Social Workout

Old Country

London Builds Playground for Old People

Breaking news from Hyde Park: A playground. For retirees. Huh? Well, how else are they going to get exercise? They're not welcome on the kid's swingset, and it takes a very brave senior to shuffle into your typical David Barton or Equinox, or whatever fancy urban gym Brits go to.

Every park has a children’s playground. But there are few facilities for adults and very few for older adults. We hope in the future that every park will have a playground for older people.

So says one Madeleine Eldson of the Knightsbridge Association. You go Madeleine! The park's six pieces of equipment include "a cross-trainer and sit-up bench...a body-flexer, free runner, flex wheel and an exercise bike." (Apparently all brought in from Denmark, which one must assume is the hub of sleek outdoor playground materiel). No fighting over the body flexer! The BBC says that playgrounds for old people were first popular in Europe and China. My thought? Where's America in all this, and what about playgrounds for those of us 20 to 60? 

Scientific

Prescription Dance Classes

Wondering what to get grandma for her 80th birthday? If Driver's Yoga isn't for her, here's another hot option: Dance classes. A new study by the University of Missouri shows that seniors who take dance classes show marked increases in walking speed and balance, which is great for zooming around, but even better for reducing the risk of falling. Seniors in the test group were not only speedier and sturdier, they liked the dance classes so much that they clamored for them to continue after their initial 18-week test period. In sum: Everyone should dance more, grandmas included. 

Feats

Wild Ab Workouts

See John Maulkin, aged 71 and living in Northern Cyprus, do 15 "standing reps" with his ab wheel. Ab wheel? Yes, dare you to find one in the corner of your gym and try just one of these. (Via Conditioning Research.)

Newslinks

Yoga, Playgrounds, and Kegels Push Fitness Boundaries

• First there was yoga for dogs; now there's yoga for horses.  
• It used to be that playgrounds were for kids only, but London just opened its first playground designed for senior citizens.
• And maybe you thought Kegels were just for women. Nope, turns out they work wonders for men, too.  

Fountain of Youth

Old People Should Pump Iron

The most recent edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine features a roundup of studies regarding the effects of exercise on aging successfully — a specialty otherwise known as "preventive gerontology." (Love that.) No big surprise: All the researchers agree violently that physical activity keeps you healthy and feeling younger. But there are some unexpected findings....

Workout

feel good aerobics class

back to aerobics

we danced, got to know each other a bit, and worked really hard.

Every Little Movement

A Gentleman's Workout in Paris

[R.Barr, dearest of old family friends, lives in Paris in a meandering set of linked chambres de bonnes on the Rue St. Honore. He is of a certain age, over 80, and long since retired from the American Foreign Service -- and mostly, too, from a late in life acting career. On hearing of Social Workout, he sent in the following description of his own exercise routine, which we run, mostly untouched, with thanks and glee. ~The Eds.]

Touches of Alexander, Yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, squats, stretches, mid-section bends and twists, etc., all go into the try toward 45 minute daily exercise mix. Lately, "backwards walking," (which came somewhere out of the Internet), has become part of a later-in-the-day promenade. Advantage, so they say, is that the backward motion uses different leg muscles, and that one step backward is worth ten forward, a bonus when the cardio limits walking time.

What began with a few backwards steps across the living room has become about 1,000 during the daily promenade. Luck for me is the ground floor tunnel leading from our building to another -- a Greek Parthenon-shaped glass building, with its own ground floor -- located across the street.

This morning, about half-way through the 150 meter Parthenon walk-through, I noticed a young couple near my starting point. As I went along, she took a few backsteps, then forward for a longer stretch with our exchange of waves. Then came a few more of her backsteps, with his showing, at least from my distant point, a tone of skepticism. Then back to their mostly forward walking. I waited for them at the end for a quick exchange of smiles and words....

The Man

Jack is Back!

When he turned 81, back in 1995, Jack Lalanne was still an animal. Working out, speaking in public, planning a 20 mile birthday swim.... We hadn't heard from him in a while, and, frankly, we kind of assumed no news was bad news. But then, BLAMMO, staring up at us from our Google Reader: "Fitness lion Jack LaLanne still roaring in winter." Hallelujah, at 94 (nine! four!) this dude puts even our brave B.O.W.C.s to shame: "I work out every day for two hours," he said. "Swim one-half hour, and the other one and one-half hours I do weights." Apparently, he's also found "mind games" online which he plays to keep mentally sharp.

Think he's some kind of fitness weirdo? Fair enough, but keep in mind he's been happily married to Elaine for 50 (five! oh!) years, lives in a sweet three-and-a-half acre ranch on Morro Bay (about the most beautiful coastline in the galaxy), and still works! (Never mind the fortune he makes from his various books, TV rights, exercise equipment, and health clubs.)

"Exercise is king, nutrition is queen," says Jack. "Put them together and you've got a kingdom."