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Saved by the bell

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For 60-year-old exercise guru Karl Knopf, it’s as clear as a bell.

A kettlebell, that is.

“When a person’s young, they exercise for the aesthetics of it — how they look. When they get to be middle aged, they start to exercise for the health of it — to prevent diabetes, heart disease, et cetera,” Knopf explains in a phone interview from his home in Sunnyvale, Calif.

“But when a person gets to be in their 60s, 70s and 80s, they need to start exercising for the function of it, so that they can do those activities of daily living: pick up a grandchild, push a lawnmower, shovel the snow out of their driveway or whatever. So they need to start exercising with a purpose.”

That’s where kettlebells come in.

Exercises with the rudimentary workout tool — which resembles a cannonball with a handle — are “multi-joint, functional and done at a speed that most activities of daily living are done,” notes Knopf, who has been teaching exercise to older adults and the disabled for 35 years in community-based programs.

“Too often when you go to the gym, you sit on a machine and it’s just a prescribed direction that you can go, where kettlebells give you that opportunity to be more functional and natural. You can make it applicable to those activities that you perform.”

Kettlebells, of course, have been in use for more than 100 years — most notably by Russian athletes and 19th-century strongmen.

More recently, the cast iron weights have enjoyed a revival of sorts in North America, with celebrities like Lance Armstrong, Sylvester Stallone and Penelope Cruz jumping on the kettlebell bandwagon.

That’s a good thing, notes the professor and coordinator of the adaptive fitness therapy program at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, Calif., who teaches undergraduate students headed for careers in physical therapy and exercise physiology.

Knopf, proud owner of a doctor of education degree, says kettlebells can be used to help improve coordination and balance, as well as strength.

But kettlebell training needs to be done correctly.

“If you do it too strenuously or incorrectly, you can hurt a tendon, a ligament, et cetera, or cause back or neck problems,” the good doc warns. “So it’s really important to start slowly and really focus on form before you start jerking heavy weights around.”

In his newest book Kettlebells for 50 , Knopf outlines a variety of exercises for older adults who are intermediate or advanced fitness enthusiasts.

Knopf, who recalls first hefting kettlebells as a teen in his high school weight room, likes to use them once a week.

That’s in addition to swimming, cycling and stretching regularly, along with lifting conventional weights up to four times a week.

It’s an active regimen, but it helps him deal with his chronic back pain and arthritic joints.

Knopf, longtime member of the American Senior Fitness Association’s national advisory board knows the human body shouldn’t be idle.

“I learned that early on when I worked with quadriplegics and paraplegics,” he says. “I figured if we could find exercises that they could do and it helped keep them functioning the best they could, then there’s really no excuse why everybody can’t find some method of exercise that’s both enjoyable and beneficial.”

Knopf acknowledges that many older people are afraid to get fit for fear of getting hurt. But it’s never too late to get saved by the (kettle)bell.

“Strength training is so important if people want to maintain their quality of life and age successfully,” he says.

Knopf suggests doing kettlebells once a week “as a cross-training method to ramp up enthusiasm” and as part of a diverse exercise program.

“About 30% of how you age is in your genes,” he says.

“But that means 70% is how you eat, how you think and what you do. We have a great ability to determine how we age. We can let aging happen to us or we can be proactive.”

 

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