Transcription:
How to Exercise Safely on Your Own

Introduction: Here's another edition of the BayCare Health System’s podcast series, BayCare HealthChat with Melanie Cole.

Melanie Cole: You know you're supposed to exercise, but if you injure yourself, you can't do it, or if you have preexisting conditions, you need to make sure that you're exercising safely. Welcome to BayCare HealthChat. I'm Melanie Cole, and today we're discussing exercising safely. Joining me in this series is Dr. Kevin Elder, he's Board Certified in Sports Medicine and Family Medicine at BayCare. Dr. Elder, it's a pleasure again to have you on. Let's just start with setting goals because I think that's a great place to start when you want to start exercising. If you're a new exerciser, setting those smart goals. Tell us about that.

Dr. Elder: Setting goals is to get somewhere. I think you have to have an idea of what direction you're going, so that starts with, I think the best thing to do, to start an exercise program, you have to think about what is your goal? Not just kind of fly off and run out in the street and start running and you have to kind of have an idea of what are we trying to get to here? So with that, looking at what's your current level of fitness is, what's your goal as far as, is it muscle toning? Is it gaining strength? Is it trying to lose weight? Is it trying to increase your cardio endurance? You could have an overlap of these goals, but I think the key would be knowing where you're at and kind of setting a long-term goal, but also a short-term goal. The importance of the long-term goals. It provides you kind of an overall direction. The importance of the short-term goal is that it's attainable and I think it's important to have something attainable so you feel like you did something, Hey, this is worth it. I can do this. So starting off slow, having attainable goals that make sense. And then progressing from there. What is your goal might not be your friend's goal or might not be your neighbor's goal or your family member's goal. That's where it's a very personalized issue. You can exercise with someone and still have different goals, but I think it's important to have personalized goals that are attainable and then have long-term perspective of where you're trying to get to.

Host: Excellent explanation. So as we're giving some easy steps to follow to make sure we're exercising safely, let's start with proper equipment because that's a good place to start. If you're going to walk or run, you need good shoes. Tell us about equipment that we should look at and does everybody need to set up a gym in their home or go to a big gym?

Dr. Elder: Definitely we should think about equipment and equipment can extend from clothing to footwear. I guess sort of included in clothing, but also looking at actual equipment weights and bands and whatever. As far as clothing, bottom line with clothing is, it's actually a little bit amusing to me. The whole clothing industry, everyone's walking around in yoga clothes. I guess that's a thing in these days, I assume that everybody seen in yoga, just left the yoga studio, but you want to wear comfortable clothing that fits your activities. So you might not wear a full yoga suit if you're going to go run out in the middle of the heat. If you're going to run on a really windy cold day, you might need a windbreaker. If you're going to be doing weightlifting, you might not want to wear something that's going to get snagged on the seat or if you're riding your bike, have billowing pant legs that get caught in the spokes. So just thinking about what you're doing and what's the weather and having a bit of common sense about it.

Certainly some of these newer outfits that people can wear and the newer materials, they can serve some function, they may wick sweat better. They may, frankly, if they make somebody mentally feel good about themselves and they're more inclined to exercise, then I say, go for it. Outside of that proper footwear, knowing your foot type and you can go to a running store and they can help you determine that or there's actually things you can do to figure that out on your own. There's plenty resources for that, but having the right type of shoe for what you're doing and then when it comes down to actual exercise equipment, we don't need to have a crazy multi thousand dollar gym. You want to, again figure out what your goals are and maybe all you need is some bands and you go out somewhere and tie the bands off to a hand railing and just looking out at the lake. And doing some band work, and maybe that's a great gym or maybe you prefer to be in your garage and you're actually having some dumbbells. So you can kind of be creative. I think that sometimes not spending massive amounts of thousands of dollars on gym equipment so you can be a little creative, might help somebody sustain exercise because you mix it up.

Host: Well put and certainly true. You don't need a big expensive gym. Some dumbbells, bands. That's great advice. So now people want to get started. They don't know whether they should do cardiovascular, they hear these terms flown about, Dr. Elder, they hear aerobicexercise, they hear strength training, flexibility, functional training, all these different types. What type do you suggest that they start with and then tell us about the different types of exercise.

Dr. Elder: I think that the important thing is to, if somebody's just getting started, they want to certainly work on some flexibility, doing some aerobic exercise, really just doing a mix of things and they may have preferences that they have. For example, there might be somebody who enjoys doing some endurance or cardio and doing some flexibility work, but really doesn't enjoy strength training too much. Now I think that the goal with strength training in a mature older adult is not necessarily to be trying to bulk up, but what they're trying to do is maintain strength and if you don't spend some time on strength training, you'll lose strength. So I think that's the importance. Even if somebody loves endurance or they just love stretching all the time, even that person needs to spend a little bit of time on strength just to maintain what they have. So that's kind of the key.

Stretching, balance exercises might be more important for someone else, especially a lot of data that as people age, spending time on balance exercises, spending time on these types of things can have a lot of long-term consequences to their health overall. With exercise we have to keep in mind that maintaining strength, cardiovascular endurance exercise where you're elevating your heart rate, this is good for you on many levels. Cardiovascularly, in general exercise is going to decrease all cause mortality and then we have activities of daily living and function and what in essence will determine somebody being able to maintain their independence and their living, and that's continuing to focus on their strength, continue to focus on balance. So these things, not only do they make us feel better, but they allow us to live the lives we kind of want to live.

Host: As people are learning to do these different types of exercise. Strength training is a perfect example and as someone who's been a personal trainer for 30 years, I know that one of the things we learned back then was proper form and it's still important today. If you don't have a trainer, you mentioned bands and hand weights and dumbbells and things. How do you know proper form and tell us a little bit about how a person can tell just basically by following their body's cues if they're doing this properly.

Dr. Elder: First of all, we have multitude of resources we can find. Of course not everything on the web is going to guide you the right direction, but you can usually pretty easily look up an actual legitimate physical therapist or athletic training type website and get some real guidance. So that's one way and there's multitude of videos you can look up and I think that somebody wants to really see the actual movement. That's a simple way, but if we're just trying to do these reps of whatever exercise we're doing, I think in general the guidelines are, for example, in pushups, you want to make sure your back is straight, your core is supported and tight. You know it's okay as you're learning to maybe have somebody has their knees down and they're doing kind of that partial pushup and then moving up to where your knees are off the floor, progressing to where they're moving their hands around and working different areas.

I think with form where we may be more inclined to get an injury in the case of a pushup for example would be if we're starting to have our back sagging down or pushing off more with one side or we're straining our neck or whatever it is, and you can extend this to any exercise. You're doing shoulder exercises, sitting up straight, not having rounded shoulders, shoulder blades pinched together. You want to avoid where somebody is extending their range of motion outside of their comfort zone where their form starts to get bad. This is where injuries occur. It's better to have good form and do less reps and build up rather than trying to push it and then get injured and then we can't exercise. And that's the whole point is to continue exercising.

Host: 100% agree and it is such important information to look at the form, lunges, knees, all these things, but coming along with all of that is good nutrition and hydration and this is often overlooked. When you are exercising, you think, Oh, you know, I didn't work out that hard or maybe I don't need to hydrate as much. Tell us about that and really what do we have to keep in mind as we're exercising,

Dr. Elder: So obviously we can get a lot of information on nutrition and you and I did a nutrition podcast that we covered some of those areas particularly, but in general when we talk about nutrition for exercise, want to make sure we have fuel so we've had a decent carb snack prior to exercise, could be 30 minutes to two hours before the activity. We want to make sure we're hydrated, especially in the heat or if we're exercising indoors where it's hot, it's going to be different requirements if you're doing a relaxing stretching class versus doing let's say a hot yoga class where you're really sweating. There, you might not only need to hydrate before but maybe during and just over hydration or pre hydration as it would be said. After the exercise, we want to make sure we're replenishing the glycogen stores and getting some source of carbohydrate as well as protein afterwards. The simple example that gets used is chocolate milk, just simple and cheap. Obviously there's tons of other commercially available fancy sport drinks if you want to go that route but somebody has a reason they don't want dairy. Then we have all kinds of other milk and various things we can do. There's just a ton of options so you want to find something somebody likes, they find palatable to themselves and make sure that's part of the regimen.

Host: And be sure to listen to Dr. Elder's nutrition for athletes and it's really not only for athletes. He gives some great advice on that in another podcast. Before we wrap up, Dr. Elder people work out for the first time and they get sore and that can sometimes sideline them. They are not sure why they're sore. They don't know if they injured themselves. Speak about good and bad soreness briefly for us so that people understand what they're supposed to feel and then really give us your best advice to starting out a workout program to beginning exercise and what you want us to know.

Dr. Elder: So brief discussion of soreness would be soreness is good in general. If we are somewhat sore after we exercise then our body's saying, Hey you did your job, you work these muscles over and that's how muscles get stronger. That's how we get more fit as we work them out. Now if we go to a level of we're limping around days later and can't exercise the next time we try to exercise, that's overdoing it. That's too much. So some soreness is good. Post exercise is good. If we still have soreness or we have soreness that gets in the way during exercise, then we want to question injury or we want to question are we doing too much? So that's kind of the basics of that. Best advice is to have a plan, short term goal, what you want to try to accomplish. Just starting the exercise where you want to be in a week, two weeks. We have an attainable goal. We feel good about what we're doing. Mix it up, make it something that you're going to enjoy doing. This should not be like something you're sentenced to, like you've been sentenced to go exercise. This should be something to look forward to. This is something fun. Mix it up. Try different things.

Find friends to work out with. Have a long-term goal. Understand you're going to be sore, understand that you're going to have days you don't feel like it, but that's where you mix it up and you make a decision that this means your freedom. This means your quality of life and it's too important not to do. And then you have to remember how you feel when you finish exercise, how good you feel, how your body feels, looking at your health parameters, is your blood pressure going down? Are your blood sugars going down? And we have to almost maybe even write those down or spend time to even meditate or think about them and remember that. There'll be times where the exercise will get out of its normal progression for whatever reason, life gets in the way or stress or some work project, but then we have to acknowledge that and then get back on the train when possible. Proper form, proper nutrition, proper equipment. These are all part of our progression with this, but you can mix it up. You can get more fancy as you go along, but the first step is to walk out the door or walk out in the garage or wherever you're going to do this and make it happen.

Host: Absolutely great advice, and as you said, you know, you can really start slow, make your goals, but everything counts, any activity you do, whether it's yard work or stretching or walking, it all adds up and it all helps to make us healthier. Thank you, Dr. Elder, what a great series of fitness podcasts from you. Thank you again, that concludes this episode of BayCare HealthChat. To learn more about BayCare Sports Medicine services please visit our website at baycare.org for more information. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and all the other BayCare podcasts. Be sure and share this show with your friends and family on social media because we've learned a lot from Dr. Elder, and you can share all of that from the experts at BayCare. I'm Melanie Cole.