Today’s message is for the senior citizens out there. Get your butts in the gym. Start working out with weights. Is the only way you going to find the fountain of youth, okay? There’s the 80-year-old who owns a marathon, he’s not an alien folks, he’s a man who’s fit, who goes to the gym, who works out his legs, who goes out there and runs and pounds the pavement, that’s why he’s out there doing those things because he feels young he feels good and he’s running a long 20-year olds.

Jackal lane, up until the day he died, he used to tie boats to back and swim for his birthday the, guy used to work out with weights and he died at 74 but up until that time who is in phenomenal shape how did he do it he was an alien either. It’s all about hard work. You start to lose muscle mass ten percent every year start in the age of around fifty years old you lose muscle mass you lose strength, you lose strength you lose function, “strength equals function” Don’t expect to do anything functional and be independent well into his seventy’s and eighty’s if you’re not doing some sort of exercise and the best way to keep your muscles fit and strong is with weights. Walking is not enough. I’m very happy that you walk it’s great stay fit but you’ve been walking you are one. Your muscles are used to your body weight they’re not getting stronger and like I said you start to lose muscle mass every year.

So, oh maybe now you’re not walking as long as you used to or as far as you used to, now maybe you need a cane and a year or two goes by and now you need the help of both arms, now you start to use a walker and now maybe those get weeks and now you maybe you fall, all this can be prevented. Okay, we all have to increase our age we don’t have to get old. Getting old is a choice I understand I’m almost forty years old it’s harder for me to lose weight than it used to be when I was 25 and it’s harder for me to build muscle than when I was 25. But you have to go to the gym, it’s the only way to stop losing muscle mass and to build muscle mass increases your strength.

So, if you’re afraid of working out if it’s scary to you first of all of you have any kind of Physical limitations or pain, Physical Therapy. If you have Medicare, Medicare takes care of it. They don’t want you to fall and break your hip, they want you to go to Physical Therapy and get some kind of treatment. So, if it’s just weakness that you’re suffering from and it stops you from doing some kind of functional physical activity then Physical Therapy can help. That is the first step in a process of getting better and getting more fit. If you have no kind of physical limitations but you want to stop the process because before it becomes a problem then go to Physical Therapy like our place we do fitness training so we could teach you how to exercises so this way you can continue to go to a gym and it’s not so scary or intimidating to go to a gym and actually put the weight in the machine and do the machines or look some dumbbell, you’d actually learn how to do that. We do the whole body we do with whatever weights you can do, whatever weight you are comfortable doing even if it is so weak that raising your arm against gravity is what you could do then that’s what we start with until you get stronger than we give you one pound or that we keep going up becomes two pounds three pounds she gets stronger and stronger to be more fit and more independent, less reliant on family to help you and you stay away and stay out of those nursing homes. You’d be more independent well into your eighties and nineties.

Start today it’s not too late I always tell people when you’re six feet under that’s when it’s too late. I don’t care if you’ve never lifted a weight in your life, today’s the day you start we can help you and we can make it fun and after several weeks you start to see “wow, I can so things that I was unable to do five years ago”

Give us a call pklpt.com And you into our physical therapy and into a fitness program start today for better you.

PKL Physical Therapy has offices in Amityville and Bethpage Long Island, New York.