How to Create Your Fitness Habit and an Exercise Routine that Works

Welcome to today's roundtable for the Living to 100 Club. Today we're discussing maintaining physical fitness in our senior years, such an important ingredient to living longer and living healthier. Our past roundtable discussions have looked at managing isolation during COVID Celebrating Aging and how older adults can overcome financial barriers. We bring together experts to implore— explore subjects that enhance our senior years, shed light on strategies to live longer, and help us keep the aging process in a positive perspective. I'd like to welcome today's guests. Dr. Ed Barry is a board-certified chiropractic orthopedist and certified laser pain management physician. Dr. Barry has spent the last 38 years helping patients to get back to all the things they used to do after physical setbacks or injuries. Welcome, Ed. Dan McFarland is a certified personal trainer and a physical therapist assistant who does house calls. He's performed over 15,000 in-home therapy sessions primarily with senior citizens. As Dan has said, 90% of my patients were prescribed physical therapy because of generalized age-related weakness. Enrico Cavaglia is America's healthy aging trainer with a chronological age of 78 and a fitness age of 35. He's a speaker, author of 29 books and DVD programs, and a personal trainer and health coach for 37 years. He is also a multi-gold and silver medalist in the California State Senior Olympics. Rico is also hosting a summit on wellness and self-care with 70 health and wellness experts. We'll hopefully get to that a little later in the program. Thank you all for participating in our conversation today. We know that physical activity and exercise are necessary ingredients, as I've already said, for successful aging, regardless of what age we're at, where we live, or what physical, motivational, or psychological barriers we may encounter. So, what are some of the physical limitations to exercising? How can we incorporate a fitness program in our daily life? For those in the 65 and over age group and even those 90 and over. One of the recommendations for seniors is age ever a barrier to being physically fit? And what works when trying to make fitness a regular part of our lives? These are some of the questions we'll address in our conversation with our panel today. So, let's start with the obvious. Why is physical fitness so important in our senior years? Dan, let me ask you to start with that. Why is physical fitness so important?

Well, thank you. I appreciate that question. And it's the obvious need for us to maintain our physical selves. I think just generally speaking, generically speaking, human beings are both spiritual, cerebral, and we're physical. And we were, from what I understand, and it makes sense to me, what I understand about human development is that the brain developed as an adaptation to allow the body to be better at hunting and being mobile, being more strategic. However, something along the way occurred where the brain decided it was going to be the boss, and it figured out all sorts of things to make it easier and easier for human beings to survive. And in that process, it developed that our human bodies have become almost obsolete. And my goodness, Does there ever come some negative ramifications from that? Because our nature, our very being is physical. And as we develop and grow into a time when we're not needing our bodies, thinking that our mind, our thoughts and our technology is going to take care of us, we suddenly realize that I'm in pain, I'm losing my quality of life. And why is that? Well, simply because we neglected to take care of the physical, which normally happened as an, as a, just a natural part of being. We were taking care of our body by surviving, by foraging, by roaming, by hunting, by farming. And now we don't need that any longer. And so we've trapped ourselves with our ingenuity, with our incredible brains. And they've— and technology and science and medicine is allowing us to live longer, but only with the aid of science and prescriptions and surgeries. And so we're in a very strange era, era when we can live— many people can live a long time, but it's a miserable, unhappy, joyless, unfortunate, uh, and we've all seen it, we, uh, experience. So I'll just leave it at that because I could go on and on.

Yeah, so the— so we have a lot of conveniences in today's society that allows us to avoid a lot of the physical activity that our ancestors were always engaged in. Consequently, we don't do that physical exercise and physical activity like we used to and like we need, and the bodies do need that. Rico or Ed, many other thoughts on why it's so important in our senior years to stay active?

Well, it's interesting. I was very interested to hear Danny's explanation because it's almost the exact same paradigm that CrossFit uses, in advertising its services, you know, and its rigorous, rigorous physical fitness routine. But that's certainly not for most of us as seniors. Exercise is almost a dirty word to seniors because most people, when they get to a ripe old age, they just stop. They haven't done any activity for a long period of time. And I'll never forget the advice of a drill sergeant I had in basic training who, when we were all through, he said to us, you know, now most of you guys are probably in the best shape you've ever been in in your lives. Don't let go of it. Keep doing things to keep yourself— and, and, and those words always stuck with me. And I always made exercise a habit in my life, and it's, it's what I really tried to pass on to my patients in some form or another. And I've had many examples of older patients who have been challenged in that regard. And I remember one woman in particular who had a disabled husband, and she said to me, I, I do not want to wind up like him. And as a result of that, motivated by that, she joined a senior citizen basic fitness group that was sponsored by a local hospital, and it was the best thing that she had ever done in her life. And she became very, very fit at her advanced age. In her 70s, and she was such an example that she went around to different groups, senior groups, with her group to try to coax them into joining this. And she said to me, many of them were so discouraged because they said, "Oh, we could never do that. Look at you, you know, you're fit," as if she got there magically without any effort whatsoever. And she tried to explain to them, in vain, that she started just like them, with no experience, no background, no prior history of real vigorous physical activity in her life. And yet she was able to achieve that level. And I think that's where a lot of people become discouraged. But the scientific statistics tell us that 2.5 hours a week of exercise can extend life as much as 3 years. And that, that is probably one of the best motivations I think that you can give to people, um, as, as they're aging. Start somewhere. And, um, I think, you know, basically you have to start with your physician in an evaluation to find out what limitations or restrictions that you have so that it fits the program that you're going to want to get into. You know, you don't want to hurt yourself, but you want to have a high regard for whatever physical restrictions or limitations that you may have so you can custom fit with the advice of your trainer or the person that you're working with in a gym or in a fitness program who can customize a program just for you and then bring you along at an appropriate speed and rate that will get you to meet your goals. And those goals are very important, as I'm sure as both Danny and Rico, who have worked with individuals on that level, setting goals for them is really the most important thing. They have to have goals that they've set for themselves that are realistic and that they can achieve within a reasonable period of time so that they can be encouraged to continue forward with this.

Right. Yeah, that's some good advice. And we start where the person is at, right? Rico and I were just talking about that in our podcast last week. Rico, I know you've worked a lot with seniors and offered a lot of coaching experience. So, what do you say to the 70-year-old person who says, "Oh, I'm too old. I don't really need— I'm not going to benefit anymore. It's beyond my capacity." What's the counsel that you offer them?

Well, just to add on what Danny and Ed said, which is I totally agree with all that. Well, first of all, You know, I tell people, you know, it doesn't matter what your age, and that's what my whole Ageless Living lifestyle is all about. It's not to live your life by your age. It doesn't matter what your age is. What really matters is how you take care of your mind and your body. You know, so we have a saying, we have to age, but you don't have to get old in the process. And old is just a state of your mind and a state of your body. And it's primarily how you take care of your mind and your body, you know. So first of all, it doesn't matter what age you are. No matter what physical condition you're in or your age, you can get yourself fit. And as Ed was saying, the important thing is, is you don't have to be a triathlete, right? You don't have to go to a boot camp. You don't, you just have to get as fit as what will suit your lifestyle. You know, I just hate to see people not be able to do something that physically that they'd like to do, but they're not fit enough to do it. So if you don't want to climb mountains, you don't have to get in that good, great of a shape. But if you just want to be able to, ride a bike around, you know, with your grandkids or whatever, whatever you want to do. I just encourage people that you can get as fit as you need to be to satisfy whatever you want to do in your lifestyle. And the other thing is, is, well, I want to say what Danny was saying too, or I think it was you, Joe, is that, yeah, we have convenience ourselves to death, haven't we? It's just insane. Yeah. So it's all about movement. It's all about keeping your body in movement and I, well, maybe I should say this right now. You know, it was only a pretty recent study and I don't really recall what university or what it was, but it was a peer-reviewed study and they had two different groups and one group, they had them do one hour of highly intense exercise for an whole hour every day. So those people thought that they were really getting in good shape and they were really, you know, doing himself good. And the other group, they just had him keep moving. I'm sure you guys have all heard the saying that, you know, sitting is the new smoking, how bad sitting so much is for you. So they have not sit too long, you know, not sit more than about 30 minutes and they always get up and they just kept moving throughout their day, light activities. And at the end of the study, they're basing on weight loss and the group who just did the movement lost more weight than the people who did high-intensity workout for a whole hour. So, so, so really, for as, as we age, we don't have to beat yourself up, but you got to be consistent. You need to do something every day and you need to keep moving.

Well, I'm thinking about the audience that may be watching this and they're saying, gee, I'm really busy. I've got a lot of things. I can't incorporate this kind of, you know, exercise regimen into my routine. I live a very active lifestyle and I just don't have time. So what do you say to that person who's really too busy? Ed?

Well, you know, you can wake up in the morning and in 5 minutes you can do some running in place, jumping jacks, and a variety of exercises, maybe some sit-ups, some push-ups, and It takes about 5 minutes to do that just to get things started, to get the, to get the motor to start churning a little bit in the morning. Something very, very easy to do. I like to tell people that if you are engaged in some type of physical activity, and just about everybody has something that they like to do, it might be playing softball with a group or maybe pickleball. Or maybe bowling. What, what types of activities do you need to do to stay in shape to maximize your performance in those activities? And then construct a workout routine based on that. I, I find that to be highly motivating to people who are, are looking to try to exercise or start into a program if they're already involved in another activity for which maybe they haven't really thought about doing an exercise program. Um, I remember— I'm old enough to remember the Jack LaLanne television show, and Jack was famous for this. I mean, he had very, very simple exercises that you could do on a chair without any effort, without joining a gym. And, um, and he motivated people to do just exactly that, to just move, just in a couple of minutes a day when you're sitting somewhere, maybe watching television. Think about how you can move and how you can do that. And a lot of his activities revolved around that, showing people how to do very simple routines and try to keep and maintain some level of fitness during their lifetime and as they got older.

So if the recommendation is— I think I've seen 150 minutes a day— a week, rather, of some type of exercise, add that 5 minutes in the morning isn't going to come close to 150 minutes in a week. So what's the minimum? What would you say is the bare minimum that anybody, as long as they're physically capable, anybody should be putting in?

Most doctors would recommend about 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day every day. And I would say, if you really crunch for time, 15 minutes a day. We'd get you up to that 2.5 hours a week, I think, to meet that minimum requirement. But the hope is that once you started to engage in something like that, you would begin, as you start to feel better, to go more and to invest more time into that as you're going forward. And I think that happens for a lot of people.

Right. Right. Dan, any thoughts on that in terms of what the minimum is?

Yes, just let me just step away for just a moment and get something and be right back.

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, here's what I tell people when they say they don't have time. I say, you know, that's actually the worst excuse possible. You know, everybody has, everybody has time. Oh, I'll just finish this real quick. Okay. Uh, uh, everybody has the same 24 hours a day, and, and I can attest to, I'm sure Danny can too, you know, we've worked with I've worked with lots of CEOs and high-powered, busy, successful people, and they take time to exercise because they know it's gonna make them more productive and more successful and also feel better, you know? So not having time is a lame excuse. And so I gotta get at people, I get on their case a little bit, say, no, that's not right. You know, if you wanna be able to function well and stay healthier and feel good and live longer, you gotta get out of that mindset of you don't have time. Right.

We all have time. We all have the same 24 hours in our, in our day. So people can find the time. Right. Dan, any other thoughts on that? The minimum?

Well, the reason people don't exercise or don't benefit from exercise is not that they, they haven't started a program. They haven't joined a gym. Everybody has. But the primary inhibitors to exercise, the thing that people, and most people presume that they have to leave their home to exercise. We buy into the marketing. We buy into the fact that, you know, we go to a gym, we see these big impressive machines. Oh my gosh, they, that's the answer, right? That Cybex circuit, that Nautilus circuit, those impressive machines. And if I don't have that at home, how can I possibly get fit? The two primary inhibitors to people maintaining fitness over their lifetime is that they, well, first of all, they quit. And why do they quit? They quit because of convenience. They have to go someplace. They have to get in their car. They have to get dressed up. They have to think about interacting with other people. And of course, during this past year, that was impossible. So I can't imagine the ramifications over the past year of people's health and their weight and all that. But the second thing is, One is convenience, the other is time. If it's going to take a lot of time, we're not going to do it. We're just going to shut it down. So in our minds, we're telling ourselves that no, it's as we age and we fought all the battles and we've retired and our couch and our television and our device are calling us, we just don't see how exercise is going to fit into our schedule. Well, that's why I created something for myself, but not just for myself, but for others. And it's based on a series of experiences and inspirations that I had during my 50s. I'm 71 now. And what I created was a method of exercising every single day at home in just 10 minutes. And that's what I've done for the past 10 years. 10 minutes a day. It's a very specific system that I use and a tool that I developed that facilitates the, the performance of 20 functional and therapeutic exercises that make up the, the basis of the health of our musculoskeletal system. I call it Mobility Max. Uh-huh. 10-minute exercise system. Okay. And it, that's a little brochure I created. And this is the manual that shows the various exercises that I do every day in 10 minutes, 20 of them. And yes, I need a little more exercise than that. I need some cardiovascular. That's, you're not gonna get that in 10 minutes, but it certainly prepares you to now go do your walking, your jogging, your running, your riding, stair stepping, whatever you wanna do, your pickleball, your tennis. And I am phenomenal results from my 10-minute program. It was inspired by Dr. Weisberg, who's a physical therapist up in Great Neck, New Jersey, I recall. He's retired now, but he wrote a book called 3 Minutes to a Pain-Free Life. And he developed a 3-minute, 6-exercise daily routine for people that would take care of their joints. And I learned so much from that. It inspired me so much that I just incorporated his 3 minutes and his 6 exercises into my 10-minute, 20-exercise routine. So yes, at home we can exercise. People are not gonna do it because if they're just left to their own wits, and coming up with something and the things you mentioned, Doctor, are appropriate. Yes, the jumping jacks, fantastic, hula hoops, jumping rope, all of that. But if we don't get routine, if it's not a, if we don't have a routine, we're just going to become non-compliant with it and we're gonna fall off. But anyways.

Yeah, thanks, Dan. It really is, as you say, a matter of setting up this kind of regular behaviors for consistency, something that's practical. And I think kind of what you're alluding to, Rico, is that we have the time, and it's, it's really a mindset saying, I do need to include this in my day-to-day lifestyle. I do need to find the time. It's, it's that mindset that kind of shifts our whole way of looking at things, and that's what's missing, I think, in so many cases where people say, oh, I'm, you know, I'm just too weak, or I don't have the strength, or whatever's going on. And it's, it's really that mindset that, that we really need to kind of reframe our whole view about this. And that's one of the reasons for doing this, because I think there are a lot of people that just are sedentary, and they think it's, you know, it's beyond, you know, doing anything now. It's too late, or I'm 70 years old, I'm overweight, I'm not going to be able to get anywhere. And we know that's not true. We know that's not true. So how do we motivate? We, we can say that, all right, it doesn't take a lot of time, 10 to 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes a day if you have some piece of equipment like Dan is talking about, Mobility Max. And there are certain regular types of behavior, the aerobics, the strength training, and I think Rico, you talked about flexibility. That's one of the three legs of that stool, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that's really most important as we age. You know, a true measure of your age really is how good is your posture, how well can you move, how flexible are you? That's the true measure of your age. So what I recommend to my clients and to everyone is if you would just establish this, I mean, we're creatures of habit anyway, right? So we gotta create a habit of, if you will just take 15 minutes before you go to bed and do some basic— I have like a basic 7 stretches. And if you'll just get out on the floor, relax, slow your mind down and do these basic stretches. You need to stretch every day because, you know, we're sitting, our hamstrings are getting tight. And just do these basic stretches every day before you go to bed. First of all, it'll make you relax and help you to sleep better. And if you can't spend 15 minutes to do a flexibility program, I don't know what to tell you because it's gonna It's gonna be so valuable for you because as you know, you see older people, they're walking around all stiff and they're moving real slow. Why does that happen? It's just because they allowed their connective tissues and their muscles to shorten up and get stiff. And you don't have to do that. If you stretch every day, you can be flexible every day. So I have a saying, if you do it every day, you can do it every day. And just to add on what Danny said, absolutely, you don't need any equipment What I, I teach what I call functional fitness. It's doing things that'll help you to function in your daily life. And you don't need any equipment. You just need your own body weight. You can hold onto the kitchen counter and do squats. You can do bends, you can do kicks, you can do lunges, you can do pushups. You can get a complete whole body workout without any equipment right at home. Just like Danny said.

Those are techniques that have become increasingly more valuable during the pandemic too, when people don't have the availability.

Yeah.

Of all of the paraphernalia and the equipment. Unless of course you can go out and buy a Peloton or something like that.

That's pretty cool. Those are pretty cool.

And all the encouragement to, um, be social and be in groups and be a part of a gym or a class or something like that, that's not working anymore. So people are really more isolated. By their choosing. But so we have to be able to adapt. And as you talk about doing things in our own homes can make a difference. I know the gyms are frantically trying to reopen and, you know, even here in California, they found a lot of different kind of workarounds and people really need to get to the gyms, but if they can't, they got to find ways to do it at home. So Rico, I can appreciate that.

We had a, we had a significant case here in New Jersey which, uh, you guys have probably heard about. There was a, a fellow who owned a gym and his partner, uh, in Belmar, New Jersey, who, uh, were closed down by the state because we had a pretty rigorous shutdown and restrictions here in New Jersey ordained by the governor. And, uh, he refused to go along with it because his, his philosophy was that now more than ever his clients needed to be able to get in and exercise. And he has had a sterling record. He has had no incidences or cases of COVID since he reopened his gym.

Wow.

And he's being fined every single day by the government of the state. And yet he continues on. And he's filing a lawsuit against the state. And everybody here hopes that he's successful with it. But he's got a great philosophy. And he's very persistent.

Yeah. That's an important point. Yeah, we've had similar cases here.

I just did a stint as a personal trainer at the local YMCA here in the Tampa Bay, Florida area. And as you may know, Florida is less stringent. I just got back from eating at my favorite restaurant, Carrabba's, sitting at the bar. Every other chair was not available, but I mean, here in Florida, I must tell you, we're Yeah, we're pretty wide open, but, and, and, um, it's everything, um, people are wearing masks and gives a comfort level, but the shopping malls are open, have been, and the restaurants and the roads are filled. And, um, even an assisted living facility that I'm going to tomorrow to play music is now, uh, you know, opening up. Uh, of course, the patients have recently been vaccinated, or excuse me, the residents, but at the gym, the YMCA, where I was at, it was something I wanted to experience. I got certified as a personal trainer 6 months ago, and it's not my philosophy. I mean, I learned a lot, but the gym is not my philosophy, and I think there are many inhibitors to people going to gyms, but I would see, and we would clean it, twice, a couple times a day with the aerosols and so forth. But I'd see a lot of interesting groups of people come in. You come in with a mask on, and then when you're going to exercise, you can take your mask off. But—

That doesn't make sense.

Yeah, yeah. And so it, but the clientele was interesting. You have the typical young people, bodybuilders, and the girls in the spandex coming in. And then you have the older folks. The YMCA is just a wonderful place, great, great culture. I'm not there any longer because I just, it's tedious to me. I can't train people on those machines. I have to train people my way with my methods. But anyways, then I see the older people, the people post-orthopedic or cardiovascular problems and heart attacks and so forth come in. And, you know, they're just trying to make those darn machines fix, help them. And they go through the motions. I'm glad they get out and they come there, but they're not getting that much value from it, that those machines that isolate on one muscle at a time and one movement at a time. But yeah, our gyms are functioning. And so it's good people get out, but it's only such a small percentage of those that—

Very small.

That really, yeah, they represent just the tip of the iceberg. Those few that come in there, 60, 70, or 80, they come in there and know that this is their last, stand in terms of maintaining their independence and their quality of life. And they're just the tip of the iceberg. For, for every one of them that comes in there, there's a thousand out in the community that aren't doing anything just like that.

Of course.

Well, as you mentioned before, Danny, you know, when people go into those gyms, especially elderly folks, they're intimidated, uh, by the equipment and by the machines, you know. And some of them are like science projects, you know. You need to study the placards to understand exactly how you should do it and to get benefit from it and not injure yourself.

Thank you. Yes. They're horrible. They're like medieval, you know, torture racks to strap yourself into those machines. They were awful. I just was so depressed. I wanted to be there and I wanted to be doing some personal training there with that. I just, I just couldn't do it at the end. I had to just, mm-mm.

Yeah. I just wanna add, yeah, I agree. I mean, machines have their place mostly for rehabilitation. That's where they originally came from. You can isolate a certain muscle and that's good. But I totally agree. Again, that's why I like to do, teach, train people with just using their own body weight. That's what I call functional fitness. And I want to add to that, you know, here in San Diego for quite a while, they even shut down the parks and things. And I work with a lot of my clients I still work with, we work out outdoors. That's the best place to get out in the sun and the air and fresh air. And you feel so much more invigorated. And they even closed down the parks and I was really upset with that. And they finally opened up. Up because I mean, that's— people need to be outside, not shut up into a, into a home all day with bad air. That's the worst quality of air. That's where you're going to get sick is inside your house, really, you know. You need to get out, get fresh air. You need to move your body. You need to get sunshine. You need to get some vitamin D. You need to go out and move, even just go out walking, you know, but go to the parks and get out outside and move. That's where you need to be.

Yeah, you're exactly right. Being in a confined place is one of the riskiest environments that you can possibly be in during a pandemic.

So let me shift to a little different subject here because part of the concern is a lot of the seniors that we work with have some level of physical disability or physical impairment or maybe a history of chronic pain or maybe there may be some hip fracture or shoulder fracture. How do we adjust to working with somebody? I know Rico, you've talked about working with people in wheelchairs, and Ed, I know you've worked with a lot of chronic pain patients. But how do you adjust to the person with severe arthritis or chronic pain, or again, the hip fracture? How can they stay physically active? It's maybe beyond the rehabilitation phase? What, what, what comes after that?

If you, if you're looking at, uh, what, what is the general purpose of exercise? And, and, uh, both Danny and Rico touched about on all of them. I mean, basically what you're trying to achieve is endurance, flexibility, balance, and strength. So you take somebody like that who has limitations, and, and for me, within those four, I think the two most important would be strength because we lose so much muscle mass so rapidly as we age, and balance, which deteriorates also very rapidly as we age. So within the restrictions that that individual has, you need to find activities for which they can perform in that. Now, with strength, all the exercises that they were talking about before that can be done in the home with a simple apparatus, or like Jack Lalaine had demonstrated using a chair. Those are things that probably somebody can easily do with significant restrictions. Balance as well. And, and all— and, and the amazing thing about this is that we live, we live in a wonderful age where there's so much information available. You could probably find anything demonstrated on YouTube and see that fits the bill for you, for whatever restriction you have. I'll never forget a story that I read in a study that was done at a hospital several years ago where they took a gentleman who was wheelchair-bound. He had— and he was amputated on one side in his leg above the knee. He was on— he was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and he was also on high blood pressure medication. And the trainers took him, and they really put him through his paces. I mean, he had to work hard. He He, he was wheelchair-bound because he had a prosthesis, but he couldn't wear it comfortably. And by the time they got done with him, after 6 weeks, he was out of the wheelchair, walking with his prosthesis, off of the insulin, and off of the blood pressure medication. So there, there really is— I mean, you set your own limitations, you set your own restrictions. For even somebody like that in an extreme state of ill health there is the potential to reap tremendous rewards with exercise. But in a case like that, it took people who were very knowledgeable and who could direct him and, and put him in a place that he felt comfortable. That was uncomfortable for him, but it doesn't have to be for everybody.

Sure. So just quickly, what's a balance exercise you recommended to patients?

What type of balance?

What exercise would you recommend to maintain or increase your balance?

I think tai chi is probably the easiest thing to do and under instruction, proper instruction, and you can get videos for that or on YouTube. Very simple, very, very good for balance. I would put that as probably number one, and even yoga, although for For elderly patients who have restrictions in mobility, they have to be careful about some of the postures. And that they can discuss with a good yoga instructor who can steer them away with the knowledge of their restrictions, away from the particular movements that might cause them problems.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Dan, I cut you off. You were going to say—

That's OK. Great comments. I was just going to say that one of the great inhibitions to exercising for folks is once they get injured, once they— especially a joint that's painful, then we tend to let that be the boss of our whole body. We tend to shut everything down for fear of making it worse. Or if we have a heart problem, or if we, you know, have a strain muscle, but yeah, or the pain. We just, we tend, 90% of our body might be great. It might be healthy, but we're going to shut down everything because of that knee or that hip or that ankle or that shoulder. I just went through an experience this last year. So last year, goodbye last year. But starting in the, before the pandemic even hit, I tore my calf muscle. I was on the beach, St. Pete Beach with all of those crazy kids, and I was throwing the, the Aerobie disc, which flies 100 yards, me and my buddy. And, uh, I jumped, and all of a sudden I felt a snap in my— right in the base of my calf. And I want to tell you, it put me down. I was on, I was on a walker for a couple days.

I had—

but using my system every single day, I was able to work around that, work around that, and keep the 90% of me together. Then I went back and did it again a couple months later. And because I didn't, I didn't do the soft tissue mobilization I should have done. I didn't do the foam rolling on that scar tissue and really rehab it. And then I had another thing, but anyways, a series of things that I had on my right leg, which I'm right side dominant, could have shut me down and really dropped me to a lower level of functioning and fitness. And that's what happens. We plateau down. When we have these injuries or these surgeries, the illnesses, and we have to be thinking about exercise even when we're not feeling good.

That's a good point. I had never heard that. That's really important that we really have the full picture. Otherwise, if we focus on just that one setback, that one obstacle, or that one limitation, we lose track of what the rest of the body needs. So that's, that's really important, Dan. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, Rico.

Yeah, a couple of things here. I'll talk about balance, but just on what Danny was saying, you know, when you have some injury, whether it's muscle or joint, rest maybe initially very short time. I know Ed knows this, you know, but now, man, what you need to do is move it. You need to get it, get it moving. You need to get circulation. You need to move it. You don't need to let it sit there and get stiff and stagnant. So you, so whatever injury you have, that's actually the body part that you need to start working on. That's the one that needs the attention, not hold back and say, oh, I can't do nothing with this. So that's so important that you need to, you know, just like Danny did, if you start putting some energy into whatever area or thing that's having the problem, then you're gonna get some good results and improve it. And then on balance, Balance is so important. I mean, I see it with so many people and there's two basic exercises that I have people do to improve their balance. So the first thing to realize that balance is all about the hips. It's all about shifting the weight in your hips. So it's all about shifting the weight to one leg. So just a basic exercise is to just shift all the weight to one leg and then raise your foot up. If you can, you know, bring your leg all the way up and just be able to stand on one leg. And if you're having trouble with that, which a lot of people actually do, you can stand next to a chair or counter or something. So in case you need to hold on to it, but just go back and forth, shift over to the left leg, bring your right leg up, shift over to the right leg, bring your left leg up.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you just keep doing that, that'll improve. And then a little bit more difficult one is to stand upright and line up your feet in a parallel line, you know, like put your right foot right in front of your your left foot. A lot of people can't even do that with your arms down to your side. And then, but then just keep working on it and pretty soon you'll get that muscle-brain connection. And then when you get, when you can do that okay, then you close your eyes. That's a little more difficult, you know, but if you did that every day and then close your eyes, you greatly improve your balance. So no matter what condition you have, no matter what age, you can definitely improve it a lot.

Yeah, that, that's so important, Rico, because one of the leading causes of disability in many seniors is falls, which result in hip fractures.

Yeah.

And oftentimes lead to death, especially in significantly elderly people. And developing that kind of balance really helps to prevent a significant injury such as that. So it's really critical.

Yeah, that's an important point. Yeah, so all variations of tai chi movement, it sounds like. I read somewhere just brushing your teeth on one foot is a good way to try to— yeah, I have difficulty with that.

When I'm in the grocery store, if I'm standing in line, I'm holding my cart and I'm standing on one leg and I'm just kind of doing a little balance there's so many moments we can steal during the day in order to provide some physical benefit to ourselves. Our body is our gym. We've got the most complicated machine in the universe. And we just need— but we didn't get an owner's manual when we were born.

Well, now there is one. That's a— oh, I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. I started to butt in, but we have one now, right, Joe? Rico's, uh, that's just what I created.

Oh, wonderful. Smart.

It's called the, uh, the Ageless Body Self-Care Guide Operations Manual for the Human Body and Mind. And I interviewed like 75 top wellness and self-care experts. Where was that? And yeah, it's online now. I'll let you guys know. Yeah, you'll, you guys know about it. Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead. Why don't you tell us how people can access it, Rico?

I know it's Yeah, we extended for another week. So there's like 70, about 75 videos that you can view for free with it. If you go to yourselfcareguide.com/7daysfree, the number 7 days free, you can go and watch those videos for free. And then of course, you can buy the whole, the whole package, which includes the videos, audio, transcript, and summaries of of all these different tips and strategies, all different areas of how to take care of your eyes, your teeth, your heart, your hair, everything, and then your mind and so many things. It's amazing. It came out to be really a truly amazing product that can really help a lot of people, I think, save lives.

Rico, are you familiar with Dr. Weisberg's book, 3 Minutes to a Pain-Free Life? It's a brilliant, brilliant summation of the biological needs of joints and muscles, primarily, and tendons, the soft tissue and ligaments. And he, it's a brilliant breakdown. And if it, I think you would find that really, you know, you've already done all your work and your research, but I just highly recommend you look at that.

Is it W-I-S-E-B-E-R-G or W-I-S-E-B-E-R-G?

Wiesberg, W-E-I-S-B-E-R-G. I believe it's B-E-R-G, Dr. Weisberg.

Okay.

3 Minutes to a Pain-Free Life.

Yeah, I'll definitely check that out.

Very practical guide for a 3-minute maintenance program. It's like, again, it's like the owner's manual for the human body.

We know on your point about just standing in line at the grocery store, I have a thing too. I tell people it's called ABS. Which spells ABS, but what it stands for is always be stretching. So you can stand around, you can put your leg up on a thing. You can be, you know, you can put your hand, you can move your neck. You can always be moving, always be stretching. I always do that. People look at you, I say, hey, how come you're not doing that?

I created an exercise program for when you're sitting in your airline seat. How to exercise from head to toe without bothering anyone next to you. You can literally move every aspect of your body to some extent. Just start at the top and go down. I didn't quite complete it, but I was in the video studio. I think it's somewhere in somebody's video archives right now.

Even if you just do isometric, just tighten up your muscles and let them go.

It involved isometrics, you know, Absolutely. And also just range of motion, you know, rotation of the shoulders.

Yeah.

Going through, you know, boom. Yeah. Get those shoulders. People don't realize that, you know, the hips and the shoulders are very similar. The body's not, it's complex, but you can break it down. The hips and the shoulders are similar. The elbows and the knees are similar. The ankles, and the wrists are similar. So, if we know what they're supposed to do in terms of range of motion and we just practice that every day, it's like the gate that in the back of your yard or the door. If you go use it every day and just swing it open, it's going to work. But if you forget about it for 10 years and go try to swing it open, those hinges are corroded.

So— Ed, last time you and I spoke, you were working on your equipment there for reducing back pain. What can you tell us about that?

The, uh, the Lift device, which, which was designed as, uh, actually a better mousetrap than the gravity inversion swing or the teeter where you hang upside down because it actually produces a, um, a type of movement, dynamic movement, flexion distraction in a very comfortable position laying down, which you can do easily in about 10 or 15 minutes every day and several times a day if you like, which really addresses most of the chronic and severe lower back problems that people experience on a daily basis. And lower back pain is probably, if not the number one, the number two reason that people will go into a doctor's office. And it's also become the number one reason for the prescription of opioid medication. So when we talk about restrictions to exercise, It's a big one. We wanted to develop something that would enable people to get back to the ability to move comfortably and be able to re-engage in their exercise program as quickly as possible. We feel that this device probably unlocks the door to that.

Is it available yet?

We're going to be in production hopefully by the beginning of the fall. Right now we're starting a seating program in physical therapy offices and chiropractic offices. We want to try to get some more substantiation for the device and a little bit more research before we start to distribute it to the, to the public. But we think, we think it's going to be a real, a real good device.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Be sure to keep me apprised of that so I can let our audience know.

Absolutely, absolutely.

What's the name of that device?

It's called the Lift. It's called the Lift. Very, very simple device, and it's featured on our website, back2.com, and there's a little video that illustrates how the device is used, and it gives a little bit of an explanation. So we're looking forward to that. I got a couple of funny stories for you about the theories of exercise.

Okay.

When I was in my 20s, I, I used to go to a general practitioner who was an old Russian doctor, um, who actually, um, was a battlefield surgeon in Stalingrad. And he told me that he could actually hypnotize himself into lifting weights and produce a sweat in his body. And, and I, I didn't have enough information about science at the time to question the veracity of that claim. Another story that I read in Reader's Digest years ago was by a cardiologist who swore that you only had so many heartbeats in the course of a lifetime, so why waste them on exercise?

That's kind of the, the Jim Fixx, uh, line. They said, uh, he really can run so many miles, and Jim Fixx ran too many miles in his life.

Well, that's like that joke too is, uh, I forgot who said it, some, some old-time comedian guy said, every time I get, I get the urge to exercise, I take a nap and it goes away.

Yeah.

You know, you mentioned Jim Fixx. There was another doctor, uh, in his era, uh, Dr. Sheeran, and he was a, uh, a noted cardiologist who began running very late in life. He didn't start running marathons and long-distance races until he was 45. —and he conducted a very interesting study where he looked at marathon runners who generally don't reach maturity in their performance until they're in their, like, early to mid-30s. And he wanted to see if they stayed fit over the course of a lifetime, what the loss of capacity was for their performance. Now, and he studied these fellows that had stayed active in the sport. Until later in life. And even into their 60s, they only lost about 15% to 20% of their performance ability. Now, I've never seen a study that was conducted across the rest of the population or in sports or in athletes. But I think it could be extended to everybody, you know, where as we age, if we maintain a certain level of fitness, we're really not going to lose that much. And I think that should be encouraging to just about anybody who initiates an exercise program or continues with an exercise program if they've been involved.

Yeah, I agree. I think it is important advice.

I just, if I may, I just like to add, you know, any kind of really any extreme activity or in sports really is not healthy. It's not really good for us. Any kind of extreme, it's fun, Playing sports is fun, but if you really wanted to just keep your body in the best condition and intact and healthy all your life, you would just do things like walk, swim, yoga. Tai Chi. You wouldn't beat yourself up. All these things are fun to do and sports, but they're not really healthy for you. So if you really just want to be able to move and be pain-free and be functional all your life, you really need to just kind of take it easy on your body, especially as we age, you know, it takes longer to recover from any kind of— so especially as we age, we don't need to do any real strenuous exercise unless you really love it and want to. You just have to keep moving, really. You just got to keep moving your body.

We don't need to push ourselves to the max. So absolutely not. That's a good point. That's a good point, Rico. Looks like we're going to have to wrap up in a, in a minute or two. So let me ask you, what, what's a word of advice you would offer to our audience, each of you? And what would you recommend to people who want to maintain their you know, physical fitness in their—

No matter what, no matter what age you are, it's never too late to start. And I'll recall another story, and this was local, about an 80-year-old gentleman who had never run before in his life, and he started running, uh, and his wife was shocked that he started to do this. And he found that in his age group, he was winning a lot of races because all the guys that were in his age group that had been running their whole life were worn out. Their knees were shot, their hips were shot. He started coming home with first place trophies, second place trophies, and then he started to get invitations to meets all over the country. And his wife thought it was the greatest thing because now he had this activity that he'd get involved with. But you're right, people do overdo it, uh, and there's no need to really do that rigorous. It can be very, very simple, but it's so important to just keep moving. You have to move.

It's never too late to start. That's good advice. Yeah. Dan? Yeah.

I'd say just to the folks that might be watching this and thinking about how to get going, remember, movement is medicine and your body is your vehicle. And you want to take care of it. And you don't have to go to a gym. You don't need the complicated machines. People have stayed fit for thousands of years and they didn't have gyms and machines. Don't think you have to leave your house to stay fit. Find your exercise at home. Get a jump rope, do some jumping, watch some, some old Jack LaLanne videos. Get just strip it down, be minimalist, and that's where the value is. And I've created that. Anytime anyone wants to hear about it, I'll be glad to tell them, but that's my story, is to keep it at home because that way you're more likely to do it.

Yeah, that's important. Movement is medicine. I like that. So, Dan, your Mobility Max, is there a website, URL you can share? Yes.

The main website is mobilitymax10.com, mobilitymax10.com, because it refers to the 10 minutes. And it consists of an apparatus, which is so simple. It's a doorframe, bedroom. Imagine your bedroom door. That's where mine is. And you can fit an exercise bar precisely to the width of your doorframe. And then you can adjust the exercise bar up and down at 14 different levels starting from the top. So now you can do a series of functional exercises. Here I'm illustrating a modified chin-up, and you notice I have the bar at a height where I don't have to have my feet off the ground. Mm-hmm. And I can use my legs and my arms. And because you have the open vertical plane, of the doorframe, you can do some really creative things. How about pushups every day? Gosh, I can't get on the floor. Well, you don't need to. Adjust the bar in your bedroom door to the right height for whatever your strength level is. I like to start with it at, you know, up around my knees and then do 25 and then take it down, take it down. Wow. Yes. And that's the door. It's a door-mounted exercise bar that fits discreetly, invisibly into your bedroom door. It's strong and sturdy. You can place it at 14 different levels. And then I put a prescription of the 20 exercises you wanna do every day, 30 seconds each, just 10 minutes. Good piece of equipment.

Great. Yeah. Thanks, Dan. MobilityMax10.com. Yes, sir. Yeah, final, final words of advice.

Or first of all, I just have to say though, it's quite amazing that the three of us, we have so much in common, and we're also all inventors. I also have a fitness program, a product called the Vitality Stick. It's a stick that I invented that you can do aerobic routine, you can do a stretch routine, and you can do a strength routine all at your home too. It's called Vitality Stick. But my message to the people, just like what Ed and Danny said, is, you know, it's all about your mindset. You've got to change your mindset that you can do it, you can get as fit as you want to be, and that you have plenty of time to do it. And there's no— any kind of thing you have is just an excuse, you know. So let go of the excuses and you can do it. We know you can do it. All of us know you can do it. And many, many people do it too. So just get out and move and just do it.

That's it. Good advice. Good advice. Thanks. And again, Rico, your, um, Ageless Summit is—

what's the URL again? Yeah, it's, it's yourselfcareguide.com/7daysfree. So you can watch all these amazing video trainings from all these top experts for free for 7 days.

Great. Thank you. And then, Ed, your website again is back 2, B-A-A-C-K—

B-A-A-C-K-2.com.

The number 2 dot com. Well, this has been great. This is just what I was hoping for, sharing a lot of insights and recommendations and your own experiences as trainers and as really good therapists, physical therapists, and really making a difference because it's just more education. The more we can convey the importance of these ingredients for successful aging, I think the better off we are. So I really appreciate your contributions to our discussions tonight, and thank you all for being part of this.