At the gym there are many weekly sessions now geared up for the older, less mobile pensioners. These include a variety of Ortago, which in layman’s terms is supposed to be seated routines involving cardio, strength training and stretching and are specifically aimed at retaining as much balance and mobility as the practitioner has at the start of their journey. It cannot in all honesty put ack talents that have been worn away by illness and age. The class type depends very much on the tutor, some of whom seem to have less patience with the set of clientele they end up with. The tutors/trainers/supervisors are all fully qualified to train all ages and abilities but you can be pretty sure they were not necessarily planning to spend their entire working life amongst the old and decrepit members of their flock! They probably envisioned a healthy crowd of fit young 30 year-olds hanging off their every word!
The mobility and balance element can all be done at home after a couple of sessions in the studio being shown the correct methods. However, part of the scheme to get the oldies out to the gym in the first place is to ensure they do go out regularly and meet up with their peers. This is as important to partially immobile folk as all the bending and stretching in the world. To be fair, once the mobility and balance has started causing problems, it can only be worked on to keep what’s left – it cannot do a lot to replace what used to be there and has since disappeared. So the best course of action is to strengthen the rest of the limbs that are working well. Making sure that no one puts on any excess weight is one the primary actions; The instructors love to get arthritic folk to ‘sit/stand’ which is to stand up from seated without holding on to rails or worktops. A chair with no arms is needed; watching a professional seniors trainer online videos is as good as going down the gym if it’s very busy and no spaces available. The online videos show exactly how to do sit/stand with premium ease. Just a few per day, but regularly two or three times per day, will soon bring confidence back. Wearing correct footwear for the age and type of mobility issues is also a big factor. Many oldies like to wear sketchers training shows which are comfortable an easy to get on, but they are nowhere near as supportive as they should be for the job they have to do.