You're listening to Pack Life,and this is your host Meli. If you're interested in a bigger,better,more fulfilling life for you and your companion animals,then you're in the right place. Let's go!
Hi Everybody! Today on Pack Life we are talking about Dog fitness. Why? Why would you do it?
I have friends that look at me like I am crazy when I mention doing fitness for a dog. And for me it feels very intuitive. So before I go into any detail in later shows about how to work on certain aspects of health, wellness or fitness for our animals I wanted to take one show to lay the foundation for why I think it's important.
The basics are the same reasons it is important for humans to work on health and fitness. I want any animals and humans I love to live a long healthy life, minimizing pain and suffering. So that is the overarching theme. We'll dig into why I think it's important and how this contributes to that overall goal.
Little bit of background about me: I have my master's in applied physiology and kinesiology and I didn't start getting into really healthy living until college. It has shaped the rest of my life. So I'm very passionate about sharing some of this.
Also, after college,I spent some time working with lots of seniors doing senior fitness-and what a huge impression it left in my life. Not only with the wisdom that I gained from connecting with people that had lived 70-80 years already, but also seeing what happens in older age.
That really set a foundation for me of how important it is to start taking care of yourself now, because what happens down the line is hugely influenced by what we're doing in the present. I noticed a big difference in my Senior fitness programs from people that had started getting active at 40/50/60 compared to those who waited until 70 or 80. So, even if you're like "uh,I'm in that 40 plus group", it is never too late to start and you can make a big impact now!
How we lay that foundation is essentially anytime we face a challenge that is slightly outside of our comfort zone, our body will adapt so that when that challenge comes back around, we are better prepared to deal with it the next time. I find this true mentally, emotionally, and physically. Today we're really focusing on the physical component of this. So, as a specific example, if we were to look at fitness: Let's say I start doing cardio with my dog, meaning, cardiovascular work where our heart and vascular system are working together to fuel this machine and do the activities we wanna do in this life.
If I start walking more, jogging more, maybe running-and my dog does the same, we will increase capillaries. We'll build new vessels that can carry blood to the tissues. Our heart will expand a little bit on the inside.nIt will start to fill more with blood so that every stroke, every time our heart pumps and squeezes and pushes blood around the body, it is pushing more blood around. We also get more efficient at processing and sending that blood back.
So our physical structures change to make it easier and easier. Let's say someone just started a jogging program for a marathon and they've only walked. The first time they jog, their heart is exploding. After a couple weeks, three weeks, or a month, their body starts to adapt and they are able to do more. Because the physical structures are changing within the body.
I'm a fitness nerd and can geek out on this all day. I'm gonna do future shows where I dig deep into the adaptation of cardio of strength training. So, if you like this, there is more coming. If not,d on't worry-That's as deep as we're going today.
So now there is a trick with this adaptation. We are looking for what I call the sweet spot. And I also find this true, whether it's mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical growth and adaptation that we're looking for.
What I mean by sweet spot is that we want to challenge ourselves in a way that makes our body go,Hmm,I need to prepare in case that challenge comes again and I need to change some things so that I am ready. But if we go too far, if we challenge ourselves in a way that is WAY outside of what we can physically handle, instead of inspiring change to make us stronger, often we're going to injure ourselves. We're going to get hurt and then our body needs to spend a lot of effort repairing the damage instead of preparing and making us stronger.
Let's go back to my story about working with senior citizens and exercise. I had some women in the programs who were very frail, had never done fitness in their life, and were raised at a time when they were not encouraged and had no desire to physical work. Ever.
And so they had really low bone density, which means that their bones were brittle. They didn't have a lot of mineral in there, and they could break easily. This is very dangerous when you get older.
One of the things that can build bone density, among others, and cause the body to go, "Ooh,we need to deposit more stuff in there and make these structures stronger" is impact. Jogging, jumping, and those kinds of things provide impact. Now,if I take someone who has really low bone density-osteoporosis, and I try to get them to add impact by asking them to jump up and down 40 times on one leg. They're likely gonna break their bone because their body was not prepared and we way overshot that challenge to change and adapt.
So we're always looking for just slightly outside of what we're currently capable of to signal our body to make that change without doing that huge jump that is gonna cause us more problems and more damage than good.
The Converse side to this beautiful adaptation that we can use to make gains improve ourselves in whatever directions we're looking for, is that if we don't use something, We lose it. The body will say, "Hey, you know all those resources I was putting toward building new capillaries and increasing the amount of blood the heart can pump and getting more efficient at processing oxygen, we don't really need that anymore. Let me use these resources to create something else that matches whatever challenges are going on in the environment now."
Going back to the senior example, I also saw a lot of constriction of the joints. People hunched over, people whose arms didn't fully extend or go straight anymore and isnte4ad stayed kind of in a bent position. People whose legs didn't fully go straight anymore and who had lost a lot of flexibility. Part of that is just the changes that happen with age and our tissues. Another big piece of it was that if I don't reach over my head to grab things that are high off of a shelf anymore an am never fully extending my arms anymore, my body is going to start to lose flexibility in that area. Suddenly I'm not gonna be able to stretch my arms overhead anymore.
So as we decrease using things, our body stops putting resources that way, and we lose the ability to do those things in general.
So that's a lot of context to talk about how we are living today what is going on with our bodies and how it impacts our dogs. Most of us have a lot of screen time and seated time. Much more than our bodies were originally designed to have. So our daily life no longer reflects what this beautiful machinery we have is able to do and we are starting to lose a lot of physical abilities.
Even those of us who like to work out, who like to go to the gym, typically are sedentary and seated and looking at a screen most of the day. Then we grind hard for one hour, and then we go back to our sedentary seated lifestyle. There's detriment to this. We all know and I don't have to give you specific stats about what has been happening to the human population with disease, pain, and healthcare in general.
I think we have a lot of power to make some changes here. And the first thing I wanna say is if you're going to the gym for an hour, I'm applauding you. So don't think I'm saying that there's anything wrong with that.
We are currently starting to see a lot of hunched shoulders and forward head posture, even in children and early teens from all of this screen time. So I am a big fan of anything that gets us up and moving, even if it's as simple as a walk.
This is one of the reasons that I love animals and humans living together, especially if you have a dog that needs to go out and do things and it inspires you to go out and do more things. We are going to get a lot of benefit from a little bit of movement throughout the day versus being really sedentary and then, Locking it all in in a half hour or an hour while we do our quick workout.
Also,if you have a job that involves a lot of movement during the day, kudos to you. That puts you pretty far ahead in meeting a lot of your physical needs, especially if it involves moving in different directions and doing things with your arms and your body. When I was first opening our business, I worked a lot with my business partner in the business doing our canine care jobs. I was always moving down and up, AND we had a two and a half acre property that we were walking all the time.
Since we've hired other people to do those things, now I have to put some effort to get even close to that amount of movement. It is the same for our dogs. I know they're animals and they bounce around on their own, but especially in constrained city life apartments, being on leash, etc. dogs don't always have the opportunity to stretch their legs every day and run at a full Gallup and get the flexibility that I was talking about for us in our joints. This is like us reaching up above our head. When dogs are in a full gallup they are extending and stretching their upper body and their lower body away as they move their limbs out, and then bring them back together underneath themselves.
So there is a lot of value in looking at the routines that our dogs are in, figuring out what they're not doing, and finding ways to make sure we get those movement patterns in their day. I feel the same way for humans that I do about dogs.
I'll dig into this next concept more on another show. One of the things I find is that sometimes we're making a choice. Is it our fitness or the dog's fitness? Are we taking the dog to the dog park while we stand still and the dogs are running and grunting a great workout and we're not? Or are we prioritizing our own needs and leaving the dog at home?
I have an episode coming up where I'm gonna talk about opportunities to meet these needs together. In the meantime, I hope this has inspired you a bit about why dog fitness is something that is important, and that it inspires you to take a little action. My homework for you today is to do anything you can think of until I release our next show about dog fitness that gets you and your dog moving more in any direction. Up, down, sideways, twisting, running, walking, jogging- anything that gets you a little more active, specifically if it's something you can insert between screen time.
I know we get a lot of notifications that are like "ah, you've been sitting for too long, you should stand up and stretch." If you're able to not just a standup and a sit back down, but do a five minute quick jog around the house with your dog, or throwing the toy where you actually get engaged and your dog's engaged, that's gonna go a long way for both of your bodies even though it doesn't feel like your doing much compared to a Herculean effort at the gym.
Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this inspired you a little bit to get more active and I hope this supports you. There will be more coming about how to implement change, and in the meantime, if you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out. I hope you have a great day and I'm looking forward to the next show!