Adaptability and flexibility are keys to healthier and longer survival amidst large scale catastrophes and imminent pandemics!

Closure of medical schools, social distancing, and home-isolation is the ideal time for medical students to physically shape-up and to prepare for their medical board examinations!  

When are you showing your mini gym to us? Well, I read your mind, didn’t I? I’m so sorry, I just got sidetracked! Thank you for your patience! Please, come on in, and please step down to the lower level of our house where my mini gym is set-up!

Well, this is our lower level storage attic that I set-up my TRX suspension in it.  I fastened the metal base of it to the ceiling boards. Another confession; as a respect for my open-house guests, and to make the picture more esthetically pleasant, I placed a partition behind me, and chopped off the sides of the picture! To give you an inside scoop, within the past 5 months I have been working on developing certain integrated Swiss (air) ball and TRX workout activities for 60+ years folks to facilitate a longer and healthier life for them. I have coined the term “Swiss ball-N-TRX” for these integrated movements. I will keep you updated, about future development or how you may access them. Are you ready for another confession? Here we go; being at home allows me to work on perfecting the steps without anyone noticing my embarrassing falls or awkward movements! After all, and to adopt some help from George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher, “if you fall in the attic and no one is around to see you falling, you have not fallen!”. These days I try to work two to three times with my TRX suspension, and each time I spent up to 30 minutes on it.

Combine your work and workout, if you can! Life is too short and skills that one needs to acquire are too many! Currently commonly available jobs are mostly tech-related and often require use of computers; but they are too sedentary. If you master the art of blending your physical and computer activities together, you will do an awesome justice to your health and longevity. Do you want to know how I do it myself? Well, just look at me on my Fit-Desk stationary bike! This is one of the few ways that I mix-up my work and workouts.

I wrote most of this blog while I was pedaling on it! The only drawback of this system is that after an hour or more of sitting on it your buttocks will start screaming at you! As I wrote the latter, I noticed that my butt is on fire! Isn’t it odd that perception and intensity of pain is a matter of mind! If it doesn’t cross our mind, it just doesn’t matter!

Guess what’s the coffee brand in my insulated mug? I give you a hint, it’s not Starbucks! It is, “Biggby Best, and I love my Biggby”! We buy 2-Ib whole bean bags from Costco, and then grind and brew as needed. Why, Biggby? Well, it is smooth and mellow…and more importantly, if you didn’t know before, it shares much in common with Michigan State University, and Northwestern Medical Review! They are all incepted and nurtured in East Lansing, Michigan!

Posture, posture, posture, and again posture! Maintaining an erect and straight posture is the key to your awesome look for many years to come. Are you ready for another confession of mine? I know you love to hear confessions and secrets! Do you remember how many times you’ve promised to keep the secrets that you were told…and you failed to keep them! Don’t worry, I have good news for you! Had they meant to be true secrets you wouldn’t have heard about them in the first place!

Well here we go; during my first year of college, in 1968, I gradually got disgusted with my vulture-neck-like and withdrawn-like posture. The caricature image that I used to see in the mirror of my mind was as if I was trying to pierce my chest with my nose and hiding my head in it. To correct the problem, I employed certain vigorous remedial efforts. The top 3 of those were: (1) tossing away the pillows and sleeping in supine position all night long so that the back of my head and my shoulder blades were all aligned on the same surface; (2) walking or climbing up or down the stairs with heavy textbooks on my head; and (3) being consciously aware of my posture and trying to keep my chest and head up at all times and while sitting. You know what! It was a tough endeavor, but I stuck with it, and I did it!

What does a good posture do for us? Keeping your posture straight, strengthens your muscles from your feet to your head. This is an awesome continuous, and all-day-long workout that steadily and without making much fuss burns lots of calories for us and let us blossom out. Would you rather be a withdrawn person or the one who blossoms out and gets the attention of the whole world? If you’re opting for the former, all I can say is that psychiatrists can do magic for you, and they can turn the rest of your life into a more meaningful and happier life for you.

Never forget your core workout! Belly (abdominal) fat is by far the most annoying bodily feature for all of us. It is the most obvious indicator of overindulgence and lack of physical activities. The good news is that the most effective treatment for this problem is performing sit-ups and abdominal crunches that you can do on any flat surfaces. Although I must add that I personally prefer doing them on cushiony mats! Core exercises target our lower back, abdomen, hips, pelvis and thighs. They are essential for maintaining our balance, stability, elegant postures and graceful gaits. 

Strong abdominal muscles are the accessory backbones of our body! Strong abs are key to longer and healthier life! Anyone with lower back pain or history of a herniated disk is doomed to have repetitive flares of agonizing and paralytic pains that at times bring tears to their eyes. Why is this so? Look at it this way; the main bulk of our weight is above our waist, but all that weight is supported by our lumbar vertebrae, that are less than 2 inches wide. Strengthening our abs will provide adjunct support to our lumbar spine and bear a big chunk of our upper body weight. As a result, it minimizes our chances for sustaining lumbar injuries. I guess now you understand why your doctors always stress that the best remedy for chronic back pain is shedding your extra weight!

Have you ever paid attention to the types of workouts that most young guys do at the gyms?

They are mainly focused on their chest- and arm-blasting (biceps and triceps) workouts! Hardly you see them working on their glutes (buttocks), abs or quads. These young fellows can’t see the years way ahead of them! They fail to see that their bulky arms and chest that are resting on tiny abs and buttocks are a prelude to lifelong backaches and extended immobility. So, what can we do about this? A minimum of 5 to 30 minutes of daily abs workout will do the trick for most of us. I know of several healthy-looking 75-year or older folks at my health cub, who claim that they have been doing sit-ups for as long as they remember, every morning, before stepping down from their bed. If you ask me about my abs workouts, I’ll tell you that in one form or the other, they consume about 10% of my entire daily workout.

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Well, I understand that our open house time is up! All, I can say is “thank you for coming over to my mini gym! Hope to catch you healthily down the road again!