People Power

Monitor Your Progress And Meet Your Goals

By 

Bridget M.M. Simpson

ACE Personal Trainer

Masters of Health Services Management

Health care in our nation is a complex industry that attempts to meet the needs of a diverse population with a full spectrum of services.  In addition to general practitioners, specialists are available to offer additional care in the form of diagnostics, treatment plans, and most importantly, information.  Often, a visit to the doctor generates more questions on a range of issues, not just of the medical issue at hand, but the administrative concerns relating to how the care will be covered, what it will ultimately cost the consumer, and how the process will be navigated.

I once read Dr. Spock’s seminal work, Baby and Child Care, and remember one bit of reassurance that has stayed with me:  “Trust yourself.  You know more than you think you do.”  That applies to all of us, even in matters of health care.  If we are attentive, we will realize that there are many times when information will be presented to us that will cause us to think, “Wait a minute, I already knew that.”  One thing we need is a way to compile information in a way that reminds us of what we know, and enables us to be proactive in matters of our own health care, even as we consult with medical personnel.  Our priority is twofold:  We need to become a healthier nation and we need to spend less on our medical care whenever it is possible and appropriate. 

We are already seeing an increased awareness of the impact of lifestyle changes on health.  While some choices may contribute to risk factors, other choices may reduce risk factors.  When people become proactive regarding their wellness, it is helpful to do so within a framework of goals and rewards.  Goals can be as basic as being able to navigate from the car to the living-room with a bag of groceries, or a grandiose as participating in an IronMan triathlon.  In each case, people will have moments of progress, which I call Personal Best.  Your Personal Best is unique.  Many workplaces are incorporating workplace wellness programs in order to capitalize on the potential for healthier employees to qualify for lower priced premiums, which benefit both the employee and the employer.    

The Columbia Association in Columbia, Maryland, has what they call the WINN Program, which stands for When If Not Now.  It is aimed at new fitness center members who are interested in being introduced to the facilities with the help of a WINN coach who evaluates the WINNer’s medical limitations (based on a doctor’s input), possible impact prescription drugs may have on workouts, and interests.  The WINNer is informed about various group fitness activities appropriate to her level of expertise, and encouraged to try new things.  All WINNers are personally educated in the weight rooms to ensure proper posture and a workout is tailored to their needs and abilities.   WINNers use a low-tech chart to keep track of what machines they use, how many sets, and how many repetitions per set.  This chart allows a WINNer or coach to quickly scan weeks of work to see progress.  Being able to see clear evidence of progress can be motivating when a WINNer feels that she has not been making progress.  

My People Power goal is to introduce non-medical professionals and non-professional support groups into the lifestyle of a person interested in addressing the following general health concerns:  prevention, awareness of treatment options, and cost containment.  Health care is too important to take on faith, even if that faith is invested in a trusted doctor.  People need to be aware of options, but also, people need to be mindful of the importance of their own contribution and progress.  Culturally, we are conditioned to always see a fault that needs correction and to seek help to improve ourselves, and this can mean we overlook important accomplishments.  I would like people to look at their efforts and see accomplishments within the context of their own situations.  

No, Thank You!

The holiday season is drawing to a close.  Anyone overindulge?  

If you had a bit more of the holiday goodies than you wanted, was it because they were calling your name and you decided to indulge, or did you cave to pressure from a friend or family member who really wanted you to have something?  

Do we need to wear a pin to parties which says, “Please don’t subject me to peer pressure for (insert occasion of your choice)”?  

How should the following exchange progress:
How are you?
Fine, how are you?
Great!  Have you tried these cookies?
No, but they are cute.
Here, have one!
No, thank you.

At this point, the conversation could take many turns:
Ok, what have you been up to all week?
Why not?
What about this small one?

Do we need to resort to excuses which may or may not be considered sufficient?
I’m allergic.  (Can’t you take something?)
I’m diabetic. (Oh, but they are sugar free!)
I hate them.  (But they are so yummy!  What about those?)
I just don’t want one.  Nothing personal. (But it’s [insert occasion here]!)
So-and-so licked them.  (Save me- I’m grasping at straws!) 

Has anyone considered that not accepting no thank you is essentially starting an argument, and do we really want to do that at a party?  
Is there anyone who has not felt coerced into accepting something we didn’t want, just to keep someone else happy?  (Oh, this sweater is just perfect for you!)
Has anyone said no thank you without the instant worry that there is going to be an uncomfortable expectation of justification?  Do you really need to offer a graphic, medical reason to say no thank you?  Because even if there is one, are we obliged to share at parties?  
Do we need to admit to taking a handful of candy off every desk in the building from Halloween until New Year's Eve, every hour, and that this final cookie will set off an internal ticking time bomb which is primed to explode and coat everyone on our side of the room with icky guts?  (To which we hear, one more cookie after all that is no big deal?)

How about when we hear people say no, thank you, we accept it?  Imagine the relief we could generate!  A true gift.

It is so easy to say yes.  It is so easy to go along with things.  It is called giving in to peer pressure.  When the pressure is applied strongly enough, it is called bullying.  It adds stress to any occasion.  It makes people wonder why they aren’t worthy of consideration.  It leads to regret.  

How about we don’t ask questions if we don’t want to hear the answers?  

Real friends believe you when you say no, thank you. 

No questions asked.  

Time Travel- Elementary Information

In 2013, I had the occasion to be recognized by a former classmate after swimming in a two mile open water event.  The only thing I can imagine is that my hair, recently confined to a swim cap, was reminiscent of the lack of style I had in the sixth grade.  The woman asking me if I was Bridget T. was not at all familiar.  I no longer have the skill of placing people out of context, and she was not in a classroom (or about 11 years old).  I replied, “I used to be.”  She introduced herself, and I recalled being in class with her for three years, once upon a time.  The encounter was pleasant enough.  We had grown well past sixth grade angst in the approximately 35 years since our last encounter.  We compared notes on professions, children, and where we lived now.  

After this encounter, I made the pro forma searches through social media to see if we might keep in touch, but I didn’t see that happening.  We hadn’t really been friends, and I hadn’t given her a passing thought since we were in school together.  As pleasant as the visit was, I had no interest in going back to find other classmates in order to cultivate anything with any of them.  I don't wish to relive that time, but if I could go back, I would want to see me.  I have nothing to say to my former classmates, beyond the conversation that strikes up from a chance encounter.  I have plenty to say to my sixth grade self.  

I would say (although I really knew it at the time) 

that zits go away and braces will work.  

There would be many times of feeling like I looked good, 

and even times of feeling truly beautiful.   

I would say that for all the times I was picked last in gym, 

I would offer encouragement to beginning swimmers of all ages 

and take on endurance events like triathlon and open water swimming.  

I would encounter champions, including a few Olympians- 

one of whom was astonished by my ability (and willingness) to swim up to eight miles.  

I would say that although French class was never the path to fluency I hoped, 

I would one day walk through Paris.  

I would travel through many countries, 

and make myself understood with limited language skills and unlimited smiles.  

Marla says she and her friends asked, “What ever became of Bridget?”  Perhaps the greater question is to ask, “Did I ever think I’d be where I am?”  Fortunately, my younger self managed to muddle through without the wisdom or encouragement of hindsight.  It has been quite an adventure, with more to come.

All Generations into the Pool

Water Your Community And It Will Grow

reprinted from AKWA Newsletter, April/May 2014 issue, with the permission of Aquatic Exercise Association.

In active fitness centers, schedules may include classes aimed at specific skill levels and intensities: Arthritis Aqua, Aqua Kick Boxing, Aquatic Pilates, and many more.  If we are going to embrace aqua as a lifelong activity, we should occasionally offer a class or workshop which is inclusive.  All ages, all skills, all active.  The water is the ultimate equalizer. Most of our standard moves can be adapted to suit any level of intensity, so as long as working to a personal best is encouraged, nobody should feel out of place and everyone can work to capacity.   

We have all had times when we taught classes to parents with children in tow.  Sometimes the kids had a place to play away from the aqua class, and sometimes the kids would slip into the pool and try to stay close to their parents.  Sometimes, a handful of seniors or parents or triathletes cluster in one corner of the pool and chat during the workout.  The primary objective of the class is that the workout promote fitness.  Talking, children, or other distractions need to be addressed out of consideration and fairness to the entire class, but there should be a level of tolerance, or at least an initial benefit of the doubt.  We are modeling best practices when we grant the privilege of participation to everyone who gets feet wet.  

Healthy people are important, but so are healthy communities.  If we work to find a way for people to build networks beyond age groups, fitness levels, family or employment status; we will be building a stronger community.  Watch the national news and it is clear that we are at risk of divisiveness if we are insular.  Sometimes it helps to reach across demographics to offer encouragement and support.  Maybe the conversations that start in the pool will continue in the locker rooms and out into the dry clothes world.   

Why should community runs and walks have all the fun?  Declare a theme day and assign an impartial staff member to be the Water Bottle Judge, Cool Shades Judge, or Top CoverUp Judge. Perhaps there could be special recognition for the member and guest with the greatest age difference.  Extend a special invitation to gym members who have never set foot on deck.  

Or triple-dog-dare them to risk scary hair and the scent of chlorine.

Where Lance Armstrong Went Wrong

. . . based strictly on my impressions, which were formed by occasionally tuning in to cycling events like the Tour de France, Olympic events, and newscasts.  

Lance Armstrong was unable to appreciate his personal best.  

The LiveStrong Foundation came out with statements following Armstrong’s fall from grace that they are still dedicated to the mission of supporting people with cancer and people with people with cancer.  That is hugely important, and no mistakes of Armstrong’s should take away from that, or his lack of confidence could gain power as an infectious agent.  

People beat cancer.  

People are able to LiveStrong, both during the fight and after.  

Some people are not able to beat cancer, 

and they leave behind survivors who need to LiveStrong.      

I imagine that surviving cancer and feeling compelled to continue using chemical cocktails to enhance performance on a world stage must stem from a supreme level of insecurity.  

I am reminded of Erma Bombeck’s book I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want To Go To Boise.  One of the children interviewed for the book said something along the lines of “people who want to do drugs should try chemo.”  This kid clearly knows something.  We know that performance enhancing drugs have negative side effects.  Why risk doing something which might cause more cancer?  

I have not had cancer, so I don’t know, but many people report seeing cancer as a turning point.  If they survive, they often demonstrate a resolve to make life count extra from then on.  To value it, appreciate it, and maximize the potential found in it.  Armstrong moved forward from cancer to become a father, to become incredibly fit, with or without doping.  We may not know what he would have been capable of on his bike without performance enhancement,  but he had to have had something going for him that he undervalued.  Doping won’t get you across the finish line without work.  He worked, he trained, and he will never know what might have been.  He never believed in LiveStrong. 

How sad.  

Now banned from many sports due to his illegal behaviors, Armstrong could continue to train, and even achieve his clean personal best; but without the validation of sanctioned competition, only he would know for sure what he accomplished.  Because for so long, his post-cancer reality was fake.  

(While the LiveStrong slogan is incorporated into this essay, this essay is unrelated to the LifeStrong Foundation, and may not represent the LiveStrong Foundation’s opinions.  I am writing only my own thoughts; which represent how I understand that slogan and Lance Armstrong.)  

My first response to The Shriver Report:

A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink

Comments following the discussion of Head Start.

I’m working my way through the Shriver Report (at section 2981 of 8215), and I find it curious that it seems more important to get women working than raising their children.  In some cases, childcare accounts for “from 20 percent to nearly 50 percent of that mother’s monthly salary” (US Census, 2011), which doesn’t leave much for living expenses like rent, food, etc.  I was lucky.  I was not put in day care.  I was not sent to preschool.  My mother was on welfare from the time I was a toddler until I started Kindergarten.  Looking back, it was a very precarious time, but I don’t remember learning to read-  I just always did.  I saw my mother read.  We went to the library for free reading.  

If I was sick, my mother took care of me.  My mother prepared my food, made my clothes when she got discounted fabric, and we got by.  My belief is that the consistent care I had in my early childhood gave me a solid foundation for learning and ultimately working.  Where are the studies comparing childhoods like mine to HeadStart childhoods or early childhoods which start daycare within the first year of life?  I have gone on to be very well educated, and when I became a single parent with an infant, I made specific choices to ensure that I would not have to rely on daycare centers.  My daughter did not go to HeadStart or PreK.  I worked part time, and when I wasn’t with her, she was in the consistent care of my mother.  

Now in school, my daughter reads beautifully.  I am still working part time, which allows me to flex my schedule if she is ill or has a school function to which I am invited.  We live within our means.  We are still sharing housing and expenses with my mother.  My boys have finished high school, and one has finished community college.  

When we discuss national policy regarding stability for early childhood, the discussion always turns to getting the children out of the home.  We do not sufficiently support the family dynamic, and so we undermine parents.  We try to justify it by elevating babysitters to child care providers or child development specialists, or early childhood teachers, with the attendant advanced education (and typical student debt which means the qualified professionals must command greater wages— wages greater than the parents of their charges can often earn).  It is insidious.  

I value education.  I value work and its financial compensation.  I also value mothering- and the fact that there is no one correct way to be a mother.  I used cloth diapers with all of my children.  I nursed my children.  I worked part time in such a way that my boys were primarily cared for by a parent.  I made many of my sons’ early clothes, but I have managed a few items for my daughter, despite a more intense work load during her early years.  We read (mainly library books!) most nights before she goes to sleep.  The parenting hints outlined in the discussion of Save the Children (Schriver Report, section 2835 of 8215) are great tools.  Some parents need to be instructed or reminded to take the time to speak with pre-speech children.  Humans need exposure to language.  Human language, not just tech-based recordings of speech.  Can an early childhood classroom always beat out the one to one attention a parent can give?  Can a school day with limited recess take the place of playtime available if a parent is able to watch a child in a yard or at a playground?  

We need to do more as a society to support children and their need for parents, not just professional caregivers.  This does not have to be expensive.  Knowledge is power.  Our education of students needs to include economics from early grades.  Students need to know how to apply math to money.  Loans mean interest.  What does life cost?  How can choices impact a budget?  Students need to know what food costs, and how to build a nutritious menu from a budget.  Parents need to be able to evaluate the possible benefit of having two people work different shifts so they share child care time.  Some parents are able to form co-ops, so a group of children has a consistent core of adults caring for them.  There are many ways to manage, and many ways yet to be tested.  

I am severely under-employed.  The implication of the Shriver Report is that I am unlikely to be able to offer my children the best start from my circumstances.  Education may be an answer, but I have an MBA and a range of skills.  I am one person, and not likely to skew the national statistics, but maybe what I am doing has societal value.  Perhaps I am able to offer the best situation to my family by limiting my professional advancement and potential income.  We have food and housing.  We even have fun!  An executive career would require relocation away from a family support network, longer hours away from my household, and curtailed parenting.  Much as I want a home of my own, life in a warmer climate, and some of the finer things in life, I am not willing to undervalue my role as mother to accomplish it, and I will not be convinced that I am doing my family a disservice by Leaning Back, so to speak.  I am not wasting my potential.  I am maximizing it to suit my priorities.

There is absolutely huge need in this country.  Parents are struggling, so children are struggling.  We must work to eradicate poverty.  There is no excuse for children in our country to have food insecurity.  We need to identify our primary concerns and consider multiple strategies for addressing those concerns.  PreK may be one answer, but it is not the only answer.  Child care for working parents may be one answer, but it is not the only answer.  We need to expand our understanding of poverty, and the Shriver Report addresses many faces, causes, and consequences of poverty.  Many people who seem to be on track are on the brink of disaster, since one unexpected expense can throw off a whole budget, and lead to utility shut offs, homelessness, hunger, and no easy path back.  

We cannot make the assumption that poverty equates to un- or under-educated.  

We cannot even assume that poverty means unemployed.  

In Praise of Small Goals

by Bridget M.M. Simpson

April 2013

Published in AKWA (Aug/Sept. 2013)

In the interest of posting something on this blog I started with the best of intentions, 
I am going to post some content which may not be new, but may be of interest.  
AKWA is the newsletter of the Aquatic Exercise Association.

I tell my class participants that they get bonus points for just showing up.  Once you are there, doing the workout is almost easy.  Maybe you start off just going through the motions, but you gain momentum, catch other people’s enthusiasm, get it done, and by the time class is over you feel better.  But if you don’t drag yourself to the workout, you are sunk.  

As fitness professionals, we are driven to motivate people and their progress in turn motivates us.  I know there have been times when I have pushed myself to finish an event because my classes had offered encouragement and I knew they would be eager to hear about my adventure.  Even the time I came in last, with a Coast Guard escort (they kindly said that they would let me finish the course).  

I offer a weekly Range of Motion class, and one of my strategies is to apply each exercise not only to a specific muscle, but to a daily use for that muscle.  The Arthritis Foundation is great about connecting their exercises to daily living, and it bears remembering not only what muscles we have, but how we rely on them.  My periodic difficulties with mobility have reminded me that fitness goals are not limited to big events.  There have been times when my ultimate goal of participating in a triathlon has been predicated on my ability to regain the mobility needed to tie my own sneakers in the transition area.  

When we are teaching aqua classes, what do our participants take back home with them?  Are they associating some of the combinations with daily life?  I used to joke that a side kick was what you needed to do to kick things under the bed.  If you are doing a torso stretch with your class, perhaps bracing your left hand on your right knee to help you look way back over your right shoulder (then reversing the stretch, of course), do your participants connect this motion with helping them maintain their ability to check behind them as they back out of a driveway?  

We need to be sure that we are connecting our classes to our participants’ lives outside the gym or pool. My office has a nursing home next door.  I spend a bit of time each week crossing the parking lot to deliver mail, visit, and see most of the people spending their days sitting or lying down. With an aging population, we need to look ahead to the future goals of all people, regardless of current fitness or enthusiasm for increasing fitness.  Not everyone wants to run a marathon (which may shock distance runners everywhere), but I think it is safe to suggest that we all want to be able to cope with daily needs independently.  Have you ever struggled with getting dressed?  Getting to the bathroom?  Getting from one end of the shopping center to the other?  Many of us may be able to relate to these challenges based on experiences following injuries, but were lucky enough to consider the difficulty short term.  

We need to plan to age without an assumption that we will lose function and independence.  I believe that we need to look at every step we take, at any speed, as a step we will be able to take again in the future.  It’s like having your cake and eating it, too.  If you don’t take steps now, you may not be able to take them in decades to come, and that may be what forces you to leave your home and depend on the ability of others to move your body into clothes, into beds and chairs, and into the bathroom facilities.  

What you do today can enhance tomorrow, and it is never too late to make a difference.