Center helps ‘AWSUM’ group stay fit

By Julie Rausch

At least 200 “AWSUM” individuals come to WSU several times each week, determined to have a healthier quality of life.

AWSUM stands for Active Walking Seniors Uniquely Motivated. Early mornings, five days a week, older adults — the average age is 72 — are stretching, flexing, bending, working with resistance bands and balls, and lifting light hand-held weights. The members — some are WSU retirees — attend personal fitness classes or tone and flex classes two or three days a week at WSU’s Center for Physical Activity and Aging.

Jim Rhatigan, senior vice president, has been going to the center’s 6:30 a.m. class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the past 10 years. His wife Beverly was one of the first people to take the class. Both started the class to combat high blood pressure.

When Rhatigan started, he couldn’t run a single lap in the Heskett Center gym; now he has no problem jogging 12. His wife, meanwhile, got her blood pressure in check and is off medication.

“There are dozens and dozens of benefits that you don’t see but are definitely there,” he says. “This is tremendous preventative health.”

“We work on the cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular strength and resistance training, as well as balance and flexibility,” says Ruth Bohlken, center program coordinator. “Each area of the class is focused on improving different abilities.”

As part of her job, Bohlken gives talks to various senior groups and volunteers at the Senior Center, teaching a fitness class two days a week. Mostly what she sees in the community are people who are not involved with any regular fitness program, she says.The center provides education and services to encourage healthy lifestyles. Important components of the center include providing a community environment for exercise, researching ways to improve the quality of life, sharing information on topics involving aging adults and serving as a learning environment for students completing practical experience degree requirements.Not only are the seniors in WSU’s center improving their own conditions, their involvement in research projects on aging may help others, too.

The research includes such areas as movement, strength, flexibility, medical conditions, mental health, bone mass, physiology, cardio-respiratory fitness, vision, hearing and balance, according to Michael Rogers, research coordinator and exercise physiologist.For example, some volunteered for a driving study that looked at the movement of the head and neck while looking over the shoulder. Other studies have looked at wrist movement while using a computer mouse or maneuvering the steering wheel.

Studies like these are interdisciplinary, involving WSU professionals in education, engineering, psychology and physical therapy who are finding solutions for aging populations wanting to improve their condition.

The interdisciplinary team is developing an index for range of motion and flexibility for trainers and therapists to use. For example, a 55-year-old might have a flexibility index of six out of 10. With an index of baseline figures, that data can be compared to others of the same age and sex.

“From an exercise physiology standpoint, we use initial flexibility to prescribe exercise,” says Rogers. “It shows limitations in one’s ability, and whether they have below average flexibility. In rehabilitation, if someone sustains an illness or injury we know where we should get them back to. The ergonomics people are interested because they design equipment for aging individuals. What fits the younger person may not fit the older person.”

The benefits of data collecting for health care professionals and the public is invaluable.

“By generating range of motion data, we could probably make some assumption toward risk of arthritis and be able to correlate it down the road,” says Rogers. “We also can look at the extent of their arthritis and relate that to any limitations of range of motion and flexibility.”

Already those taking fitness classes at the center are benefiting from the testing.

“We give great individualized feedback,” Rogers says. “Measures that we took a few months (ago) were analyzed and we gave them back individualized results so they can compare their results to others in the program.”

Janelle Robertson, a senior, takes WSU Senior Vice President Jim Rhatigan’s blood pressure. Rhatigan started taking a popular early morning fitness class offered by the Center for Physical Activity and Aging to combat high blood pressure.