Anonymous wrote:I’ve been doing home health care for the last near decade and have seen the effects of a lifetime of limited mobility on the human body. I mean just people whose lives as adults are an endless cycle of sitting at work, sitting at home, sitting in the car, etc. with just short periods of walking and maybe light housework. The core strength starts to plummet along with the steady decline of muscle mass beginning in our 30s if we live this way and most of us do. Even if you’re doing the treadmill and some weight lifting at the gym that won’t keep you flexible. People forget about or never realize how critical this is until they’ve lost it. Something as simple as having the flexibility to wipe your own behind in your 80s and beyond is rooted in keeping core strength and flexibility intact as you age.
I broke an ankle and a wrist over the last few years and have suffered some neck issues from spinal stenosis. I’ve been to PT several times to work on rehabbing those injuries and learning how to move my body to minimize the effects of the stenosis. I’ve seen a number of elders in PT to work on limited mobility not adjacent to injury. It’s made me realize that I need to get very serious now at 52 to recover from the decades I’ve spent sitting at desks and coming home exhausted to sit on the sofa. I’m getting back into yoga and ballet because I want to be able to wipe my own poop hatch as long as possible.
This is very true. I'm 52, and I spent years sitting, whether at work, or 2 hour commutes 5x/week. And I had two large babies that ripped up my stomach muscles.
I have always been flexible, but a couple of years ago, I couldn't do this even though I know I could when I was younger.
I spent the last year doing stretching, including a little bit of core strengthening, in part because of issues with sciatic/piriformis syndrome (also due to sitting too much). I also lost some weight, not that I was all that heavy.
All of that combined, I can now do this, pretty easily. And I can squat and get up easily, too.
I stopped working for about 1.5 years about 10 yrs ago, and I was so much healthier. Working is bad for me. I'm hoping to quite in a few years.