Maintaining Flexibility, Balance, and Core Strength As We Age: With Jaclyn Starr Evans

   
"It's a privilege to age, let's have fun in the process!"
-Carol Williams

After 3 very painful incidents of a broken back, I am probably more aware of the need to maintain flexibility, balance and core strength than the average senior woman golfer.  

Intellectually, we all know how important it is to maintain those things but exercise is so boring, it's easy to let it slide. As we age and things start going south, you start realizing a few minutes a day would have been a good investment in yourself.

Last month our Apple Valley Women's Golf league team event was scheduled at Lake Chelan Municipal Golf Course. That's always one of my favorite venues to play. I had the good fortune to have Jaclyn Starr Evans fill out our foursome. Destiny has an interesting way of intervening that way.

Not only was the golf very enjoyable that day but the weather cooperated in spite of the dark skies threatening rain.  The weather stayed cool and wind only kicked up on our last 4 holes, so it was quite a pleasant round.

As the day went by, I learned that Jaclyn operated a residential eldercare home for almost 20 years in Chelan. The longer she was involved with elder care she realized that, after turning 60, she couldn't count on luck to keep her healthy and strong as she aged.  She realized she was going to need to start working at keeping her body strong enough for golfing and hiking.  Hiking with llamas each summer is a now a family tradition.

Jaclyn decided to start a YouTube Channel to share her mission to stay Healthy2aHundred and help others do the same. This channel helps her friends follow along with doing her routines.

She has two specific videos where she demonstrates her easy to follow routines.
 
  10 Minute Yoga and Back Strengthening Stretches With Meditation, Breathing and Affirmations

   8 Minutes Balance and Core Strength Routine 

The videos are intended, Jaclyn says, to help people easily learn the routines and then do them on their own.

The first part of her day is always a 10-minute Yoga Routine, which includes meditation, affirmations and back-strengthening poses. 

Even a tiny amount of yoga done each day can help with flexibility and stretching muscles. So, with that in mind, she created the very short routine which can be lengthened by holding the poses for longer periods as you gain the ability to do so.

Jaclyn says she finds it easiest to fit 10-minutes into each morning to start the day off on a positive note.

The second video recommended is an 8-minute Balance and Core-Strengthening Routine that Jaclyn does twice a week after the yoga, usually Wednesday and Saturday. As she explains in the video, she hates formal exercise (prefers hiking and walking, even short bursts of slow jogging), so found a song which lasts exactly 30-seconds. This helps to keep her going and let her know when the minute or 90-seconds is up. The song Jaclyn uses is Battle Hymn of the Republic, which can be sung slowly to increase time exercise or faster when beginning if muscles start screaming too quickly.

The third, and perhaps most important part of Jaclyn’s efforts to keep her body healthier as she ages is aerobics. She does what she calls a Snail-Mail Jog. The video for this part is under production, but it will incorporate High-Intensity Interval Training practices.  It is done at a (mostly) Low-Intensity pace.,  She sets a timer and jogs very slowly for 4 minutes, walks 4 minutes when the timer goes off, then repeats the sequence until 16 minutes of jogging has taken place.

Hopefully, the video will be finished and posted in the near future.

I’ve watched the already published videos and plan to give the yoga and exercise routine a good college try. Hey, I'm willing to try anything that will help me keep golfing into my golden years in spite of chronic back issues.

Jaclyn said, “I feel that starting the yoga routine was what gave me the discipline to stick with the other healthy practices.”

After starting the yoga, Jaclyn became more interested in the actual science of aging. She now considers herself an amateur bio-gerontologist. She has studied the "Blue Zones", which are five areas in the world where high percentages of people live to one hundred. She has tried to follow the lead of those centenarians by focusing her diet more heavily on plant-based eating, family activities and building her social circle of golf friends.

Very interesting, she told me, “that based on the high number of 100+ people I knew while in the eldercare business, even including three men living to almost 102, our town of Chelan would definitely qualify as a tiny Blue Zone.”

Jaclyn thinks the best book to explain the research into living healthy to old age is by Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical Center. It is titled LIFESPAN: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To.

Jaclyn says, a more recently published book called AGELESS: The New Science of Getting Older without Getting Old, by Andrew Steele, indicates that possibly tortoises should be our role model, as they stay healthy until they die at over 200 years old.  Jaclyn seemed to appreciate the reassurance about growing older, realizing that aging will happen no matter what, but healthy on the inside, even though Slow and Wrinkled will win the race, just as we learned in kindergarten!

Along with more exercise, all studies show that calorie restriction promotes healthier life as animals age. Jaclyn found the book FAST DIET, by Dr. Mosley, about Intermittent Fasting, to be most helpful in learning about the healthy aspects of calorie restriction with an easy method. She began doing 2-day a week Intermittent Fasting for a year, but now works to put all eating into a window between 10a and 6p. This results in a 16-hour “fast” each day since studies show that may be just as effective a longer fasts.

I was also interested to learn that Jaclyn is married to the owner of Tunnel Hill Winery, located in the stone buildings at the west entrance to Lake Chelan. , She reassured us that in the Blue Zone of Sardinia Italy, where men live the longest recorded lives, that red wine is part of their daily routine.

“I’m hoping that will hold true for the men in my family,” Jaclyn said.  She invited me to come to Chelan again soon for a trip to Tunnel Hill Winery. I'm more of a white wine woman but if red wine will help me stay healthy longer, I should definitely consider putting the red wine theory through a series of tests. 

Cheers !

If you haven't already done so, I invite you to subscribe to this Blog so you will be notified of all new posts as they are published. 
You can do so by ordering the 
FREE Report:
5 Ways To Lower Your Golf Score... Without Lessons

Also, be sure to sign up for our Facebook Group:
Senior Women Avid Golfers