Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Melody Schoenfeld with Flawless Fitness in Pasadena, California, and I'm here to talk about abdominal exercises for seniors. Now, it really depends on what kind of a senior that you are quite frankly. If you're a super strong senior, you can do anything anyone else can do. And that's the kind of senior I plan to be. But, if you're a senior who has some, some problems with movement, then, we'll just start from the ground up. One of the easiest exercises you can do is a basic pelvic tilt where you just lay your back on the floor and you're going to try to tilt your pelvis. So, you're essentially squeezing your butt and you're using your abdominals to bring your, your pelvis up kind of towards the ceiling. Right? So, it's not lifting your back off the floor. Now, I'm a big fan of Life Skills; so, one thing I think people should be able to do is get up and off the ground. So, doing crunches is not going to be particularly useful. I don't think crunches are useful anyways. But, we'll talk about that another time. So, you should be able to sit up. Right? So, we start with the legs straight. You put the arms out in front of you and you try to just sit all the way up. Right? If you're not there yet, do what you can. Right? You do what you can to get up there. So, if you're in a place where all you can do is fist to get up there; I like to get away with it for a little while, just for a little while. But, what you want to try to do is you want to try to start to build up that strength to get all the way up. An easy way to do that is figure out where your sticking point is. So, suppose this is your sticking point, you hold that there. Right? And then, every time you try to get pass that point. So, you hold it up, your sticking point and you wait and you wait. And then, next time you try it again and then, maybe next time you're going to get pass your sticking point. And that's actually the general rule of thumb for any exercise where you have a sticking point and you hold that sticking point for a little while and eventually, you're going to be able to buss through it. But, those are some great ways to start and then, you just work your way up from there and become Superman; you'd be able to bounce things up off your belly and you'll be fine. I'm Melody Schoenfeld, and this have been exercises for the abdominals for seniors.