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No matter your age or physical condition, it’s never too late to start exercising and getting fit. Senior Fitness can help you to stay healthy and flexible for much longer, and keep your joints strong and healthy.
Building A Balanced Exercise Plan
Staying active doesn’t have to be complicated. Just remember to check with your doctor before you start an exercise regimen. Also, avoid any exercises that won’t be safe for you. Mixing different types of physical activity helps to keep your workouts interesting and improve your overall health and fitness. The trick is to find activities that you enjoy, based on the four building blocks of fitness. These building blocks are:
Balance
Balance exercises help you to maintain stability in later life and stay stronger while standing. For balance exercises, try yoga, tai chi, and posture exercises to gain confidence with your balance.
Exercises like this improve your balance, posture, and walking quality. When your balance is better, you’re also less likely to have a fall and will have less reason to fear falling.
Cardio for Senior Fitness
Cardiovascular exercises use large muscle groups in different motions. It works by getting your heart pumping and can leave you feeling a little bit short of breath. Workouts that are cardio include walking, swimming, stair climbing, hiking, cycling, rowing, tennis, and dancing.
Doing cardio exercise helps to lessen fatigue and shortness of breath. It will also improve endurance for daily activities like walking, errands, or cleaning your home, allowing you to stay more independent later in life.
Strength & Power Training
Strength training builds up muscle through repetitive motions with weights or external resistance from machines, weights, elastic bands, or your body weight. If you really want to increase power and reaction times, you can try power training, which is strength training done at a faster speed.
Strength training is great for older people, as it helps to prevent loss of bone mass, builds muscle, and improves balance. This is important for being able to stay active and avoid falls. Power training can improve your speed while crossing the road or prevent falls by helping you to react more quickly if you start to trip or lose your balance. Building up your strength will help you stay independent and make daily tasks like opening jars, getting in and out of the car, and lifting objects much easier.
Flexibility for Senior Fitness
Flexibility workouts challenge your joints to move through a full range of motion. This can be done via stationary stretches or stretches that involve some movement to keep your muscles and joints supple and less likely to be injured. Yoga is a great way to improve flexibility.
Flexibility will help your body to keep limber and increases your range of movement for physical activities you need to do in daily life, such as looking behind you while you drive, tying your shoes, shampooing your hair, or playing with your grandchildren.
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