Strength training for seniors is essential to leading a healthy lifestyle – I’ll help you get there today with these 5 top training tips for seniors!
Strength training for older adults is essential to leading a healthy lifestyle it will help you stay fit, maintain independence, and reduce symptoms related to chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, and obesity.
After age 50, 1-2% of muscle strength is lost per year; What’s more, after 60, you lose 3% a year. This is why strength training in older adults is so important.
To avoid or reduce this loss, about 150 minutes of moderate resistance physical activity per week is recommended. This can include cardiovascular exercises, as well as weight training or exercises with your own body weight in order to condition your muscles and improve flexibility and balance.
The key to fitness training for adults over 50 is to be smart about strength training and not be aggressive with your joints.
Tips For The Training Of Older Adults
PRIORITIZE MOVEMENTS IN YOUR FULL MOVEMENT RANGE
If you start training in a gym, you don’t necessarily have to use each and every one of the training machines you find there.
What you really need is to stop sitting and move more. Squats, lunges, walking, jogging, jumping, and pushing as long as your joints or previous injuries allow.
The idea is to do full body movements that are not painful and that are fun to do.
START WITH BODY WEIGHT EXERCISES
Lifting weights is just one way to build strength, but for many, it may not be the best way.
If lifting weights from the beginning seems too intense, then you can start with bodyweight exercises by learning how to perform them with proper technique to reduce the risk of injury.
Before someone begins to lift extra weight, they must be able to handle their own body weight. Too often, people go too fast and sacrifice form and biomechanics just to lift heavy weights, and that’s a very wrong thing to do.
Try starting with the following exercises:
- Squats
- Push-ups (if they are difficult you can get on your knees).
- Shoulder presses (As simple as raising your hands in the air or with water bottles).
- Short abdominal crunch (two or three sets of ten to 15 repetitions three times a week).
Even these simple exercises can help you improve your everyday life.
Once you get the hang of them, and just from there, adding some weight with weights or resistance bands is recommended.
ADD STRETCH AND BALANCE EXERCISES TO AVOID INJURIES
In addition to strength training, older adults are advised to include exercises for balance, flexibility and mobility, or maintenance of range of motion. The idea is to take an approach to exercise that addresses a little of everything.
It’s best to focus on multi-directional, full-body movements rather than isolating a certain muscle group. What’s more, if you train to improve your mobility and flexibility, you will experience better strength gains over time.
Note that balance also decreases over time.
PLEASE BE AWARE OF SPENDING AN ADDITIONAL WARM-UP AND RECOVERY TIME
Now, more than ever, is the time to get serious about warming up and cooling down.
This is because you simply heal and recover more slowly than when you were younger. Remember to take a few extra days off and more breaks between training sets.
The main difference between exercising in your twenties and sixties is recovery and flexibility.
It may be a bit easier if you are new to weightlifting, or if you haven’t done it since you were younger.
If you’ve never done weight training before, keep the first day short and light. Do not exceed about 10 to 15 minutes.
If your muscles hurt the next day, wait until they go away before your next session. Allow your body enough time to adapt and recover from each workout to reap the greatest benefits.
SET A GOAL THAT MATTERS YOU NOW, NOT WHAT YOU WERE 20 YEARS AGO
It can be tempting to try to achieve big goals, such as lifting a certain amount of weight and building a certain amount of muscle. But actually, it’s more helpful to understand why you want to stay active and strong.
Consider your needs and goals at this stage of life… What is the purpose of the training? And the strength training and fitness routine should be created to match your desired goal.
However, the possibility of suffering from a chronic disease also plays an important role. One is more prone to illness or certain health challenges as we age.
That is why you should not close only to weight training, meditation exercises such as yoga and tai chi are perfect complements later in life because they promote a healthy and relaxed mind.