Fitness center targets the anti-aging process in Fort Myers

Reporter: Amy Oshier
Published: Updated:

Many health experts believe you can slow down the aging process if you maintain muscle mass and bone strength.

A number of specialized fitness programs are actually designed to turn back time. If you’re interested in checking one out, look for one that offer longevity or performance training.

You are as young as you feel, as the saying goes.

To Denise Chambre, it’s more than just words.

“I feel like I’m in my 30s,” Chambre said. “I’ll be 60 this year.”

She is one of a growing number of Americans working out at focused-training centers hoping to slow the effects of time.

“They do a lot of balance exercises with you when they’re on a vibrating plate. So it’s really engaging a lot of those like little muscles that you never use,” Chambre said.

Physical therapists Mile Marhovick and Greg Robrahn co-own Oesteostrong in Fort Myers. It’s a fitness center built on technology using science and specialized equipment to train smarter.

“I was interested in anti-aging and specifically became a specialist in geriatrics. So I started looking at what we can do to age healthfully,” Marhovich said.

Robrahn said: “These machines are educational tools, and how to teach you how to recruit muscle, this fast twitch muscle fiber that enables you to produce significant amount of forces that can alter your muscular skeletal profile. And so we’ll see people with much stronger bones more dense bones, but also the ability to recruit the majority of muscle fibers necessary to well go through their normal activities.”

Workouts are timed for maximum results, working through balance and on to strength. Instead of weights, people are pushing pressure, exerting more pounds of force than their joins would allow.

Fitness programs are targeting the aging process. (CREDIT: WINK News)

Numerous studies show weight-bearing exercise can help slow bone less and even build bone.

“As you apply tremendous forces to the skeletal system, it will lay down new collagen, it’ll actually create bone in the direction of forces that you’re putting through the bone,” Robrahn said.

Marhovich said when you’re able to improve your bone density after a certain age, it becomes like aging backward.

“And if you can regain that, then everything becomes easier. You can play golf better, you can play tennis better, you can prevent injuries,” she said.

Chambre arrived at the gym with brittle bones and a diagnosis of osteoporosis. She said she believes this training helped her escape injury after falling down a flight of stairs.

“In the past, that would have definitely been a fracture when I just, kind of, sat there for a minute and, kind of, felt how my body felt, got up and I thought, my gosh, this is a win for sure,” Chambre said.

Staying stronger longer is the measure of success.

Copyright ©2024 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.