My mom’s survival and incredible recovery from an aneurism rupture some 15+ years ago taught me some life lessons and changed some of my priorities. My mom’s survival was pure luck as she was at a public swimming pool at the time of incident and was rushed to the hospital immediately. Even with immediate first aid, to survive a brain aneurism is a miracle in itself – she was in coma for 3 weeks before the doctors could attempt surgery. She survived, recovered and been living relatively independently since. I am convinced that her weight training, swimming, badminton and line dancing prior to the incident gave her the solid base necessary to recover from the aneurism.
In the last few years, she had a few falls despite all the preventive exercises. Strengthening exercises probably help reduced the number of falls. However, none of the exercise programs taught her how to fall and how to get up. From these falls, she fractured her back once, fractured her wrist twice and been stuck on the floor for a long time not being able to get back up. As my mom ages, re-programming her reflexes is very difficult – I hope it can be different for other seniors.
On Feb 16th, I am offering a free MartialGym lesson for adults 55+ to address this gap. The goal is not to create fighters but I think I have something unique to offer to this age group so that they can help themselves and maybe even help their parents. My goal is to teach participants how to protect themselves better while having fun. They will learn how to protect themselves from push and shuffle, from grabs, during falls (i.e. protect their tail bone, head, wrist and shoulder), how to get back up, and how to roll, how and where to strike, etc. We will also use gymnastics skills, light apparatus and music to train on tempo, balances, reflexes, etc. The goal is to make the classes fun and engaging so that the newly learned techniques will become instinctive.
As oppose to just imitating moves, I will explain and demonstrate why certain things work (or not work). Furthermore, instead of memorizing some slow form (where memorization can become an obstacle in itself), participants will be moving naturally in varying tempo, directions, levels, etc. They will experiment different ways to accomplish a task and to interact with external forces and find way(s) that works. Participants will discover new ways to use their bodies through proper alignment, shape, speed, relaxation, etc.
(For those who are curious, the demo class has only one more spot left. Please follow the link here to register online)
Exercise:
- Given the description of the new class and the target audience, describe key similarities and differences in approach (as compared to your current/past KF class, gymnastics or school)