Warming Them Up to Exercise : Diane Edwards’ ‘Prime Moves’ offers the elderly a ‘step-by-step fitness program for a healthier life’ and debunks the myths about old age.
LAGUNA HILLS--At 79, Milt Plotnick is far more physically active than he ever was at 49.
When the Leisure World resident gets up in the morning, he does 20 minutes of stretching exercises and 50 to 60 pushups. After breakfast, he rides his bike for an hour; afternoons, he swims a half-mile--nonstop.
That’s not to mention taking a strenuous conditioning class three times a week where he joins 150 other Leisure World residents in doing aerobics, calisthenics and stretching exercises to the strains of Sousa marches and Top 10 tunes.
The lean and trim Plotnick, a retired controller for Saks Fifth Avenue, can’t imagine not exercising.
“It’s kept me alive, I’ll tell you that,” says Plotnick, who not only shed 30 pounds but a sedentary lifestyle. “It’s a wonderful thing for a man to keep physically fit and mentally alert.”
Plotnick is one of some 8,000 people a month who work out at the Leisure World fitness center under the guidance of Diane Edwards, founder and director of one of the largest and most successful fitness programs for older adults in the country.
“I credit everything to her,” says Plotnick. “This is the greatest gal I’ve ever known. It’s her personality and ability to guide us into taking care of ourselves.”
Says Ruth Rowland, 89, who started fitness classes for the first time in her life when she and her husband moved to Leisure World 10 years ago: “She has really changed my life. I’ve become very agile. I have energy. I walk all the time. I just don’t sit. And I think she instills in you that you can do anything, that you don’t have to just be an old lady.”
Edwards’ fans are legion, and now the fitness guru of Leisure World has put her expertise into book form.
“Prime Moves: Low Impact Exercises for the Mature Adult” (Avery; $12.95) emphasizes the benefits that come with regular exercise and, in the process of offering a “step-by-step fitness program for a healthier life,” debunks the myths about old age.
Edwards, a professor of physical education in the Emeritus Institute at Saddleback College, guides the reader in custom designing an exercise program. The book, written with author and journalist Kathy Nash, also offers special exercises for those with arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes or heart disease.
When Edwards began conducting fitness classes at Leisure World 19 years ago, the retirement community had just finished serving as the site of a pioneer four-year study on physical fitness and the older adult conducted by a USC research team.
As team leader Herbert A. de Vries says in the book’s foreword, “25 years ago, the prevailing medical opinion was that the older individual was ‘untrainable.’ The ‘experts’ believed any physical conditioning that began after age 40 produced only slight effects--and after age 60, no observable improvement in function.”
But the study of men and women aged 56 to 87 showed--and other studies have since corroborated--that older people not only do benefit from physical exercise but can benefit as much as (or greater than) a younger person.
Times have indeed changed since De Vries conducted his study.
Today, Edwards said, there are some 20,000 repeat visits a month at the Leisure World fitness center--a gymnasium and an equipment room with treadmills, bicycles and weightlifting equipment.
“It’s just booming right now,” says Edwards. “When I first started, it was really a novelty: ‘How dare you exercise those people? They’re supposed to rock.’ ”
Plotnick, who is featured in the book, was one of Edwards’ first students, and he amply illustrates the strength and vigor regular exercise brings to older people.
“It’s such great satisfaction to see these people for years and years,” said Edwards. “It’s amazing: They just keep going and they really look healthy and well. They tell me all the time the remarkable things they do. They participate in exercise programs on cruise ships and they’re doing the same things as the young people.”
Indeed, Edwards emphasizes that age is not a factor.
“What the factor is is the sedentary lifestyle,” she said. “And they know (exercise) works; otherwise they wouldn’t keep coming. And they feel so good and look so good and it enables them to participate in all the recreational things they hoped to do when they retired.
“It’s the quality of life. That’s the whole issue here, the quality of life.”
Edwards said the benefits of regular exercise are numerous, including lowered heart rates, reduced blood pressure and improved respiration. That’s not to mention better sleep and reduced depression and stress.
And, she said, one of the most important benefits for older people is increased strength and flexibility.
“That’s a whole different issue that enables people to basically maintain independence,” she said. “They can get across the street in time to make the light, they can turn their head when they drive to see behind them, and their reaction time is improved. They’re also able to get out of the bathtub, carry in groceries, carry suitcases when they travel, carry golf clubs and get out of the back seat of a car.
“These, to me, are the practical aspects of exercise.”
Edwards said she’s “had people with strokes come in with wheelchairs and helpers. With time they advance to the walker and four-pronged cane and pretty soon they’re on their own and back and functioning again.”
It’s important, she emphasizes, “to see what we can do to keep these people from being hospitalized. If we can get people so they can be more functionally capable, this has got to have a big impact on the cost of medical care.”
Edwards said local physicians have told her that right away they can spot older patients who are in exercise classes.
“First, they can hop on the examining table; you know how high those are,” she said. “And if they have to have surgery--hip replacement or whatever--they have less anesthetics, they leave the hospital sooner with fewer complications and are back to their normal activities much quicker.
“The word is spreading that these kinds of things are happening, that these people feel better.”
Edwards said there are several reasons behind her writing the book.
“One is we have a lot of people who come from other parts of the country; we call them the Snow Birds. They love the program, but when they go back home they don’t have anything to keep them going. They’ve been after me (to write a book): ‘Are these (guidelines) written down?’ ‘You should do a book’ “--she laughed--”You know, nag, nag, nag.”
Edwards said she also receives calls from activity directors and others who work with an older population who want fitness guidelines for their aging populations.
What she wants her book to accomplish, Edwards said, “is to get people to understand it doesn’t matter what age you are. You can start (exercising) at any time, and when you do, you get all these beneficial effects.”
Book Signings. Danielle Marie (“Straight From the Heart”) will sign from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Fahrenheit 451 Books, 509 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach. . . . Miriam Polster (“Eve’s Daughters”) will sign at Fahrenheit from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday. . . . J.A. Jance (“Without Due Process”) will sign at noon Sunday at Book Carnival, 348 S. Tustin Ave., Orange.
Send information about book-related events to: Books & Authors, View, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Deadline is two weeks before publication.