Exciting news from the Reclaim Lifestyles team! Our exercise expert, Ben Dreyer, recently completed the PWR!Moves® certification for personal trainers. What is PWR!Moves®? PWR!®, which stands for Parkinson Wellness Recovery, is a nonprofit organization helping people with Parkinson’s improve their quality of life through research-driven exercise. They offer certifications for trainers and physical therapists to equip fitness professionals with knowledge and skills to incorporate into their practices while working with Parkinson’s patients. Ben is now a PWR!Moves® certified exercise instructor, and our friend Beth Schmelling will soon be a PWR!Moves® certified physical therapist.
What the Certification Means
Certified exercise instructors like Ben have learned the PWR!Moves® framework for developing PD-specific, neuroplasticity-principled, personalized therapy and exercise plans for Parkinson’s patients at any stage in the disease. The framework allows fitness instructors to create comprehensive exercise plans for clients to help them improve endurance, strength, agility, and balance. The instructor certification workshop is recognized by the Parkinson’s Foundation Accredited Exercise Education Program.
As a certified instructor, Ben can now confidently work with Parkinson’s patients on improving their quality of life with functional exercises based on four very simple base moves that can be adapted into nearly unlimited variations. Like LEGO blocks, instructors can assemble exercise routines with these four foundational components in infinite ways.
Four Basic Moves for Improved Functional Movement
As we’ve discussed with Ben in past blogs, he begins with any client by determining a baseline by having them perform exercises that include the basic movement patterns, or Primal Pattern Movements, that we all need to be able to do to live fully independently. Standing up, sitting down, twisting, pulling, pushing, bending, etc.—these are the moves we all perform in our daily lives. The PWR!Moves® framework is built on the same principles: taking these basic movements and adapting exercises around them to address the specific challenges Parkinson’s patients deal with, such as movement speed and amplitude.
For example, one of the basic moves is essentially a squat, but because the exercises are focused on helping Parkinson’s patients make bigger, faster moves, the PWR! Up move is a squat up while raising your arms all the way up. Because Parkinson’s patients can have a hard time with proprioception, or the sense of where their bodies are in space, moves that are very small can feel much larger. Having them do very large, exaggerated movements is proven to help correct this distortion.
The Benefits of Exercise for PD
Parkinson’s disease is a dopamine issue, which leads to a breakdown of the cognitive-neuromuscular component—your movements don’t match what your brain is telling you. One of the common treatments for PD is a drug called levodopa, a central nervous system agent that works by being converted to dopamine in the brain. In studies of Parkinson’s patients engaging in regular physical activity, it was found that high-intensity aerobic workouts can increase dopamine levels on par with levodopa. That’s a pretty big testament to the power of exercise, right?
For PD Patients, Intensity Matters
While a lot of the messaging to the general public around getting active can (rightly) be more focused on “any movement is better than no movement at all”, it turns out that for PD patients, it’s worth it to push yourself harder. In a study with sedentary participants on spin bikes, one group was told to target 60% of their max heart rate (MHR) while another group was told to hit 80%. The group that went to 80% MHR saw dopamine increases on par with levodopa, and while the 60% group did see some increase, it was far less than the 80% group. In another study with similar results, one group self-selected their intensity, with most ending up hitting 60 RPM on their bikes, while participants in the other group were paired with professional cyclists on tandem stationary bikes. The pros were told to target 80-90 RPMs and to encourage their partners to push themselves. The group that got coached by the pros? They saw double the dopamine response of the group of participants who were solo.
So what’s that all mean? For Parkinson’s patients, it pays to have a little extra encouragement, whether that’s one on one with a coach, in a class, or through an exercise app like Restart!.
How PWR!Moves® Are Making It Into the Restart! App
As we work to continually improve the Restart! app and make it accessible for as many people as possible, we are excited to incorporate Ben’s training into the next iterations of the app. In the future, as we have planned, Restart! will have a more robust onboarding process that will get into the specifics of what a new Reclaimer is comfortable with, such as if they can get down to the ground or not. A more detail-oriented onboarding will be particularly helpful for users who are coping with conditions like Parkinson’s.
Because the app’s exercise library is already built on the principles of improving functionality in the Primal Pattern Movements, it will continue to be useful to Parkinson’s patients—and patients in the earlier stages of the disease should feel welcome to use the app in its current format (with the knowledge and sign-off of their care team, of course).
We are passionate about making our app the exercise app where you can truly start from where you are, no matter what you’re dealing with, and then provide the support and encouragement to make steady improvements over time. Our current exercise library targets strength, flexibility, and balance, which are all areas that are beneficial for Parkinson’s patients to focus on, but we will soon add cardio exercises as well to help you work up to the levels of intensive aerobic exercise that provide the most benefits for your brain.
Try out the app now for free for three months! Then it’s just $24.99 per three months to keep up your new habit. Download it here.