Ladies,
If there is one area of our lives that I see give women over the age of 50 trouble as they get older, it is using the stairs.
Too often I have heard from women who have knee pain going up and down stairs, and who are altering their life because of it.
They start going down the stairs backwards. Then they go up the stairs sideways. Then they completely rely on the hand railing to push themselves up the stairs.
Finally, they avoid the stairs altogether and decide to only use the ground floor of their home. They change where they sleep; where they shower; where they keep their makeup and clothes.
In short, they completely change their life because their knees hurt too much using the stairs.
But it doesn’t just end with their home. Their kids’ homes soon become troublesome, too, as do many parks, restaurants, theaters, airports, and other areas that they frequent.
Unfortunately, in under 12 months, many women find themselves completely trapped in a “single story and flat surfaces only” world.
If you find yourself anywhere in this series of events, I have good news for you. You are not subject to an inevitable decline of becoming immobile and trapped. You can start doing things today that can and will have a huge impact on your quality of life and physical mobility every day going forward.
The first thing is you need to realize that if you don’t do something now, it is only going to get worse with every passing day. This is not something that just goes away or gets better on its own. You need to start taking action, and the sooner you start, the better.
The second thing is you need to prioritize the function and strength of your muscles. The reason why your knee hurts so much with stairs is because your muscles are getting weaker and more dysfunctional.
I know you have been told that it is a joint issue, but the only reason a joint issue exists is because there is first a muscle issue. So even if you opt to have a knee replacement to get rid of the joint issue, if you don’t also take care of the muscle issue, the underlying problems will continue to persist.
So how do you take care of your muscle issues?
The first thing you need to do is Muscle Activation Techniques®, or MAT®.
Muscle Activation Techniques® is a process that identifies where in your body you have inhibited muscles, or muscles that aren’t working properly. Then, once those muscles are identified, the MAT® process is able to strengthen those muscles directly, helping them to function better and work correctly.
Since 2012, I have been working with women in their 50s and beyond, helping them overcome their different aches and pains with Muscle Activation Techniques®. I can confidently say that the one commonality between every single woman I have worked with is that at some point in her life she stopped prioritizing her muscle strength as much as she once did, and when that point came, she started losing strength and function, which quickly led to the onset of aches and pains that were not previously there.
However, once her muscle function started improving using MAT®, the aches and pains that had set in started to subside.
So MAT® is step one. It is the fastest and most effective way to see improvements in your muscle strength and function.
Step two is to start doing strength training exercises a minimum of three days a week.
Many women avoid strength training out of fear of hurting themselves, which is completely understandable. However, by not strength training, you are telling your body that it does not need to keep the strength you have already built, and because of that you start getting weaker and weaker with every passing year.
Fortunately, strength training does not need to be painful, and when you follow the four Exercise For Life Principles, you reduce your risk for injury to essentially zero.
The four Exercise For Life Principles are exactly what we teach you to use within your workouts in The Exercise For Life Membership, which you can get a free trial of by clicking here.
If you are new to our content, the four Exercise For Life Principles are:
- Use Your Symptom-Free Full Range of Motion
- Control Your Moving & Non-Moving Segments
- Move Slowly
- Focus On Squeezing Your Muscles
These four principles ensure that not only will your workouts be safe, but they will be highly effective at helping you build your strength.
If using the stairs hurts your knees, you do not have to limit your life to avoid that pain. By strengthening your muscles and getting your muscles functioning better, you can continue to do all the things in your life without issue for as long as you want to do them.
The first thing to do is get your muscles functioning properly with Muscle Activation Techniques® and then build their strength with traditional strength training using the four Exercise For Life Principles.
If you are struggling with painful knees when you use the stairs, I would love to see you on my MAT® table soon.
You can schedule your consultation and assessment with me by clicking here and selecting the time that works best for you.
In strength and health,
Julie
Julie Cates is an experienced, certified, and insured National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Certified Personal Trainer and mastery level Muscle Activation Techniques® (MAT®) Rx Specialist (MATRx). She is also one of the few practitioners worldwide certified in the MAT® Athlete process.
She is one of 88 certified mastery level Resistance Training Specialists® (RTSm) in the world. This combination makes her style of training impactful and still preventative and restorative of joint and muscle issues and pain that are common with exercise.
Julie specializes in working with women 50 and over. Specifically, her main focus is working with women with bone density loss, muscle loss, Osteopenia, and Osteoporosis.
Julie has incredible experience working with brand new exercisers. Very specific types and styles of exercises are needed for restoring and maintaining bone density, and Julie guides her clients through these in a pain-free way.
She is also well experienced in helping women exercise even with various joint, bone, systemic, and neurological diagnoses. Julie is definitely your go-to personal trainer for women with Osteoporosis!
She sees clients out of her studio, Muscle Activation Schaumburg, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
