THE QUEST TO FIND THE WORKOUT THAT WORKS FOR YOU IN 2012!
My interest in understanding how the human body moves and functions inspired me to pursue a career in medicine. Through my many years of schooling and medical practice, I remain fascinated by how complex, yet effective, the human body is. I have also had an extensive interest in athletics and fitness throughout my life. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle has always been a personal and professional commitment of mine.
Now that I have crossed the half century mark in age…
I am a living example that life is a degenerative process. The aches and pains associated have caused me to reemphasize my focus on motion and flexibility. For years, I have performed exercise programs consisting of swimming, jogging, lifting weights, simple stretching, and core strengthening. In spite of a weekly commitment to these programs, I have lost mobility in joints and suffered from increasing aches and pains. This downward progression has significantly frustrated and caused me to reassess my workout routine and search for alternate methods to positively improve a stagnated program.
This is nothing like I have done before…
The search for the ultimate workout ended two months ago when I joined a group boot camp. Under the guidance of our trainer, a group of eight of us strives to restore our youthful function. Two days a week, for one hour, we are committed to a very intense exercise program that stresses our muscles and flexibility. Each session brings some new twist or variation which keeps me on my toes. The fun part is that we are performing simple exercises we learned as children but have long since forgotten; Picture commando crawls, band exercises, ball exercises, kicking exercises, jumping activities, hurdling activities, shuttle runs, etc.
I am happy to report that while I have had many new muscle pains, my aches of aging are disappearing and my flexibility is improving. Just two months into the program, I feel many times better.
Most of my patients ask, “What should I do to protect my spine?”
If you do not have formal guidance from a therapist, the ideal combination is Pilates to build strength and yoga for flexibility. This, in essence, is what we are doing in our boot camp in addition to aerobic conditioning. It is my professional belief that we need to keep strengthening muscles and moving joints to optimize function and condition. For years I have explained to my patients that when one is young, they can play sports for exercise. As we age, we must exercise so that we can play sports, as well as carry out our daily activities and occupations.
Find the workout that works for you.
If you feel stagnated in your workout, change and variety are good. Exercising with a group of friends or a trainer can push you to a level that is difficult to realize on your own. Varying your routines is essential to preventing loss of progress or stagnation due to over-training individual muscle groups.
Washingtonian Magazine’s December 2011 issue features an article entitled, “Workouts that Really Work.” This article highlights various examples of this concept, including working on jumping and climbing, pole dancing, cross fit competitive lifting, punching, and swinging kettle bells. All of these sample workouts are excellent combinations, which my boot camp combines for a holistic approach. The boot camp concept amounts to a forced muscle confusion program which does wonders for overall endurance, vitality, and well being.
There is still more to conquer and clearly aging will continue, but at least I am in a better spirit and physical shape as I move forward for the next half of a century. I will keep you informed of my progress with additional blog updates in regard to this workout routine, my thoughts, my progress, and my experience.
Best wishes in your continued voyage for optimizing your health. Which workouts really work for you?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
3 Responses to “THE QUEST TO FIND THE WORKOUT THAT WORKS FOR YOU IN 2012!”
Leave a Reply
Topics
- As heard on WTOP
- Ask the Expert
- Associations & Organizations
- Athletics
- Autumn
- Awards
- Awareness
- Back Pain
- Blogging Manifesto
- Bone Health
- Community
- Conditions & Diagnoses
- Coporate Social Responsibility
- Dr. Chatterjee
- Dr. Good
- Dr. Hasz
- Dr. Nguyen
- Dr. Schuler
- Dr. Subach
- Ergonomics
- Essential Nutrients
- Events
- Exercise & Sports
- Genetics
- Golf
- Kids
- Medications
- Men's Health
- Nancy Goldbranson, Practice Administrator
- Neck Pain
- News
- Non-Operative Treatment
- Notes from the President's Desk
- Nutrition
- Operative Treatment
- Osteoporosis
- Pain Management
- Patient Questions
- Patient Stories
- Personal Training
- Philanthropy
- Physical Therapy
- Physician Assistants (PA)
- Post Surgical Rehabilitation
- Prevention
- Recipes
- Scoliosis
- Smoking Cessation
- Spinal Champions
- Spinal Surgery Recovery
- Spondylolisthesis
- Spondylosis
- Spring
- Statistics
- Summer
- Symptoms
- Teamwork at VSI
- The Spinal Research Foundation
- Tips
- Treatments
- True Story
- Uncategorized
- Unique Aspects of VSI
- Video
- Virginia Therapy & Fitness Center (VTFC)
- We're Different
- We've Got Your Back Race for Spinal Health
- Weight Loss
- Welcome
- Whiplash
- Winter
- Workplace Ergonomics
- _Acupuncture
I have been doing a very similar workout, aptly named Functional Fitness Program, 3 days a week. While it is strenuous, it has helped tremendously keep my body & back from languishing from non-use. In addition 2-3 days a week I am either walking or light jogging to keep my cardio fitness up. Keep up the great work VSI.
Great blog, pls continue your work and keep us updated with fresh entries.
I am happy to report that I have now been involved in boot camp for nearly four months. I am glad to report that the original aches and pains of starting new exercise programs have resolved in that I am able to tolerate the workouts much better on a routine basis. Currently, I am continuing to pursue a varied approach to include boot camp workouts along with my own home workout routine. The remainder of the time I spend with stationary cycling, elliptical training, light weight training, swimming laps, or aggressive walking with the dogs. I have found my success has been in maintaining a diverse focus of core strengthening, aerobic conditioning, and overall muscle training. This also keeps my interest while working on a diverse group. While I may not win a body building competition with this, I am able to maintain better energy levels, better overall feeling of health, and much improved energy levels. We will continue to move forward with our efforts in practicing what we preach and so far to date focusing on the very routine has been the best answer for me in the past few years.