Hello and welcome to another live broadcast that MedStar health. My name is Karen single and I’m joined today by dr. Richard Hinton sports medicine, medical director for the Baltimore region. Today we’re going to be discussing how you can stay active during this difficult pandemic.
Many of you, including me, are teleworking. We have a child at home, we have schools are closed. So what can you do to make sure that you have you stay active, so we’re going to share with you today some tips and exercise to keep you healthy and active during this time. So, stick around ask your questions in the comments and please share this with your family and friends. We even encourage you to like our broadcast today, so we know that you’re here with us today.
So first of all, thank you doctor. Hidden for being here today appreciated happy to be here great. So before we start with some questions that we’ve been asked, can you tell us a little bit about yourself sure I am the medical director for MedStar Sports Medicine here in the Baltimore area?
I’M an orthopedic surgeon. We have the great opportunity of taking care of many of the professional and collegiate scholastic teams and many individual athletes here in Baltimore, prior to being an orthopedic surgeon. I’Ve been a physical therapist and an athletic trainer and had done my masters in public health over at Johns Hopkins, so I’ve been interested in public health and musculoskeletal care for quite some time.
Thank you sure, so why is it so important that we share this information with our viewers right now sure we’re all have been asked to do what’s right for the greater good, but that has really gotten us as individuals out of our routines, regular exercise, even as Brief as 30 to 60 minutes of moderate exercise a day, just has a lot of wonderful benefits for us that are important that it tends to boost the immune function. It really helps us keep normal eating and sleep patterns. It really is a huge contributor to our mental health, and I think this is all, though.
Certainly no one wants this to be upon us right now. I think it does present people with an opportunity to invest in themselves to start new routines, be it meditation or yoga or exercise program that they haven’t been engaged in in the past, that they can invest in themselves and hopefully even come out of this with some Lifetime health benefits and new activities that will benefit us long after this is behind us.
Thank you. So, let’s talk a little bit about just general prevention tips, short in code at 19, right so with with exercise. The first thing is just to pay attention and follow the great information that has been put out by the public health community, just the general concepts of social spacing of hand, hygiene and washing of avoiding frequently used surfaces or touch surfaces. So the key thing is to pay attention to the great public health information that has been out there and then myself, along with others today, will talk to you about how you apply that to your exercise.
Thank you. What are some recommended? Si outdoor exercises that people can do sure, so this is going to get us all outside a little bit more walk and exercising outside. You can do very safely again following the concepts of social spacing people can hike, people can walk bike outside. It’S always key that if you are hiking particularly away from your neighborhood, a home that someone you know always has a plan about your schedule, where you will be how long you will be gone, where you intend to hike every hiker or a person out on a Long walk should take a telephone with them and have a plan in mind if something were to go awry also getting outside really helps us says you know many Americans, a vitamin D deficient.
Vitamin D plays an important role in all immune functions and getting outside 10 to 30 minutes a day can really help support your vitamin D levels, and that is also important. Thank you and just a reminder for those of you just joining us. We are here today with dr Richard Hinton sports medicine director talking about ways that you can stay active during the kovin 19 pandemic. So the next question, if you have any questions for dr. Hinton, please ask them in the comments below we do already have some that came in so we’ll get to those in just a moment.
So let’s talk about a little bit about to our parents with kids that have sure one of them being me right. There are some safe activities that we can do with our kids right now sure. So a key thing with the kids, I think, is they’re out of their school routine. So an interesting concept, I think, is to schedule outdoor activities at regular times during the day with your kids set your phone for the alarm to go off, be it at 10:00 or at 2:00, or at some point in the day that the kids routinely can get Outside and play there’s a lot of unstructured play, whether that’s hide-and-go-seek or different types of things.
As long as you apply the concept of social spacing, if children are using sporting equipment, even if they’re just using it by themselves, they need to wipe down that equipment, cleaned out equipment wash their hands before and after activity. The key thing for children is a general aerobic fitness, a general sort of activities that keep them involved.
There are sports specific skills. If you have a young lacrosse player or a baseball player or a basketball player, there are self play activities, wall bowling and different drills. That we here at MedStar, will be able to provide you in the future or go to different sport governing bodies like the u.s
Lacrosse, a US soccer, a USA baseball that will have specific drills that you can participate in with your child at home. A key thing is many of our young athletes, you’re, still an athlete you’re. Still a team member you’re still part of what you were doing before this happened. So it’s very important for you to stay connected on social media with your teammates, to share your concerns and feel about. What’S going on to look forward to a day when you’re back playing – and I think it’s also a wonderful opportunity for you as a young athlete to know more about your sport to take time and read about tactics and skills and greats in your game and positive Games experiences from playing your sport to keep you connected and maybe being a better and more knowledgeable player and teammate.
When you come back, I thought that I had my kids are in dance and their dance was cancelled right so tomorrow morning, rather than then I’m going to dance, I’m gon na actually have my own dance class. What school at home? Right! Because I am aware of some of the activities that they’re doing and our dances staying connected to through Facebook live work and again I think that’s a great example of how you, as a family or you as an individual. Maybe with this can own your own fitness. A little bit more, that’s great, so you talked about different exercises that people can say connected any other, any other thoughts for exercising help. How can people stay connected?
We’Re so sorry, right now, yeah in general, look even if you’re taking up something that seems relatively like a yoga program or a walking program. You have to understand if you haven’t been exercising that even those things can be taxing on your body, so in general, with any new exercise program, the frequency, the intensity, the duration of the exercise needs to all go up very gradually. If you’re doing something that hurts stop doing, it find a way to work around your pain, not through your pain but gradually moving into new exercise. Programs is important.
Great. Thank you. So we have a question from Jocelyn. She was asking about swimming. Is it safe to swim at a resort, pool, indoor or outdoor, and what about hot tubs are they see? She was so? I would tell you in general, probably public pools know just depending on the number of people that are in the pool are accessing the pool using a private pool or a private hot tub. There is no data currently that that presents a problem as long as you are appropriately using the hygiene and the routine preparation for your pool and your hot tub. You do need to spend time again being conscious about wiping down surfaces that help you get access to.
The handrails or in-and-out limit the number of people again for social spacing but being inappropriately treated hot tub by itself does not present a problem if you were following the routine instructions about safety with the hot pool and also practicing the basic public health concepts. Now of spacing hand-washing cleaning surfaces. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Jocelyn. We have another question from nicholas. He asks. Is there a risk of catching the virus while out running right? I would tell you that again, the way this virus is transmitted is over a respiratory droplets. One thing everybody in an athletic situation needs to know is that the virus is not present in sweat is not transmitted.
That way. Conceptually this whole concept of social spacing is that droplets can travel six feet between people after a call for after a sneeze. If you are appropriately following spacing, if you are not with someone that is either coughing or other activities exercising outside and running should not present any significant risk. Thank you. So Deena asked what about playground equipment is that considered off-limits, yeah, playground, activity or equipment? Now is not great, because it’s really a public use calm, you know overly use, it concentrates the people in a given plays own around the equipment, rather than spreading them out the entire playground or entire area of play. So that is probably not the place to be right now.
Thank you thanks for that question Tina, so we have a question from Suzanne what about exercise for those folks who are over 60 years old and if you don’t live in a neighborhood, what is can do? What is that’s conducive to walking? What can they do right? So I’m going to bring in some other folks here at MedStar that we have the great chance to work with Kelly, Laura who is MedStar athletic trainer and then Jay Dyer. Who is our head of strength and conditioning here at MedStar and has worked with the u.s
National teams and a cadre of Scholastic, professional and collegiate athletes for years. So I’m going to hand this over to you Kelly and let you have at that: okay, so there’s a multitude of information! That’S out online right now! That includes home workouts that you can do with your body weight or different types of fitness. I think it’s important that you find something that you enjoy doing and something that meets your current intensity level of fitness, so, whether you’re a beginner, you should stay with the beginner type of exercises and gradually work your way into something else. For a change of scenery.
There’S a ton of great trails that are out here in the Baltimore area and all over the country, so you can take advantage of you know some different scenery than just your backyard or just your neighborhood. That’S our health and our sports performance team are going to be putting out some really great content for you on the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned for all of that information, but yeah. I think there’s so much out there right now that you can do and it’s a great time to work on your fitness and a lot of the available content now can be done in a group fashion or shared fashion is well online. Yeah, that’s great!
So we have another question about suggestions on exercising what your exercise routine should look like sure, and what, if you don’t have an a home gym, watch what you do? How can you use your body and other things in the house to exercise at home? Right and that’s I mean with the sort of urgency of this situation. Not everybody has had a chance to grow and put together on a gym. So Jay Dyer had a strength and conditioning he’s going to come talk and actually demonstrate some of the basic concepts of just core fitness and safe exercise and the concepts.
And if you don’t have a you know a full gym at home, basically using body weight and other household items almost yeah, I mean again as Kelly touched on a lot of this comes down to your level of fitness expertise. How long you’ve been training so there’s gon na be varying degrees and regressions and progressions of every exercise based on your ability? Again, one thing to add to doctor Hinton’s advice before some people: if you’ve not exercised before the idea of starting 30 minutes, continuous, could seem daunting. One way to break that up would be just doing 10 minutes of exercise after every meal.
So after you finish, breakfast go out for a 10 minute walk. You know: walk 5 minutes away from your house, turn around walk back 10 minutes after launch 10 minutes after dinner and then get your accumulation of exercise throughout the day. If you feel like doing it all at once is too much so and again with some of the stuff that’s out online, you would just want to make sure that you are. You know not overly challenging yourself if you are going to use, say a grade of perceived exertion scale if you’ve never exercised before and you’re starting something out if we’re going on a scale. One two – and you probably want to be in that four range – five range – meaning 40 %, 50 % of what you think your overall capabilities are and then continuing to progress, as you become more fit starting out in a 10, is just going to lead you to Either quitting the exercise program or possibly injuring yourself, so Jays going to go through some again, this concept of being able to use your body as your exercise, equipment and some notes on kind of some basic exercises and how to keep that safe.
Another concept, though, is if you have strength and conditioning or athletic training professionals that you have worked with and have a relationship with incorporate them call them there we’re here as a not only as a health system of MedStar, but as a community of health providers to Help you get through this, so if you do have established relationships, contact those people and again we are going to be with you during this pandemic and hopefully we’ll be able to help you, along with all of your issues and questions about maintaining your fitness during what Can be sort of a trying time, okay, okay, so one of the foundational exercises would be squat into the floor, so we’re nice and solid and we’re gon na hinge our hips back towards the chair.
So that’s going to give us a landing spot and also again, if we were to lose our balance, it has something to catch us. Okay, the next thing, if you don’t feel comfortable, even starting with that type of movement, you could just get on a doorframe or find a wall on your house all right and get down into that squat position using the wall for support. Okay doing some type of ice metric squat will also help in developing your strength and also your fitness level, so yeah those two versions for squats, as you get more advanced, obviously you’re going to use load.
Ok, there’s plenty of stuff out on the internet and and social media of people like holding their kids doing squats. Ok, it’s a little bit more challenging for me by 19 year old weighs 200 pounds, so he doesn’t actually sit still on my shoulders. Alright, so we can go again staying with, like our lower body, for exercises, we’re going to lay down on the mat we’re going to have our back flat and our head down on the ground. Okay, these are bed heels, are in contact with the ground. Alright, what we’re going to do is just drive through our heels and activate our hamstrings, gluts and low back alright and again. This is not something that you have to do rapidly. I’M just going to go nice and controlled, focusing on the large muscle groups in your lower body and again, as you get stronger and make progress, you can switch this to a single leg exercise.
Okay, you can elevate your heels all good progressions to make as you become more fit all right. We have push-ups, but you get in your starting spot. If you haven’t been, training may just be holding this position all right. This kind of a push-up plank position and sustaining that hold for 20 seconds 30 seconds just to develop some strength and strength endurance through your chest. Okay, next progression would be using your knees as your pivot point coming down, making sure your elbows are going back towards your feet towards your hips, okay and then. Finally, just your basic push-up same thing: feet shoulder-width, core, tight. All right now we’re going to go into something called a hollow hole. Okay, so a lot of people like to do planks.
Those can be different. There could be different problems with doing a plank. Okay number one is actually sustaining the position. So, if we’re going to do a hollow hold, what that allows us to do is change the height of our legs to basically change the difficulty of the exercise. So if you’re going to start here, get our backs flat to the ground legs are up, then we’re just going to hold that position very similar to a plank and then, as we get stronger, we can extend our arms over our head and then we can also Drop our legs as we get stronger, hollow position. All right, you’ll see it’s very similar to holding a plank this way, all right, except it’s going to guarantee that our backs flat and against the ground where sometimes when people are planking, they collapse down. So those are a few things to get started up Thanks.
Thank you very much. Thank you to our experts for joining us today. Thank you for joining us for this Facebook live broadcast, as Kelly mentioned, we’re going to continue to put content out there to help you during this time. So you can reach out to us on our website and also on our blog blog med-surg org and also on our social media pages. Thank you very much for joining. Take care.
