Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

The NuStep is a great multifunctional piece of equipment. Did you know the NuStep can be used for more than just building endurance? You can build strength, cardio, AND endurance depending how you use it. This is what makes the NuStep such a versatile piece of equipment in a senior living fitness center and why NIFS has partnered with NuStep for Pump it for Parkinson’s on Tuesday, April 11! This one-day event invites senior living communities across the country to come together, learn how Parkinson’s Disease affects our friends and neighbors while raising awareness on the benefits of exercise for those fighting back against the disease! We’ll be utilizing, you guessed it, the NuStep! Participation is free and communities will have a chance to win a NuStep T6 Cross Trainer. We’d love to have your community help us meet our goal of 1 million steps to honor the 1 million people in the US with Parkinson’s Day! Visit our Pump it for Parkinson’s page to complete your community’s registration and receive free tools to help in your planning.

As for taking your residents’ workouts to the next level on the NuStep, check out these great coaching techniques!

Using the NuStep for Endurance: Besides just getting on and going, have a plan when trying to build endurance with the NuStep. To help build endurance, make sure the resistance of the machine is moderately set. About a 4-6 on your 1-10 RPE (rating of perceived exertion) scale. Make sure you are maintaining your steps per minute! To help improve your endurance over time, add one to two minutes to the duration of your exercise session every week. This can help you go for a longer amount of time without taking a break.

Using the NuStep for Strength: To build strength with the NuStep, try this simple workout. After a warmup of about five minutes, turn your resistance up to a challenging level, about a 7-9 on your RPE scale. Using only your arms (feet are resting off the peddles), row at a moderate to quick pace for two minutes. After the two minutes, switch to just using your legs (arms resting on the arm rests), also peddling at the same pace for two more minutes. After the two minutes are up and now using your full body, peddle for five minutes on the same resistance. Repeat the cycle for the duration of your workout. Building strength can help you maintain independence, increase bone health, and increase muscle mass.

Using the NuStep for Cardio: To increase your cardiovascular fitness, you can try interval or high intensity interval training (HIIT). This will help increase the functional ability of your heart and lungs. Make sure you warm up for at least five minutes at a low resistance. After your warm up, increase the resistance to a moderate-vigorous level, about a 7-9 on your RPE scale, and peddle quickly for 60 seconds maintaining your steps per minute. After the 60 seconds is over, lower your resistance to a 4-5 on your RPE scale and decrease your steps per minute for a 60 second recovery. Repeat for the duration of your workout. You can adjust the amount of time as necessary. 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off, and so forth.

Make sure you are finishing your workout with a cooldown and some light stretching. Also make sure you are using the NuStep with good posture and that the machine is adjusted correctly for you. Before starting a workout, consult your physician and exercise professional if certain types of exercise are right for you. The NuStep can be a great alternative to other equipment which may be confusing to use, difficult to get in and out of, or aggravates an ailment. Check out a variety of NuStep workouts by visiting their website!

Join us for our Pump It for Parkinson's Event and receive a free program guide and resources to host this event at your community, April 11! Click below for more information. 

I recently had a resident from one of our client sites in Illinois contact me wanting to know which senior living communities in greater-Indianapolis NIFS was partnered with as she would soon be relocating to be closer to her daughter. She wanted to refine her search to communities where NIFS was similarly providing a robust health and fitness program to what she had come to experience in her current community. She had done some exploring on her own and quickly recognized that communities simply having an onsite fitness center with some weekly exercise classes did not measure up for her.

Think about that for just a minute, she was making visits to communities and spending time on websites; a fitness center walk-thru during a tour or clicking on some pictures of amenities on a website were not showing her enough. This informed consumer understood the value and distinction of a professionally managed fitness program and she wanted to narrow her focus to where she knows NIFS helps communities deliver on their brand promise of supporting residents in living well. A couple of observations on her part that she loved about her NIFS program:

• Amazing Staff: she commented on how much she enjoys and appreciates the knowledgeable and degreed NIFS staff at her community. She shared how much she valued the relationship with the staff and the creative and engaging ways they keep her motivated.
• Robust Programming: she loves a good challenge and finds that NIFS exercise challenges, incentives and educational programs keep her motivated. She likes the regular schedule of NIFS initiatives and is always asking what’s next!

Community leadership or life enrichment staff in senior living communities might not even see the distinction the way this resident does. After all, fitness is only component of an overall wellness program and/or community to operate. Or perhaps you are thinking other seniors wouldn’t make such an astute observation in a fitness program.

When NIFS first begins staffing services at a community and offering creative programs to engage residents, one of the common pieces of feedback we hear from clients is, “We didn’t even know what we were missing or that you would be able to get as many different residents engaged.” They knew they wanted to do better when bringing us in, but how quickly we’d make an impact regularly takes them by surprise. It’s always one of our favorite moments in a client relationship!

Here are a couple of examples of that program growth at NIFS client locations:

In particular, take a look at the Total Members, Classes Offered/Month and Class Participants/Month. There are not a significant number of new classes added to the calendar at either community but through our ability to recruit and engage more residents in the fitness program, overall class participation increased by 46% across these two communities. If you think your group fitness participation is strong now, how would it look with an increase of almost 50%? What about a 34% increase in the number of one-on-one appointments conducted during the month? What kind of message would that participation convey to current and prospective residents? Is that a distinction your community needs?

This holds true with many residents as well. Once they see and experience the distinction, the fitness program becomes one of their biggest areas of pride in the community and something they vocally champion to visitors, guests and family members. Over a decade ago when I was still managing a NIFS fitness center, it was always interesting to hear the oohs and ahhs of guests of residents who joined them for a class or came into the fitness center to exercise with them. They would often tell me how it compared to the fitness center in the community in which they lived or in comparison to the resources available to them aging in place at home. Again, they had to experience it to see the distinction.

Perhaps it’s time to evaluate the quality of your wellness program to discover opportunities for your community to create distinction in the active lifestyle of your residents. It may also be time to consider your marketing message and how you are positioning your fitness program with prospects.

Evaluate the quality of your wellness program, download our quick read below!

In every fitness center setting it seems that the goal is to provide the most up-to-date, “trendy” group fitness classes and personal training. And while I agree that trying to offer something new and exciting is very important, I also think that sometimes we need to bring fitness back to the basics.

This is very important at a senior living setting. Many of our senior living communities support active living for several hundred people and providing fitness services appropriate for every fitness level can be challenging. It easy to cater to the “most active” group of participants. But we wanted to make sure we were reaching as many different residents as possible, so our fitness center staff challenged ourselves to take it back to the basics by providing a personalized group training that focused on the “bare bones” of exercise. And let me tell you, it has been some of the most rewarding work I’ve done to date! 

While I can’t deny that fitness professionals get a thrill out of providing a tough workout in a high intensity class and hearing “that was hard,” I can honestly say that providing an appropriate workout for those who need to take it back to the basics of fitness is also just as thrilling. Being able to coach a member to stand up from his chair independently when he hasn't been able to in a long time can make your heart swell with pride for his accomplishment. 

Now I’m taking that “back to basics” challenge to you dear reader. If you work in a senior fitness setting, take a look at your membership. Start identifying the needs of your members who struggle with standing, walking, overall balance, basic strength, and most importantly their confidence! One of the criteria we used when we started evaluating who might benefit most from “back to basics” programming was to begin with members who tend to get a little behind in class and do not reap the full the benefits. 

Once you build that member list, start reaching out individually to target specific fitness and functional living needs. Then watch how your overall participation numbers grow and how the increased confidence of some of your more frail residents helps them gain additional strength for every day needs. This experience has surprised me; I didn’t expect that getting back to the basics would be so rewarding and exciting, but it has been an absolute joy. Have a similar story to share? Respond the comments below.

If you DIY the fitness program in your senior living community, you probably think your offerings are market-standard and don't need to be reconsidered. Even with strong staff running your fitness program, that in-house team has limits on what they can build for the community, and it's likely that you're missing out on opportunities for substantial improvement. The problem with those missed opportunities is that even with something as basic as exercise, it's tough to know what you don't know.

• Annual fitness center visits increased 44% despite there being no change in total eligible residents during this time.
• Appointment volume increased 68% which means that residents got a lot more high touch interaction with our fitness experts.
• The average number of fitness center visits per day increased 43% and the number of residents who visited the fitness center at least once per month jumped 20%.
• In a community where the group fitness program was already strong, we made a few tweaks and overall class participation increased 9%.

As I said, the staff leadership at this client location was strong before we came on board; they were doing a nice job tracking and using available data as well as providing good variety in programming. But, there are limits to what a small team can do in an environment like that without additional job-specific support. And that's the value of outsourcing your fitness center program to an organization that specializes in building and sustaining strong resident fitness programs. We were quickly able to help this team: 

• Identify new ways to attract residents into appointments and structure documented follow-up practices to keep residents engaged in their exercise programs.
• Adopt a program evaluation framework that allowed them to focus in on a few goals and truly evaluate what was/wasn't working in their community.
• Provide comprehensive balance training/fall prevention programming with a depth that far exceed previous efforts, and served to draw in new participants to the fitness center and group fitness classes.

If you're ready to start moving your community fitness program to the next level, click below to download our eBook: How to Transform Your Fitness Center From Vacant to Vibrant.