Animal Flow
Push, pull, carry, squat, lunge, hinge, rotate.
These are the seven movement patterns that your body relies on to get things done every day. And not just during a workout. Think about how you pull a box off a shelf, squat down to pick something up, push your grocery cart, lift your grocery bags off the floor, turn to grab something behind you, pull your luggage through the airport.
The moment you loose the ability to perform these actions, you loose your independence.
As we age, it becomes harder to keep our muscles healthy and strong. We start loosing muscle mass and strength in our 40’s and our body’s ability to produce the proteins that the muscles need to grow decreases as well. When protein production falls, individual muscle cells get smaller. This atrophy increases as we become more sedentary and with age to an alarming rate of 14% per year in our 60’s and up to 53% in our 80%. The loss of strength increases the likelihood of dysfunction, weakness, pain, injury, fall, fractures and death.
When we have pain, we become over protective with our bodies. We are afraid of movement. We become even more sedentary. We tend to choose rest, massage, acupuncture, possibly pills and maybe even surgery. The problem is that we only treat the symptom, chasing the pain instead of treating the source of the pain, which is the lack of strength and muscle mass.
That is exactly why we need to move and to strengthen our bodies throughout our lives and definitely as we age. And the good news is that you can improve your abilities and lessen your aches and pains in only a few weeks of strength training.
Here are the guidelines for a healthy and strong, well functioning body:
30 minutes of activity every day.
Choose something you like: walking, biking, swimming, yoga, Pilates, rowing, etc…Most importantly, twice a week, strength training.
This way you keep your strength and avoid injury because your body is ready for life and the activities you enjoy: playing with your kids/grandkids, gardening, skiing, horseback riding, tennis, dancing, etc.
As my teacher, Craig Liebenson says:
“Remember, it is not the activity that brings you down,
it’s the activity you’re not prepared for that brings you down.”
4 week Fitness Challenge
(4WFC Series )
Package is $80
Payable before the first class.
If you can’t make the class, there is a recording of the class available to you for 36 hours.
This class is a 4 week long commitment.
This is for anybody who wants to move to their next personal level of fitness. There will always be different versions of each exercise to choose from. It will make a huge difference to everything you do in your life, Pilates, running, playing any sport, gardening, etc. You will be amazed to feel less pain, more energy and more power.
This is not a Pilates class, it is a functional movement class. We will be doing some cardio vascular work, we’ll be loading the body and putting it under stress safely to build up muscles, strength, resilience, efficiency, stability and endurance. It will be fun and challenging. This is your chance to play and work hard and see and feel the result after only 4 weeks. You are stronger than you think and I will prove it to you.
For this class, you need a towel, a thera-band, weights and a chair.
There will be a recording sent to you after class, available for 36 hours.