Fitness for Retirees, Interview with Janelle Graham Fitness Trainer

Interview with Janelle Graham, Fitness Trainer from 24 Hour Fitness in Castle Rock, Colorado.  Topics include priority actions seniors can take to live a more healthy life and LiveWell in their retirement. 

Erik:   00:01        

Welcome to mastering Monday, the interview segment. Hi, I'm Erik Bowman, your host and the owner of Bowman financial strategies where we provide straight answers so you can make confident decisions to live the retirement you have always dreamed of. Today is the first of three episodes where I interviewed Janelle Graham of fitness trainer from 24 hour fitness in Castle Rock, Colorado. I hope you enjoy.

Erik:      00:32                   

Hi Janelle. How are you today? I'm well, how are you? I'm good. Thanks for coming and talking with us today about physical fitness. Uh, I'd like to start off with you telling us just a little bit about yourself, your history and what it is you currently do.

Janelle:    00:47                   

I am originally from Illinois. I went to school for Athletic Training and Sports Med to um, just get to help others because I have a big heart and helping others and just improving what people are doing on a daily basis and helping them live a healthier, fitter and stronger life. So I have been doing group fitness for 14 years and I got into the personal training one on one with clients for about the last three years now. It's been a different journey from being in a big group setting. So now working one on one and getting individuals personalized programming to help them daily, life wise. Some clients want more of that athletic bound and then other clients are just wanting to be able to get up and move on a daily basis. So wide array.

Erik:       01:38                   

What is it you like most about the personal training as opposed to the group training?

Janelle:    01:43                   

My personal training aspect is it's a one on one. So I have personal responsibility for that persons and helping them feel better about themselves or help improve some type of performance if that's their number one goal. Some it is just, you know, they want to get up and move on a daily basis and be able to walk around to get an out of their car easier and just do daily life activities better. (Right.) So that's a big shift in difference from like a group fitness setting cause you're dealing with 30, 40, sometimes even 50 people. So in that one on one setting, it's more individualized for their wants and their needs and what they're looking at doing.

Erik:   02:30                   

And where are you located? Where do you work out of?

Janelle:     02:32                   

I'm at 24 hour fitness and Castle Rock,

Erik:   02:35                   

Colorado Castle Rock. And just full disclosure, you work with my wife Heidi and you've been a godsend to her to help her maintain some mobility and um, develop strength training and she loves working out with you. So thank you for that.

Janelle:    02:47                   

Thank you.

Erik:     03:33                   

A couple of questions and as we go through the questions, we just want to keep in mind that you know, my firm works primarily with seniors or people that transitioning from the working years of their life. We call that the accumulation years and they're transitioning into the distribution years where they are going to stop working, still generating income, but hopefully having a time of their life. They want to be going on vacation, they want to be going on cruises, they want to spend time with grand kids. They want to be able to walk and hike and ski and do all of these things. And we know that just because we're all aging doesn't mean we want to take doing less as the route that we must go down, that we want to take advantage of those, especially the first 15 years of retirement where we're still healthy and we have the assets to be able to do fun things and enjoy our life. So with that said, um, one of the questions I had and I think that a lot of my clients would have is we can divide physical fitness into flexibility, strength training, cardiovascular fitness, how do those work together and is any one of those maybe a higher priority for somebody who's 60 years old plus?

Janelle:    04:00                   

Looking at those, if you're 60 plus, the biggest thing I would personally take in would be the strength training aspect of it. And because as we get older, our bone density decreases. So having a good strength training program or just a regimen to keep the bones stronger and that's going to help you actually stay active longer cause you're not going to have to worry about slipping and falling and maybe hurting or breaking anything. So strength training, research out there has shown that it actually increases your bone density. So keeping just the skeletal system strong because that's what all of your muscles attached to and that skeletal system actually helps you move. Strength training is a big part as 60 and older to keep you upright so that you're able to just go for a walk on a daily basis. That could be your cardio format and programming.

Janelle:    04:59                   

Just walking a mile a day would be probably number two is just getting up and actually moving. So a lot of 60 and older come into a lifestyle change where they may have been getting up and going to work and they've been on this great schedule. So they've been moving and now that they're into that retirement phase of life, they get more freedom, which is exciting because now they get to go into a bunch of things. Um, but then they also find themselves more sedentary. Thinking about a cardio programming can be as easy as just getting up and going for a walk around a few blocks, you know, mile, uh, maybe walking up and down a hill. And if you've got stairs in the house, it's simple as that as well.

Erik:      05:42                   

A little quick anecdote there is, uh, my wife got me out walking with her, a couple actually over the summer. We went out for about three months straight and I thought that my knee was going downhill and I had arthritis and it hurts so much and I couldn't bend down to pick things up off the floor and I went out because my wife told me to and so I did, but then magically one day after doing that for three months, just walking one to five miles a day, my knee was completely healed.

Janelle:    06:09                   

All the pain was gone! Just from walking, (just from walking right) from walking. That pounding the resistance that you get just from walking on concrete or walking on dirt roads or even like hiking trails. The impact just from that actually helps with the bone density as well. Then the last one would probably be flexibility than mobility, so that's going to come into a big factor, especially as you start to move a little bit more. You're going to notice that things muscles start to get a little bit tighter and you may lose a little bit of range of motion and that's where the flexibility mobility of what you're doing on a daily basis is going to be important as well.

Erik:     06:54                   

You had mentioned a little bit Janelle about strength training being critical because of bone density issues with seniors and aging. When it comes to flexibility, can you talk a little bit about how strength training and flexibility to actually tie together?

Janelle:    07:33                   

They absolutely can. So with strength training, you want to be working through specific ranges of motion just in your strength training regimen on a daily basis. You'll actually be heading into that flexibility and getting more mobile basic things of learning how to sit down in a chair properly and stand up is strength training, but it's also falls in the realm of flexibility and mobility. Actually getting the joints of the body to actually move the way that they're supposed to move.

Erik:    07:46                   

How would you think that a physical regimen or an exercise program for a senior is going to differ from one for somebody who's 30 or 40 years old and why?

Janelle:     07:59                   

With someone that's on, you know, that's in this their 60s compared to the 30s and 40s, um, their bodies are going to move just a little bit different and they're going to need a little bit more of a structure base, almost a checklist of things to do and their physical activities to make sure that they're working in that strength zone and actually getting the strength that they need just to be able to do daily life activities, like picking something up off the floor, bending down to get their groceries, and then putting things into a cabinet are simple things for someone that starts to get a little bit older. (right) But building up the strength to actually be able to lift something a little bit heavier compared to someone that's in their 30s or 40s they're getting into more of that athletic sense more so, and so they're going to be moving at a quicker pace. They're going to be lifting a lot heavier. So as we get older we have to be a little bit more cautious of how we're actually moving and that we're actually moving in a safe and effective manner so that we don't hurt ourselves and that we can do more in the gym but also at home as well because we do have a higher chance of getting injured as we get older. (Right.)

Erik:     09:17                   

We may have brought some of those injuries with us too.

Janelle:     09:24                   

Right. You know, based off of what your job was and maybe even some of your past history of what you did whenever you were younger, you know, did you play sports or were you more active when you were in your 30s and 40s? (right.) Some people aren't as active in their thirties and forties and also some family history comes into that as well. But anybody can be healthier and fitter and stronger as long as they have an understanding of it and they have a program that is suitable for them and where they are currently. So they're doing the things that they are able to do but also progressing and learning new things. Because just because you're in your 60s doesn't mean that you can't learn something new.

Erik:     10:00                   

The key takeaway from that is everybody can progress forward from the point that they're at now. (Absolutely.) There's no, it's kind of done. (No,) but anybody can start from wherever they are and if they have an appropriate exercise program in place, they can progress and actually get more healthy even if they're in their 60s or 70s and I think about some of the common activities that seniors might be doing. A lot of that is just a desire to walk or go hiking, do those things they never had time for. But a lot of travel takes place and when you go to Europe or you're on a cruise ship, there's a lot of walking and it would make sense to practice walking distances before you just land in Italy for three weeks and you now are walking six miles a day and you're not ready for it. I just think it's interesting that people forget every decade that we're in right now is practice for the next decade as far as physical fitness is concerned. (Yes.)

Erik:     11:00                   

Well, that concludes our first of three interviews, segments that run approximately 10 minutes each with Janelle Graham, and I wanted to thank you for joining me today. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them on our Facebook page or on our website at www.bowmenfinancialstrategies.com.