Men's Health: 3 Problems That Affect Your Mobility

Looking back at your younger days, you used to be able to squat or walk two miles without panting, touch your toes without bending your knees. Suddenly you're fifty years and it hits you that you can’t play football with your son, while it’s becoming more difficult getting up from a low couch. You hate exercise these days; even the slightest physical activity is just too much. You prefer going around in your car, being driven by someone else of course, you sleep a lot and snore so loud your wife has to put plugs in her ears. They say it's old age slowly creeping up. After several years of youthful vibrancy, you seem to be losing it. Admit it you are worn and torn.

Does this experience sound familiar? The stark reality is that many men are getting less agile.  Why? You have put more of the wrong kind of strain on your joints at earlier ages. You have damaged your joints by having weak and inflexible tendons and muscles and by being overweight. You have become complacent over the years, thinking your youthful vigour and energy will continue forever. Rather than continue the physical activity that sustained you during your youth, you slowly let go and instead wine and dine, indulge in unhealthy habits, sleep late, or not at all, trying to burn your candles at both ends. Frankly the result is slow degeneration of your body – wearing and tearing in bits and pieces starting from your 30’s. Between the age of 40 and 50, the damage already shows up in your physique – dull skin, obesity, potbelly, and breathlessness.

The good news is that the damage can be reversed, or at least reduced. You can beat wear- and -tear and become more agile, limber, lithe, and energetic than ever before so you can continue to be physically active without the grunts and groans. Remember, for many, wear- and- tear is part of aging. Wear- and- tear saps the important elements of your youth, replacing with creaky, groaning joints tired, sore, inflexible muscles, which inevitable leads to wear and tear arthritis. You can detect the early warning signs of arthritis before it hits.

What is the difference between wear- and- tear and arthritis? Wear- and- tear is pure mechanical damage. Arthritis occurs when this mechanical damage triggers chemical reactions within a joint that cause its destruction.  No effects of aging are more important to eliminate than those that affect your muscles and joints because they bear the major brunt of wear- and- tear. As muscles become stiff and joints become painful and limited in their range of movement, you actually begin to look and feel older.

The following information on exercises to perform will make you almost pain-free.

1.Stiffness

Endlessly sitting in your cars, and at your desks with increasing computer use, leads to muscle shortening and muscle pulls. If you don’t  stretch your tendons and muscles, they get shorter and shorter, impeding your movements and putting stress on your joints. Tendons that are not stretched regularly re-form thicker, as well. This is because the body lays down new collagen in tendons. When it pours the collagen into a shortened tendon, it strengthens that weakened tendon by making it thicker, limiting your range of motion.

Similarly, when muscles are not used, the body lays down new collagen in response to the lack of movement. Any unused muscle will become shortened, tight, and immobile, sometimes within days. Why? It’s the body's way of balancing an inactive or underused joint. How do you keep your muscles and tendons supple? Put stretching back into your workout. What are the benefits of stretching? 1. Stretching delivers relief from the aches and pains of wear and tear. 2. Stretching stabilises your joints by strengthening and coordinating the small muscles that exert fine control over your joints, and by protecting them from jarring movements. 3. Stretching improves your posture, strength, and flexibility.

2. Frail Muscles

Weakness of the quadriceps muscles is one of the earliest symptoms reported by arthritis patients and often precedes the development of knee pain and disability. As a matter of fact it is a better determinant of pain and disability than even x-ray.  As you’re now aware that you lose muscle with age, beginning around 40, accelerates at age 50, and by age 80, you have lost approximately 40% of your total skeletal muscle mass. But much of this decline can be avoided with strength training.

The thinking is that it’s the joint damage that causes the muscle weakness, so the next step for you will be to build new muscle to protect your joints, primarily your knee joints. Every man should do resistance training for his quadriceps, the muscles on the front of the thighs. Why? Quite simply, the quadriceps act as brakes. As your legs descend during a normal stride, the quadriceps slow the heels as they approach the ground. Once your heels hit the ground, your quadriceps are shock absorbers that dissipate potentially damaging forces before they hit the knee joints. With weakened quads, the load goes straight to your joints as your heels land on the pavement. Strong quadriceps also functions as stabilisers that guard against shearing, and twisting forces on the knees. Strong quadriceps will allow you to be more active. And the more active you are, the more calories you can burn.

3. Excess Weight

Imagine carrying 100kg around; 20 kg over your ideal weight. Think of the strain on your knees, hips and shoulders. Soon your body begins to wear and tear with the excess weight. Hence, the more pain you have the less activity you engage in, while the kilos keep piling up. Doctors have always advised that weight loss leads to a decrease in arthritis pain, but weight gain dramatically increases the pain.

How do you resolve it? The biggest problem is that painful joints make vigorous exercise tougher to do. As a result, the less you exercise, the greater weight gain, which is potentially dangerous to the body. So, you have to burn your calorie intake with aerobic exercise without injuring your joints. The best exercises are walking, bicycling, tai chi, and particularly swimming, which is very gentle on the joints of your lower body. If you suffer from kneecap pain, try swimming with fins. Adding fins forces you to kick a little more straight-legged, so you would not put pressure on your knee.

 

Assaulting these three problem areas with a smart program of stretching, strengthening, and weight loss will help you feel dramatically better than you have felt in a decade. So just do it.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons.