What Is Chair-Based Exercise?
Time marches on and we’re counting down to the New Year; it’s time to start planning how you’re going to maintain health and fitness if you have it or improve it if you could do better. Recently, especially on click-bait websites, there are a couple of companies that are pitching chair-based exercises as a solution to increase muscle and lose weight. “Only 15 minutes per day” they say and seem to imply you can have a body that’s ripped and toned. It’s tempting.
Part of the pitch is that after 50, men should be doing more resistance exercise and leave the heavy exercise behind because “it’s a young man’s exercise and too strenuous.” The premise of chair-exercise raises questions about increasing muscle mass.
The first question is simple: Do chair-exercise programs benefit the people who utilize them? Yes. They appear to help people who are older than 60 with flexibility and balance issues. There are dozens of exercises, from the simple such as ankle flexion and extension, to something more rigorous like squats by standing up and sitting down in a chair.
There are two more questions related to chair exercises and the approach the ads take while promoting such programs; I’ll cover that on Saturday. In the meantime, find a solid chair (preferably with arms, but it’s not critical) and do as many squats—meaning standing up and sitting down—as you can, every day, in one set, from now until Saturday.
What are you prepared to do today?
