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Harmful Advice from the Fitness Experts
What is a Fitness Expert, Anyway?
Yikes! I just read another article citing a fitness expert, extolling the dangers of walking as a primary form of exercise for seniors. I would like to think that the author has good intentions, and it is not my intent to criticize her or the facts and figures that she cites.
It’s just that so much information that would actually be helpful to a senior beginning a walking program was left out of her article. In citing the dangers, I can see how a senior contemplating walking for daily exercise would just give up before they even began.
I have been a fitness instructor, specializing in teaching the senior population, for over 20 years. I have been witness to the destruction that many “experts” cause: the preventable injuries, the discouragement caused by pushing too hard and too fast, the lack of knowledge about common ailments that seniors face, and the dismissal of the feedback of the actual folks performing the exercises.
The author of the article about walking focused of the dangers of extreme exercise, which is important; but there was not a lot of helpful suggestions for how to begin and how to safely progress a walking program.
And absolutely no attention was given to “gait”, something that should be addressed…
