The key to healthy aging, each physically and mentally, is constructing strength and power. It might be easier than you think that.
We probably need not remind you that your body changes with age. Age-related muscle loss begins around age 35 and increases slowly—about 1% per 12 months. But after about age 60, muscle declines more rapidly, so adults who don’t do regular strength training can lose 4 to six kilos of muscle per decade. Moreover, lost muscle will likely be replaced by fat.
Doing exercises to construct strength and power
Before you start, try the next: rise up from a chair without using your arms, walk up and down 10 steps without holding onto a handrail, and stand on one foot without support for no less than five seconds. If even one among these is difficult for you, you need to seek skilled help and supervision as you start.
Otherwise, you’ll be able to try the exercises below yourself. You can do any of those without equipment, but you’ll have so as to add dumbbells or ankle weights as you progress, and increase the load each time the exercise starts to feel easy. As a general rule, take step one—lifting, stepping, or climbing—in three seconds, hold for one second, and take three seconds to return to the starting position.
Power training can increase your response time while it builds strength. Building power lets you cross the road before the sunshine changes or prevents you from falling for those who trip. You can add power training to the exercises below by increasing the speed at which you perform the primary phase of every exercise, regularly increasing the speed until you’ll be able to complete it in a single second.
Finally, allowing your muscles to heal is essential to injury prevention. Be sure to rest no less than one minute between sets. Allowing 48 hours between workouts is particularly essential. In other words, you do not need to strength train greater than thrice per week.
Exercise examples by Barb Cousins.
Image: © Wavebreakmedia Ltd | Time for dreams