90,80,70,60,50 – It Doesn’t Matter How Old You Are!
Are You Finding It Harder To Get Out Of The Car? Do you find it difficult to get up from an armchair without pushing up on the arms of the chair? You may be finding it hard to get out of the bath. These are signs that your muscles have weakened and that you need to strengthen them before they deteriorate further. After the age of 50 our strength declines by 15% per decade. Our muscles begin to lose their mass and strength as we age. This applies to both men and women.
90, 80, 70, 60, 50 years old it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can still get stronger and fitter. The older you are the longer it takes but you can still do it you just need to be a little patient. People are struggling with living their lives when it doesn’t need to be as bad as they are experiencing. It’s difficult to maintain some level of fitness and muscle maintenance but it definitely can be done and it makes things better.
When you exercise, particularly after exercising hard, it takes longer than it did when you were younger but you just have to be patient and wait for your body to recover. This can take two or three days to happen if you have been doing something challenging for your strength. It will take a day or two if you have been doing something to improve your cardio vascular system. After that you can start to exercise again. It’s important to gradually push yourself so that you become fitter, otherwise you will just stay the same. Exercising does work and you’ll also feel better about yourself.
Strength is important in many things that we do in our daily lives e.g. it has been found that leg strength improves the distances that people are able to walk. Weaknesses in our leg muscles particularly our quadriceps can often be a contributory factor towards knee pain. Our breathing capacity declines as we age and half of this loss of aerobic capacity can be put down to loss of muscle mass.
Age-related loss of muscle mass is known as Sarcopenia. Weakness in muscle strength and muscle mass contributes towards people falling over in their later years. Getting stronger reduces the chances of this happening.
Balance is important in avoiding falls but muscle strength is what enables the good balance and adjustment to happen.
Being fit and strong helps those unexpected things to be taken in your stride, so to speak.
Muscle weakness can be slowed down, stopped and even improved through resistance training. Resistance training is the use of weights, exercise bands, your own body weight etc. and doesn’t mean that you will end up like some incredible hulk with bulging muscles.
Women can’t have large bulky muscles anyway as there is not enough testosterone in their bodies. If women work at it they will have toned muscles and be stronger. The only way that women can have enormous developed muscles is through taking anabolic steroids.
Resistance training also improves bone health, postural stability, flexibility and range of movement.
Moderate cardio-vascular exercise e.g. walking, running, cycling, swimming etc. together with resistance training will slow down the decline in resting lung function.
Weight training can also go a long way to prevent brittle bone formation, and can help reverse the damage already done. For example, a walking lunge exercise is a great way to build bone density in your hips, even without any additional weights. Strength training also increases your body’s production of growth factors, which are responsible for cellular growth, proliferation, and differentiation. Some of these growth factors help explain why working your muscles also benefits your brain and helps prevent dementia.
