Paige Waehner - Strength Training for Seniors - Increase your Balance, Stability, and Stamina to Rewind the Aging Process

For example, say you’re going for a walk. To get to a level 5, pretend that you’re walking fast to catch a bus that’s in the distance, but you don’t want to break into a run because you have a bad knee. That’s getting you just out of your comfort zone, but not so far that you hate what you’re doing.

More advanced exercisers can opt for higher intensity like speed walking, running, or high-intensity interval training, which would get you around level 7 or 8, maybe even 9 depending on what you’re doing.

The point is, this kind of exercise makes your heart strong, increases your stamina and endurance, and it also burns calories, a plus if you want to lose a few pounds.

If you’re a beginner or it’s been a bit since you’ve exercised, you might start with a light walking workout two to three times a week at a low to moderate pace. Start with 5 or 10 minutes and slowly increase your walking time as you get stronger and fitter.

Now, the guidelines suggest 150 to 300 minutes, which would come out to about twenty to forty minutes a day, but start with what feels good to you. Even five minutes counts.

STRENGTH TRAINING

Now we get into the nitty-gritty of what you’ll be doing in the 12-week program. To start, we’ll do a quick overview of the guidelines for strength training to give you an idea of what’s to come.

I’ve talked about the benefits of strength training, but what do you do and how often? This program will show you exactly that, but the ODPHP has some basics to get you started.

The idea with strength training is to make your muscles do more work than they’re used to doing. You’ve probably experienced this a number of times, like whenever the seasons change and you do something you haven’t done in months such as gardening or shoveling snow.

You’re overloading your muscles which, in the short-term, can cause some muscle soreness but, in the long-term, leads to building lean muscle tissue.

Here are some general guidelines:

✓ Muscle-strengthening activities include lifting weights, using resistance bands, bodyweight exercises, heavy gardening, or even carrying heavy loads on a regular basis.

✓ For the most benefit, you should focus on working the major muscle groups which include the chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, lower body, and core.

✓ You should aim to lift weights on at least two non-consecutive days a week.

✓ For each exercise, you want to do between 8 and 16 repetitions for about one to three sets. Repetitions refer to the number of times you do an exercise and a set refers to how many times you do that exercise consecutively. For example, if you lift and lower a weight 10 times, you’ve completed ten reps in one set. You’ll see this throughout the program expressed as the number of sets times the reps, such as 1 x 10 (one set of ten reps).

✓ You should increase the amount of weight as you get stronger and you can also add another day of strength training as well.

You’ll learn more about all of this throughout the rest of the book and find specifics about how to manipulate different elements of your strength training workouts once the program ends. These principles will guide you in continuing to progress long after the program is over.

FLEXIBILITY TRAINING

Another piece of the puzzle is flexibility, something that tends to decline as we age. That’s usually because our muscles shrink naturally, which may reduce our range of motion.

Flexibility is all about the range of motion within your joints. One great example is your hip joint. If you can imagine lifting your right knee straight up to your hip, then circling that knee to the right, that gives you an idea of range of motion.

But there are a number of things that can contribute to lack of range of motion such as:

✓ Genes—Some us of are more flexible simply because we’ve inherited that gene

✓ Joint structure—One thing we can’t control is the actual structure of our joints, which may limit our range of motion

✓ Connective tissue—Things like ligaments, tendons, and muscles can make a difference in how your joints move and how flexible you are

✓ Strength—One other important part is the strength of your opposing muscles. That means the muscles that are opposite from one another such as your biceps are opposing muscles to your triceps. Here’s an example: If your quadriceps (on the front of the legs) are tight, that could hinder the flexibility of your hamstrings, on the back of the legs. So working on flexibility on both sides of the body can help

The bottom line is that working on flexibility, as you will in this program, will help minimize some of the factors that contribute to balance issues. The other important part of working on range of motion exercises is that these moves can increase the synovial fluid to your joints. This allows a greater freedom of movement and also may decelerate the degeneration of the joints.

BALANCE TRAINING

Fall prevention is one of the most important things to conquer for all of us, especially older adults. The statistics can be eye-opening. The National Council on Aging has found that:

✓ Falls are the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries for older adults

✓ Falls result in more than 2.8 million injuries each year

✓ The cost of injuries caused by falls was more than $50 billion in 2015

The emotional and psychological cost of falling, or even just fear of falling, has an enormous impact on older adults. A growing number of older adults are afraid of falling and, as a result, limit their activities, which only adds to a further decline in physical ability.

Limiting activities has much more impact than just physically. When you’re afraid of falling or even getting in and out of a car, you might stay home more, which can lead to to social isolation, depression, and feelings of helplessness.

Here’s what’s important to know: Falling is not inevitable just because we get older. In fact, we have some level of control over that by how we exercise and take care of our bodies, which is an important part of this 12-week program.

Balance problems are one reason many adults seek help from a doctor because that lack of balance affects almost every aspect of life such as:

✓ Walking without staggering or falling

✓ Getting up and down from a chair without falling

✓ Climbing stairs without tripping

✓ Bending over without falling

Good balance is so important for staying healthy and maintaining independence, which is why it’s critical to incorporate balance exercises into your daily life.

Balance issues can have a number of causes, so you should talk to your doctor about to try to identify the impetus. Just a few issues include high blood pressure, ear infection, stroke, or multiple sclerosis.

Barring those issues, if you don’t have any other conditions, balance training can become a very important part of your daily activity. Balance focuses on those smaller areas we don’t often think about such as the tendons and ligaments that hold our joints together.

There are also very small muscles that work to help stabilize us. The muscles of the feet, the ankles, and the knees are crucial to keeping us mobile and healthy. The balance exercises in this book will help you work on all of these areas in a safe environment that will help you improve so that you can stay strong and independent.

CORE TRAINING

Another very important part of aging in a healthy way is to give your body a strong foundation to work from. That foundation is your core. Think of your core, which is

ExErcisE GuidElinEs for sEniors comprised of much more than your abs, as the sun around which your body revolves. The stronger and brighter it is, the stronger and brighter the rest of your body is as well.