectively learn and use information for development. This dimension increases openness to new ideas and maintains creativity and curiosity.
• Environmental: The understanding of the impact of your interaction with nature and your personal environment, which will help improve the standard of living in the community.
• Social: The ability to feel connected and participate in your community and enhance your well-being through relationships with family, friends, and coworkers.
• Emotional: The ability to control stress and appropriately express yourself, leading to positive self-esteem and meeting life’s challenges.
• Occupational/Vocational: The ability to find and create a balance between work and play by matching your values with interests and utilizing talents in your world.
• Physical: The ability of the body to properly and effectively function by staying active and avoiding harmful habits in order to accept uniqueness and improve health.

As long as you are contributing to and feeding these other dimensions equally, there is no need to be overwhelmed with guilt for not hopping on an elliptical for 30 minutes. Be conscious of your decisions and don’t punish yourself for missing a workout, because exercise can quickly become a chore if we shift our mind in that direction. Feed your wellness with all dimensions, and if you are falling out of balance in your physical wellness, search for an activity you enjoy. Be active, be healthy, be you.

Don’t forget about the core muscles! The core helps to protect organs and keeps the torso strong enough to connect the upper body with the lower body. A strong core helps with balance and stability in everyday activities. Core strength also helps with all activities and sports. It’s very important for athletes to have strong core muscles. Strengthening the core muscles can help to relieve lower back pain/problems and increase good posture.  Just like every other muscle group, our bodies need a good core workout on a regular basis. It doesn’t take long; you can get a full core workout in 15-20 minutes or less. I work at a corporate fitness center and teach multiple core classes a week. Try my workout below and let me know what you think! Form is very important, so view the video clip prior to starting for helpful tips.

• On back, hands underneath you supporting the lower back, legs straight in the air, feet together, lower legs pushing the lower back into the mat. Use the stomach muscles to lift the legs back up. Perform the exercise slow and controlled. 15 leg raises, then hold the legs just off the floor and hold for 15 seconds. Next, 6 little circles one direction keeping feet together. 6 circles the other direction, then finish with a 15 second hold again.
• Flip over to a center plank for 1 minute  – on elbows & toes, shoulders above elbows, weight pushed back towards feet, keep hips low, body in a straight line, abs pulled in tight without holding breath.
• Modification can be done on knees instead of toes.
• Turn to a side plank for 1 minute – shoulders above each other, bottom hip up off the mat, feet on top of each other, abs in tight without holding breath.
• Modification can be done with bottom knee on the mat, still keeping bottom hip up high.
• Flip over to the other side for 1 minute – form is important so see details above or video clip!
• Back to a center plank (see video below) – lift one leg for 10 seconds, switch legs.
• Lift one leg out to the side (see video below) for 10 seconds, switch legs.
• Hold a perfect center plank for 30 seconds.
• Back to a side plank, but this time lift the top leg up for 15 seconds, then one leg lift to one truck rotation (see video below) for 45 seconds.
• Switch sides and repeat.
• Back to a center plank hold for 30 seconds.
• Relax on mat (on your stomach) for a few lower body exercises.
• One arm up, other down by side on the mat, use the lower back to lift the chest up & down off the mat. 15 reps. Switch arms and repeat 15 reps.
• Keep neck and shoulders relaxed, exhale when you lift, slow & controlled, always pause at the top to squeeze the lower back muscles. See video for a form check!
• Both arms and legs up & down. 10 reps, then hold for 10 seconds.
• Opposite arm & leg, lift and pause, then switch to the other arm & leg. 30 seconds.
• One arm out to side, other arm down by side on the mat, lift and rotate towards the arm that is straight out. See video. 10 reps then switch arms & sides and repeat 10 reps.
• Back up to a center plank hold for 30 seconds.
• Flip over to your back for bicycles (see video for form and modification) for 30 seconds.
• Not tired yet? Repeat the workout.

Not ready for this long of a core workout yet? It’s ok, start with a couple exercises and work your way up to completing it all.  If you like the FREE WORKOUT FRIDAY, subscribe to our blog!

You likely receive feedback from residents on how much they enjoy certain group fitness classes or instructors, or perhaps the NuStep in the fitness center. You hear it in passing comments like, “Don’t get rid of the yoga instructor,” or “We need another NuStep.” Those comments provide great feedback as part of your overall assessment of the fitness program. But beyond those individual preferences, how do you measure the true value of your community fitness program and what it lends to your resident population as well as to your community’s marketing potential?

Cater to the All Potential Participants

Your lifelong exercisers will likely find opportunities that they enjoy no matter how much or how little your community is able to offer. Positive feedback from these select participants doesn’t mean that your program is making the grade for your resident population as a whole. There is likely an untapped audience in your community and creative programming plus personal touches can help draw those less active residents into the fitness center and/or classes. This is definitely an area of strength for us. Our clients quickly see the benefits of a partnership with NIFS when we can show them exactly who is participating in our programming.  

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Fitness Program

So that begs the question: Do you know what percentage of your residents participate in group fitness classes or uses the fitness center from month to month? Which classes are the most popular or which pieces of equipment are most frequently used? Have your residents shared why this is the case? If you can’t answer all or some of these questions, that likely means your community fitness offerings could benefit from a more solid foundation to evaluate participation and resident interests.

Consider these simple steps your community can take to begin measuring the effectiveness of your program:

1. Utilization of your fitness center and participation in group fitness classes should be tracked daily and reported on a regular basis. Communities can determine the information they would like to evaluate and implement tracking methods for their fitness staff and residents. We find that residents take to simple sign-in sheets fairly easily and fitness staff and group fitness instructors can provide friendly reminders to residents to sign in. Providing a structured memberhsip process is a good starting point to clearly track who is and is not participating.
2. Conduct annual surveys to gather direct resident feedback to rate the overall quality of existing classes, instructors, programs, and services. Learn from the resident population as a whole (don’t just send the survey to active participants) about additional programs that they would like to see or ask them to share why they aren’t currently participating. After processing the results, develop an action plan to follow up with individual residents or on general program improvements to continually evolve the program and hopefully engage more participants.
3. Your fit and active crowd will likely be the most vocal about the types of equipment they would like to see or group classes they would like to try. However, it is important to regularly evaluate the full scope of programing including balance in class offerings, available equipment, and scheduled programs focused on fitness. Residents of all ability levels should have exercise options in the fitness center as well as group exercise classes for their specific needs. It’s fine for instructors to provide modifications for residents of all ability levels in classes, but it’s important for lower-functioning participants to feel like they have options all their own and that they aren’t simply being condescended to in a group of more able-bodied residents.

Taking these simple steps can help improve resident satisfaction in your community fitness offerings. It will also provide more concrete talking points for your marketing department when speaking with prospective residents. Important program metrics coupled with powerful and personal success stories speak volumes to prospects who are trying to gain an understanding of what their lives can be like if they move into your community.  

We see it all the time – fantastic retirement communities with diverse and enriching wellness programming for their residents, but lacking a unified banner to pull it all together.  Instead, the programming is a little bit hodge-podge and lacking in a strategic focus.  And senior living wellness professionals, because their busy and pulled in 100 different directions, are missing out on opportunities to capitalize on these engaging wellness activities.

What is your senior living community’s wellness strategy missing?

• Are you able to capture stories of how your wellness services are positively impacting the lives of your residents?
• Is your marketing and sales staff able to effectively articulate what it means to live vibrantly in your community to prospects who may be reluctant to leave their homes?
• Do you have a wellness brand that is well-executed through the community within multiple departments, through a variety of personnel?

 If you didn’t answer a resounding YES to all three of those questions, then check out some of the key strategies below that we offer our clients who are working on building a better wellness brand.

• Begin with the end in mind:  When you’re just getting started considering the brand you want to develop for wellness at your senior living setting, it is sometimes helpful to think about the end point.  Consider what you want to communicate and how that should look.  Once you are able to define that end-picture, you can start working backwards on what needs to be developed, designed, created, and transformed.

• Identify and leverage existing successes:  Think about what is a huge success at your community?  What do your residents buzz about over and over again?  What kinds of events, programs, or services get the greatest participation?  Those offerings may provide you with a jumping off point for considering your wellness brand.  Giving thought to the stakeholders in your community who need to be at the table for these discussions also is part of this consideration.
• Use the wellness dimension model to look for programming holes:  Start by writing down all the dimensions (physical, emotional, social, environmental, intellectual, vocational, spiritual) and list out all the programs you’ve run in the last six to 12 months.  Then put the programs into the wellness dimension buckets where they belong. (Most initiatives will fall into more than one dimension.)  This simple mapping technique should help you identify where you may have some gaps in services.  It should also show you low-hanging fruit opportunities for early success in your branding efforts.

To learn about two more strategies as well as some tactics for executing on your wellness brand, view our “Build a Better Wellness Brand” webinar using the button below.  If you want to cut to the chase and access all four of our Build Vitality webinars, click here.

Do you need to improve your posture? Sit at a desk all day and not realize that you slouch? A lot of people focus on the front of their bodies and forget to work the back side. Go to your corporate fitness center to start strengthening your upper back muscles which will help to pull your shoulders up & back resulting in better poster. Strengthening the upper back can also help with back pain. A stronger back will produce stronger shoulders and shoulder joint, resulting in less risk for injuries. Now that I’ve got you thinking about your posture, sit up straight! I’ve got your “back” so try this upper back workout for an improved quality of life!

*Very important tip when performing upper back exercises is to make sure the shoulders are rolled back and use the upper back by squeezing the shoulder blades together instead of pulling with the arms (biceps). Always focus on lifting with the back, and not holding your breath! Your muscles need oxygen to get stronger so think about taking deep breaths throughout all workouts.

Traditional lat pulldowns – either with a lat pulldown machine or try a dual cable machine to mix it up a little. 12-15 reps, 2 sets

Assisted pull ups – using the upper back, pull up (squeeze), slow & controlled lower the body still using the upper back. 10 reps, 2 sets

Dumbbell row – pick a challenging weight in each hand, palms facing each other, weights out in front of thighs, knees slightly bent, slight bend forward at the waist, pull elbows up high behind you and squeeze the shoulder blades while you pause, then release the weights slowly back to starting position. 12-15 reps, 2 sets (Very important – do not bend in the spine, just slightly at the waist!)

Push up position row – this works the upper back and core at the same time. While in a push up position up on the toes (knees on mat for modification), keep the hips in line with body not up, weight in each hand, alternating sides pull the elbow up high, squeezing the shoulder blade, and try not to rotate your body. Focus on using the upper back and core muscles during this advanced exercise. 10-12 reps each side, 2 sets

Summer will be here before we know it, which means spending time outdoors and hotter temperatures. Men will be working outside or spending time at the pool, which usually means having their shirts off. And women will be wearing dresses and also spending time outdoors. It’s time to focus on our backs for strength and a better appearance. How do you get ready for summer?