Maintaining your physical fitness as you age is important to living a long healthy life. As your body ages, your bones become weaker, making them more vulnerable to breaks. Keeping fit helps to keep your bones strong, and your body can recover from injuries more quickly. This article will give you some great ideas for maintaining your fitness into your golden years.
When doing resistance training for fitness, choose a good weight that challenges you. The right weight will allow you to perform about ten to twelve repetitions of the exercise motion before you become too fatigued to do it again. Too heavy and you risk injury, too light and you won’t gain maximum benefit from your workout.
Before doing an exercise, especially one you’ve never done before, be sure to find out the correct form and amount of resistance you should be using. Often times, this is best checked by watching your movements in a mirror or having a friend or partner help you. Incorrect form can lead to limited results or injury.
Always be sure to stretch before any kind of work out or exercise routine. Stretching warms up your muscles and gets your body ready for a work out. Be sure to hold each stretch for ten to thirty seconds in order to get optimal results. Stretching also helps prevent injury.
A good investment in your physical health is to seek the help of a fitness trainer to help you improve your fitness level. A personal trainer can provide you with professional knowledge that they can share with you. In addition, they can help motivate you to stick through your difficult workouts. Make sure that a personal trainer is right for you before you hire one.
Do not schedule regular periods of rest and recovery during your workout sessions. Instead, take periodic breaks only when you feel that you need them, regardless of the time spent performing exercises. However, you should rest less frequently in the earlier stages of your workout program, then more frequently as you begin to grow fatigued. Otherwise, you risk cutting your total workout time down unnecessarily.
Running hills is great exercise, but can sometimes be cumbersome. You can make it a little easier. While running up the hill, focus your eyes on the top of the hill and keep your head up. This will make it easier to breathe by opening up your airways.
To get better in tennis, try teaching your eyes how to focus on moving objects quicker. You need to learn to able to quickly change focus from far away to close up without hesitation so that you can effectively hit a tennis ball. You can practice while riding in a car; try focusing on something about a tennis court away and then quickly change your focus to something closer.
Choose the best time to exercise. While most people like to get exercise out of the way in the morning, sometimes it’s better to wait. Lung function peaks in most people between 4pm and 5pm, so this may be better for you. Interestingly, midday is the time when exercise returns the lowest lung function. That being said, you should exercise at a time that suits you – your body will indicate that to you.
Getting a punching bag or rubber human shaped punching target can provide an outlet for stress as well as a way to work on ones personal fitness. The punching will work out ones upper body including biceps, triceps, and deltoids. One will appreciate their punching bag the next time they need to let off some steam.
Adjust your fitness routine in the fall to take advantage of the weather. There are a lot of great exercises that you can do outside, including walking, hiking and riding a bike. Visit a park that you’ve never been to before or take your dog out on a run. Raking leaves can even help you burn calories! Finding creative ways to enjoy the weather will make exercising fun.
Increase your starting pace each time you run. To help increase your speed overall when you run, start out running faster than your regular pace. Over time, your body will recognize this as your normal pace, and you will be able to increase it again. Keep doing this until you hit your maximum running speeds.
One way to increase strength quickly is to do a high volume of repetitions with light weights at a fast pace. This technique has a similar effect in terms of strength building as lifting a heavier weight more slowly. Start off with a weight level that is about fifty percent of what you would usually lift.
Keep your squatting posture perfect to help you build up abdominal muscles. Many people believe that squats are only beneficial to the legs and butt, but that is not the case. If you always use proper form when squatting, this can actually work out both your abs and your chest as well.
While you may expect a longer workout to be beneficial, you should keep it to an hour tops. Once you reach the 60 minute point, this is when your body will begin to produce cortisol, a stress hormone. This hormone can block testosterone and waste your efforts to grow muscle. Keep it shorter and make it worth more.
A great tip to help you get physically fit is to start playing tennis. There’s no such thing as an overweight tennis player because of all the running they have to do back and forth on the court. You can play it competitively or you can just play against your friends.
As stated in the beginning of this article, maintaining your physical fitness as you age is important to living a long healthy life. Bones become more brittle as you age, making it harder to recover from injuries. Apply the advice from this article to help maintain your fitness as you get older, and to keep your bones healthy and strong.
