Helping My Parents with At-Home Fitness for Parkinson’s

"Mary Beth, we need to take my car into the shop," my dad tells me when I come home for the holidays, "It’s been acting up."

I ask him what it’s been doing, and how bad he thinks it might be. He explains that it’s overheating, and he suspects that it might be a bad head gasket. which is a pretty costly and time-consuming fix. Dad’s van is 1 of 2 vehicles that my parents own. And both of them are in poor shape. Every time I drive one, I can identify a problem. The rotors are warped. The breaks squeak. Or maybe a belt is loose. Knowing that they’re playing Russian roulette with their vehicles makes me nervous. But I’m not really sure how to help, either.

The importance of exercise

After we take Dad’s van into the shop, I realize that having unreliable transportation isn’t just inconvenient. It also prevents my dad from getting to his fitness classes.

Fitness has been a really important part of my life for decades. Knowing how much of an impact it’s had on me only reinforces what I think it does for my dad. Lots of reports seem to show that exercise is one of the best combatants of Parkinson’s symptoms, and I don’t want to leave my dad’s (or my mom’s) relationship to fitness up to fate.¹

Muscle mass and aging

On Christmas day, my mom struggles to move my gift across the living room. She rips the paper from the box, unpacks each item and realizes that I’ve gotten her a weight set. Last time I was home, I told her that after age 30, we begin to lose some of our muscle mass, which is why strength training is so important.²

She tells me she wants to jump on the fitness train. She’s been meaning to get into a routine, and this seems like a good way to start. Mom is always game to try a new challenge. It’s a little tricky to convince Dad to adopt new routines – especially from home, but I hope that Mom’s ambition will inspire him.

Creating an at-home fitness routine

In the back of my mind, I also know that dad may not be able to travel to his fitness classes forever. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t create an at-home fitness routine for him and my mom.

The night before my sister and I fly out of Detroit, we’re in a hotel’s fitness center when we team up to film instructional videos for my parents. My sister is the group fitness director at a gym in New York, and she intimately knows how to guide others into executing proper form. She stays away from complex movements, and instead relies on isolated motions that are fairly simple to follow. This seems like the best way to incorporate unsupervised movements into my parents’ lives.

Another strategy is to create routines that they can complete from the comfort of the couch. Dad likes to watch evening movies. Mom often sits with him in the living room. And I know that making it easy to participate in strength activities during down time makes it more likely that they’ll create a fitness routine.

My sister and I hope that making silly videos of us will get my parents to watch them, because following the movements could help them increase bone density, mobility, strength, and overall health. But we also know that it’s up to them to put in the work and use the tools that we’ve provided.³