Simple Lifting Exercises for Older People.

Louis Shalako

Boy, it sucks getting older, eh.

Or maybe it’s not so bad—at least, at long last, we seem to have our shit together. It’s got something to do with that attitude.

It happens in a number of ways.

I had to get over my shyness, (or maybe I just wanted to) and one way of doing that was to exercise on the beach. I have all kinds of thoughts on the subject.

If people want to laugh, that’s fine with me.

I am also a bit of a comic character, so there.

I’ve done a couple of short sets of very simple upper-body exercises today. It’s important not to hurt myself, as I have to go to work tomorrow. Quite frankly, I need the money. I can’t afford to quit, let alone be injured.

At the beach this morning, I used a big rock which probably weighs six to eight pounds. I was glad to see that no one had stolen it in the night.

It’s got a good shape so that I can keep a proper grip on it. I wouldn’t want to drop that on my foot or on my phone, both of which would be painful I am sure.

The first exercise is simple curls, which can be done one-armed with different sized dumbbells. Or a rock. I did ten or twelve of those. This is for the biceps. I’m standing for all of these exercises. Then I do lifts straight up, an overall shoulder exercise, another ten or twelve.

Then I do lifts up and outwards from each shoulder, on roughly a forty-five degree angle.

I’ll do five or six of each, and at this point, my hands are definitely a bit shaky. If a beautiful woman walks past, I am resolved to smile and nod and to say hi.

Then I do another kind of simple lift. This involves holding the rock down by the hip.

Now simply straight-arm the rock up to the horizon in front of the face. Hold it for three seconds, and then lower it down again. You want to maintain control of the rock. I do about three to five of those. Then there is a similar lift where I’m holding it by my hip and lifting it straight out sideways from the shoulder. You can feel it pulling on your shoulder muscles, that is for sure. Bring the rock up to the horizon, hold it for three seconds, and then lower it carefully down again. By this time, about three of these are more than enough when first starting out. You can always pick a different rock if it is too heavy or too light. The last exercise is to hold the rock down by the hip and then curl it up, stroking it up in close alongside of my body. It’s an underarm lift.

Later, back home in my living room, I took the ten-pound dumbbell and at full arm extension, laid it on the carpet above my head. I’m lying flat on my back. From there, I straight-arm it up so it’s above my chest and my head. Straight up, and then carefully lower it down to a few inches above the carpet. After three of those, maybe four, I switched arms. I switch hands with the weight off to one side. If I drop it, it’s not going to hit me. The next exercise is similar. Only in this case, the lift is from an arm extended out to the side from the shoulder. 

This is another straight-arm lift, and I bring the dumbbell up above the centre of my chest, or above my chin, that sort of thing. This leads to the last of the very simple exercises I have been doing. This is a simple dumbbell-press, straight up and down again to the shoulder. I alternate arms after ten or twelve repetitions. If you have a bar, you would be using both arms. I recommend very small loads for older people just starting out. What you want is more repetitions in that case.

You want to establish the habit, and that means not hurting yourself or trying to change the world in a day or two.

Right?

Here’s the thing. When you get older, you might sleep on your side and then you wake up in the morning with pain in between the shoulders. You have a really good sleep and then wake up with a crick in the neck. This is due to lack of muscle tone, where the simple weight of your body is putting stress and compression on muscles and joints that aren’t able to properly withstand it.

Note, none of these exercises will do much for that little pot-belly, but simply standing to do them probably does strengthen the core-body group of muscles—which was why I was at the beach in the first place. I stand navel-deep in the cool lake water and soak the pain out of my hips and lower back, the knees. After a while, I lean over and soak my elbows and wrists. I walk around a bit. Try and stand up, resist the force of the light waves. Stand up on the land, raise the chin and try to get a bit of a curve into that lower back…it’s funny how often you hear a little click in the stiff or sore area, as something drops back into its proper place. 

Walking on sand is an exercise in itself.

Being barefoot in the sun and the sand has its Zen-like qualities. It is sensual. It helps to get in touch with your own body.

It is a minor workout in its own right. Quite frankly, it seems to do a lot for me, and no doubt some of that is pure Zen, i.e. a kind of personal applied psychology. It’s all about the quality of your life.

For that reason, a light and simple routine might be of great benefit to anyone who is interested. As for my own goals, I’ve never really had pectorals in my entire life. Not much, anyways. At the age of 58 years old, it would be interesting to see if I could actually give myself some.

Otherwise I’m going to be stuck forever with this saggy little pair of man-tits.

END

Image Credit. By Raquel Baranow - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43853612



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It Is So Over.

Courtesy David Shankbone, (Wiki.)

Louis Shalako

I screwed up some guts the other day.

I called and made a dentist appointment. It’s such a simple little thing. Most people take it for granted. But bear in mind that the Ontario Disability Support Program will pay for an extraction. They might even pay for a cavity to be filled. They don’t pay for dentures. They don’t pay for crowns, caps, veneers, or bridges, or any kind of cosmetic dental work.

Yet I can’t help but think that a little bit of cosmetic dental work might have been of some real benefit in a case like mine.

Sweating it out over six or seven days, there was never any real danger of me booking for the hills or failing to attend for the appointment. I’m not a little kid and I have some mastery over self.

The fact is that I went.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t a little nervous. What I wanted them to do, was to pull about twelve or thirteen teeth from the upper jaw. I wanted to get a fine set of plastic teeth, dentures.

I would like to enjoy that most simple and human of things: a nice smile.

My brother got his a few years ago. While they obviously look like store-bought teeth, the transformation was startling.

When I was about eight years old, my brother and I were fighting in the kitchen. We were fighting over a can of apple juice or something. He whapped me right in the teeth with it, chipping the upper left incisor.

When I was about ten years old, we were spinning around in the schoolyard, making ourselves dizzy and just having fun at recess. Kids do that sort of thing. Falling flat on my face, I took a real big chip out of the upper right incisor. Half the tooth was gone.

The doctor patched it up with plastic paste, which was all very well although he didn’t do a very nice job of it. It always did look clunky, discoloured, and I suppose teenagers are at their most self-conscious. I always knew it was there.

Let’s not get too deeply into the personal history, but I went through a pretty rough time. It went on for years. I neglected my teeth. At some point I had a rotten molar, and it didn’t taste very good. It smelled bad. Every time I ate, it would hit the nerve and the pain would go on until I took narcotic pain pills such as Tylenol 3. T-3s have 30 mg of codeine. When I finally worked up the nerve to get it pulled, it turned out I had a staph infection from the tooth. You get it from eating improperly washed produce, or improper hand-washing in food preparation. 

It took two different regimens of antibiotics to clear that up, before the doctor would pull the tooth.

My breath cleared right up. Even the smell of my farts changed. The staph was living in my gut and it changes the body chemistry. Imagine how hard it is to talk to people, when you know damned well your breath smells like shit.

At that time, the dentist fixed one cavity, but I really don’t drink a lot of pop and eat a lot of candy. I hadn’t seen a dentist in ten or fifteen years. That was six years ago. Okay, I’m a bit of a gagger and no one likes going to the dentist. But now, forty-five years later, that plastic patch on the upper incisor is porous. It’s a black tooth now, right out of Benny Hill and Monty Python. What with all the chips, old patches now about to crumble and fall out of the other incisor, it’s no wonder I wanted them all pulled.

It was six years ago, when I looked into caps, veneers, and implanted teeth. My old man was still alive, and I had some hopes of getting a little help to pay the $4,000.00 that a total of four veneers would cost. The dentist told me that with longitudinal cracks in the teeth, it wasn’t a good option. It was disappointing, but it was also going to be expensive, and at the time I just accepted that they weren’t going to do it. I basically just walked away because they wouldn’t give me what I wanted…

For forty-five fucking years I have lived with ugly teeth.

It really is a formative experience. It has helped to shape, in so many ways, just who I am—who I became for far too long there.

I am so fucking sick of it.

And of course we are so good about blaming ourselves, aren’t we?

I know what a pretty girl is—and I had this crazy idea they weren’t going to be too interested, in a guy with bad teeth. It’s not very appealing, is it ladies? I didn’t have too many other things going for me either—I’m not rich, and I’m not likely to get a real good job anytime soon. I’m not that charming, not that confident, not that good in social situations….and no wonder, when you know the facts.

Well, the bad news is they talked me out of it. We’re not going to pull twelve or thirteen teeth in one go. I’m not going to get my beautiful store-bought smile.

We’re going to drill down into that ugly old tooth. We’re going to do what the nice dentist says is best, and the worst part of it is, that I can’t even be unconscious when we do the work. 

With the white plastic paste, hopefully they can make it look all right…

Judging by the hour and a half I spent in that itty-bitty little chair, as they poked, prodded, tapped, pried, photographed, measured and collated, this might be a bit of an ordeal.

I have to assume that this is going to be worth it, ladies and gentlemen.

To go through life with the world’s second-biggest inferiority complex is over.

It is so fucking over, ladies and gentlemen.

And in a month or two, after two or three appointments, this will be over too.

In the meantime, I will try not to be too scared shitless.

END