Helping Patients and Clients Upgrade Their Movement

Here’s Part 3 of our Best Practices series on the “soft” skills involved in helping your patients and clients get better, and, more importantly,  stay better.

An introduction to the series and Part 1 which focuses on beverage suggestions can be found here. Part 2 – all about food – can be found here.

This clinical tip is all about movement – a hugely important aspect of your patients’ total health. We asked SAFM students to share just One Favorite recommendation they have found to be particularly powerful when helping clients incorporate appropriate Movement and Activity into their daily routine. And we asked them to make it specific, practical, and hands-on.

We all know that movement is essential for optimal human functioning. Some clients are too sedentary – with lots of reasons on hand as to why they “can’t” do any exercise. Sometimes the word “exercise” is actually part of the problem. Or there’s no time. Or it hurts too much. Or it’s embarrassing. Or it’s inconvenient. With all this at play, we may have to help them get started or support them in sustaining an active but fledgling habit.

For other clients, their choice of notably aggressive or too frequent or too lengthy exercise is actually counter-productive to their disease reversal goals. 

So enjoy these toolbox pearls! Movement, like everything else, has to be assessed with a nuanced lens – avoiding the common pitfalls associated with over exercising, being too sedentary, or engaging in Activity which is not appropriate for a particular client at a particular point in time.  N=1.  

SAFM practitioners are savvy at lifestyle interventions. And they generously share their ideas and success stories with their peers. The pearls below are just a small, recent sampling of commonplace fare on our Practitioner Forum. This article is Part 3 in this Best Practices series; you may access Part 1 and Part 2 too.

Is your toolbox overflowing with tools like these?  Will you add to it right now?  Please do.  

Our movement for good medicine that actually prevents and reverses chronic disease … and the patients you’re passionate about serving need You to be highly capable and confident in facilitating lifestyle change.

 

 

 

 

 

Part 3 – Movement

Dance Break

For many of our clients, it pays to start with dance. Not fancy dancing where you need lessons, but just turning on some music they love and dancing for a solid five minutes with some gusto multiple times a day. Many SAFM practitioners take dance breaks in between clients – a great way to combine a Movement break with vitamin J (for Joy). This type of practice can shift mood, bring the person back into their body, and reconnect them with fun and enjoyment.  Activates the parasympathetic nervous system!

Collaborate with your clients to create short playlists (3-4 songs each) and encourage them to dance multiple times a day. Or introduce them to a virtual online dancing platform such as Body Groove.  They can do it in the privacy of your own home and choose the intensity and length of the activity.

Move with Your Life

For some clients, the concept of a “gym” is a big part of their resistance to exercise.  The time and expense of having to “go there” to workout, the potential self-consciousness, the perception that it might be intimidating or the equipment might be hard to use…  We can all benefit from returning to the basic concept of Using our Bodies in the course of normal life.  We can set new habits in this vein and benefit frequently from choices such as parking at the back of the lot and enjoying a nice walk to the front door, using two baskets at the grocery store instead of a cart, biking to a friend’s house or to work instead of taking the car, or avoiding all escalators/elevators and opting for stairs every time instead (and saying yes especially when carrying something like a suitcase vs. using that as an excuse to not do so). 

Joyful Movement

Your patients’ intuition can hold the answers to many health-related questions. And so it is with Exercise – ask them what kind of movement resonates with them? It might be walking, hiking, gardening or riding a bike. It might be play time with a beloved pet.  Or a child.  Or they may want to play with a hula hoop or a jump rope. You’ll never know unless you ask.

Whatever they choose should put a smile on their face.

Involve Nature

Ever heard of forest bathing? Being in nature confers a multitude of benefits. Try to find ways for your patients to Move in nature – whether a hike in a park, planting a garden, doing an outdoor bootcamp or rowing a boat in a lake – nature provides a therapeutic and wonderful backdrop for physical activity.

Aggressive Exercisers

For some, aggressive exercise may be appropriate. But what should raise a red flag is if someone is exhausted after exercise, or if they are experiencing signs of poor recovery such as excessive soreness or  injuries.   

Remind clients that exercise is controlled stress to the body – designed to activate the body’s own innate antioxidant defenses as a way of supporting healing and vitality as well as muscle maintenance and growth. And that affects a whole bunch of tissue – our skeletal muscles, our heart, our lungs, and many others. But exercise fundamentally generates oxidative stress. And so, when people don’t have good, strong antioxidant function, they may feel lasting effects of wear and tear of that controlled oxidative damage from the exercise. This is where cutting back or changing the type of Activity people engage in is in order until the body’s antioxidant capacity is sufficient to handle the oxidative load.

Stack the habits – AKA Exercise Snacks

Habit stacking is a behavioral technique where someone engages in mini-habits which eventually lead to more entrenched “larger” behaviors.  One of our practitioners calls these Exercise Snacks. Movement lends itself beautifully to mini-habits. Here are some mini-habit / exercise snack suggestions from SAFM practitioners:

• One push up whenever you think of it
• A set of sit-ups whenever you are about to sit down for a meal
• Squats while brushing your teeth
• Rebounding for 5 minutes on the hour
• Putting on your exercise clothes upon waking as a signal that some type of activity will happen later
• A dozen press-ups against the kitchen counter while waiting for the kettle to boil
• 30 air squats every time a client uses the bathroom

You get the idea. Take this opportunity to reassure your clients that  Movement confers benefits even if undertaken in spurts – 3 short 10-minute walks are as beneficial as one 30-minute one. This is key for those clients who can’t allocate a big block of time for exercise. Those mini-habits and Exercise Snacks are as beneficial to health as prolonged, sustained exercise.

Movement Time is Family Time

For people with young children that have a hard time exercising, encourage them to find activities which include the kids. Going for a walk and “racing” to the corner can get the heart rate up. Obstacle courses are an opportunity for a friendly family competition. Explore a fun baby yoga routine or find fun exercise videos online that include children. If your clients are creative, they can get in some exercise, build bonds with their children and wear them out all at the same time. No guilt required!

TV Time is Movement Time

A busy Dad who wanted to spend time with his kids in the evening vs. taking time away from home to go to the gym, began doing an exercise stint during *every* commercial break of family TV time. And his kids joined in! They walked up and down the stairs, did pushups, used hand weights, hula hooped, and had short exuberant dance parties. This is Movement AND time together, laughter, connection, and – yes! – fun. A great reminder that our assumptions about what a new habit will require of us (especially negative aspects!) don’t necessarily have to be true .

Partnership

Many clients can benefit from having a Movement Accountability Buddy. Encourage them to seek out others who may want to engage in additional physical activity; research shows that being accountable to someone increases follow-through.  If a person is already not getting enough social connection and stimulation, then working out on their own is also not likely to be sustainable.  Having a buddy or perhaps joining an exercise group or class can satisfy many different needs at once.

Change it Up

A key concept that few patients understand is that movement and exercise have to be commensurate with their fitness level, state of health and current needs. Just like diet may need to change with time, so does the type of activity that a client engages in.

Many patients get stuck in an exercise rut by engaging in the same activity for years at a time – and while this can be beneficial, it pays to change things up. Any comprehensive Movement program should include elements of cardio, strength training and stretching/flexibility. Encourage your clients to go outside of their exercise comfort zone – if they love strength training, perhaps trying a yoga class would be beneficial. If they run for exercise, encourage them to work on their abdomen and upper body. You get the idea.  Long-standing habits build comfort but also boredom.  

Building Strength Can Be Portable

Kudos to whoever invented those exercise bands – easy to throw in your travel bag or keep an extra set at the office. Strength training is so important for long term health – strengthening bones, helping the body burn fat and balancing blood glucose. If bands are not your client’s thing, encourage them to join an app such as the 7-minute workout. Many of the workouts do not require any equipment and only take 7 minutes!

Yoga’s the Thing

The benefits of Yoga are many and far reaching, and it’s not difficult to find a Yoga modality that fits anyone’s fitness level and exercise goals. The wonderful thing about Yoga is that it combines physical benefits with breathing – helping with stress management and parasympathetic activation. Even intense power yoga modalities incorporate appropriate deep breathing to minimize sympathetic activation that is usually present with vigorous exercise.

Face the Barriers

Ask your patients what the barriers are that keep them from engaging in physical activity – perhaps it’s time, pain, distaste, boredom, lack of past ‘success’, lack of self-confidence (have people made fun of them or have they failed in the past?). Together, find creative ways to overcome the obstacles in small incremental doses and always celebrate ANY movement as a cumulative goal.  We don’t transcend restrictions and barriers we don’t explore! 

We hope you enjoy and benefit from these Movement hacks and suggestions. Visit Part 1 of this clinical tip for tips on beverages and Part 2 featuring food.