How Your Exercise Should Evolve As You Age
We don’t stop exercising because we age. We age because we stop exercising.
It’s a proven fact that exercise helps to improve one's quality of life and longevity. Our bodies are just designed to move.
Recently, more and more research has discovered how moving our bodies directly impacts brain health, and how exercising keeps us from experiencing many of the negative physical effects of aging.
However, we rarely talk about how we should evolve our exercise as we age and what our workouts should look like as we get older.
When we exercise, we should consider the three main parts of our body that will be impacted:
our muscles
our joints
and our bones
When we are in our 20’s and 30’s, we are mostly concerned with our muscles, as they are what make us look good! As we age, our joints and bones start to feel the years of wear and tear, so exercising can and should look different.
This does NOT mean you should stop doing the exercises we love - it just means we should adjust our movements to ensure we are listening to our aging body and protecting it.
I’m 68 now and just a few years ago I could easily do squat jumps with no issues. This year, however, my knees are bothered by them, so I’ve had to bring the level down and substitute the jumps with a lower impact movement.
So how does working out differ as we age than when we were in our 20’s & 30’s?
Well, most of us are familiar with the 3 main types of exercise:
Cardio - Any exercise in which we do a movement that raises our heart rate substantially. This is good for strengthening our heart, increasing our respiratory function, oxygenating the blood and brain, and increasing our circulation. Examples of cardio activities are walking briskly, biking, swimming, and dancing.
Strength Training - Any exercise in which we build muscle strength either with weights or using our body weight. Remember, muscles move bones and joints, so by strength training we are protecting the skeletal cyst by increasing muscle mass. Strength training also helps to keep us strong, stable, and mobile, and improve our balance as we age. It also increases our metabolism, helps to prevent or reverse osteoporosis, and can decrease excess body fat. Examples of strength training are weight lifting, body weight classes, and kettlebells.
Flexibility - Any exercise in which we lengthen and stretch out the muscles and increase mobility in joints, which helps the body become more limber and increases our mobility, providing more freedom in your movement and preventing injuries. Examples of flexibility activities are stretching, yoga, and Tai Chi.
In our youth, most of us probably only focused on the type of exercise we liked the most. For example, runners would devote most of their time to running and would likely not practice as much strength training and flexibility exercises.
As we age, it is important to make sure we are building our muscles while protecting our joints and bones, as we want them to last in a healthy state as long as possible.
To do this, we need to regularly practice all three types of exercise, so it is important to have an exercise plan that incorporates cardio, strength training, and flexibility regularly.
Along with age also comes some wisdom and hopefully awareness of how our body moves and what it needs. Its strengths and weaknesses and parts that just don’t move like they used to.
We should listen to our bodies and adapt our workouts accordingly.
For example, here is how the same move can look different for different ages:
35-year-old
Squat jumps
Jumping jacks
Running or jogging
V sits on mat
65-year-old
Squat with heel raises
Side steps with jumping jack arms
Power walk or march
V sits on chair
As you can see, evolving your exercise is all about listening to your body and taking care of all its parts - your joints, your bones, and your muscles.
Now that you have a good idea of what our workout should look like, here are 5 tips that I always provide my clients for safe and effective exercise as we age:
Always have fun and enjoy how you are moving
Always warm up before working out
Make sure you are aligned properly
Protect your joints by never locking them but keeping them soft.
Remember to breathe
You can see some quick and easy examples of these in the video below.
Most importantly - be sure to have fun and just keep moving!
About the author:
Vickie Aigner is the Founder and CEO of Alive, Fit & Free - an organization that hosts virtual classes and events for people of any age, any ability, anywhere.
