Shoulder injuries and aging flash!

Here's a great example of how information on exercise and aging is not readily available. Perhaps it can also be an example of how this blog can, to some extent, address that problem.

My wife has used the South Beach Diet over the past couple of years with not very good results. I can't say I saw her lose any significant amount of weight using it. But she decided to give it another try after discovering a new book that augments the diet with an exercise regime. It was while perusing this book that I stumbled across a piece of information that may be germane to my recent shoulder problem, but that is certainly crucial information for those intending to exercise in their later years.

In the book, the author (Dr. Arthur Agatston) describes how he took up a sort of cardio-boxing routine, which helped him to discover the virtues of interval training. One exercise his trainer had him do involved lifting a medicine ball overhead and throwing it. He describes how he felt some pain in his shoulder when he did this, though he ignored the pain. The pain increased over the subsequent weeks such that he had to seek a diagnosis and treatment. It turns out that by doing that particular exercise, he had developed a shoulder injury--a rotator cuff tear.

Furthermore, the doctor who diagnosed the problem told him that he always tells patients of Agatston's age to NOT do exercises that involve lifting weight overhead (Agatston was born in 1947, his book came out in 2008, so we could deduce that Agatston was around 60 years old when the doctor gave him that advice). It turns out that, with age, calcium deposits form in the joints causing restricted space for muscles and tendons. This, in turn, leads to greater risk of rotator cuff injury with increasing age. Essentially, the tendons and/or muscles in the affected joints are weaker and subject to tearing more easily under stress (the discussion of the problem Agatston encountered is found on pp 49-50 of his "The South Beach Diet Super Charged")

I read about rotator cuff injuries at the following link: http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/rotatorcuff/a/rotatorcuff.htm . That description does indicate that this sort of injury can be diagnosed as tendinitis--as my shoulder injury was. So, did I really have a rotator cuff injury? I should mention that, although I feel pretty much fully recovered now, I do get a burning sensation in my shoulder while, after exercising, I hold my arm in a certain position. I really do think this age-related restriction of the joint, and thus of tendons and muscles in the joint, may apply to me.

So, where was this information when I needed it? When I told my doctor I planned to start an exercise regime, why did he not warn me about age-related joint restrictions, or about lifting weight over my head? Why didn't the doctors I saw when I went with a shoulder problem point this out? Why didn't the physical therapist who treated me for tendinitis suggest this as a possible problem? Are these medical professionals just as much in the dark as I am when it comes to age and exercise?

Sadly, it seems so. Again, perhaps I can help to offset these inadequacies and shortcomings by making this blog a repository of information on aging and exercise. I'll have to consider now whether I need to stop lifting weight over my head.

Calisthenics or "bodyweight exercises"

I plan on doing a post soon showing the exercises the physical therapist gave me and that seem to have my shoulder pretty much fully mended up by now. There are some technical issues involved, such as how to graphically or pictorially show the exercises: photos, a video uploaded to youtube, some diagrams? Anyway, once I get those resolved I'll publish that post. But in this posting, I just want to make brief note of a little web research I did on calisthenics.

I've already noted in previous posts that I intend to do calisthenics--in place of the weight lifting I now do for strength conditioning--for at least part of the year. Actually, as I write this I even think to myself that I could foresee replacing weight lifting entirely with a good calisthenics program. Since I'm still in the fairly early planning stages of my exercise regime, though, I don't want to make any binding decisions about that now.

Anyway, as I speak of calisthenics what I mean is essentially exercises that use only your body's own weight as resistance--as opposed to using a barbell, dumbbells, or, say, rubber resistance bands. So I have in mind things like push-ups--which are much the same as doing bench presses--chin-ups, sit-ups, dips, and the like. Throughout my life I've always referred to these sorts of exercises as calisthenics.

Some recent web searching revealed to me that such exercises are now sometimes referred to as "bodyweight exercises." That makes some sense since, as I mentioned, when doing them you're using your body's weight as the resistance against which you work to build strength. I have to admit, though, that I'm a little suspicious of the new terminology I've discovered--suspicious that it was invented to turn what has always been common knowledge in fitness circles, i.e., types of calisthenics and what muscles they strengthen, into something that can be marketed. A sort of bait-and-switch maneuver.

There are at least two sites trying to sell books and exercise routines under the "bodyweight exercise" label. One also uses the phrase "combat conditioning," while the other tries to purvey its products as the discovery of "coach so-and-so." I'll let you find those for yourself if you're interested, since I don't wish to make this blog into a promotion of those sites. The bottom line is that they, like the P90X people, are in the business of marketing fitness.

The problem with the main sites I found for those bodyweight exercise or calisthenics sites do a pretty hard sell. They don't want to give you much in the way of information unless you pay them. But I'm sure there are plenty of sites on the net where at least the basic information they're trying to market (e.g., types of exercises and what muscles they strengthen) are freely available. I hope one of the things I can do on this blog is to create something of a repository for that type of information.

So, to begin with, here's a link to a site that explains a fairly simple calisthnics or bodyweight exercise routine: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mahler19.htm . Another similar site can be seen here: http://www.cbass.com/Furey.htm . Be aware that at both sites you're going to find links to one of the sites that tries to sell books and other materials connected with the "combat conditioning" calisthenics marketing ploy. Another similar page the provides a video can be viewed here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Quick-Bodyweight-Exercise-Routines .

Despite the marketing on some of these pages they do have at least one virtue: they provide a really basic set of calisthenics that, practiced for 15 to 30 minutes daily or a few times per week should really help develop one's strength and conditioning--presuming, of course, that one follows a healthy diet in addition.

I hope to be able to provide more such links to sites that, without trying to goad the maximum amount of money out of you, provide good information on bodyweight or calisthenic exercise routines.

UPDATE: here's a link for a page with a lot of links to bodyweight exercising: http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode2/Workouts . There's plenty of advertising there too, but there's enough useful information at the links that it seemed worthwhile to include the link.