I have seen that majority of the people don’t exercise. When they are young, the pet excuse they take is – “Hey, man I am busy; I don’t have enough time to exercise”. And when they get old, they just become too lazy to workout. They don’t realize that eventually they will have to pay heavy price for this indifferent attitude in terms of poor health, irreparable muscle and bone loss; so much so that when they get old they will find it hard to carry on even day-to-day routine activities like climbing stairs.
If you are facing any difficulty in performing your daily routine activities, take this as a warning sign, especially if you are crossing the age of fifty.
Strength And Stamina After 50, 55 Or Even 60 – Fitness Tips For Seniors
As you get older, your body starts to deteriorate if you don’t exercise – bones get brittle, muscles shrink, and your ligaments & other working parts don’t recover from injury as speedily as they used to. Some of this is just part of natural aging process, but there’s a lot you can do to ward off some of the effects and impacts of aging – that is to live a longer, healthier life and be physically independent for the rest of your life.
Read on here for the best senior fitness tips to help retain and improve your strength and stamina in old age, after 50 or even 60 and beyond.
# 1
Mix Up Your Exercise Routine: For instance if you exercise on treadmill every day, there is all the probability that soon you will get bored and skip out on your workout regimen.
Make it lively by mixing up your fitness routine with a variety of different activities – high intensity movements such climbing stairs, swimming, dancing, cycling, yoga, dancing, jogging, gardening or even Zumba.
# 2
Be Consistent: Regularity is the key to keep your interest live in exercising. If you miss one day then there is every chance that you will not feel like doing it the next day as well. Do some thing every day, may be just going for a walk around the block. Set some time in your schedule every single day to move your ass and be active. You can keep a pair of dumbbell at home and use them when you can’t go out due bad weather.
Find out here how to have your own dumbbell gym at home with least investment.
# 3
Weight Lifting At Any Age: Don’t think that weight lifting is only for young people or body builders. It’s as beneficial for seniors as is for the young ones. Weight lifting is one of the most effective ways at all ages to gain stamina, strength and endurance. It helps retain and build muscles and bones, which are essentially required in old age. You can start with small weights, and gradually increase them as you gain strength, stamina and endurance.
# 4
Daily Exercise Improves Heart Rate: An individual with healthy heart rate is likely to live longer. When you sit calmly, your heart slips into slower, steady pace called as your resting heart rate. An increased resting heart rate over time is a sign of heart trouble ahead.
The average healthy resting heart rate for a person is between 60 and 80 beats in a minute. However, a well-conditioned athlete like a professional cyclist or a marathon runner may have a resting heart rate of even less than 40 beats in one minute, and a sedentary, unconditioned adult’s heart rate can go above 100 beats a minute. A woman’s resting heart rate will average 8 to 10 beats a minute more than a similarly conditioned man.
Aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, jogging, swimming, or cycling, during which you increase heart rate by working your larger muscle groups for a sustained period of time, strengthens your heart, trains it to pump more blood per contraction, and eventually leads to a slower resting heart rate.
# 5
Work On All Major Muscle Groups: To improve the metabolism rate and gain strength, endurance & stamina, you must understand and work on all major muscle groups (alternating upper body, lower body and core muscles) every week, not just one or two.
You don’t have to do a lot of different exercises to work all major muscle groups, but just judiciously choose the appropriate exercises.