Wow. Inspiring.
May I ask - how old was she when you started, and what were her limitations?
(I'm thinking about my in laws... who are in their late 80s)
Her health had been declining and she's been more and more inactive over the past several years, I'm assuming because of undiagnosed COPD that had been lingering under the surface.
She's almost 80. I started training her last year, but the only benefit I could really report from back then was that various pains disappeared in her body. (She had arthritis pain and pains from just not understanding that you can abuse your body. She would get terrible pain from bending over in a garden all day and was astonished to learn she could make it disappear by stretching out her front. She was actually able to stop all her pain meds and, once we started stretching out her chest muscles in a doorway, she was able to stop taking a medication to help her breathe.)
However, despite these amazing benefits, she she didn't like training and didn't take it that seriously. It was a chore to her, so it kind of tapered off.
Earlier in the summer she had a major medical crisis (stress and forest fires caused the COPD to really knock her down) and she lost 10lbs of bodyweight when she was already super-lean to begin with. Not a good situation at all. I finally got through to her and she started taking training seriously. In the last few months she's hitting strength feats that are astonishing both of us. She says she feels great, she moves great, she's not in any pain and she's capable of doing stuff she hasn't been in years -- maybe ever. I can see a real spark of life back in her as she's returned to doing all kinds of things she enjoyed, but stopped doing.
I don't have her deadlifting as an exercise in itself, but I make sure she picks up the weights for her farmer carries and frontload carries with perfect form, and every now and then she'll pick up some heavy dumbbells and look at me with astonishment, saying, "That felt effortless!" and I'll say, "Yeah, that's what happens when your body is working right!" Just getting her posture and alignment right has corrected a lot of physical problems for her.
I had been building up her leg strength with wall sits and quadruped rocking, but, full bodyweight squats still eluded her. She could do them, but they were shaking and I didn't like how dangerous they looked. That's when I started teaching her Pavel's techniques: I had her corksrew her legs into the ground so she could feel tension in her legs and but, then I had her pull herself down, then told her to stand up... she effortlessly popped up like a spring was released. We were both shocked and she looked at me like it was a magic trick.
It's been wild seeing how well she responds to the tension techniques + good posture. i certainly never responded like she is. When everything is aligned, she turns into an absolute machine. She can pick up two 30lbs DBs and complain they seem super heavy, but then I correct her form and she stands up like she's holding soup cans.
It's utterly fascinating to me. She's the only person I've ever trained -- the closest I've come before this is working out with friends and sharing tips. When I use Pavel's tension techniques, I don't suddenly have a burst of super strength: I just become solid and feel like I can grind through any weight. When she uses them, she basically transforms like Popeye after a can of spinach.
After the COPD, I would say her limitations were poor aerobic power, general weakness, missing muscle mass, poor movement and her body was locked into poor positions after decades of muscles tightening in all the wrong places. I've still got a lot of things I'd like to improve on her (shoulder mobility, thoracic mobility) before I think she's fixed, but she's already seeing incredible benefits and her quality of movement gains and strength gains have been tremendous. She's a lifelong smoker with COPD, but OS marching has done a lot to improve her cardio. She was unable to march for more than 10 reps at first, but now she can go for minutes at a time before she gets bored.
