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Introduction

Hello and welcome to our short, introductory guide on simple stretching techniques to keep stable & limber for seniors.

As you get older, your body will go through a lot of changes. Your hair will turn grey or white, your skin will become wrinkled, and your body will become stiff as you suffer from joint, muscle, and bone problems. For many years, we’ve accepted that stiffening of the joints and tightening of the muscles were a natural part of aging, but new research suggests otherwise.

Research has now found that at least half of the changes aging people experience in regards to their joints, muscles, and bones are a direct result of a lack of activity.

However, when less than 10 percent of people over the age of 50 aren’t getting enough exercise to maintain their health at the very least, it’s no wonder that so many people have accepted their fates as normal.

Bone and Muscle Problems in the Aging Body

The most common bone and muscle problems the aging body may experience include osteoarthritis when the cartilage in your joints begins to break down, osteomalacia which is a softening of the bones, osteoporosis that leads to brittle bones when bones lose their mass, rheumatoid arthritis which is an inflammation in the joints, and general muscle weakness and pain.

Muscle Changes

As we age, there are a few changes that our muscles go through that lead to the above problems. Our muscle fibers become smaller and we have less of them, and nervous system changes lead to less muscle tone and a decreased ability to contract muscles. Lost muscle tissue is regenerated more slowly than before and the tissue that replaces it is often tough and fibrous.

Bone Changes

We don’t often think of bones as living tissue, but they absolutely are, and also go through changes as we age. Our bones begin to lose more calcium and other important minerals because of the hormonal changes that occur as we age. Women are especially vulnerable after they’ve gone through menopause, but men are also affected by bone loss that occurs with age.

Joint Changes

The movement in our joints is a result of the movement of ligaments, the flowing of synovial fluid which surrounds your joints, and layers of cartilage that keeps bones from coming into direct contact with each other. However, in the aging body, ligaments can become shorter and less flexible, there is less synovial fluid to lubricate joints, and cartilage thins. All of this leads to stiffening in the joints.

How This Guide Can Help You

A surprising number of these age-related conditions can be reversed or prevented by doing regular exercise and stretching exercises. This course specifically focuses on how to use stretching as a way to maintain limberness and flexibility no matter how old you are. The truth is, it’s never too late to start doing something for your body.

By the end of this guide, you will have all the tools you need to keep your body in the best possible shape so you can enjoy your golden years

Chapter 1 – An Overview Of Stretching The Aging Body And Basic Anatomy

The primary goal of stretching the aging body is to prevent muscles and joints from becoming stiff from disuse. By regularly stretching your muscles and flexing your joints, you can help prevent many of the age-related conditions that affect the joints, muscles, and bones of an aging body. In this part of the guide, we’re going to go over the major muscle groups and joints that are most important to keep limber.

The 11 Major Muscle Groups

There are 11 major muscle groups that you want to make sure you’re using regularly and keeping stretched out. If you are also doing strength training exercises, these are the same muscle groups that you will be working out with that.

Forearms – Your lower arm has several muscles that are particularly important for lifting and holding objects.

Biceps – A large muscle found in each of your upper arms, your biceps help your forearms with lifting things.

Triceps – These are the other 2 muscles that are found in your upper arms. They help your body extend and bend your elbow.

Shoulders – There are a number of muscles on your front, back, and side that make up the shoulders which are responsible for arm movement.

Trapezius – Often referred to as traps, these are the muscles in your upper back that helps move your neck, head, and shoulder blade.

Chest – This group of muscles that covers your ribcage is responsible for helping with arm movement and breathing.

Abdominals – This important group of muscles located in your abdomen help with breathing and support your spine. They are often referred to as abs or your core muscles.

Back – One of the biggest muscle groups, your back muscles help support your spine and are a part of hip movement.

Quadriceps – These are the four muscles that are found at the front of your thigh and are a vital part of leg movement as they help control the hip and knee movements.
Hamstrings – The group of muscle that makes up the back of your thigh and help with the movement of the hip and knee as well.

Calves – The muscles found in your lower leg are what help you move your knee and flex your ankle.

The 7 Major Joints

Although you have a number of smaller joints in your fingers and toes, there are 7 major joints in the rest of your body that we’re going to cover. Every joint is made up of a combination of muscles that provide the movement, ligaments and tendons that connect bones and muscles, and bones.

Spine – Your spine helps support your upper body and houses the nerves that run to every body system. It’s made up of a number of individual vertebrae.

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Introduction

What is a Legendary Life?

If you’ve ever heard people talking about living a legendary life, you’re probably wondering what that means. What is a legendary life? How do you start living one? In this eBook, we’re going to look at what it means to live a legendary life. We’ll see how it can benefit you. We’ll also look at the changes you can put in place so that you can launch your legendary existence.

Living a legendary life, essentially, means that you’re living your best life. It means trying to maximize the potential in everything you do to give yourself the best chance of feeling good. It means achieving more and experiencing maximum happiness. It means that you exploit your potential to the full and seize opportunities whenever they present themselves. It also means you pursue your dreams freely without allowing yourself to be held back from achieving everything you could.

Living a legendary life also means that you need to find balance. This is a vital element of staying healthy and happy. When you manage your energy and time wisely, you can nurture yourself to the full. Taking care of your mind, body and spirit allow you to live the best life you can.

If you’re ready to start living a legendary life, it’s time to read on. We’ll give you practical tips to help you achieve your full potential. Discover how you can implement change to make your life the best it can be.

Chapter 1: Awareness and Planning

It stands to reason that you can’t implement change for the better in your life until you know what’s wrong. You can’t improve something if you don’t know what needs to be improved. The first thing you need to do is, therefore, to become more aware. You need to take a closer look at your life to identify where the problems lie.

Recognizing Where the Problems Lie

The first step to living a legendary life is being brutally honest with yourself. Take a close look at your life. Examine the aspects of your life that you aren’t happy with. Which elements of your life are bringing you down? Where could improvements be made?

It isn’t easy to look objectively at your life. Nobody wants to dwell on the problem areas. Very few people are willing to focus on the things that make them unhappy. Yet, this is essential. You need to be aware of what’s wrong to turn it around for the better.

Take the time to consider every part of your life. Look at your health, your job, your relationships, and your leisure time. Are you happy with the way things are going? What aren’t you satisfied with?

You need to be ruthless with yourself. There’s no point in lying to yourself or overlooking the truth. If something is making you unhappy it needs to be addressed. Otherwise, you cannot ever live a legendary life.

Note down the areas of your life with which you are dissatisfied. Perhaps you’re unhappy with your weight or want to feel healthier. Perhaps you’re bored and unstimulated in your job and want to embark on a new career. Perhaps you’re tired of meaningless dates and long for commitment to one special person. Maybe you’re tired of sitting watching TV every night and are ready to take up a new, fulfilling hobby. Jot down all your observations. You’ll need them to help you to move to the next stage.

Visualizing Perfection

Now that you have a list of things that are making you unhappy, it’s time to start implementing change. To move towards improvement, you need to visualize perfection. How does your dream life look? You need a clear idea of the goals and intentions you need to achieve. This will enable you to take the necessary action.

Acting, all too often, feels intimidating and frightening. Sometimes, it may even feel impossible. If you’ve been working in the same job for decades, for example, the idea of resigning may be terrifying. If you’ve always had problems committing to a relationship, the idea of settling down could seem impossible.

Yet if you begin visualizing what you want from life, you can begin to see how change can be made.

Visualizing be a test-run. It gives you a clearer idea of how you can live a dream life. It will also help you to establish more clearly what you want. It also helps you to adopt a more positive mindset.

How do you begin visualizing? The first step is to choose your focus. Pick one of the areas that you need to improve and focus on it. Think about how you’ll feel once you’ve turned it around for the better.

Allow your imagination to lead you. For example, if you’re keen to change your job, imagine what you’d like to do. Which career path would stimulate you and give you the satisfaction you seek? Picture yourself working at the job of your dreams. How will your life look? What will you wear to work every day? How will your daily routine appear? How will you get to your new workplace?

Ask yourself those questions and let yourself experience the feelings you’d have if everything you imagined was real. This practice is vital to success. It puts you into the correct mindset that you need to succeed. It also boosts your mood.

Designing Your Legendary Life

A major key to success is having intention in everything you do. Setting intentions allows you to act with drive and purpose. It allows you to determine a clear path to follow. It allows you to identify what you must accomplish.

By setting yourself intentions on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, you’ll develop purpose in your life. This will also enable you to measure how successful you are being in improving your everyday existence.

What is intention setting? Essentially, it’s the same as setting goals for yourself. Setting intentions allows you to decide the types of feelings and emotions you’re seeking. When you intend to become or do something, you’re taking a step closer to a legendary life.

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Introduction

As our society evolves, we are constantly facing the need to change our behaviors and habits to increase our health and quality of life. We are now facing climate change, food insecurity and over 40% of our population is suffering from chronic disease.

One of the recent ideas put forward to improve our world and health is the plant-based nutrition.

Even though food regiments are not something our doctor prescribes (yet), research is showing that food has a lot to contribute to our health. It is also a less costly option to our society than prescribing medication.

Whether you want to save the animals, become healthier or simply feel better, the plant-based nutrition is a great option for those of us who want to be a better and healthier person.

Choosing a plant-based nutrition doesn’t have to be a complex commitment. With the help of this guide, you will be ready to step into the world of plant-based eating in no time and set yourself up for success.

In this book, you will learn about plant-based nutrition, the research about it and how you can successfully transition into a plant-based nutrition. You will also find some recipes to kick-start your journey and find answers to questions that might be limiting you in your transition to a plant-based nutrition.

First, let’s define what plant-based eating is all about.

Chapter 1: What is plant-based eating?

We are hearing the word plant-based nutrition more and more in our society. With the launch of documentaries like Game Changers, books like Forks over knives and the emergence of athletes changing their nutrition to be plant-based, one has to wonder what this is all about.

Our understanding of plant-based eating may differ from one individual to another. In the world of nutrition, plant-based eating is having a large portion of one’s nutrition coming from vegetables, fruits, herbs, nuts, whole grains and also include legumes or other plants.

A spectrum of plant-based nutrition options is available to you. Some are very strict (vegan diet), others are still adding animal products like dairy (vegetarian) and at the other end of the spectrum are those that still eat meat, poultry and fish on an occasional basis.

We once believed that early humans consumed a large proportion of animal protein in their diet. It is from that belief that, in the 2000s, the Paleo diet (mainly comprised of animal protein) became really popular in the world of nutrition and diet.

Although, we now know that the nutrition of bipedal primates and Homo sapiens was primarily composed of nuts, fruits, leaves, roots, seeds and water. In that case, the “original” Paleo Diet was in reality plant-based eating. It is also linked to the fact that some of the strongest animals on Earth are not carnivores. The strongest mammal is the gorilla (most are herbivores). It has the ability to lift around 4409 lbs., that is 10 times its body weight. It would be like a 200 lb. individual lifting 2000 lb. If other mammals can live a healthy and strong life on a plant-based nutrition, we probably can too.

Why choose a plant-based nutrition?

Many reasons exist for choosing a plant-based nutrition, we will discuss in more details some of those reasons but here’s our top 5:

1) Improve your health: Most Americans consume double the recommended daily intake of protein which can also cause issues with digestion. By reducing your intake of animal food, you will most likely reach the recommended daily intake of protein without surpassing it. In addition, an increased consumption of vegetables, grains and beans will bring more fiber into your nutrition. Most Americans don’t consume enough fiber and that can lead to inflammation of the digestive tract, constipation and hemorrhoids.

2) Succeed in weight loss and weight management: In general, individuals who are on a plant-based nutrition tend to consume fewer calories than individuals who consume animal protein. That is because most of their calories are coming from healthier options and fewer calories per weight. Plant-based eaters tend to eat less process food and avoid meat focused restaurants like fast-food chain that provide unhealthy meal options.

3) Prevent or manage a chronic disease: As you will see in the next section, research demonstrates that individuals on a plant-based nutrition can prevent chronic disease, reduce obesity and mostly encourage a healthy lifestyle and increase their quality of life.

4) Stop spending on supplements: Did you know that our nation’s population spends more than $30 billion a year on supplements? What if you didn’t need to waste that money? With a plant-based nutrition, you are more likely to receive all the nutrients you need from natural sources like legumes, vegetables, and fruits. Not only does this save you money, it also saves you from trying to remember to purchase and consume supplements.

5) Save our planet: Agriculture uses approximately 70% of our fresh water (globally on average). That said, the production of meat requires around 1000% more water (1 kg requires from 5000 to 20,000 liters of water) than some grains like wheat (1 kg of wheat requires between 500 and 4000 liters of water). In addition, a lot of the grain is cultivated to feed the animals we eat and if we started eating that grain and reduce our consumption of meat, less water and fewer resources would be used to produce animal food.

Chapter 2: The Science Behind Plant-Based Eating

Research shows that we need more fruits and vegetables in our plates to prevent chronic disease and help with our weight management. In the next section, you will learn about what we need more in our nutrition intake (vegetables, fruits, fiber) and what we need less (sodium, sugar, protein) in order to live a healthier life.
Fruits and Vegetables

Plant-based eating means that you have a large proportion of your meal that comes from plant-based food. That said, fruits and vegetables are often the number one thing that comes to mind when we think of a plant-based nutrition.

According to some studies, only 15% of our population is able to meet the minimum requirement of daily recommendation for fruits and even less (10%) for vegetables. Experts in nutrition all across the world agree that the insufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables contribute to the obesity epidemic and chronic disease related to poor nutrition, especially in our country.

A report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that a daily intake of 400 g of fruits and vegetable would contribute to preventing chronic diseases which include diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity. To put this in perspective, 1 tomato is approximately 75 g while a medium size potato is about 150 grams. For fruits, a medium apple is about 150 g and a small kiwi is around 75 g.

Fiber

As mentioned earlier, fiber is lacking in the nutrition of Americans. It is recommended to consume from 25 g (women) to 38 g (men) of fiber on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we consume an average of 15 g daily. That is not enough for most of us and can have a negative impact on the bowels and cause constipation or hemorrhoids.

According to research, an increase intake in fiber can help prevent and reduce heart diseases, diabetes, and colon cancer.

You can find two types of fiber, water-soluble and water-insoluble. Water-soluble fiber can be found in fruits, vegetables, legumes, oat and bran. Since water-soluble fiber absorbs water during digestion, it can help decrease or prevent constipation. Fiber is also known to decrease the blood cholesterol levels.

As for water-insoluble fibers, they can be found in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and many cereals, including brown rice. The insoluble fiber wears that name because they remain.