Donations Make us online
As mentioned, exercise is vitally important to healthy aging, and that goes for both aerobic exercise and strength training. Strength training allows you to maintain your mobility.
“One of the pillars of healthy aging when I counsel patients is muscle mass. I think it is absolutely critical that patients continue or start, if they didn’t already, strength training all the way into their elderly years,” Septimus said. “Because as we age, we lose lean muscle mass, and the more lean muscle mass that you can maintain into elder age, the more stable you’re going to be, and the less likely you’re going to be to fall.”
Falls are the biggest fear Septimus has for his patients once they reach their 70s.
It’s never too late to start strength training, he said, but it’s ideal to start when you’re young because you’ll have a better base as you get older. “I generally advise … that you should do resistance training twice a week [for 30 minutes], and that’s for all ages,” he said.
There isn’t one right way to strength train. Instead, it’ll depend on your age and abilities and what you enjoy enough to actually keep doing regularly. You can try yoga, pilates reformer, CrossFit, resistance band training exercises or bodyweight exercises, for example.
“The opportunity for strength training is limitless, you just have to be willing to engage, and often you have to find an expert who can instruct you into how to safely do it,” Septimus said.
3. They try not to isolate themselves.
Source link
