On May 31, St. Paul’s Plaza in Chula Vista celebrated National Senior Health & Fitness Day with a day of intergenerational activities with children from Kid’s Depot preschool and organized by high school seniors from Christo Rey San Diego High School. St. Paul’s Plaza has many active seniors dedicated to staying fit physically and mentally. Also at the event, a few residents were given health and fitness awards.
St. Paul’s Plaza Fitness & Wellness Coordinator Janet Blair said she holds a celebration for its seniors every year in honor of National Senior Health & Fitness Day. Blair said St. Paul’s works with independent living, assisted living, and memory care residents.
“We not only have the privilege of having a pool, gym, and dance studio, but we also have one of me,” she said. “Many facilities like this do not have a health and fitness coordinator, only an activities coordinator. My goal here is to make sure that our seniors here are active and engaged in the fitness programs we provide.”
Blair said the day is a celebration for the seniors that participate in all or many of its fitness classes.
“More than 55% of our seniors choose to take advantage of several times a week of its classes offered at the pool, the gym, specialized strength and balance groups, range of motion exercises, yoga, tai chi and brain fitness,” she said. “That is what today is all about. It is about acknowledging their efforts in getting out, giving it a go, and do what they can to move it or lose it.”
Blair said in giving out special awards, it has a resident who loves to dance. Ruby Miller earned the award as being the Plaza Influencer.
“She loves to spend a lot of her day with her headset on, feeling the music with her body,” she said. “She runs a Move and Groove class on Mondays and has about eight residents that come down, they put on 50 and 60s tunes and they do chair dancing. She tries to talk to everybody here at the Plaza and likes to encourage them to come out to some of the classes and talks about how much better it makes her feel to just keep on moving. She has a really big impact on our community here. She has made a lot of residents here make the decision to get up and go and be part of our Move It or Lose It programing.”
Resident Dot Barret earned the Motion Is the Lotion Award.
Blair said Barret had a terrible fall that took months to recuperate.
“She has come back and beyond from where she was before the fall,” she said.
“That is a really big thing to say for a senior in their 80s. She is now able to ride the bike in the gym. She comes to the exercise classes where we do strength training and dancing. She also comes to our range and motion classes four times a week to keep the oil flowing so she can continue to live a pain free life. This is something many seniors do not realize. They sit. They get in pain. And they do not realize the solution. These range and motion classes are like a gentle yoga class where they focus on posture and breath and open all the joints in the body.”
Joseph and Francis Aguilera earned the Move It or Lose It Award.
“They are a delightful couple and they both have significant health challenges,” she said. “But they encourage each other to keep coming back to classes. They really love it. They really look forward to the classes. They come at least five times a week on a regular basis. Joe loves to dance. We did not know this until we put him in front of a mirror with a dance rail in front of him. When I get him doing steps to the music he really gets down. I’ll say, ‘Shake your tail feathers,’ and he has it all shaking and has all these creative moves. He is an inspiration for sure and his wife has gotten stronger. She had a stroke and has come all the way back from doing these classes.”
Blair said they have not been able to do intergenerational events since the pandemic, so this year she made it special by using their high school interns, who were involved in every step in making this day happen for the residents. She said she brought in the children from Kid’s Depot, bringing back the relationship they had before COVID, and truly made it an intergenerational event.
“Today, we had 20 5-year-olds and they were just gorgeous,” she said. “They came down and we did some games in the community room that were simple enough for the kids to do, and fun. And we did not want something that would make the seniors fall over. We played Giants Treasure, an Australian game where they sneak up behind them and get the treasure. We did a bean bag toss, and egg and spoon race.”
Blair said it was a competition between them as in both the bean bag toss and egg spoon race, a senior won one game and a 5-year-old won the other.
Blair said everyone in the room received some kind of medal. She said the kids all got a You are a Star medal, and the seniors got a swimming medal as many of them use the pool and she loves to encourage them to swim. Blair said Sprouts Chula Vista and Eastlake helped by donating healthy snacks for the event.
“They just loved seeing the kids playing the games and doing the activities,” she said. “Personally, and those who study this will tell you that having this intergenerational type of event is extremely important. We had quite a bit of our memory care residents here today, and they just light up when they are around children. It just brings them such joy. Little kids have no agenda, and they are very sensitive to energy. When you bring the intergenerational component into the experience they just light up and enjoy it. In the end I encouraged them to share their medals, so they intermingled through the crowd, and everybody was laughing, smiling, and it was a really happy place that everyone was in during that time.”
Blair said of the 56 assisted living/independent living residents, 48 utilize the Fitness Programs offered at the Plaza.
“There are many levels of fitness in our population, but I can say that 37 of the 48 come to at least three classes a week, 16 use the pool regularly; three go to the Tai Chi classes with Southwestern College offered here at the Plaza. The rest come on a regular basis to our strength training, stretching, balance and mobility classes,” she said.
