Nordic walking gets you outside

You probably have beautiful sites near where you live. Get out and enjoy them!

When power tripping is a good thing

Did you know strength isn't the only thing to think about? It turns out active agers should think about another component of fitness: power.

Where strength is the ability to move objects and your body over a distance, power is the ability to do it quickly, e.g., standing up from a chair, going up stairs. People typically handle less weight for power than for strength.

Sarcopenia sets in as we get older. We start to lose muscle mass, which affects strength and power.

• The shocking statistic is we can lose up to 40% of our muscle mass with 30% happening between the ages of 50 and 80 years.
• Total strength, therefore, goes down as well.
• Power is important for doing our daily activities.
• Additionally, the older we get, the greater our risk of falling becomes. That risk goes down the stronger we are, especially as we're able to generate more power.
• The linked study in this paragraph suggested that stronger and more powerful people are less likely to fall, especially when that strength and power is in the lower body.
• Focused exercise in the study appeared to turn back the clock up to 20 years, making the participants stronger and more powerful.

A manual from Harvard Medical School tells us we can gain back that strength and power with exercise.

• Exercise tends to restore the neural pathways needed to activate the fast twitch muscles.
• Increased muscle mass also makes the body more efficient at processing sugar, oxygen, and other nutrients in the blood.

Since power is the product of force (how much) and velocity (how fast), we have to improve either one or both to gain power.

• This linked study came to an interesting conclusion: it's more important for older people to generate power (move lighter loads quickly) than to display strength (move a heavy weight).
• Examples of generating power included getting across the street quickly, getting one's arms in front to break a fall (martial arts version linked), or moving one's foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal.

To remedy this, weightlifting is the first thought that comes to mind. However, what role can Nordic walking play?

• The first thought is to walk uphill as fast as you can. Fighting gravity in a speed drill is one way to improve lower body power.
• You can also skip. These explosive moves help develop power, especially when you thrust your lead knee higher.
• Bounding may take a bit more to learn than skipping, but it generates quite a bit of power because you're essentially doing a series of long jumps.

Nordic walking and cancer

A fascinating article described an experiment where blood samples right after exercise were more effective at slowing the growth of cancer cells.

What did the researchers do?

• Immediately after the research participants exercised, the researchers put the participants' blood into petri dishes containing colon cancer tumor cells. 
• After letting the participants rest, they took more blood and put it into petri dishes with cancer tumor cells. 

The researchers noticed the cancer cells grew more slowly in the blood drawn immediately after exercise than in the blood drawn after a period of rest.

What the researchers are thinking at this point: "The researchers think they may have identified that something in subsequent analyses of the men’s blood. They found a large increase in molecules involved in inflammation immediately after exercise. Inflammation can slow cell growth and reproduction. So a transitory increase in inflammatory markers after exercise might be helping to jam the proliferation of tumor cells."

What this could mean for the rest of us: "The changes in exercisers’ blood were potent but 'transient,'...So activities would have to be repeated to provide any continuing protection, and it remains unclear how intense or prolonged that exercise ideally would need to be, or if the effects extend equally to fighting other types of cancer."

How should we apply the lessons: Maybe it would mean that we should think about being active throughout the day rather than sedentary most of the day with spurts of exercise.