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By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
The importance of keeping fit only increases with age, and with that in mind, a new program is coming to Hays via the Cottonwood Extension District to help keep area residents approaching their senior years get active and find their way to better health.
The Stay Strong Stay Healthy program, while new to Hays has been a fixture in Kansas for several years targeting middle-aged to older adults.
The $20 program will last eight weeks, with the first meeting set for Oct. 26 at the extension district office, 601 Main. Sessions will then run from 10 to 11 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays until Dec. 16.
"So we'll meet 16 times for an hour, twice a week, said Bernie Unruh, Cottonwood Extension District agent. " And just over that time period, we were so fortunate to see some really good changes in people, they just became stronger. They are supposed to. The idea is to do it every other day, do strengthening every other day walk, you can still walk every day, but just to get people up and moving."
She said especially with a modern, primarily sedentary lifestyle, a lack of activity can be detrimental to health.
"If you go home and you sit down, and you don't get up and get moving, then your body just, it relaxes and nothing," Unruh said. "There's no metabolism happening. There's nothing happening. So sitting is our worst disease."
Participants in the program will be exposed to gradually increasing activity, she said, with the goal of increasing strength and activity levels.
"We do some stretching exercises at the beginning," Unruh said. "And then there is a program. And so we start out pretty easy, really only doing five repetitions. ... We do the upper body and the lower body, I mean, the very first thing we do is stand up and sit down and stand up and sit down five times.
"And then a couple of weeks later, we're doing six times and then eight times and then 10 times and then doing 10 times twice. So it's amazing how you can increase over the eight weeks."
"And so it can be at many levels. We're not going to get down on the floor and do push-ups. We're not going to, you know, do jumping jacks, it starts pretty slow and then we do cool down at the end. And so it does last about an hour in the beginning."
Accompanying the training, she said will be nutrition information and training recommendations for outside the sessions.
Since their inception, Unruh said Stay Strong Stay Healthy programs have grown in popularity, brought into Kansas via Missouri, who works with eight other states to bring the program to residents throughout the region.
Interested participants can sign up at the district office. Forms can also be found online.
During registration, Unruh said some information would be collected to ensure the program is working at an attainable pace for the participants.
"You could be a person that is seriously not doing hardly any exercise, being pretty sedentary, and we can still have you come and get started," Unruh said. "But we do kind of want to know where you're at."
And she said she doesn't believe any condition is automatically disqualifying.
"I'm going to say that every physician is going to say, yes, you need to do this," Unruh said. "We've never had a physician say no, you're not doing this, even if you have to have a walker in front of you, and you have to hang on. Or if you have to have a chair, we can get a chair that has hands on it, so you could push yourself up, but we just have to get your body moving."
Unruh said exercise could also be a powerful way to fight stress, and with the group setting of the program, the encouragement from others with similar levels of fitness can help participants stay motivated.
"One way is to exercise. Another way is to stay connected with someone," Unruh said. "There was a seminar that I went to and I thought this was really cool that (suggested) to start your day you should text, if you text, text two people before 10 o'clock. Text ... and just stay connected."