Joey Wahler (Host): It can be helpful on your road to better health, so we're discussing Redefining Fitness Beyond the Gym. Our guest, Debbie Varney. She's Fitness and Wellness Coordinator for Memorial Health System Ohio. This is Memorial Health Radio from Memorial Health System Ohio. Thanks for joining us. I'm Joey Wahler.

Hi there, Debbie. Welcome.

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Thank you very much.

Host: Thank you, appreciate you being aboard. So first, how can people that may be disinterested in the typical gym membership or may not have access to a gym in the first place, how can they still prioritize their health and fitness in meaningful ways? How do they get started?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: You know, it's funny that you asked me this or that I was brought on to talk about this because every Friday I do a video for Memorial Health System and I've done this for probably five years now and I've started to move more towards quality of life. So that's the first thing is we have to change the way we think about exercise.

Let's don't even call it exercise. Let's call it quality of life. Everybody wants that, but what we have to realize is movement, any movement, will move you towards quality of life. So in my videos, I show people things they can do at home, things you can do in a gym, but most of the audience I get are doing these things at home.

And it's how to improve balance, how to improve sit to stand. We are all maturing through life. I never say growing old or even getting older. We're maturing. And when we do that, we have to change the way we look at exercise. So any movement we do, if we have the right forethought with it, is exercise.

Host: So it seems like what you're saying there is that a lot of this has to do with, forget for the moment about the actual movements, which we'll talk more about in a moment, but it seems like much of what you're aiming for here is the right state of mind and the way that things are worded. Like if you say, do you want to exercise?

Many will say ugh. But if you say, do you want better quality of life? Just about everyone is in for that, right?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Yeah, that is exactly what I have learned in the five years that I've made these videos is people want longevity, but we don't longevity without quality, and that is what I try to do, is show people simple things we can put in our day to day life, where you don't have to go to the gym, and you're not overwhelmed, thinking, oh, I still have to do 45 minutes of exercise today. I show things for 10 minutes, and over time, you see improvement.

Host: When you say movement is exercise, for instance, you mentioned the term sit to stand. As the father of a two-year-old, I know that that's a term often associated with infants, but what does it mean for we adults?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Well, the main thing is I work for a health system and you will see in waiting rooms people's names are called and they have to rock back and forth before they can get out of the chair. I show how we can practice sit to stand at home to keep the strength and the ability to do that safely. Number one, you're not embarrassed that you're rocking back and forth trying to get out or having to have assistance. But number two, it's the sense of building confidence. We change our whole way of life when we start to lose the ability sit to stand. When we start to lose the confidence that we have to walk down a sidewalk to a store.

So it's about changing our thought when we are at home and things we can do in our kitchen or with a sturdy kitchen chair. Doesn't always have to be on the floor. You can lie on your bed and do this stuff.

Host: So, when you say this stuff, what would be a few other examples? Let's say you have no gym equipment, I know years ago you'll possibly recall there used to be the exercise show on TV. Body by Jake, and Jake Steinfeld would talk about how you can use mama's can of tomato sauce to do a little movement here and there, even if you have no weights, even if it's not that in particular that you're talking about, you're talking about that type of thing, right? Improvise.

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Absolutely. Something that we all seem to get caught up in is television. So for a portion of your TV watching time, bring in a kitchen chair, something sturdy. You cannot do this from a recliner. And during the commercials, during your half hour show, you are going to plant your feet on the ground. You're going to make sure your knees are straight out from your hips. And you're going to stand up and sit down just for the length of the commercials. Then you can scoot back in your chair and slouch again. But when we go to do this movement, we scoot out to the end of our chair. And what that does is incorporate core muscles.

So we're doing a core exercise, also, while we are strengthening the legs. So it's little things like that you can incorporate throughout your day. When you're doing the dishes or brushing your teeth, somewhere safe so you can hang on to the countertop if needed, you do calf raises or heel raises. In ballet, it's a releve.

You do that for the time it takes you two minutes to brush your teeth, you will get tremendous ankle mobility, as well as strong calf muscles, which help you to do the sit to stand.

Host: This idea of doing a mini workout, as you said, during a commercial break in a TV show; imagine if you would do that for an entire hour show. You'd have yourself a nice little, well, Debbie, I don't want to call it a workout because that might discourage people as we discussed, but you'd have a nice little movement session going, wouldn't you?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Absolutely. And what we're also doing is causing circulation to flow. You know, the spine is the highway to life. I teach Tai Chi and Qigong and the Chinese consider the spine as the highway to life. We have got to get that blood flowing through the spine to every appendage in the body. If we sit all night and watch TV, that's not happening.

So you can think of it as healing on the inside, as well as seeing change and building strength on the outside.

Host: Gotcha. Switching gears a little bit. How about the idea that no two people have the same health or physical conditions. And so why is it important to recognize this in fitness? It seems like many people get discouraged or too preoccupied worrying about what other people are doing, what other people look like, what they're eating, what they're doing to work out, but what works for them doesn't necessarily work for you, right?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Yeah, that's correct. Everything is not for everybody. We've got this wonderful thing in front of us every day called technology, so we can find every video under the sun. That doesn't mean we all should be doing that. We need to think about what are our physical limitations or what are our strong points.

What do we have strengthened? Start with the strength component and then as you build more strength, it might be just core strength. I'm going to scoot out to the edge of my seat, lift through my ribcage, not my shoulders, and I'm going to gain strength in my core. And then I start working on the legs, and then I start working on the arms.

So we don't get so overwhelmed that it is total body. Now when we look at these videos, we have the tendency to either think, I can never do that, or we're going to think, I need to do that. And you might not need to do that. You might not be to that point. So we have to be very choosy. Look through quite a few videos before you choose what to participate in.

And always remember, modification is key. If you see something that you can do, you don't want to start out doing a full 20 or 30 minute workout. You want to start with five minutes today and then tomorrow add two more minutes onto that. But don't overwhelm yourself.

Host: Yeah. Because overwhelming yourself leads to getting discouraged and giving up too easily and quitting before you practically even get started. Right?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Absolutely. And if you already have knee issues, you are not going to do squat jumps. We have to make ourself aware. What should we choose? What's going to benefit us or what could possibly harm us? And that kind of comes down to finding someone responsible to talk to if you truly don't know what to do.

Host: When we talk about goals, you alluded to it a moment ago, so much is discussed for people that work out in a more traditional way, either at a gym or at home, in terms of setting goals, increasing them, meeting them, etc. What are some of the goals that people can keep in mind with your approach? You touched on it a bit by saying, you know, start with a few minutes and raise it incrementally slightly each day.

But beyond that, any other tips for people to keep in mind in terms of what they're really trying to achieve here short and long term?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Yes, they do have to be realistic goals. For many years we think we have to get in the gym for an hour, two hours a day. We have to do cardio, 30 minutes on the treadmill and then it's another hour lifting weights. Well that's not reasonable. It's not reasonable for really anybody nowadays because our lives are so busy.

 We have to think in terms of goals as anything that moves you towards your aim or your purpose makes you a success. And we don't look at things that way. We look at if I don't lose 30 pounds by the end of February, I have failed. No, anything that moves you slightly towards your aim or your purpose makes you a success.

So we have to put a different terminology in our mind and then a different meaning to the outcome.

Host: Absolutely. Few other things here. One being flexibility. It's something that many, even that work out regularly, I think probably men more so than women don't pay enough attention to. Guys are interested in getting stronger, looking more muscular, oftentimes, not all, but many, and typically will let flexibility go by the wayside, but especially as we get older, how important is flexibility and what are a few tips you have for being able to increase that?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: I am one of the master trainers for a program called Matter of Balance. And most of my clientele that take these classes are 65 to 95. And the thing is, they aren't the only ones that struggle with balance. The beginning of losing our balance is losing flexibility. We all have a normal stride length.

If you're 40 years old, since you were two or three, you've developed that stride length. Muscles have memory. So when we have a larger stride length, our body responds to that to keep our balance. But as we start to mature in life and start to fear falling, then we shorten the stride length. When we begin to do that, we shorten the range of motion in our hips.

 When we go to look to see if anybody is coming when we're driving a car, but we don't turn through our waist, we don't turn the head on the neck, we shorten it, then flexibility isn't there anymore whenever we crucially need it, because we stopped using it. So we have to be aware. Shuffling your feet and not taking your normal stride length puts you at a higher risk of falling.

So there's things that you can do seated in a chair. Pull your knee into your chest. If you're not comfortable with that, when you're lying in bed, put a bath towel behind the back of your leg and pull that knee up as far as you can. You don't have to go to a yoga class and get into all those positions in order to stay flexible.

So it's very important that you can do these stretches in bed. You don't even have to lie on the floor. You can do them in the chair. Again, while we're being entertained with television. You can do those torso rotations, those neck rotations to maintain flexibility, which will lower your risk of falling.

Host: In summary here, Debbie, what advice do you have for people struggling with self-worth, so to speak, regarding their health and fitness journey? How do they continue to value themselves more effectively, maintain the confidence they need that you were stressing earlier, because people do get discouraged. Even people that work out all the time have days when they just don't want to do it today. How do you keep moving forward and just do something?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: The first thing I have told personal training clients, well, I give them their program. And then I tell them, the first thing you have to do every day is stand in front of a mirror and say three wonderful things about you to you. Because we have been beat down through the years. Believe it or not, this wonderful thing called technology has also beat us up.

Because we compare ourselves to pictures that are not real. That have filters. We compare ourselves to athletes that those are even changed on the screen. So you start by changing your mindset. We have to value us before we will do anything to improve our quality of life. And that starts all in how we feel about us.

Host: I can tell you as someone that used to cover pro sports locker rooms on a regular basis, if you're going to compare yourself to those guys, that's an unrealistic start, right, they're in about the top half a percentile in the world, literally.

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Yeah, and then we get a very poor self image. If you have a poor self image, you're not going to do the things that you need to do to have a quality of life. So it's changing your mindset and that starts before exercise. It starts in the morning, first thing, three good things about you to you. You're going to believe your own words quicker than anybody else's, but we don't do that.

We look in the mirror and then we quickly look away. We look in the mirror and we see ourselves as not where we should be, or even to the point of disgusting. Then we're not going to succeed in moving toward any goals with that attitude. So we have to change how we see ourselves. Look at ourselves and say, you know, I might be 40 years old, but I look pretty good today. I'm going to have a great day. You have to change it to a positive mental attitude before you'll ever do the work, or we will start something and then stop it.

Host: Sounds like great advice indeed. Well folks, we trust you're now more familiar with Redefining Fitness Beyond the Gym. Debbie Varney, a pleasure. It sounds like your knowledge is the type that everyone can benefit from. Thanks so much again.

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Oh, thank you for having me.

Host: Absolutely. And for more information and to connect with a provider, please visit mhsystem.org/community/health-wellness. By the way, Debbie, would you like to plug where people can find these videos of yours?

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Absolutely, on Memorial Health System's Facebook page. They come out every Friday at 11 a. m., then they're moved to the video archives. I have five years of videos out there for all different fitness levels.

Host: So you go in front of the mirror, you compliment yourself three times, no matter what. And then you head on over to the computer or the phone and you pull up a Debbie video and away we go.

Debbie Varney, CPT, GFC: Absolutely.

Host: Sounds great. Folks, please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and all the other Memorial Health System podcasts as well. If you found this one helpful, please do share it on your social media. I'm Joey Wahler, and thanks so much again for being part of Memorial Health Radio from Memorial Health System, Ohio.