She walked into the locker room and took several steps toward the sink counter. Now I was sure: she couldn’t make heel contact with the floor using sneakers. She couldn’t be older than 25, wasn’t overweight but had clearly been chronically inactive: her body showed no signs of consistent muscle development. Then I noticed the heavy make-up and the bleached hair. It was not the same girl. The other one had brown hair. They both looked like office workers. Could that gait issue be related to long term use of high heels? Could be: it’s a working-class neighborhood and a cheap gym. They probably work since very young and if they have to wear high heel shoes for work, that could be the reason for the peculiar gait.
A few minutes later, a woman that could be old or not walked into the same locker room. She looked very tired. Fatigued. Her spine “looked painful”: an important kyphosis, protracted hips, and lumbar spine sustaining a large, flaccid abdomen, signs of sarcopenia and locomotor dysfunction.
An older gentleman that takes very short steps and has very little hip and lower limb flexion ability walks by my treadmill almost every day. We wave at each other.
The second anorexic woman came in yesterday. There is an older woman, too. We just smile. I don’t know their stories. Eating disorder? Neuromuscular degenerative disorder? Cancer? It could be anything.
All these people have in common is that they are at this specific cheap, quiet gym. I remember others with visible signs of poor health. They suddenly stopped coming. Nobody knows if they just moved, gave up or died.
I’m just a member there. I walk on the treadmill to hold on to the threads of my sanity. My brain needs to walk and the Oklahoma outdoors weather is lethal to me during one third of the year. Like so many others who are cold tolerant and heat intolerant, as Global Warming progresses, we become prisoners to our AC environments. The treadmill saves me. While I walk, I look and sometimes I observe.
As I observe, I wish I could have observed humans with movement-educated eyes before. I would certainly be able to help more people if I had. Unfortunately, I spent decades observing molecules, environments and societies with educated eyes. Not moving humans.
I added coaching as an occupational hat or set of tools around 2006. It was an accident: I just happened to be there where evidence-based knowledge could be helpful and I didn’t even know. A woman walked into this gym at the slum with her husband. She had just been told that she had fibromyalgia. “What can you do for me?”, she asked the head coach and owner. I was asked questions I didn’t know the answer to. A family reached out to me through the internet for help with two cases of anorexia. Questions, questions. At the same time that physicians asked for literature review, nutritionists and coaches needed information about a new drug or supplement, athletes had questions about everything, there were these people, these silent people parading their mysterious suffering in front of my eyes.
The second strength-training social project that I wrote was for a friend who worked in the Public Health System in Brazil, in a unit with a predominance of truck drivers and cleaning staff members as their patients. We were told there could be grants for a training center associated with the unit. The project was never implemented. I did learn to observe, though.
Those, and not fancy gyms or even strength gyms are the places to “observe” and work at, if possible, to develop expertise in strength and conditioning coaching. There’s more to learn in one day in any of these places than in a lifetime as a personal trainer for shape, beauty or even strength for strength’s sake.
I don’t think that’s going to happen, though. These “observing eyes” are not what the fitness industry needs.
Some reading:
The Influence of High Heel Shoes and Toe Walking on Gait Kinematics and Kinetics
Clinical definition of sarcopenia
An Overview of Sarcopenic Obesity
Nutrition and Exercise in Sarcopenia.
