SEMINARS SHOW BEST WAY TO EXERCISE

Commonsense decisions about exercise is learned through education, say the workers at the St. Francis Center for Health and Rehabilitation.

In an effort to teach this kind of common sense to everyone from competitive athletes and coaches to senior citizens who are trying to maintain their health, the center has been giving free seminars about every six weeks.

The seminars have focused on exercising in hot weather, caring for common overuse injuries and improving athletic technique. Seminar organizers Gerry Salter and Bill Logan bring in a wide range of speakers to help them get the word out.

"We're trying to work with them to try and prevent as many injuries as possible," Logan, the wellness coordinator for St. Francis, said. "And get them to recognize the early signs of injury coming on."

Many people make up their minds about losing weight, or getting into shape, and set off with the intention of making it happen right away. People who have never run will suddenly decide to launch themselves into a three-mile run. Willpower might take them beyond what their cardiovascular system is comfortably capable of maintaining, but their hips, knees and ankles will have a say in how far they will go.

"The major problem that we run into is people who want to get fit but they really don't know how to do it," Salter, a physical therapist at the center, said. "Training programs should be as individualized as the people who do them. The common denominator with all of them is inflexibility.

"When you talk about a conditioning program, flexibility is a central part of all of that."

The seminars draw in as many as 45 people and offer presentations by Southeast Missouri State University athletic trainers and faculty, the director of the medical center's sports medicine program and St. Francis emergency room physician Dr. Charles Pancoast.

The specific presentations, like the last one on the evaluation, treatment and prevention of Iliotibial Band Syndrome, attract the more competitive athletes who have suffered from this condition in the past. But the seminars, even the specific ones, are designed so that anyone having an interest in athletics could attend.

Salter said the seminars, and the center itself, are attempting to reverse myths of many years of locker room mentality.

"If you have three parameters within a program, frequency, intensity and duration, changing any one of those will allow your body to adapt," he said. "Changing all three at the same time is often too much. The way they manipulate these programs is not necessarily done with an educational background. You have to take things slowly and allow your body to adapt."

The center's next seminar will be in March and deal with the techniques of improving strength and speed the safe way. The seminar will concentrate on high-school age athletes, but the ideas will work for athletes of all levels.

"Primary care is the thing these days, it's prevention," Salter said. "We don't want people to have a high school career and then fall apart in college."

Salter has found that interest in exercise has been fluctuating through the years. Some people have been steadily interested, while others tend to go from one extreme to the other.

"The people that are hitting their 50s, and getting close to retirement age, most of them are starting to re-evaluate their lives," Logan said. "They're saying, 'Hey I've worked awfully hard all my life, am I going to be able to enjoy any of it?'"

All exercise, even walking, should be taught to a certain degree. How far to walk, how often, how fast and how a person feels while walking are important issues to address before starting a program. This heads off problems in the future.