Maintaining Your Health And Fitness At Any Age

We all want to keep fit and healthy, but as we age, sometimes it gets more difficult to carry out strenuous exercises, but you can still keep your body moving by going for a brisk 20 minute walk and trying to increase the length of the walk over a period of time. Also, when you perform an exercise, just try and do a little more each time and over a period of time, this will make a big difference to your health and your body.

Don’t overdo it though as you are likely to pull muscles, just do what you can and increase the exercise or repetitions over time.

A complete fitness program should include the following:

Aerobic exercise

Walking, jogging, cycling, swimming and dance exercise are good ones to try. Aerobic exercise works the large muscles in your body, benefitting your cardiovascular system – and your weight.

Work up to getting 20 or more minutes per session, three or four days a week. Make sure you can pass the ‘talk test’ which means exercising at a pace that lets you carry on a conversation.

Strength training

Lifting hand weights improves your strength and posture, maintains bone strength, reduces the risk of lower back injury and also helps you tone.

Start with a hand weight that you can comfortably handle for eight repetitions. Gradually add more repetitions until you can complete twelve.

Stretching

Stretching exercises help maintain flexibility and range of motion in joints. They also reduce the risk of injury and muscle soreness. Yoga and Pilates are good forms of stretching exercise; they build core body strength and increase stability.

Good Nutrition

We can also increase our energy by giving our bodies the best nutrition possible and this is undoubtedly from fruit and vegetables. Experts recommend that we have at least 5 a-day of fruit and vegetables in order to give our bodies the essential nutrients we need, but sometimes it is not easy to do this and now this recommendation has been increased from 5 a-day to 7-9.