All Life is Learning - August 2024

Course Registration

Calling all history lovers—get ready to put your archeology gloves on! There is still time to register for our last summer course, “Can You Dig It? Tour of the WMU Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Dig Site,” with instructor Dr. John Geisler on Saturday, August 3 from 10 a.m. to noon. This one-of-a-kind educational experience will take place at the Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Project Field in Niles, Michigan. Click here to quickly access a Google Maps link for directions to the site. 

Cool Course Ideas

A lifelong learner responding to our recent OLLI survey suggested a course sharing the stories of Peace Corps Alumni. If this was you, would you mind calling the office at (269) 387-4157—we’d love to follow up on this wonderful idea! If this wasn’t you, but you have an idea of your own for a cool course you’d like to see OLLI offer, please don’t hesitate to reach out and let us know! 

Fall Course Registration

Also, don’t forget! Fall course registration starts Wednesday, August 21, at 10 a.m. Keep an eye out for our new course catalog, which will be sent by mail and published digitally in the coming weeks! 

Below are refresher instructions for how to register online for membership and courses: 

Online Registration Step-by-Step

• After browsing the catalog, click the button that says, “Click Here to Register.”
• Sign-in to your membership account by entering your username and password. 
• If you are an OLLI member or previous registrant, you already have a username. If you do not know what it is, or need help creating a new account, email the OLLI office at wmu-olli@wmich.edu.
  • Remember, members enjoy the lowest course fees and other benefits. Make sure to Add a Membership to your cart if you have not yet renewed or purchased your annual membership.
• Under the Courses tab, click on the link for the appropriate starting month for the course you are interested in taking. 
• Browse for your desired course and click the “Add to Cart” button.
• When you are finished selecting all of your courses, click the Cart button to check out. 
• Check out to complete your transaction—now you're ready for class! 
  • For virtual courses, online access links will be sent to you prior to your course start date. For on-campus classes, parking passes will be emailed a week before your course start date, if needed.

Don't Forget You Can Bring a Friend - For Free!

If you plan to take a course this semester that isn’t full, consider participating in our Bring a Friend program, which allows you to invite those who are curious about OLLI to sit in on a course with you for free! This is a great way to introduce your friends and family to our lovely lifelong learning community and encourage them to join. Please don’t forget to contact the office beforehand to let us know that you will be bringing a friend so we can know who our guests are. 

Dave Paul's Biomecial Ethics Class - An Opportunity to Join the Conversation

Are you a knowledge-seeker who wants to dive deeper? In this unique blended course, “Biomedical Ethics,” you’ll spend an entire semester learning alongside WMU undergraduates as Professor Dave Paul aims to cultivate a better understanding of the modern moral issues that exist in medicine, healthcare, and the biomedical sciences. Topics will include race and racism in medicine and health care, doctor/patient relationships, transitioning from a “doctor knows best” to a “patient has authority” model of care, physician aid in dying, and balancing truth telling with confidentiality. OLLI members in particular can bring a wealth of life and work experiences to share in this intergenerational class, so please consider joining this important topic of conversation by registering for “Biomedical Ethics” this semester.

A Series of Classes by Milestone Senior Services

OLLI is growing our community partnerships! In Fall 2024, Milestone Senior Services is offering three free courses throughout the semester as a part of their “Golden Information for Your Golden Years” series—one each in September, October, and November. These courses are also open to the public, so you’ll want to bring your friends and neighbors to learn important information that’s focused on helping seniors thrive! Look for this series in your OLLI Fall 2024 mailer and the Fall 2024 digital catalog. 

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A New Way to Communicate with OLLI

Great news OLLI members! We’re excited to announce a brand-new texting feature that makes staying connected with us even easier. Opting in for text updates means you’ll receive important information and reminders sent straight to your cell phone. You can opt-in to our texting feature by following these simple steps:

1. Sign into your account
2. Select “Account” at the top yellow bar 
3. Select “My Profile” under “Account Overview”
4. Select the box that says “Check here if you agree to receive mobile text notifications”
5. Scroll down to the bottom and select the green button that says “Save Changes” 

Now you are all set to receive texts from OLLI! We hope this new feature will facilitate clearer communication within our lifelong learning community and improve your OLLI experience overall. 

Note: Please take the time to double check that your information in our registration system is updated and correct. This will help make sure that you will receive text notifications, as well as other important OLLI-related information that may be sent to you via post or email. 

What Members Are Saying...

Origins of Old Time String Band Music as a Window to American History with Howard Steiner and the Rinktum Ramblers Band: 

“There's a special chemistry among these five very talented musicians. Everything they play is truly wonderful. Howard keeps us informed about the history of each piece, drawing from his vast knowledge of musicology as well as history. This is an outstanding course. We did no work, just totally enjoyed every minute of it.” 

Please Pass the Gratitude with Jennifer Clark: 

“Jennifer shared great information. So grateful for OLLI and the awesome instructors and classes!!” 

“Good quotations about gratitude; good involvement of class members in group discussion. Encouragement to make gratitude an ongoing priority in our lives.” 

Film: The Unimaginable Journey of Peter Ertel with Joe Cahn: 

“I learned that what Ertel valued most about the USA was our acceptance of others.” 

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Cross-Training, Muscle Confusion Principle, Thomas Jefferson, and Einstein 

Tyler Norman, Ph.D.
Manager of Corporate Outreach
ACSM Exercise Physiologist
NCFI Corporate Fitness Specialist
West Hills Athletic Club, WMU

Not to be confused with CrossFit, cross-training is a term you may have heard of that refers to engaging in a variety of different types of exercise, recreation, and physical activity. The old adage about coaches preferring multi-sport athletes is because of the benefits of cross-training. For example, if you happen to play both golf and pickleball, you are a multi-sport athlete and already cross-training.  

Exercise Science is essentially the study of how the human body responds to different types of stress. The basic premise is that by participating in different types of physical activity and exercise, you are changing the type of stress put on the body. Subsequently, your body will respond by adapting to the new type of stress, and this adaptation causes our fitness to improve. An example is how swimmers often do “dry” workouts on land because there are certain types of stress that cannot be incurred in the water.  

That leads us to the muscle confusion principle (MCP). This is my favorite training principle of all and has been the guiding light in my 35 years as a personal trainer. The muscle confusion principle theory is based on the idea that by consistently changing your workouts and putting stress on the muscle that it is not used to (or adapted to) you will confuse the muscle and force it to adapt to the new stress. The way your body adapts is by increasing strength, endurance, flexibility, power, or whatever your training goal may be. To use an education analogy, if you take the same test over and over, you will get a 100% every time, because you are no longer challenged by the material. If you execute the same workout every time, your body has adapted to that workout and your fitness will plateau. It harkens back to Einstein’s definition of insanity in doing the same thing and expecting different results. If you want your fitness to change, the stress on your body has to change.  

One of my all-time favorite quotes is “If I want what I’ve never had, I must do what I’ve never done,” by Thomas Jefferson. Many variables can be manipulated in exercise to confuse the muscles. Frequency, duration, and intensity are the three primary aspects to work with when employing the MCP. If I do weightlifting or calisthenics, simply reversing the order of exercises is a great way to employ the MCP. By adding an additional workout per week, or adding extra sets/repetitions, I increase my volume of exercise. I can reduce my weights and reduce my rest time in between sets, or increase my weights and increase my rest time in between sets. I can also change the types of exercises I use from workout to workout or change the type of workout altogether.  

Yoga is hilariously challenging for some of the fittest people I know. As for cardio, interval training is a great way to change the stress on the heart and force adaptation. Interval training is a method of having a high intensity “interval” within a low to moderate intensity session. If I were walking in my neighborhood, I could do a 10 second run at every third mailbox. All of these examples will trick the body into adaptation and generate progress in your fitness. Finally, the MPC and cross-training will prevent burnout and boredom. Trying different things is fun, and seeing your fitness improve certainly is too!

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