Final Inquiry – March 27

Mission Accomplished … ?

Well we’ve arrived at the end and I can safely say that I have been successful (marginally) in improving my flexibility. I had lofty goals in the beginning of working towards doing the splits but it became very apparent that such a goal was beyond my capabilities. So the next best thing was to improve my sit-and-reach, and sit-to-stand test scores – which I did. I have not been able to move beyond the 16 inch mark that I discussed in my post a couple weeks ago but going from 14 to 16 inches is not insignificant. I also improved my sit-to-stand score by 1 point, which isn’t much, but to be honest I had a reasonably good score to start with. I can now complete the test without hands and minimal balance disruption.

Reflective Thoughts

Overall, I am happy with my progress and I have enjoyed the project. Mobility is so important to physical and mental health and it often gets neglected as we age. It is directly correlated to longevity. I hadn’t realized how stiff and inflexible I actually was until I initially attempted the sit-reach-test for my baseline. I was somewhat disappointed, though not surprised, to see that I was below average for my age. When I was very happy to see that I improved to being just slightly above average over the 3 month period. I still have a long way to go to reach my overall goals but seeing direct results and real progress has been the most enjoyable part of this project.

The least enjoyable part for me has been sharing somewhat personal information about myself in a public blog post. I realize that I had the option of of being private but I figured it would help my growth to get more comfortable sharing personal information. That being said, I had initially planned on posting videos of myself doing the exercises but I noped out of that real quick after watching them. The videos I did include were very helpful and I think the tools related to linking videos, H5P, and learning by video were the most helpful for my project. Videos are widely used in school and being comfortable sharing them correctly with students is very important.

If I were to do this again I think I would focus on something a little more practical that I could use in the classroom. For example, I love playing games and I would have loved to do a “game of the week” blog that highlighted educational games teachers could use in various subjects/grades. Unfortunately I did not think of this idea until late February when we were already well into the project.

Thank you all for reading my posts and I encourage everyone to get up, move around, and do your stretches! I’ve included the Youtube video of the exact routine that I used throughout my program. It’s fairly quick and easy to follow along. You don’t have to be planning on doing the splits to get the most out of this video as it targets areas of the body that most people have issues with. Do the work – your future geriatric self won’t be able to thank you enough!

Take care,

Brad