March 30, 2008
March 26, 2008
65 is going out the window…
There is a great book I want to turn you on to… a horror book of sorts but alas it is all true…The book is called Grey Dawn, and it is by a very smart economist named Pete Petersen…
Petersen is a demographics nut and a specialist on the unprecedented burden an aging American is poised to place on our national budget…Social Security, Medicare, pensions will become a bigger and bigger part of national expenditure – at the expense of things like education, national defense, & investments in new technologies…
The bottom line is something has to give…65 as the age of retirement will, in terms of dollars and sense, go out the window…In fact, it is in everyone’s interest for the 65 set to keep working, paying taxes and contributing..
So what are the new 65+ Americans to do? You do what Americans always do – change the rules and stay young longer! What Rosie the Riveter and the working woman did for the United States during World War II, this new aging American – The Ranks members – will do for our time…Now more than ever, it is time for the next generation of “retirees” to start saving – saving your bodies, your strength, your balance, your flexibility – not getting old muscularly is the best savings plan you have…Society will need your Ranks Power in the American economy as seasoned strong leaders. We need Ranks Power, so 65 year olds, you are being called – it’s time to get stared!
March 19, 2008
Check out an 87 year old master yoga instructor!
There are already a handfuls of great 80 year olds out there…The Ranks finds out what these guys do to make them so different and then shares the wealth through all of its SUPER PREVENTION programming…
btw – yoga is great for the older athlete but of course a touch dangerous as well…I like Old Pattahbi Jois but I think he was a touch reckless for my taste…New to yoga? Go to your local lululemon store and I’ve found the staff there will give you unbiased advice on which studios and instructors to check out.
March 17, 2008
The Older Athlete Must First Focus on What to Remove
03 Barriers to Entry: The Older Athlete Must First Focus on What to Remove
When I first start to work with someone in their fifties or sixties who is re-entering the exercise world after a long period off (or perhaps someone who has never done focused formal exercise), I receive several legitimate reservations…
The profound concern I run into from these people goes like this:
“How can I possibly do this now? If I wasn’t an athlete in high school, what the hell chance of success do I have today?”
I am here to say, to a significant degree, your reservations are right!
Don’t get me wrong – I truly know and understand that exercise benefits enormously at every age – I’ve staked a career on that.
The Ranks is different because we consistently respect that exercise is dangerous stuff! Not exercising is a heck of a lot more dangerous, therefore you have to know how to go about it. You can still be vigorous – in fact, you have to be – but work smart.
In The Ranks’ world, working smartly (and safely) means sequencing your actions properly…The first element everyone has address upon entering the exercise fray is NOT the adding of weights, laps and stretches. Rather it is the REMOVAL of the hostile patterns and constrictions in our musculature.
This is why we have to evaluate and continue evaluating posture so thoroughly….We need to be fully aware of the potholes and landmines existing in our musculature which run against the grain of exercise and lead to injuries.
The removal of hostile patterns and constrictions in the Ranks world is done via the Gluing Energy Process in the 8 Muscular Crossroads of Pain and Performance. Head over to GenerationRanks to read up the Ranks system of building older athletes and find out how and where things go wrong as well as what to do about it!
The Ranks program is different because we face up to the fact that exercise can be risky. The key to success is to head off risk with the Gluing Energy Process of regular self applied deep tissue work.
Keep reading and keep learning. Being the Older Athlete is about focusing first on what your remove, not what you add.
March 14, 2008
What is Ranks Academy?
Essentially Ranks Academy is a body of work – a curriculum put together and taught by me, Adam Poock. The curriculum is the product of my three years’ summing up my understanding and beliefs about the preventable aspects of the aging process – the reversible aspects of Muscular Aging in particular.
Ranks Academy is my school for older athletes – mostly the first wave of baby boomers hitting their sixties, with classes held in and around Boston covering the gamut of age-related issues: balance, flexibility, pain, posture and performance…
Ranks Academy is essentially a vocational school where students learn to maintain, defend, develop and get the most performance out of their most critical biological asset – their true home –their body.
When I went into the field of keeping people younger, I quickly realized there WAS NO COMPREHENSIVE FIELD of keeping people younger. So, when I left Sargent College at Boston University fifteen years ago, I really had to get to work – studying, exploring and experimenting. I spent well over a decade working with individual bodies and learning from masters in multiple aspects of physiology, physical therapy and physical training:
The Pain Experts
The Posture Experts
The Anatomy Savants
The Manual Therapy Artisans
The Yoga Masters
And even a couple of brilliant golf pro’s (these guys know the human body extremely well btw)
Now, it’s been 15 years and 22 chapters written on the subject of NOT GETTING OLDER MUSCULARLY, and I have a lot to say…
Physical training (and rich nutrition) are indeed the avenues to outsmart the effects of chronological aging – the increasing pain, worsening posture and decreasing performance most of us feel are inevitable…..
BUT, the physical training necessary looks quite a bit different than you’d think or find in your local gym…There are precise techniques, sequences and protocols that you have to practice…Very importantly, you have to know what to do when things go wrong…you have to know what anatomy to always monitor to see how close you are to a potential injury and how to prevent it…This is tricky business!!
Today’s ager – be it the 45 year old parent with young kids or the 68 year old intent to keep working,earning and saving money – is demanding an evolution and revolution in physical training to allow them the lives they want….
One of the blessings of the free marketplace (happily we still have one in the health care arena) is that the demand for solutions fuels advances in care….We have huge urgencies in our health care system and someone like me has had the time and space to question and grow – to accumulate the information and skills an aging America needs to defend their personal safety, happiness and fortunes…
It’s time for me to give back via info. on the web and in our gym space seminars and intensives. Stay tuned, because school is in session with Adam Poock…
Think with your butt!
When people find out at a dinner party that I specialize in turning around the muscular aging process, it starts to look like an old EF Hutton commercial all around me….Staying muscularly young is a tad complex and often counter-intuitive, HOWEVER, when I only have two minutes to talk with a new person and intend to impact that person’s physical life MAJORLY, I give them this advice on muscular aging: THINK WITH YOUR BUTT….everyone intending to stay muscularly young for a long time has to practice deep tissue work at their piriformis and gluteus medius muscles REGULARLY…These muscles of the UPPER, OUTER BUTT CHEEK are the postural keystones of the human body because they connect the leg to the pelvis – or really, our core to the ground! The amount of reversible constriction one has in this part of their behind is the real measure of the muscular age – deep tissue work in this crossroad of the musculature is the key to fixing chronic back pain, getting back your posture and improving your balance. In the Ranks System, we call this critical pile of musculature in the butt cheek, The Bitter End and you have to know all about it to be the next great older athlete…
March 13, 2008
Hello world!
I’m Adam Poock, muscular physiologist and founder of The Ranks. Based on 15 years of experience, working on 1000’s of bodies, I developed a system reversing muscular aging.
The system’s foundation is removing muscular trauma in 8 crossroad areas of your body.
In this website/blog you will learn the Gluing Energy Process– deep tissue massage self applied according to key rules.
