How to prevent falls

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I walk around the 'hood for exercise. But, a Michigan winter takes the charm out of that. I have Salvation Army rescue TV and DVD player in the back room, where my exercise bike is. I have several TV series DVD box sets. So, during the last couple winters, I have pedaled my way through “Babylon 5”, “Nichols”, “Bret Maverick”, “Band of Brothers”, and, last winter, 8 seasons of “Stargate SG-1” . I still have two more seasons of “Stargate”, as well as all of “Poldark”, “Foyle’s War”, “Mr Selfridge”, “V”, “Enterprise”, “I Claudius”, the first season of “War of the Worlds”, and I forget what else. And then there are all the box sets the local public library has.

Steve

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If you like Foyle’s war, the original Inspector Morse series with John Thaw is worth a look.

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And if you liked the Babylon 5 and Stargate sci-fi series, I’d recommend Firefly, The Expanse, and Westworld. The Expanse was really good with spectacular space scenes and special effects in general.

Pete

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Move to the mountains. I walk a lot in the summers, and snowboard every day the lifts are running. Plus the 5x a week yoga/pilates. When I can’t snowboard any more, it’ll be time to move someplace where you only see snow in the movies.

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[quote=“Wyomingtim, post:24, topic:120403”]
Move to the mountains. I walk a lot in the summers, and snowboard every day the lifts are running.

Do you ever cross country ski ? You might be able to shift to that if the pounding from snowboarding gets to be too much. XC has it’s own form of pounding, but the falls are at a much slower speed than any of the alpine tumbles. Can get hurt bad, no doubt, those skinny ski’s definitely do not handle like alpine ski’s. Had 1 downhiller friend that used to teasingly disparage the skiing ability necessary for xc… until we went out and did some skiing. He was not handling the downhill turns at all. And to say he struggled with the uphill climbing is an understatement,lol. He hasn’t gone out with me again, and he rarely downhills anymore, which is something he luv’d. Same age, so I keep telling him to get back on the slopes as soon as he can, or he’ll never do it again. Hope he gets back out this winter.

I’m like you, I luv winter, just as much as summer. Fall is pretty awesome,too. Spring can be tedious in Michigan, it rains, a lot, lol.

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I second The Expanse.

One thing I remember reading about it, they got the majority of physics correct. Ever notice the ships are flying backwards when decelerating (using rockets to slow down, there are no brakes in space) while most other sci-fi shows still have them facing forward?

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I am a regular gym goer, 6 days a week, and I still lift relatively heavy weights for someone in their 60s. But last week I wondered why my legs were so sore for a few days. Much more sore than after my usual Friday leg workout. Turns out that just a little bit of simple weeding in the yard really is the equivalent of at least twice the soreness resulting from a heavy leg workout at the gym! I swear it may have been a half hour or so of weeding, but I suppose crouching down 100 or 150 times in half an hour with just body weight might be more of a workout than 4x hack squat with 0, 135, 225, 275 lbs, followed by 2x leg extension, 2x leg curls, 2x calf raises, etc. I still did the Friday workout as the soreness had mostly dissipated by Friday afternoon.

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What are you doing with my dog? Send her back.

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@MarkR building strength with weights is important. I do it myself and have done since age 20.

But the movements are repetitive and always in a specific plane of motion. That has two problems.

  1. The repetitive motions do not work the brain and nervous system to react rapidly and unpredictably in many different directions the way that dancing (Zumba) does. That opens you to potential injury if you suddenly reach out in a different direction. (For example, if you start to slip and reach out to catch yourself.)

  2. As you noticed, the limited reps in weight-lifting motions don’t replicate real-life situations such as weeding the garden using body weight. This is why an intermediate yoga class using body weight exercises is both difficult and practical for building real-world strength. I have not yet regained enough strength to do most of these the way I used to.
    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBCxhRAIgwOMC8bF-uy9tCt-LF4tnJmi3

Wendy

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I watched Morse, until I moved to metro Detroit, in 96. The Detroit PBS station did not follow the PBS schedule. So, instead of Mystery being on Thursday prime time, they showed Mystery randomly, in the middle of the night. So, I missed the last two or three seasons of Morse, including his fatal heart attack on the Oxford campus, and Lewis finishing up the case. Didn’t see “Mystery” again, until they combined it with “Masterpiece” on Sunday evenings. Did enjoy “Lewis”, though I was bummed at their killing off his wife, to make him the grumpy old bachelor that Morse was.

Favorite Morse episode “The Promised Land”: the two parter when he and Lewis go to Australia, Morse, as usual, is grumpy and hates everything, but Lewis has a blast.

And, somewhere in my stack, I have most episodes of “Rumpole”.

Unfortunately, I have confirmed, by personal experience, that DVDs start to rot when they are 20 years old. So, to avoid straight rightoffs, I have given several series one last watch, then sold on eBay, including “Eerie Indiana”, “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr”, “Yes Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister”, “Cadfael”, “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century”, probably a couple more that I forget right now. I still have an antarctic exploration bundle on offer: “The Last Place on Earth”, which was on Masterpiece in the mid 80s, and “Shackleton”, which picked up where “Last Place…” ends, in 1912, and carries on through the end of the Shackleton expedition.

Steve

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My doctor recommended licking a bit of salt when feeling dizzy (low blood pressure). Later I discovered that licking a bit of low sodium salt (high in potassium) was a great help with muscle cramps.

Shoes! Good shoes! I find most modern shoes, made mostly out of rubber, to be too soft on the sole which makes it harder to walk on uneven terrain like cobblestones. They make OK walking shoes but not good hiking shoes (even with leather insoles).

The Captain

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@steve203 …a Rumpole fan? In case you missed it and are not averse to reading (or audiobooks), John Mortimer actually wrote a “prequel” in 2004. The Penge Bungalow Murders…

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders Google Search

A fun read…even if I did picture all the characters as they were in the TV series. When this series first aired on TV, we still lived in SE London…not too far from Penge. In fact, my train to work passed through Penge (on the London Bridge to Epsom Downs line)

A good many of the stations on that line are mentioned in various of the Sherlock Holmes books, too…although theyd be villages out in the countryside in Victorian times, rather than part of London’s sprawl.

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For the uninitiated, iirc, the Penge bungalow murders were Rumpole’s first big trial. He spoke of that case often.

Steve

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Yes. He always mentioned it as his first case. I imagine his publisher proposed the idea to him and he came up with a Rumpole-esque tale…and Penge was just an unlikely sounding place name when he started writing his stories.

I actually bought the combined Rumpole series this last Christmas for the new bloke in my daughter’s life…who’s a lawyer and gets a lot of earache from me about the craptaculous skills of Colorado divorce lawyers. Surprisingly, he really enjoyed them…in spite of being too young to have been introduced via the TV series.

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I, also, consider yard work a “gym substitute”. With my back surgery, I’m not supposed to do anything like that. But I do it anyway, I’m just really careful. Often my back complains for a few hours later in the day. I suspect that’s just from lack of use. I was just outside yesterday thinning trees because bulk pickup is this week (i.e. the city comes and removes whatever piles of rubbish you put on the street, saving me from having to haul stuff to the dump).

I took a break today (mostly), but have a bit more to do tomorrow. It is intermittent, i.e. I don’t have yard work every day, so the occasion visit to the gym is a good idea. Even if just to get my heart rate up for a while.

I prevent falls by sitting on my buttocks (really…the shortened version of that is banned?) in front of the computer (like now) or the TV (later this evening). Can’t fall if I’m sitting on my buttocks. :slight_smile:

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Old guys don’t have much padding there. It all moved around front. My back recovered from a tweek it suffered, after a couple weeks, but I am still having fierce sciatica, starting in one spot where I used to have padding. After two weeks of it not abating, today, I switched desk chairs, to see if the Haworth task chair I rescued from Salvation Army does not press on the magical spot, like my other chair apparently does.

Steve

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(i.e. the city comes and removes whatever piles of rubbish you put on the street, saving me from having to haul stuff to the dump).

Ha, good luck with your pickup. Our tree waste was a least a month ago and they still haven’t picked it up yet. Also what do you want to make a bet the minutes the finally get around to picking it up some ding dong will put his out because he doesn’t know the schedule or doesn’t care about the schedule. Schedule? You mean they have a schedule for that sort of stuff?

Our neighborhood looks like a dump year round. Thank you former mayor of Houston.

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Our town is very regular. Every five weeks. This is our week. Usually it happens on our pickup day (Thursday in our area), but not always. They’ve come as early as Monday or as late as Friday. So best to get it piled up by Sunday night.

Wasn’t picked up today, so I can keep adding to it until they do.

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Obviously not a participant in CrossFit. I have to get jeans with a 34-35 inch waist to go over my rear while my waist is 32.

Sometimes I have to be careful about getting into a negative feedback loop. Usually run across a time where its too hot, too rainy, etc to be outside doing something Wind up sitting down with a good book. Sitting for long periods even in different chairs or reclined on the couch, back stiffens up, makes it harder to get up and do stuff, leads to doing less, rinse repeat, recycle. Hitting the gym and doing some gardening seems to be the cure all. Many people think that having a “bad back” precludes them from working out when doing nothing is the worst you can do. I’ve suffered from sciatica off and on for about 40 years and keeping a strong back/legs is the best answer.

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I have a wide pelvis, for a guy. When pleated pants were the thing, I couldn’t wear them, because they would not lay flat. The pleats would pull open and look ridiculous. And this is when I weighed 160, with a 32" waist.

Steve