7 Exercises to do Everyday? Scratch that! Here’s why . . .
A few hyper-specific exercises everyday won’t prepare you for life
Here at The MOB we’re focused on creating and maintaining our members' quality of life through a mix of strength, mobility, and agility training specifically designed for the older adult. The metric we encourage members to measure their progress by is in the form of a question: How well can you do all the things you want to do? Whether it’s playing tennis into your 80’s, keeping up with your garden, or carrying your grandkids, we focus on the training to help meet those goals.
One of the things that drives me bonkers is reading things in the paper or on social media that reduce the complexity of what we need to do stay strong and mobile as we age. You’ve seen it: “The 7 exercises to do everyday!” or “The best 3 exercises for anti-aging!" or “The 5 best exercises to stay fit!” These types of articles suggest that specific exercises alone will prepare you for moving well into your later years.
The Difference Between Movement Skills and Exercises
I want to offer a different way of thinking about it. What about movement skills? A movement skill is a type of movement rather than a specific exercise. For example, reaching for something is a movement skill, while an overhead press is a specific exercise that might help with reaching. So rather than The 7 Exercises to Everyday, I want to offer you the 7 Fundamental Movement Skills to practice every day.
If we exchange the word exercise with the word drill, you can remember it this way: focus on skills not drills when trying to assess your readiness for everyday life. But before we dive into it, why does this matter? It’s not just semantics!
Skills not Drills
There are many ways to perform each movement skill, allowing for a larger variety of movement and more options for your body to complete any given task. For example, there are countless ways to reach for something depending on what I'm doing. Reaching to change a lightbulb is different than reaching behind me to the backseat of the car to grab something which is different than reaching over a counter to pick up a heavy bag. The overhead press drill is great, but it only prepares me for one specific type of reaching scenario.
In short, there are many different exercises (drills) you may need to practice in order to be good at each movement skill. This will increase your movement vocabulary over time and create comprehensive coordination patterns. Just training one drill won't.
Movement skills are directly applicable to activities in daily life more than single exercises. For example, getting up and down off the floor is a directly applicable skill for daily life. The squat exercise may help with that, but it's not the only thing you're going to need to help you get better at the skill.
Movement skills speak to the brain differently than specific exercises. The brain likes to solve problems, and practicing movement skills allows your brain to incorporate a variety of movement options to help you complete the task at hand.
Most people find the idea of practicing movement skills more engaging and purposeful than just performing exercises for the sake of it. That means you’re more likely to stick to it and get more benefit over time. Also your progress will be immediatley palpable in daily life!
Exercises still have an important function!
Let me be clear. Exercises are essential! But they're the building blocks of a larger structure, not the structure itself. Thinking about training movement skills as a whole, while incorporating movement drills to work toward them, will help you maintain and improve your ability to do everyday activities for the decades into your second half of life.
If this still sounds confusing, don’t worry! It’ll make more sense as you go through the video examples of what I believe are the 7 fundamental movement skills to be practicing as a 50+ adult (but really any age!). You’ll immediately understand why I’m not offering you examples of 7 Exercises to do Everyday because within each skill are countless exercises you could do to practice it!
Ok are you ready?? Sign up for The MOBSTER below– a free and short monthly newsletter for aging well through movement to get the video delivered right to your inbox! You’ll also get the link to some Instagram stories showcasing daily examples of each skill along with examples of some exercises you might try out.