Video Transcription
Hello, everyone, and welcome into Senior Living Live. My name is Melissa. Thank you so much as always for taking the time to be with us here today. How are you feeling? How's your posture? Those are pretty good questions. Right? Mine could be a lot better today, and that is going to be our topic. It is the power of posture. Love that title. Believe it or not, it is one of the most overlooked aspects of wellness as we age. Jenny McClendon is here today to help you improve in that area and explain why this knowledge is so important for every single one of us. Our webinar today is expected to last an hour, so settle in, and please feel free to be a part of the conversation. You could do that by typing your questions out at the bottom of the screen in the q and a button. There'll be a little box there. You could type those out at any time during Jenny's presentation, and I will be happy to read those to her at the end of the webinar. Jenny, thank you so much for being with us. The webinar is all yours.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, and thank you for having me. When I was asked to share a presentation about something that seniors could benefit from, I, of course, had a whole bunch of ideas. But in my experience, three themes always seem to pop up whether I'm doing a seminar or whether I'm teaching a class. And those themes are posture, strength training and bone density, and balance. Those are the three things that I am passionate about and love talking about. So we are going to address one of those today. We are going to address posture and the power of posture.
Okay. I wanna introduce myself to you and let you know a little bit about myself and my background. I am from Raleigh, North Carolina. I grew up playing lots of sports and in the south where family and sports are kinda everything. I was always, interested in working out, and my competitive gymnastics background kind of forced me into, once I retired from that, into just hitting the gym. And I did that at an early age and just saw how much I enjoyed being there. I ended up being a physical education major at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and then I went on to become a physical therapist by attending East Carolina University. I've been practicing physical therapy for twenty five years and a specialty in geriatrics, women's studies, and outpatient orthopedics. When I was about seventeen, I started teaching fitness classes, and I am still teaching fitness classes. It is where I have just been so inspired to be around people with similar minded thoughts, and I just fell in love with working with active seniors. And so I have always taught an active senior fitness class for a very long time, over thirty years. I developed a class called Fit Over fifty in Raleigh, taught that for about sixteen years. And during the pandemic, I got really nervous. All my seniors were at home. I was not allowed to come in and teach, so I started putting fitness videos online for them. Well, actually, my son did it for me because I didn't even know how to do that. I wasn't in the techie YouTube culture. So after he put some videos online, he said, mom, these have a lot of views. Still didn't really care, didn't really know what that was about, but I was home during the pandemic with a lot of time on my hands. So I started to put a lot of videos online once a week. And to make a very long story short, it kind of blew up. It kinda went viral. And so, I developed a business called Jenny Fitstart. And what I do is I put videos online for active seniors. I teach all types of classes such as line dancing, and yoga, and strength training, Pilates, balance, you name it, I do it. And it has become a very awesome job to connect with people from all around the world. That has led to really great opportunities such as this, me being able to present to you things things I'm passionate about. It has led to retreats all around the world where people can meet each other, and we just have a lot of fun together. That is what my fitness channel is about, fitness and fun and living out our golden years to the best of our ability. In my spare time, I love to go to the beach. I love spending time with my family and walking my five year old golden retriever. I love to bake. I like to do puzzles. I like to play pickleball. So I enjoy life as well as I'm sure you do. So that's enough about me. Let's talk about why good posture is so important.
We are gonna be discussing why you know, when we think about posture, a lot of times we just think, oh, it's just about sitting up straight, but there's so much more to it. Posture is so important, and it's worthy to talk about and discuss. It is important at every age, but it is definitely more important as we age because we have changes in our activity level. We have changes in the types of activities we do, and we can be at a fall risk. So let's go through each one of these so that we can fully understand why we're even talking about this in the first place. Okay.
The first one is reduced pain. Now good posture can really help prevent aches and pains in our backs, our necks, our shoulders, our hips, and our knees.
The second one is a reduced risk of injury. I say that phrase a lot. It comes up a lot. Good posture can help prevent injuries, especially when we're working or doing any type of physical activity. So in other words, when we're doing things like gardening, when we're doing the laundry, we won't pull our muscles. We won't lose our balance. And that way, we have a reduced risk of injury and, therefore, reduced pain. Yay.
Alright. The next one is a decreased or reduced wear and tear. So good posture can reduce wear and tear on our joints and our spine because good posture basically aligns our spine correctly and uses our muscles properly. And therefore, we have less stress on our joints and less stress on our bones. And when our core is engaged, our other muscles don't have to work as hard. We always hear, you know, start with the core. If we keep our core strong, everything else falls into place. That is true. We wanna always start with the core, and that way our muscles don't have to work super hard.
Alright. The next one is reduced fatigue. When we have bad posture, our body has to work in overtime. It has to work harder and it has to use energy and most of the time, it uses this energy inefficiently. And therefore, we can have an increased tension on our spine. And like the previous slide, increased wear and tear can also lead to fatigue.
Alright, moving down the list, we are going to have improved breathing. When we sit and when we stand properly, there is more room in our lungs to expand, and therefore, we can take in more oxygen. And it can really help the diaphragm function better. So good posture improves our airflow, it can clear the mucus away from our airways. It can help strengthen muscles that support our respiratory system, and bonus y'all, it can help decrease snoring and apnea. So major bonus there.
Alright. Moving down the list, with good posture, we can have an improved level of our flexibility and range of motion, which we all could benefit from. We are in good and proper alignment when we have better room for our joints. The joints need room to move. Our muscles are looser in a good way. And so the neck, the shoulders, the back, the hip flexors, they can move better. And when they move better, we have a decreased risk of injury, decreased pain, increased strength, and increased circulation. So all those times that you don't feel like stretching, I want you to think about all those benefits when you when you do it.
Alright. The tenth one, improved digestion. So poor postures when we sit with poor postures, it can cause our organs in our abdominal area to kinda scrunch, and they are not able to function properly. It can lead to gas, bloating, constipation, and acid reflux. So we need that room to help all of our organs function properly for digestion.
Alright. So now we know why it's so important. Let's now talk about what causes poor posture. Alright. The first one, injury. So untreated injuries or significant injuries can lead to compensation, lead to muscle spasms. An example would be whiplash in a car. So we may not have as much movement as we used to, or we're compensating by tightening up one side. So injuries can be at the top of that list.
The second one can be genetics. That's always on all the list, isn't it? Some people are born with conditions that affect the shape of their spines and their hips. And if you think about it, y'all, think about your parents. Does your body kind of resemble your parents or your mom, your dad? We tend to get our body type from our parents, and that does have an effect of how we stand, how we sit, and how our spine is aligned.
Muscle weakness. So if our muscles are weak y'all, it's hard to keep our core engaged. And if we can't keep our core engaged, we can't sit properly. We can't walk properly. Well, we can, but it's not in good form, and that's when all the other muscles take over. We tend to sit how we're comfortable. So sitting on the edge of a hard chair may not feel great, but it is a good way to keep in alignment.
Alright. Stress and anxiety. When we are stressed, we tend to tense up. Right? And that tension can lead to chronic neck and chronic back pain.
Extra body weight. So the heavier we are, the more difficult it is to achieve different positions and postures. If we have extra body weight, we tend to sit a different way. We tend to move a different way. We tend to move less, and we have this extra tension on our spine, our joints, our hips. So with that extra tension, we can have different posture.
Work and daily habits. I want you to think about all the different work environments there are. Think back to all of your jobs, the ergonomics of working at a desk. Think about somebody who comes and moves boxes out of your home. They do that every single day. I think about the lady who cuts my hair. She stands probably in that same way all day long. So what we do during the day, whether it's work or our daily habits, can really, really affect our posture.
Alright. So let me play this little video here. So twenty years ago, we had what we call the computer neck. Do y'all remember that? So look at the guy on the left. You see how the back of his neck is shortened and the front of his neck is elongated? That's what we call a computer neck. And to help that, we need to make sure that we are looking a little bit down on our computer. So an easy fix is to kinda raise our computer a little bit so that we're not looking up. Now when we have short muscles, they can become very tight. And when we have stretched out muscles, they can become very weak. So we can see how this computer neck is not great for our posture. Now that was twenty years ago. What do y'all think I'm getting ready to say now. What is our what is our posture neck look like now? Oops. Hold on. I think it might have to play this again. Sorry.
We have you got it. You got it. The text neck. Unfortunately, this is huge right now. Okay. So now look at this y'all. Okay. Look at her on the left. Do you see how it's kind of opposite? So now the muscles in the front of the neck are shortened, and the muscles in the back of the neck are elongated. So take time next time you're out and about and look at people on their phones, holy moly. Now it's not our fault because we hold our phones a certain way. We are really not going to hold our phones up here. I mean, it would be great if we did, but, that's just not how they work. But now we are finding that we are having a lot of really bad posture issues because of this phone. Yes. Okay. Oops. Here we go.
So you're probably asking yourself, okay. I get it. I think I have good posture. But let's ask yourself, do I have bad posture? I mean, what does bad posture really look like? There's a couple of different ways or a couple of different types of bad posture out there. And so let's find out. We may think we sit up well, but we wanna make sure that we don't have any of these type of postures. The first one is rounded shoulders. You might have even heard the term dowager's hump. This can also be called kyphosis, and you might even hear the word hunchback even though that doesn't sound great. But, basically, this is when people have kind of a neck hump. They have a hump at the base of their neck. So I want everybody to take their hand and reach back. And do y'all feel that first protrusion? That is c six. That is our sixth cervical vertebrae. And that's the one that kinda sticks out a lot. So with some people who have a really rounded back, you can't even really feel that vertebrae. This can be caused by osteoporosis. This can be caused by arthritis. It can be caused by an overuse of corticosteroids, and it has been associated with people with Cushing's disease.
Alright. Our next one is a potbelly. Alright? Now bad posture, as we've learned, disrupts the natural alignment of our body, and it causes our abdomen to protrude forward. If you have a pot belly, that does not necessarily mean that you are overweight. It just could be on how our posture is. This is typically due to weak core muscles and an exaggerated curve in our lower back. When we have that, it basically kind of pushes our organs forward. And this can really, happen during menopause and later because of our hormonal changes. And let's not forget that there is a thing called gravity. So as we age, things just go down y'all. Okay? Organs go down. Our skin goes down. It sounds lovely. But, y'all, it happens. And what happens is if the organs are compressed, they can come off as a little bit of a pot belly. But it we have to include that on here because it does change our posture.
And then we have bent knees when standing or walking. Take a look at people walking next time you're out and about. Now as a physical therapist, I can't help it. I always look at people's gait. So, but as we age, our walking does change, and it's due to a few reasons, but I truly believe it's more so due to our fear of falling and our decreased sense of equilibrium and balance. So, typically, we see people that stand with a really wide base of support, and we see people with a little bent knee. It kinda it kinda grounds them a little bit. And this can often be, like a compensation mechanism. It helps people feel, again, like they're grounded. It helps people feel like they're maintaining a little bit better balance. It absorbs the shock a little bit, but this can happen due to misalignment of your hips and your knees. Alright.
So we have that posture, and then we have what's called just the forward head, not to be totally confused with the rounded upper back. So this basically means just the head forward, But it's very similar and when our shoulders are forward, our head typically follows. So if we have a forward shoulder, it's very hard to pull your head back in alignment. So forward head and rounded shoulders typically go hand in hand.
I believe we have one more, and this is what we call the flat back, the flat bottom posture. Have y'all seen that posture before? It's pretty darn common. This is secondary to your gluteal muscles, your tush tush push muscles. They're typically weak and underactivated. So our pelvis tilts under and it gives us really tight hip flexors, which is no good. And we have this phrase called the no as syndrome. And if you can get where I'm coming from get it? No as syndrome? No as? Okay. Little PT humor. So flat back, that is super popular.
Alright. Now where am I going here? Hold on. Okay, guys. Let's test it out. On the right, you can see me doing a quick posture assessment on one of our Awara participants at the gym that I teach at. That is Debbie. She has pretty good posture. We could always correct it a little bit more. But what are the ways that we can test it out?
The first one is to get a visual detection from a doctor or physical therapist. So if you have an amazing primary doctor, write that on your list. Next time you have a physical, ask them to check out your posture. They are trained to do that. And if you are in physical therapy for any reason, or maybe you have a personal trainer for any reason, or maybe you have an amazing fitness instructor, have them look at you from the side. And when I do a posture assessment, I mean, I look at you from all angles, and I will just take my hand all the way down. I will measure your hips to make sure that they're in alignment. I'll look at your knees, your feet. Shoot. I will even look at the arch of your feet. So you can ask your doctor or therapist to basically check you out check you out.
Alright. The second one is the four point wall test. I've been doing this so long. I'm not sure if I invented that or if I learned it. So if you have a wall near you, this is where I kinda want you to be a little bit engaging in this webinar. I'll keep talking, but if you can get to a wall, we're gonna try the four point test. What you wanna do is stand against the wall, and you're gonna have four points resting on the wall. The first point is the back of your heels. That's number one. So let's get those against the wall first. Alright. The second point is your bottom. Alright? Let's get your bottom against the wall. Your third point is your shoulder blades or your scapulas. Okay? That's your third point. And then finally, your fourth point is the back of your head. Not to be confused with lifting your head, but pushing your head straight to the wall. Those are your four points. Now, if you are there and you can do that, that is great. But ask yourself, is it work to hold that position? Does it feel uncomfortable? Does it feel painful? Are you able to get maybe three of the four? Those are the things you're looking at. Alright? Thank you. If you're at the wall, you can come back. Oh, no. Go back. Go back. Forgot this one. So here's another test that you can do. You're gonna go up against the wall, and I just call this the wall space test. I want you to get into that four points, and now I want you to take your hand and put it behind your lower back. So now there's a you should be able to fit your hand behind your lower back and the wall. There should be about one to two inches there. Okay? So I tend to take my two fingers against each other like this and put it back there. If you can't squeeze those fingers back there, then you probably have a posture that's that flat back, that no ass syndrome. Alright? So if you wanna be able to fit two fingers between your lower back and the wall. And then do you remember when I had you reach back and find that c six, that one that kinda juts out? You should be able to get another one to two inches between that c six, that one that juts out, and the wall. If you can't get your hand back there, you might have rounded shoulders or you might have that forward head. If we have those two things, we probably won't be able to put our hands back there. Alright. So how'd we do? Did you pass your test?
Alright. Let's move on. Now posture really does matter when we're standing. It matters when we're sitting. It definitely matters when we are doing daily activities and work and exercise. But did you know that it matters when you sleep? It really truly does. So we wanna make sure that we do the everything we possibly can to make sure we're keeping our alignment. So if we're sleeping eight hours a night, we have to know that it does matter how we sleep. And we've all woken up with that crick in our neck. I mean, just the other day I woke up. Have you ever slept when your ear, like, folds over five times? So we can't help it if we're in a dead sleep. But what we can do is at least start our posture in the right way and hope that it will at least relax the muscles in the proper alignment so that we don't wake up with any cricks in our necks or backs or cramps.
So the first thing we wanna do is find a nice pillow. Now I do get this question asked a lot. What type of pillow? Firm, soft. There are a gazillion out there, and my recommendation is you want to find one that's gonna work for you. My husband and I have two totally different, pillows. What I will tell you is that you don't want too many pillows. If you look at the guy on the right, do you see how his neck is, like, turned up? And so that is not putting him in good posture or alignment. He has too many pillows. So we wanna make sure we get something more like the girl on the left. Do you see how hers looks really nice? It's really good alignment. So we wanna make sure that we have the correct pillow, that we're not building it up. Because if we build it up, now we've just increased that text neck that we're trying to avoid, and vice versa. If we have a really, really, really flat pillow, sometimes we can get this alignment where we have done the opposite, kind of that computer neck. So shop around, and, I love the ones, I wish I could think of the brand, but, you can actually take the stuff out. And it took me about, two weeks to figure out exactly how much stuffing to take out and what to put in. I finally got it to where I want it, and that's really helpful.
The other thing we wanna do when we sleep is try and put a pillow between our legs. So if you look at the diagram on the top, do you see how her top leg is, like, falling down? And now that's put a lot of tension and stress on that SI joint, that lower lumbar part of our vertebrae. And if we simply just take a pillow and put it between our knees, it automatically raises our hip and puts us in really good lumbar alignment. And, again, you may not sit there all night with that. I know I toss and turn a lot, but if you can at least start that way, it is super beneficial.
Alright. I thought I would combine a list of my personal top five things that I would avoid. And the first one I have is being in one position for too long. I once talked to an orthopedic doctor who always had the thirty minute rule, never stay in one position more than thirty minutes. And you might be thinking, well, I can't help it. I have to work. I have to do this. But here's the cool thing y'all. You can get out of that position for less than thirty seconds and then get right back into it. So every little bit helps. Now I don't know how long I've been sitting here, but it's probably been about thirty minutes. So at any time, it's nice to kinda step away, stretch, and then guess what? You can get right back to it. You're gonna feel a whole lot better. We wanna make sure that we are constantly changing positions. Our body is a machine. It is not made to sit still. And so if you're sitting for a long period of time, I want you to stand and stretch, come back to your sitting position, and vice versa. If you're standing for a long period of time, see if there's any way you could take a break by sitting. You may be in a position where there's no chairs anywhere, but maybe there's something you could rest your foot on and take the pressure off your back. And then change it up and then go back to standing.
Alright. The second one of Jenny's top five things to avoid, slouching in soft chairs. Oh, that's so bad, y'all. So so bad. So what we wanna do is I know it's probably pretty comfy, but if you're finding yourself A. in a soft chair, it's not gonna be great for your posture. In fact, it's really, really hard to sit upright in a really old soft chair. But if you are committed to that soft chair, I would at least recommend that you scoot your bottom back to the back of the chair. If there's a lot of space between the back of the chair and where you're sitting, you don't really want all that space. It's just gonna cause you to slouch. Even if you're in a recliner, I'm okay with that because if I want your bottom to be in the back of the chair. At least in the recliner, your whole body's moving, and you're not slouching so much.
Alright. Number three, crossing our legs. Now I don't know how y'all are listening to this. Maybe you're sitting in a chair with your legs crossed, and you're probably like, oh, no. What's wrong? I know it's comfortable, and I know some of us have been taught that is the right way to sit, but it's really bad for your legs and your alignment. So what it does, it number one, puts pressure on your knees. It's angling your knee at kind of an abnormal angle. So then we have this extra pressure. It can decrease our circulation in our legs. It can create varicose veins, and it can make our hips uneven, and it can rotate our pelvis. All of those things just from sitting cross legged. So what do you do if that is a super major habit of yours? I would encourage you to try to cross your feet instead of the whole leg. And if you just can't not cross your legs, I would at least ask you to switch sides. So if you're if you always sit with your right leg over, at least try and take a break and sit with your left leg over. At least you might kind of align your pelvis a little bit better.
Alright. Number four, carrying heavy bags on one side. Yes. So that is something that a lot of women do with bags and purses. I will tell you a funny story when I was doing one of my very first clinical rotations as a physical therapist, and a lady came in with shoulder pain, and I could not figure it out. You know? I could not figure out the diagnosis. Did she have a rotator cuff tear? Did she have AC impingement? Did she you know, what was going on? And I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't figure it out. And at the end of our visit, she wanted me to hand her a pen, which was in her purse. So I went to hand it to her, and that purse must have weighed forty pounds. And I said, ding, ding, ding. That was it. So we wanna make sure that we are not lopsiding our bodies with big bags. I personally have two bags when I take two bags with me every day to the gym, and I put them on either side. If you can get a backpack and put both of them on, that is going to be even better. I see a lot of my participants at the gym that do my aqua class with a rolling gym bag. Love that. I love that. And so we wanna be a little bit creative. So next time you grab your bag, how heavy is it? Could we take some stuff out, or could we kind of, shift the weight between the two sides?
And then finally, not engaging the core muscles. It's so easy to say, engage the core, engage the core, but you may not know what that means. It's not very clear cut. It doesn't necessarily mean sucking on our stomach, but what it can mean is tightening up a little bit. The cue I typically give is pushing the belly button towards the spine. So let's try that right now. Kind of sit here and see if you can put not not with your hands. Push your belly button towards the spine. Do you see how you kind of tightened up a little bit? But you're not you're not sucking in your stomach. You're still breathing. So just tightening up the core. And if you're wondering what the heck is a core, I think of it as like a big heavyweight wrestling belt. So the belt that goes around someone that just won a championship. So the abdominals, the lower back, and the hip muscles, all that is kinda considered your core. And like I say, we wanna start there. So anytime that we have some lower back pain or in a weird position, try engaging the core a little bit. Try some deep breaths. Try pushing the belly button to the spine, and you might feel a little sense of relief from that.
Alright. What's next? How to get amazing posture? How can your day get more exciting? I am here to tell you how to get that. The first one is being aware. Being aware. That is key. We have to know when we are slipping a little, slipping a little, when our posture isn't great, when we've been sitting in that soft chair too long. We have to be aware. And after this webinar, y'all are gonna be on it. Okay.
The second one is a change in work habits. That is not is it's not, it's harder than it sounds. Right? We can't just pick up and quit our job, but what we can do y'all is change our habits in our job. Okay? So if we cut hair, could we space out our clients a little and have a seat during each client? If we work at a desk, could we raise that computer up a little bit? Could we buy a better chair? If we have to drive a lot for our work, could we change the way we sit in our car? So not necessarily changing your job, but definitely changing how we do our job.
Change how we do everyday activities. We could have probably skipped this whole webinar and just landed on this slide. We just need to somehow think about the little changes because little changes over a period of time can end to massive results. And I say that with everything, whether it's nutrition, exercise. You don't have to go all in y'all. Just little baby steps, and I promise you, they will give you good results. So we want to look at the way we walk, right? Chest up, swinging our arms. We wanna look at the way we sit. Remember? Not slouching in the chairs. We wanna look at the way we stand. Next time you're standing in the grocery store, check out how you're standing. Are you leaning to your good leg? Are you moving around a little bit? Are you standing over the cart? Think of how you stand. How do we wash the dishes? Are we leaning over like this? Could we change that? Could you maybe pull the cabinet door open under the sink and put one foot down in the in the cabinet? Try it, y'all. Try it. It takes the pressure off your lower back. How about when we brush our teeth? Are we leaning over the sink, or are we standing up straight? How do we do our laundry? Do we take a huge wet load and we rip it around, or do we pull it into our bodies and walk around? How do we garden? Are we leaning over, or do you have a nice little knee pad that you could come all the way down to the ground with some good straight backs? How do we feed the dog? Okay? You get where I'm going. Right? So everyday activities, I want you to slow down and see if we can tweak them just a little bit.
Change positions and move. Alright? We talked about not sitting in one position for more than thirty minutes, so we wanna make sure that we are moving. Motion is the lotion. No. Yeah. Motion is the lotion to our joints. We wanna keep our joints loose, and that will definitely help with your posture.
Alright. We can go into a little bit more extreme measures. We can go through taping. Alright. This is done by a physical therapist or maybe an orthopedic doctor. They are really nice techniques. I will say my gut feeling is that they don't change your posture. What it does though, y'all, it goes back to the first slide of being aware. When I tape somebody like this and they hunch over, the tape pulls, and they're like, oh, I didn't I didn't know. But with that tape, it helps correct. It just is more up here. So it helps you from slouching over. But I do believe in Kinesio taping, and I do think it can work, And this is an option.
A lumbar roll. These are amazing. So what it does, if you look to the guy on the left, look at not so much the lumbar roll, but look at his lower spine. It has that beautiful c shape, which is what we're after. We want a s shape at the top, and we want a c shape at the bottom. So it kinda looks like the letter s. Right? And what the lumbar roll does, it forces that lumbar area into a nice arching of your back. And they look like this. This is, this is more of a foam roller, but it totally works as a lumbar roll. If you don't have a lumbar roll and this is something that you think would help, what I used to do is just take a beach beach towel, fold it over, roll it tight, tight, tight, tight, then put, duct tape around it, and then throw it in a pillowcase. And now you have this permanent lumbar roll. The firmer it is, the better it works. And if you have a newer car, have you ever noticed that you can push a button and it pushes kind of up against your lower back? That is a car lumbar roll. So these are amazing. I love these especially for people who have that flat back.
Stability ball. Who has one of these? Who has one of these at home? I do a lot of exercise videos, and I do a lot of them with the stability ball. But guess what y'all? You can use them just for sitting. So the lady on the left, she's actually instead of using a chair to do her bicep curls, she's sitting on a ball. It's amazing because the ball is unstable. So now what does she have to do to not fall off? She's got to engage that core. So next time you're at the gym or maybe you have one, try slouching on a stability ball. It's almost impossible. It's you almost have to be forced into good posture to just sit on a ball, and that's why I love these balls. The guy on the right has it in his office. How great is that? So he is getting some great exercise without exercising. He's forcing himself into good posture, and he is engaging that core without even knowing it. If you have one and it's old, make sure you pump it up. It's gotta be firm.
The girl the way I test to make sure it's firm enough, I like the knees to be at a ninety degree angle. The lady on the left, do you see how her knees are a little bit above her hips? That's a little bit too squishy in my opinion. You're gonna want your knees and your hips to be about, the same level, and that's how you know. And, I usually recommend a fifty five centimeter one.
And then finally, exercise. Duh. Right? Because this is my expertise. Active senior exercises, that's what I do. So, we can treat our posture with exercises.
But wait. Don't move. Nobody move. Nobody move. Okay. What does your posture look like right now? And be honest. Okay? Are you sitting at the back of the chair? Are you sitting at the edge of the chair? Are you slouched? Are you, sitting with your legs crossed? It's okay. You're learning all this stuff. But I want us to know, like, how you're sitting right now. And is there any way we could tweak it? So let's tweak it if it needs to be tweaked. Alright? I'm sitting on the very edge of my chair. I feel pretty good about it. But maybe you could adjust. Maybe you've been sitting and listening to me for thirty minutes, and you need to stop and stretch. So let's do that. Everybody can just stand up, maybe lean their back a little bit forward or backwards. Maybe you wanna just lean side to side. Whatever feels good, and then we can get back into our posture.
Alright. This is Fred. This is my buddy, Fred, and he is gonna demonstrate the first exercise. Now I have how many exercises do I have? I probably have about ten. My idea for this and when I do this seminar live, we all stand up to do it. I can't really see you guys doing it, so I'm gonna give you the option if you wanna do them with me when I describe them, or you can just watch them. I call these scap pinches, scapular pinches. And what he's doing is he's basically just squeezing his shoulder blades together. That's simple. And guess what? You can do that anywhere. Anywhere, anytime. He doesn't have any equipment, just a basic old scap pinch.
Alright. Next one is shoulder rolls. Now these guys are doing them forward and then they're doing them backward. I really like that because it really helps kinda lubricate the joints in our shoulder. But if I were gonna make this a posture exercise, I would probably just have you go backwards because now we're squeezing the shoulder blades together and we're opening the chest muscles.
Alright. These are called rows with bands. Do y'all have a resistance band at your home, or do you have one in your gym? A resistance band at your home, or do you have one in your gym? I really recommend everybody have a resistance band. They are super inexpensive. You can have the ones that are like tubes like they have, or you can have ones without handles. And we got two different, two different positions. The one on the left is kinda leaning over, so she's really emphasizing the strength of her upper back. And the one on the right is it looks like probably a seated position on the ground. You know what my favorite is though? Rose on a stability ball. Now it's like two in one. You're getting the upper back and lower back. So the end all be all is that we want a strong upper back so that we stand up tall. If we have a weak upper back, we have this position.
Alright. What's our next one? Chin tucks. I could not find a video. I should have just probably videotaped me doing it. I also call these turtle tucks, chin tucks. It's kinda like, giving yourself a double chin. So you wanna emphasize this part and relax and pull back. Not to be confused with looking up. We want straight back. And sometimes people have a hard time with this, and what I do is have them lie down on their back. And the cue I give them, I put two fingers on their forehead, and I say push the back of your head against the mat and that usually helps people who have a hard time with chin tucks. But these are amazing, this can be really helpful for those that have the forward head, and think of it as preventative medicine. Maybe you don't have a forward head at all. So and do these to keep it that way.
Alright. These are standing back extensions. In my opinion, you cannot do this enough because we are not in this position during the day. We are typically in the opposite position. So we wanna make sure that we are just standing, and I like to put my hands on my hips. I like to put my thumbs on those little bony parts back there and just lean back. It feels amazing, and it helps with that lower lumbar curve.
The next one is cat and cow, and you've probably seen or done this in yoga, and this is done on your hands and knees. You wanna curl your back like an angry cat, and then you wanna arch your back and lift your head up like a cow. I also love to be in that position because you're getting some nice pressure on the wrists and the knees and pressure in a good way y'all. We want that we want that weight bearing pressure to help with our bone density.
Alright. What's next? Corner chest stretch. This is a beautiful easy type of stretch you can do either in a corner of a room or in a doorway. That's really awesome because then you can go farther. And so it's the same concept y'all. Strengthen the upper back, stretch the chest muscles so that we don't have this type of posture, and this feels amazing. Try it.
Alright. And then I have just some basic neck motions and stretches. We cannot stretch our neck enough. Now we could probably stretch it too far. We don't wanna do that. We wanna put some gentle pressure and we have to think all of the ways our neck moves side to side, rotate, and up and down. So don't be afraid to get that neck moving. My favorite place to do it is in a hot shower because then you're getting the moist heat and you could just, like, stretch and let the water just hit right on those muscles. Feels great. I would caution you of leaning your head all the way back. Those very top vertebrae are very delicate, and let's face it, our head is like a ten pound bowling ball. So we really wouldn't recommend putting a bowling ball on those top vertebrae. So I never really recommend letting the neck or letting the head hang back. Give it a little bit of room, but not all the way back.
Alright. Alright. This is another, these are two other ladies that take my classes, and they are demonstrating wall exercises. I just did an entire video on different wall exercises. She is in that four point test. Right? She's got her heels, her butt, her shoulder blades, and her back of her neck, and she's doing what's called wall angels. Remember the snow angels in the snow? She's doing wall angels. And then I asked her to change her arms a little bit into, like, a goal post. And so now she just going up and down, all the while sticking in that nice posture against the wall. And then let's see. Is she almost done? Yep.
Okay. And then I like these a lot. So she is just opening and closing one side against the wall and really nice scapular movement, and they did a great job with that. Oh, gosh. Come on. Here we go.
Now I gave you a whole lot of exercises, and I would love for you to try and do those. If you might find that you like one and not all of them, and that's totally normal, so pick the ones that actually feel good. But as always, you wanna challenge yourself with any exercise. I have a few tips for you. We want slow, controlled movements, no bouncing, no quick, abrupt movements. We also wanna breathe evenly. Now we've probably heard breathe in on the, you know, positive motion and exhale on the exertion, and that is all good. But I have found that when I tell people how to breathe, like, a certain way, their breathing becomes irregular. So just breathe normally. I just ask that you do not hold your breath. Alright?
Three, tailor the number of sets and repetitions to your fitness level. I typically recommend two to three sets of ten to fifteen reps, but it changes. So if somebody's really trying to rehab something or treat something, I might increase that. Or if it's just a small part of their daily activities, their daily exercises, maybe they're already going to the gym, you can reduce those numbers. No straining and making sure you can get through those reps without, you know, changing your facial expressions too much or having to hold your breath.
The fourth one is stop any activity that causes pain. That phrase, no pain, no gain is does not sit well with me. That's like taking a step forward and two steps back. If something is causing pain, you're gonna wanna try and modify it first. Could you decrease the range of motion? Could you decrease your position or change your position? Could you change the amount of reps? If you still do that and it still hurts, don't do the exercise at all. There are plenty others to choose from. And finally, if you have any sort of pain like back pain, always consult a doctor before starting any type of exercise program.
Alrighty. That was a lot. I hope that you learned a little something. My goal for these type of things is for you to walk away with a little bit of info, like, just a little tidbit. Right? Because like I said in the past, small changes over the time can end up with massive results. So if anybody has any questions, I am happy to try and answer them. And if I cannot answer them, I can always get back to you with an email.
Thank you, Jenny. That was awesome. I mean, it was, fun and, very enlightening, and, obviously, you have plenty of examples there for everyone to take, not just today, but, when the video is available on the back end. So if you, didn't quite catch everything and weren't able to write it down fast enough or just wanted to watch the videos again, this video will be available starting tomorrow, and it will be sent to you in a link, using the email that you used to RSVP for today's webinar. So fun stuff. Good time to get your questions in. Again, use the q and a button at the bottom of your screen. Feel free to type those out there. We've got just about a minute left here in the, top we hit the top of the hour, so we're gonna try to get, as much as this of this in as we can. We'll go over just a little bit here today, but still, please feel free to be a part of the conversation, get those questions in. One quick question here we have from doctor Andrew Malinchak. What is a CGCP, Jenny?
Oh, a certified geriatric care provider, which is a certification I have.
Wonderful. Okay. And can you tell us the difference? One just one thing that was mentioned. We have some comments. I'm, obviously looking for some questions here too. But just, don't forget about the DOs, Jenny, and, yes, doctors of osteopathic medicine. This is something that I think many doctors, have some experience in. What, specifically, obviously, the geriatric side of things, but what specifically, sets you apart from, say, somebody who is a DO?
Me, myself, or just.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, my you know, going through physical therapy school, we get to pick what we, you know, what we wanna focus on. And I've always just ended up focusing on women's studies and geriatrics. And with my experience, I always was in a outpatient orthopedic setting. So I was the one that would usually be on the end of the treatment, not the beginning of the treatment. So my specialty, my passion is kind of getting people those the last part of their rehab into getting back to their, like, their lives. So what we typically do is kind of figure out where you're coming from, what were you doing before, and can we get you back to that space. And I've always just taught active seniors. And with my YouTube channel, I personally really saw from experience that there are, A, people that can put anything online, which we have to be careful about. And so if you kind of Google senior fitness, you might find things that look super easy, like, you know, sitting with some barely movements, or you might see the whole extreme, which is maybe doing things that I personally know are just not safe. So, you know, I say specialty, but, you know, where I focus, my niche is for those active sixty five and older women and men who are already exercising. They want to do all these fun things. They want to live out their golden years to the best of their ability, and they don't wanna give up these things that, you know, they think they have to give up, and we don't have to give them up. So I really try hard and just try and modify things in the safest way possible. And I think my background in PT kind of ensures that. I'm not sure I really answered your question. But there's just so many specialties and I went to PT school twenty five years ago. So now back then, we had to learn everything, and now there's, like, such specific ways to go. You know, you have a PT that just does dry nailing, a PT that just does wound care. And so now we can go specifically. And I do think you just need to find somebody that you fit well with and that you feel comfortable with because there are so many different outlets to go to.
And I absolutely agree, and I'm glad that you explained that. You know? You can go to a doctor. It may not be their, like, you use the word niche. It may not be their niche, and so they're sending them to people like you who, that is your focus. That is your, you know, sort of what you are doing day in and day out. It's kinda like, do you want to go to somebody who, you know, only does it, you know, once or twice a year, or do you wanna go to somebody who literally lives, eats, and breathes, this kind of, help?
Mhmm.
So, I appreciate you answering that. And, Jenny, because you're so specific, and, you know, it may be harder for people to find someone like you to help them. Can you tell us how we can get in contact with you so that.
Look at this look at this next slide.
There you go.
If they don't live in North Carolina, which is where you're located Right.
Right.
Physically, how can you maybe help them, find somebody like you?
Yeah. Absolutely. So, ninety percent of what I do is online, me personally. So here's all my info overwhelming, but every if you just Google Jetty Fitstart, it all comes up. But everything I do, I never thought in a million years I would be doing virtual, anything, to be honest with you, but that's kind of where our world took us over the pandemic. So I am very, very, very easy to get in touch with. What sets me apart from other people on YouTube is that I actually really, really, really, connect with all of my members and my viewers because it's very important to me. So I respond to emails same day, if not next day, and I answer questions I can to the best of my ability. The one thing that's very hard for me, I get a lot, is is trying to help diagnose. You know, somebody says, I have some hip pain. I don't feel comfortable with that because I wanna put my hands on you, and try and help you figure it out. But I can give you some great advice from my experience. And I have a free side of my YouTube channel. I try and put videos up there at least twice a month, and they are directed just towards the active seniors and beginners. And, I have a membership group called Jenny's Fit Bunch. And for a small monthly subscription cost, they get me as their personal coach. They get, lots of perks, including a live weekly chat with me, a live class with me every week, and then extra videos. So it's a great way to connect with me personally. And what I did not expect is that it has really connected all these people together. So that's why we call ourselves the fit bunch because now this group of people are, like, super close, and, that makes me really happy. So I am very, very available. I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina. I teach at Lifetime Fitness. If you're ever in the area, you can be my guest, and I am all over social media. That's a great way to get in touch with me and use my email. And if you want you know, if you are just looking for somebody like me but in person, you know, that's where you're gonna have to really just kind of search and do some trial and error because you need to mesh well personality wise with whoever you're gonna go see. And it needs to be fun. Right? Because if it's not fun, what's the point? We gotta have a little bit of fun in there too. So, yeah, a little trial and error, and then always feel free to get in touch with me.
Awesome. Jenny, thank you so much for, what has been a very eye opening webinar. My posture, I kept finding myself we're all gonna walk out of here.
Straighter and straighter in my chair as the webinar went on. I think we all learned something new here today. I know I did. Right. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge starting from gymnastics as a youngster all the way up to now with all of us.
You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah. Well, if you enjoy this webinar with Jenny, those of you watching here today and on the back end, this is a really good time to head on over to our website. It's www.senior living live.com. You could bookmark that page, and feel free to come back anytime, give you all of our videos all about senior living. They are available on demand, and the best part, they are all free. Thank you so much for being a part of senior living live. Have a great day, everybody.