Mobility Exercises Build Longevity. Help Your Healthspan - Get Moving!

Right now, we’re spring chickens, for sure. We can’t possibly be losing our mobility, right? That’s for old people. We’re not old! Posture exercises? Pah! Mobility exercises? Wait, we’re not in a nursing home! 

We all tend to think we’re moving well because we can absolutely put our knickers on without looking like a flamingo doing a swan dive.  

Oh, hang on, …

Well, for sure we can get on all fours and crawl under our desk when we drop our pen and absolutely no effortful noises or ‘helpful’ furniture is required to get back up again.  

Well, maybe, sometimes.

But we’re certain sitting down too much is not our new 40 a day habit! No, siree! Take yesterday, we stood up for at least … er …

Not in one fell swoop or overnight, of course, but in a series of tiny and limiting alterations to the way you move over time. Left to continue these self-limiting movements, we risk spending most days of our old age in a chair propped up by cushions to support permanent back pain, and maybe with a raft of medications we could have avoided if we’d moved more, and we’re wondering WTF happened to the way we were …

Use it or lose it! We know we’re meant to enjoy the whole moving about shebang, because, if we suffer an injury that stops us moving naturally, it’s pretty shitty. That’s life’s way of giving us a dress rehearsal for an Awful Future Yet to Come, if we don’t keep it moving. 

Screw that! Let’s FUTUREPROOF against pain, illness, depression and disease, because it’s not just the way we can move that is dictated by mobility and movement.

• Go low! Squat when you pick things up from the floor. 
• Reach for the stars! Keep your protein powder on a high shelf!
• Walk more. Just walk more. Stick the occasional hop-skip in there. Call it trip training.
• Furnish the floor with your gloriousness! Make it a good place to be so you want to get down on it. Any excuse to buy more cushions, right? Then, you have to get up from it without help, too. A tumble at home when you’re older has no fear for you! Gravity, do your worst!
• Head for the hills and stairs. Coming down is important too. Most of the time we fall forward. Hold yourself high!

Absolutely we’ll take you through how to (like to) move it, move it even more but, if your mind’s flagging and deciding you should stay still …

We just need to understand how we want to live independently for as long as we can.  In FUTUREPROOF, Davinia discusses the work of Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who suggests, ‘Mobility is essential to preserving your own autonomy and ability to do what you enjoy’.

• Will I need to reach into high cupboards? Yes - you’ll need that rucksack for that walking holiday. Or that pan for the coq au vin. Or that dress-up for role play - ooh la la!
• Will I need to get low down on the floor? Want to crawl around with the grandkids? Or pull out the ski jackets from under the spare bed? Or clean up when the cat puked a furball? You bet!
• Will I need to get up off the floor without help? If you don’t want to be the comedy granny, you’d be better off learning how … 
• Can I catch myself if I trip? A comic run for a few steps is better than finding yourself in a heap on the floor. It needs balance, strength and confidence that your body’s capable of keeping you upright. If you're perimenopausal, you might have noticed that your sense of balance feels off - all the more reason to keep moving in ways that help you stay quick on your feet.

If you were required to squat, would you end up in a heap, probably after a bit of wee came out? We’ve all been there! It’s a sign we aren’t using our body in the way it was designed. Ditto not being able to pull your knickers on standing up without a balance bar and a safety net. 

But, equally, we need to guard against the idea that popping off to the gym in a quick burst at some point is all that we need to be doing to stay mobile. What we do in the gym often bears little resemblance to the requirements of moving in real life (strength yes, movement, sometimes not so much …). Yup, the gym might fall short at offsetting the dangers of sitting down for the rest of the time. Just count how many of those machines require you to, you guessed it, sit down. Looking at you, leg press, shoulder press, pec press, thigh abductor … the list goes on. And just as an FYI: Studies suggest ovarian, cervical and colon cancers are all linked to too much sitting. 

We’re living in a time when, according to Dr. Mark Hyman, ‘There is a great evolutionary mismatch between our current lifestyle and our genes and biology’.  We’re designed to be constantly on the move. Our movement causes physical stressors that help to build resilience and stability. Muscles tug on bones and bones get denser - which is all great for our health span. And stronger muscles help hormones health and insulin resistance.