Senior Fitness Series: Specific Benefits of Exercise

Senior Fitness Series: Specific Benefits of ExerciseAging ain't easy, but I still look at it as a blessing. With each decade of age comes more wisdom, more memories and a firmer grasp on who you are and what your life’s purpose is. There’s no escaping our aging bodies and we should be more thankful for what they allow us to do every day. The physiological changes to your body through aging are real. From your nervous system, your musculoskeletal and your cardiorespiratory, all systems unfortunately decline asour bodies age. Now, if you don’t feel like reading beyond this point, the lesson of this post is to learn that physical exercise can help! It can slow down, ease and sometimes reverse the signs of aging in all three of these systems. Our in home personal trainers have a program for you that can help make your day to day tasks easier. Through exercise you can boost your strength and stamina and feel better. According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine:Physical activity plays a vital role in reducing the effect of aging on most components of the musculoskeletal system. Research with master athletes demonstrate that muscle mass, muscular strength, and muscular power, are maintained to a greater extent than sedentary counterparts. Several training studies also demonstrate that previously sedentary older adults may increase muscle mass, strength, power, and endurance with strength and aerobic endurance training. Whether an older adult is active or not, training may significantly affect the health and functional ability of skeletal muscle. Neurological changes that occur in older adults can really take a toll on your mood and confidence level because of the breakdown in the brain body connection. As the brain and nerve cells age, they become less efficient and slower at responding and communicating. With this, our hearing and vision also declines. These issues can lead to difficulty balancing and depth perception and our proprierection which is basically knowing where your body is in space and being able to react appropriately. Exercise and more specifically, a strength, balance and power exercise program can really reduce these foreseen issues. The more you are practicing your balance the better you will be able to adapt to your surroundings. Think about the difference it would make to be more grounded and balanced in all that you do each day. Try balancing on one leg and see what practicing that each day does. Further, strength training, and learning new exercises helps improve that brain body communication, improving other memory and neurological connections. Plus the increased muscle mass will help with your daily activities, helping you accomplish more each day. Functional and structural changes of bone mass, joints and muscle mass make tasks feel more taxing and can lead to stiffness and pain. You can slow all of this down with exercise and start feeling more limber and stronger. Appropriate strength and balance training will increase your proprioception and muscle mass. This takes pressure off the joints so they can move more freely and experience less pain. You will hurt less and be able to do more. Giving you your confidence back too! The changes to your heart and its structure make it more difficult for your body to pump blood and oxygen to where it needs to go. This can make exercise more difficult and also makes daily habits take a lot more effort to complete which makes them feel a lot more taxing as you are doing them. These structural changes can lead to higher risk of heart issues and related illnesses. Building your heart muscles with exercise can help with all of this! Challenging your heart so that it can work more efficiently is key. Not with any crazy cardio exertion per say, but with structured and safe fitness. We are here to give you the tools to do this. There’s no better time to begin than the present!