Find Your Center Wellness Arts

  By Kate Feinberg Robins Exercise for Older Adults As we age, it may be tempting to focus exclusively on safe, low-impact exercise. But weight-bearing exercise is equally important. After age 40, the effects of inactivity increase. When we are inactive, our muscle mass, strength, bone density, and heart health all decline at a higher rate than when we were younger. After age 40, we use it or lose it. Non-weight-bearing exercise helps us build and maintain muscle tone and strength . Weight-bearing exercise builds and maintains our bone density and heart health . What is Weight-Bearing Exercise? Any exercise where you support your own weight with your muscle strength is a weight-bearing exercise. This includes walking, running, dancing, capoeira , and many yoga poses. What is Non-Weight-Bearing Exercise? Any exercise where most of your weight is supported by water, the floor, a bicycle, or other apparatus is non-weight-bearing exercise. This includes swimming, Pilates, and cyc...

By Kate Feinberg Robins How Do I Know I Have a Torn Back Muscle? Here are some signs that your back pain might be due to a muscle tear: You can remember the moment that it started hurting.   You feel lopsided, with one side of your back much tighter than the other. The pain gets worse when you try to use the muscle. How Did it Happen? Think back to that moment when your back started hurting. You might have torn a muscle if you: stretched abruptly without warming up. forced yourself to stretch further than you were ready for. lifted too much weight suddenly and with poor form. Any movement that causes a sudden strain may cause a muscle to tear. How Can I Prevent it from Happening Again? Always warm up before stretching . Make sure you’re doing the the right kind of stretching at the right time. Stretch gently, giving your muscles plenty of warmth, breath, and time before deepening the stretch. Practice proper form with resistance or small weights before increasing your weight load. ...

By Kate Feinberg Robins Warm-up stretching  should increase your mobility in preparation for more intense exercise, without putting yourself at risk of pulling a muscle. Be gentle and dynamic.  Move continuously rather than holding a position.  Keep your stretches small and your muscles in motion.  Cool-down stretching  decreases muscle soreness and tightness, and leads to long-term gains in flexibility. Sustain your position for several breaths or at least 30 seconds. Relax the muscles you're stretching.  Stretching for increased flexibility  requires repeated sustained stretches and lots of patience. Choose a moment when your muscles are very warm--like after a long walk or run.  Hold your stretch for several minutes, making sure not to put weight on the muscles being stretched.  Deepen your stretch gradually and with lots of breath.  The longer you hold the stretch and the more often you do it, the more gains you'll see in flexibility...

By Kate Feinberg Robins Did you know? Overuse is the most common cause of injury in classically trained ballet dancers. Ballet training emphasizes the use of smaller muscles such as inner thighs, deep hip rotators, and intrinsic foot muscles. For recreational ballet students, developing these smaller muscles helps maintain stability, strength, and balance as we age.  Professionally trained ballet dancers, however, need to incorporate exercises in internal hip rotation and foot plantar flexion, and to develop larger muscles such as glutes and quadriceps. This kind of cross-training can prevent or correct joint and tendon issues that accumulate from overuse. Luckily, if we catch these issues early and address them through the right exercises, we don't have to stop dancing!  At Find Your Center, we offer several forms of cross-training and personalized exercise options.  Contact Kate  to find out what kind of training package would be right for you.  Attitude...