SubjectNerd

Vertices Are Pain

  • He/Him

Game programmer, former technical artist, sometimes low-spec artist


tomforsyth
@tomforsyth

(note - I'm not a doctor, just an experienced athlete, and this is mostly anecdata and experience, but people keep asking me for health advice, so... here it is!)

Are you a nerd? Are you middle-aged? Maybe, like me, you're both. Well, you need to get some exercise! But if you were the sort of person who wanted to do exercise, you'd be reading a different post. You hate exercise. Let's face it, we all hate exercise - it takes time, it's hard, and it makes you smelly.

I'm not saying you should start pumping iron. I mean, you should, but you're probably not going to. You don't want to be MORE strong and fit than you currently are - you're just fine right now. But it would really suck to be LESS mobile than you are, right? If you couldn't walk or type or you had neck pain or back pain. The way you are is just fine, so why exercise?

Sadly, you need to do something to maintain your current level, whatever it is, or it will drop. Especially as you get older. Most of us can coast through our thirties or forties and for the most part our body will magically keep itself good. Mostly. But increasingly, you need to give it some help.

Let me give you the conclusion first, and then I will explain some of the reasoning behind it. Ideally you should do this while holding some sort of weight in each hand, but I'll get to that later.

TL;DR

  1. Stand up straight, arms down by your sides.
  2. Bend your legs and back, get your rear as close to your heels as comfortable, and touch the ground with any part of your hands.
  3. Stand back up to position 1, arms by your sides, palms facing forwards.
  4. Bend your arms at the elbow so your hands nearly (usually not quite) touch your shoulders. Try not to move your elbows or shoulders when you do this, and keep a straight wrist.
  5. Reach up as high as you can.
  6. Return to position 4, elbows kept low.
  7. Return to position 1.
    Repeat five times.
    Do this once a day.

Do not try to do this fast - slow is better - what is important is doing the full range of motion. Try to keep the stages separate, without flowing into each other. For bonus points, do this while holding something in each hands, e.g. a half-full water bottle.

Hopefully you find this no stress at all, and quite quick. Doesn't need any special clothes, doesn't make you feel out of breath or sweaty. Find some time in the day when you can just do this. First thing in the morning or last thing at night or while waiting for the kettle to boil or waiting for food to cook. Make it a habit.

If you have trouble crouching and touching the ground, only go down as far as you can maintain good control. You may also need to put your hands out sideways or forwards for balance, rather than reaching down to touch the ground - this is totally fine, and over time you will get better at it. It is better to do as much of the motion as you can while under good control, rather than trying too hard and wobbling around. Similarly, the ideal position is heels off the ground, ass touching heels, with your head looking up and forwards (like the girl in the picture - but remember she is ANNOYINGLY YOUNG AND FLEXIBLE and much better at it than either of us - I couldn't find a picture of an old person doing the pose). However, if you need to keep your heels on the floor, bend your knees less, and look towards the floor more, this is still good exercise.

When crouching some people keep their knees together and the hands outside. Others prefer knees apart, legs pointing at 45 degrees, and hands between them. Either is fine.

But... why?

"But Tom, if it doesn't hurt and isn't tiring, what good is it doing me? I keep hearing about cardio and how you have to do it for 20 minutes to work."

That is somewhat true, but that's for "cardio" - exercising your heart and lungs. Don't get me wrong - you absolutely should do this! But if you were the type to do it, you'd already be doing it, and reading someone else's post.

The focus here is something quick and simple that doesn't need a change of clothes or a shower, and just does a few key things:

  1. Moving joints through their range. This keeps them flexible.
  2. Putting weight on your bones. This keeps them strong.
  3. Putting stress on your tendons. This reduces inflammation.
  4. Gentle strength training of the muscles. This preserves their function.

Note the ordering! This will not make you into The Hulk. Not unless you start doing it with BIG weights. It's just designed to keep you the way you are. The common principle is "use it or lose it" and as we get older, the latter happens more. The body is a brilliantly self-regulating mechanism, but that self-regulation relies on input from us on what it should be ready for. These exercises will give it that input, without spending too much time or making you sweaty, which hopefully means you'll actually do them and keep doing them for the rest of your life.

That's enough sermon for now. In a later post, I'll go into the details of "why".


Part 2 - detailed tips

The first post was getting long, and there's some finer details to go over, and people had questions. Also people keep asking me to do a video of it, so maybe one day I will. I tried to find one on the internet - easy you'd think, right? But I can only find people doing it with absurdly huge weights, or people doing it really fast and getting very sweaty. If you WANT to do it like that then hey more power to you, but my target audience here is people who absolutely will not do that! So...

  1. Hold some sort of weight in each hand. How much is totally up to you. I like to use standard small "disposable" water bottles because they fit in the hand nicely and you can fill them with as much water as you want. A standard single-person water bottle is 500ml, so half-full of water is 250g. Enough to give your tendons a good bit of stretch, not enough to work up a sweat. But anything will do - books, wine bottles, garden gnomes, obsolete hand-held game consoles - use your imagination. Just have SOME weight so your wrists get a bit of tension through them.

  2. Do not try to flow the motions into each other. Deliberately think about having a slight pause between each stage. Think about getting your tendons and joints to their full range of motion - "get all the corners". Also, avoid "cheating" by using momentum. This is particularly easy between stages 3 to 5 when standing up - you have put a bunch of momentum into your upper body and arms as you stand up, and it's easy to just let that momentum carry your hands to your shoulders and above your head with little effort. But that "cheats out" of putting the stress you want on your arm muscles and tendon. Think about stopping, getting rid of that momentum your legs gave you, and then starting the arm moving again using just the strength of the biceps ("biceps" is the singular, not "bicep" - muscles can be nerds too).

  3. Don't "bounce", particularly when crouched on the floor or stretched up high. Your tendons are slightly elastic, and if you were trying to do these reps as quickly as possible, you would bounce to do it more efficiently. But we're not trying to be efficient - we're trying to make the muscles work! This can also put bad stresses on the tendons and joints - trying to move them beyond where they should go. Think about moving to the full extent, stopping under control, pause slightly, then use your muscles to start moving again.

  4. Use as much control going down as you do going up. If anything, go slower. It is very easy to just relax and let gravity do the work - instead keep the muscle under tension and control the descent. Although we typically think of exercise as putting stress on a muscle to shorten it, studies show that the muscles and tendons get just as much benefit from having stress while being lengthened (called "eccentric exercise", which makes me laugh). This is very counterintuitive! But you're spending time doing the exercise anyway, don't waste that time. Keep the descent of the arms and body controlled and deliberate, go the same or even slower than they went up, and think about maintaining muscle & tendon tension as you move.

  5. Use full range of motion. When you stand up from the floor, take a moment to think about your body being perfectly straight. Straight back. Straight elbows. Straight knees. Shoulders back. Head looking directly forwards. Don't let yourself hunch - you haven't finished the motion yet. Don't focus on the muscles - they're the easiest part to get right - focus on the joints and tendons, and putting them in their furthest positions - either fully-bent or fully-straight.

  6. If you have limited time, do fewer repetitions, but at the correct controlled deliberate speed, rather than rushing them and not getting all the corners.

  7. If you want to use a bit more weight, go for it. But don't compromise the full range of motion, and don't let gravity or momentum do any of the work. Your limit will usually be how much weight you can lift above your head, rather than the other motions. That is by design! There's no point being able to biceps-curl a whole turkey if you can't change a lightbulb. If you do want to get into proper weight-training, then good for you - go to a gym and get some tuition, because heavy weights can injure you if you don't use them correctly.

  8. If you have balance problems while crouching down, split the motion in two. First do steps 1-3, and do them while facing a wall, and use your hands on the wall to help steady yourself. Repeat those steps 1-3 five times, steadying yourself with your hands. After that you can do steps 3-7 five times using some small hand weights. Over time, you may find your balance improves and you can do all the steps together.

  9. If you're mostly stable but still slightly unsure of your balance, do the whole series of motions with your back nearly touching a wall. If you do become unsteady, just make sure you "fall" backwards and rest your elbows on the wall, then recover and try again.

What this movement is not intended to do

I get some "this other exercise is much better" comments, so just to clarify on the things this exercise is NOT intended to do:

  1. Will not build strength. None of these weights are heavy, and we're not putting any particular strain on the muscles. You probably won't get much stronger just doing this five times, slowly. You might if you start using some serious weights or doing them a lot, but there's other better exercises if you want to actually build strength. The goal here is gracefully and easily maintaining what you have.

  2. Will not get your heart rate going or help fitness. It's not meant to. That would mean getting sweaty, a change of clothes, and so on. And I know you. You're like me. If you need to do those things, you will find excuses not to do them. And the best exercise is the exercise you actually do. It's many orders of magnitude better than the exercise you don't do.

  3. Will not help you lose weight. Sorry, it won't. This isn't nearly hard enough work to make a significant dent in your base calorie burning rate. If you want to lose weight, there's a ton of other helpful guides out there. Although - spoiler alert - they all boil down to "move more, eat less". And both of those are hard. Sorry.

If you do want any of the above - and that's awesome, good for you - there's an absurd number of great videos on YouTube that will help you do this. But I cannot find a video showing what I'm trying to illustrate. Exercise for people who hate exercise is not a particularly profitable market!

  1. It's not comprehensive. There are lots of other similar useful movements that you probably should do, and I'll go over them in a later post. I just wanted to keep the first post down to the One Weird Trick - the biggest bang for the buck in one simple motion.

  2. It's possibly too difficult for some people. I have some bad news - you should have started doing this ten years ago. But you probably knew that. This really sucks, because it's not nice to live with a body that doesn't work as well as it could. The good news is it is reversible - just start doing the parts you can do. Using a smaller range of motion is still better than doing nothing at all, and you should find your range and strength returning slowly. If not, you may have an actual disease, in which case you should absolutely see a real doctor or physiotherapist if you aren't already (I am neither of those things!)

Summary of part 2

You need to do some sort of exercise. Anything at all. People vaguely hope their body will just keep staying the way it is even if they don't do exercise, but sadly that's not the case. Range of motion starts to drop, and you can't reach things high up, and it's hard to bend to reach things on the floor. You lose everyday strength, and even opening jars or standing to get out of a chair starts to become difficult (getting up out of a chair is surprisingly tough even for normally-able people). And once a motion starts to become difficult, you naturally start to do it less, and so the problem becomes worse.

Instead, if you make a conscious decision to do this set of movements, and move to the full extent, and use a little bit of effort, even just once a day, it will help enormously to keep this vicious cycle at bay.


Part 3 - physiology and goals

As I've said above, the goal of this movement (don't use the "e" word!) is to not take too long, or require special equipment, or make you sweaty. Because if it's any of those, people just won't do it. But OK, there's of course some other goals, and they break down into four main body parts: joints, bones, tendons, and muscles.

Joints

Moving joints through their whole range is important. The tissue around joints does regenerate over time, but it tends to err towards slight over-regeneration. Then when you move a joint to the limits of its motion, that gives the process feedback about where those limits are. If you don't regularly move your joints all the way to the limits then the joints slowly close in and limit your range of motion. You're probably aware of "stretching" exercises - that's what these do. There's a bit of a myth that stretching before exercise helps the exercise - the evidence is pretty slight on this - but there's no doubt you should move your limbs to their full extents frequently, even without exercise.

For this reason, it is important when doing the above motions to try to go to all the end positions. You don't have to do it with force, just make sure the arms are fully straight, legs fully straight, back fully straight, and so on. Deliberately try NOT to blend the steps together - "get all the corners" of your joints' motions - remind them where those ends are, and that you need them in your everyday life.

Bones

Our bones regenerate over time. Crazy but true. They rebuild themselves constantly. Calcium is being absorbed and redeposited all the time. When this goes out of balance, and more gets absorbed than redeposited, it's typically called "osteoporosis" and it makes the bones brittle, weak and prone to fractures. The redeposition is guided by the actual stresses you put on your bones - both the direction of stress and the size. That means you need to put weight on your bones, or they slowly vanish! This is part of the trend behind "standing desks" - getting proper bodyweight on your legs, and why people talk about "getting your steps in".

But it's not just the legs - the arms and back need this guiding stress too, and that's why the above motions are even better when you carry something in your hands, and why they put the arms in tension (step 3 & 4) and compression (step 5 & 6). The weight doesn't have to be particularly heavy, just something to communicate the lines of weight and stress to your bones, so they know where to lay down the replacement calcium.

Tendons

Your tendons have an unglamorous job - they have a muscle at one end, and a bone at the other, and they just have to slide smoothly past the surrounding tissue when you move. How hard is that? Well as anyone with RSI or tendonitis can tell you, it's terrible when it doesn't work right. There are LOTS of theories about how and why this happens, and sorry but I don't have any hard science for you - because there isn't much. What I do have is a ton of "anecdata" from me and my nerd friends who spend all day typing and using mice, and observations of who gets RSI and who doesn't. And it's the people who lift heavy things and put them down again that DON'T.

Yes, this seems mad. If you get inflamed wrists, doctors recommend you rest them, and here I am recommending you give them even more stress? Look - if it made intuitive sense - I wouldn't have to suggest it! But there is something about "big stress" on the tendons - lifting heavy things - that reminds them what they're meant to be doing, and how to do it. Little movements like typing or mousing or writing or playing the piano don't trigger the "reset" button properly. We already discussed how bones and joints need to be "reminded" what their limits and functions are - and that's uncontroversial - so it is not unreasonable to suggest that tendons need the same. Again, I'm not going to pretend I understand the mechanism (I have looked for medical studies on this, and I can't find anything convincing either way). All I know is that if I start to get wrist ache, is usually because I haven't done any exercise in a while. And that goes for my nerd friends and family.

Pick up things with your hands and put them down again! That's why holding some sort of weight while doing the motions above is a good idea. The weights don't need to be heavy to have an effect - they just need to remind all the parts of what their real function is and why they exist. You could buy a set of hand-weights, but I like to use empty plastic fizzy or water bottles because they're easy to hold and you can fill them as full of water as you want to fine-tune the amount of weight.

Like joints, tendons will also naturally shrink over time. This is most obvious in some old people as being "crooked" - they cannot fully straighten their arms or legs or back. Some of this is to do with the joints themselves, but for example on the arms, the elbow joint doesn't work like that and it's mainly because the tendons have shrunk. Like the joints, make sure you use the full range of travel when doing these movements, and even deliberately pause at each stage to make sure limbs are fully straight or bent as appropriate. Do not blend the motions together - we're not trying to win a race here! If you're short on time, do fewer repetitions correctly, don't rush to fit more in.

Muscles

In some ways muscles are the least interesting, because we already know about them. Give them weights and they get bigger. Obvious really. But the reverse is also true - that if you don't give muscles weights, they don't just get weaker, they become disorganized and actually prevent movement.

The motions above are not focused on the obvious ones in the arms and legs - though they are used. They're more about what are called the "core" muscles - the assortment of apparently random-direction muscles around your stomach and lower back that all work in funny different ways. They're often overlooked, but they are what support every other motion you ever do, because they connect the bottom half of your body to the top half. Without them, you can have the strongest arms and legs in the world, but it's not going to help much if your middle just flops around like a wet noodle.

The best workout for "core strength" is lifting things or carrying things around - exercising your abdomen and back while under strain. Not big strain, just some sort of effort. And the above motions give you the full range of motion from a fully-curled back when you're touching the ground, up to a slightly arched back when you're reaching high.


Part 4 - a few more motions

The above is the most bang for buck in a single set of motions that I could figure out. But it's of course not perfect. If you find it useful and want some more, I highly recommend adding these other simple things to your daily routine:

Neck motions

Rotate your neck left as far as it will go (chin above left shoulder), hold for two seconds, then do the other side. Repeat a few times. If you need to, you can use a SINGLE finger on your chin to help, just to stretch the tendons a little - do NOT push hard. Then tilt your head sideways, trying to bring your left ear closer to your left shoulder, hold for two seconds, repeat other side. Again, a SINGLE finger on the temple can help - do not push hard!

As with the above motions, you are trying to remind the joints and tendons what the full range of motion is. You are also trying to keep the joints in the neck and spine supple, reduce inflammation, and preserve mobility. This part of the neck (the "cervical vertebrae") is where the nerves to and from your arms comes out from your spinal cord, and if the disks become inflamed or stiff, it can lead to weakness in the arms and tingling or pain in the fingers.

I have had a painful shoulder for many decades that nobody could fix - there seems to be nothing wrong with the shoulder! Finally figured out the problem isn't the shoulder itself, it's the nerve leading from the shoulder which is getting pinched in my neck. Doing this exercise helps enormously, and when I forget, my painful shoulder reminds me! Since it only needs one hand (well, one finger), I tend do this while brushing my teeth, or when peeing. Think of places in your day you can fit these little motions into your routine.

Flappy Bird

Stand up, arms by your sides. Move your arms out to the sides, keeping the elbows straight. Now move them all the way up so they meet above your head, arms as straight as you can (you probably need to bend your elbows a bit here, but try not to). Try NOT to tilt your head forwards or backward - keep the neck straight, facing forwards. If you can, bring your elbows behind your head rather than in front of it. Hold for a few seconds and feel the stretch.

Now slowly reverse it - move your hands back out to the sides, then down by your waist, and then continue behind your back to meet or even cross over, behind your lower back. Again, keep your back straight, head looking forwards, and try to get your hands as far away from your rear as you can. Try to straighten the elbows as much as possible. Hold for a few seconds.

Repeat this a few times. Don't worry if you can't get your elbows very straight at all - the point is to gently nudge at the limits of movement, not hammer on them.

This exercise is to get the shoulder joint and the back muscles associated with it to go through their full range of motion. Normal daily life does not often require us to lift our hands above shoulder level, or to reach backwards very far, and so an extremely common problem as people get older is they discover that one day they simply can't, or that reaching above or behind their head is difficult and painful, and so as a result they avoid it, which of course makes the problem worse over time. Just being able to touch the top of your head can become a real problem. Deliberately putting your arms through this range of motion will help avoid that.

Stand up out of a chair

Don't laugh - this is surprisingly close to some peoples ability thresholds. The motion is simple - sit on a chair or a stool or a sofa, and then while using your arms as little as possible, stand up. Then - and this is the hard part - sit down again gently without "thumping" onto the seat. Again, try to use your arms as little as possible, but if it avoids a "thump" then do use them. Focus on controlled motion, not speed.

The original motion I talk about above is standing up from a crouch, and it uses the back, ass and thigh muscles all at the same time ("lats", "glutes" and "quads" for the muscle nerds). But standing up from a chair can't use the back and ass muscles very much - it's almost all work with the thighs. The thighs are also very important for walking up stairs. Simple walking on the flat does not stress the thighs enough to maintain this strength, and so it tends to go away pretty quickly as you get older. Not being able to stand from a chair or walk up stairs is a major mobility problem, and many people are closer than they realize to suddenly not being able to do it.

Super bonus points - try doing it with only one leg. It's very difficult, and many otherwise fit people simply can't. This is a fun fact to bring up at a slightly tipsy party, but make sure you catch people when they fall over!


Part 5 - doing real exercise

What if the above has magically clicked, you have discovered that "exercise" isn't as bad as you thought, and now you want to get even fitter with some traditional exercise? Good for you! Even if you start "normal" exercise, I recommend STILL doing the above motions in addition. Because sometimes you get busy and the normal exercise takes a back seat, but if you have retained the habit of doing the simple motions, then you're still preserving the baseline.

If you do want to go further, and don't have any existing exercise you like, the exercises I recommend trying are, roughly best first are:

  • Rowing. I have been rowing since I was 11, I won the UK championship a few times, and it will be unsurprising to discover that I think it is nature's most perfect exercise. It doesn't have jarring impacts, so your joints stay healthy, and it doesn't have odd twisting motions that can cause tendon problems. Old rowers just keep on rowing - there's no equivalent of "tennis elbow" or "runner's knee". With a Concept 2 machine (accept no substitute) you can do it indoors in all weather, and it's easy to measure progress. The version I most often see recommended is sitting on a rowing machine cruising for 20 minutes. But I find this very boring. Instead I suggest trying shorter periods such as 3 or 5 minutes, and pulling much harder, so you're exhausted at the end. This will get you more bang-for-the-buck in terms of bones, tendons and muscles, and it's less boring. Sorry, I can talk about rowing forever - it really is fantastic. I'll stop for now but I might do a separate post about it later :-)

  • Yoga or pilates or similar. These are great for joint flexibility and putting stress on bones and muscles. They tend to be a bit light on arm stress, and more about pushing with the arms than pulling (downward-facing dog wheeee), but still not too bad. It is fantastic for "core" strength, with lots of surprising stress directions to keep your abdominal muscles working. It is also a social activity which enhances it for some and keeps people going more often. The spiritual aspect... eh, whatever floats your boat.

  • Swimming is a fantastic all-round exercise that puts stress on every part of your body in good non-jarring ways. You do need a pool though, so it can be inconvenient, which loses it a spot.

  • Rock climbing or bouldering. This is excellent for strength and flexibility, and also stresses a whole bunch of muscles you never knew you had, in ways that more conventional exercise may miss. If you don't like heights, you can do "traverses" which is where you climb about two feet off the (padded) floor and then just climb sideways. It's just as good for you, and still challenging! Bouldering is also a fun mental workout - solving puzzles and figuring out what your body can and can't do. It can also be a good social activity.

  • Dancing and aerobics. It very much depends on the style. Many have little or no benefit to the arms, so try to choose ones that do have a wide range of motions and ideally some floor work, to get some weight through the hands. Ballroom dancing where you are significantly using your hands to pull/push your partner is really good for this.

  • Weight lifting, crossfit, and so on at a gym. These are also excellent, with a few caveats. First, most courses are designed to either exhaust you, or make you into a weightlifter. Since you're reading this, if you wanted those, you'd probably be off doing them already! Ask your local gym about classes for older people, even if you're not an old person - some of them have them. They focus on a gentler pace - slower, more controlled motions, less running.

  • Bodyweights or free weights at home. This can also be good - and it's exactly what the motions above are a form of! Start small - bottles of water, heavy books, things like that. The big problem with doing properly heavy weights at home is there is nobody to tell you when you're doing it wrong. When the weights are low it's not a problem, but as the weights increase you REALLY need to learn how to do it properly or you will hurt yourself, and that means going to a gym and getting professional tuition. For that reason I do NOT suggest buying actual weights. If you're using anything heavier than a bottle full of water or a thick book, you need to go get some lessons first.

  • Track and field, including "sprints" under a mile (100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, etc). These are excellent. Unlike jogging, they do work the whole body much better, and more in strength mode, so the tendons get a good workout. Training for them is often combined with bodyweights and crossfit-style exercises, which are all good stuff.

Less good:

  • Walking. There's nothing really WRONG with walking, but it only helps your legs, not your arms or back, and it doesn't even send your legs through the full range of motion. It also takes ages - unfortunately humans are really efficient at walking, so even a fast pace can take a long time to do any real good. But any exercise is better than no exercise, and if enjoying it means you'll do it, go for it.

  • Running. The same problems as walking - almost no benefit to arms and back or flexibility - and it's also hard on the knees because of the impact on the ground. It also doesn't really use the muscles in "strength" mode - you are mainly working the heart and lungs. But again, if you enjoy it, go for it.

  • Cycling is very polarised. For your legs it's wonderful - good powerful strokes, no jarring impacts, decent range of motion, and you can cycle hard for a short time, or gently for a long time. But it's only the legs - there's only small benefit for the core and back, and almost none for the arms. The other problem with cycling is that cycling on the street can be dangerous, and miserable in bad weather. Indoor cycling machines solve that problem, but they're the same price as a rowing machine, and of course only half as effective.

  • Ellipticals and other "full body" exercise equipment - basically treadmills with arm thingies. Unfortunately these are mostly expensive voodoo, and most don't actually provide the benefits to the arms that they promise - they're really just an even more expensive and inconvenient running machine. Get a Concept 2 rowing machine for half the price, a quarter the space, and four times the benefit.

  • Home multigyms - things with pulleys and handles and levers. These are basically the same as having a set of weights, except it's big, bulky, expensive, and can be just as dangerous unless you know what you're doing. If you're not already an athlete or a body-builder and know your way around a gym blindfolded, try something else first.

  • Running-about sports like soccer, rugby, hockey, basketball, etc. These are all great all-round exercise, but you run the risk of injury either from collisions, or from limbs being twisted strangely and injuring tendons. Depending on the playing surface, the impacts can also put long-term strain on your knees just like running. However, some people enjoy the social aspect enormously and view the risks as worth it, so if you enjoy it, go for it.

  • Martial arts - wrestling, karate, aikido, judo, jiu-jitsu, boxing, capoera, etc. These are fantastic except for one small flaw. They have great all-body conditioning, good for flexibility and joints. I would highly recommend them except for the problem of somebody else trying to hit you - because sometimes they succeed, even by accident. There are many of these styles that are "minimal contact" - I did minimal-contact karate for 15 years. And while I enjoyed it, every now and then there would be a mistake, somebody would move unexpectedly, body parts collide, and now you have a broken rib, toe or tooth (I have had one of each!) As before, choose your level of risk - I enjoyed it, and still miss it, but it became a bit too dangerous for me. There are some interesting crossovers between martial arts forms and yoga style solo exercises that might appeal to some (tai-chi, dance capoera, "boxercise") that have all the benefits without the problem of getting an elbow in the face.

I want to stress that none of these exercises are BAD. If you enjoy them, do them. The exercise you actually do is infinitely better than the exercise you don't do. But they don't do everything, and some of them are not that efficient in terms of benefit per minute spent. So it's a good idea to keep supplementing them with other things, such as the motions I talk about at the very start of this series.

Links, and more reading.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/how-can-strength-training-build-healthier-bodies-we-age Specifically on strength-training for the over-70, but it's just as applicable to the middle-aged nerd. Note they also talk about slow, deliberate movements - you are neither going for an out-of-breath cardio workout, nor are you lifting big weight to put on the beef. The good spot is somewhere in the middle. And it's good because it doesn't hurt, and doesn't make you sweaty, and that means you might actually do it!

It is interesting that it seems to help obesity, but honestly I think that's because it increases mobility, and then people move more in their normal lives, because it's easier to do so. The movements themselves are not a significant calorie-burner - in fact they're deliberately designed to NOT get you sweaty! Although muscle does require a constant "burn" just for existing, so gaining (or retaining) even a slight amount of muscle mass will help that.

https://bigthink.com/health/most-damaging-exercise-myth/
This is a more accessible version of the same thing - that training with some weight is a necessary part of keeping healthy in old age. Unfortunately the text article doesn't really talk about what "weight training" means. The video is much better and goes into it a bit, so make sure you watch watch that.

The big problem I have with this article is it keeps talking about "weight training" which immediately conjures images of 70-year-olds doing squats with 80kg bars on their shoulders. That's a very extreme thing to suggest that middle-aged people start doing (though granted some do!) and I think what they really mean by that phrase is as a contrast to "exercise" where you do it for half an hour and get out of breath and sweaty. So slower, more controlled motions, against some resistance (e.g. weights). In other words - all the stuff I've been going on about above.

And of course - go get a rowing machine from Concept 2: https://shop.concept2.com/6-indoor-rowers


This was the last portion of this article I had planned. I assume I'll get a bunch of people moaning I have maligned their favorite sport. Look, it's not my fault it's not as good as rowing - that's just simple facts. I may also update it in places if people have questions or need clarification.

Hopefully you found it useful, and you can find a way to incorporate some of these motions in your daily life, and stay healthy well into old age.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @tomforsyth's post:

I feel like this post was written for me. I don't do enough but I'd like to do more than nothing at all. Is there a name for this exercise? I'd like to see it in action. I couldn't quite tell if the photo of the kid is representative of step 2, mainly because her palms are facing backwards, not forwards.

Anyway, thank you for this advice.

Do not try to copy the tweenage girl! She is far more flexible than you will ever be. I just couldn't find a better photo of the pose. So many people have asked for a video, I will probably have to do one.

I do not have a name for this exercise. Maybe I should invent one.

Before this site is gone, I wanted to come back and say this post sort of changed my life. Because of it, I finally got back to trying to improve my fitness. Bought a used Concept2 and was rowing basically every day. Well, I am dealing with a wrist ligament injury right now but I really want to get back to rowing. It's maybe one of the only exercises I feel like has really clicked with me in a way I could stick with it for the long term. So thanks once again for all the info in this post. I think you should preserve it on your blog or something.

Excellent! Don't push it too hard - those poor wrist ligaments have to deal with the combined force of the largest muscles in your body, and they don't grow as quickly as the muscles do, so work up to it gently.

After the last media site implosion I now keep all my posts as nice simple text files on something called a "hard drive" that lives inside my computer, so yes they're safe and sound. I shall migrate them to my personal blog site shortly.

Pinned Tags