Move It! Get Fit Your Way With Silver Sneakers

Nationwide Health Insurance Program Supports Senior Fitness.

Tune yourself up for ski season and beyond. Get started by checking your health insurance plan to see if it includes Silver Sneakers. It’s a nationwide program sponsored by many health insurance plans, and it encourages older adults to get fit in whatever way they want to.

Silver Sneakers gives you access to gyms where you can walk on the treadmill, swim laps, stretch with yoga, lift weights and work out with certified instructors. You may also enjoy community-based programs that include everything from line dancing to boot camp. There are 12,000 Silver Sneaker facilities across the country. Find one near you and get going.

For me, I enjoy an aerobics class designed for seniors. It gets the heart rate up and the joints moving – but the class does it gently. My classmates and I are a heap of replacement parts. We’re full of metal hips, knees and shoulders. The instructor understands, and when she introduces a new move that’s too hard for some of us, we make adaptations. Nobody laughs. We’re all there for the fun of it and to keep our bodies moving.

But we “mambo” and we “grapevine.” We huff and we puff. We feel like prima donnas because we face a mirror and we can see ourselves. But we’re all wearing T-shirts, not tutus!

Classes also offer the benefit of socializing with others of like age before and after class. Just for fun, our class goes to lunch once a month. The recent lunch reminder email said:  “We go right after class with sweat and no make-up. So far we have never been turned away looking and smelling of exercise.”

Many seniors fear trying something new because their heads fill up with negative thoughts such as: Will the class be too hard? What should I wear? Will I fit in? Skip those thoughts.

Find a Silver Sneakers program near you. Put on your sneakers and get going. Now.