As we age we need to consider that there is a reason for continued strength training, as it isn’t just for the young and fit. When you engage in a strength-training program it can provide you with a plethora of benefits not only for the young adolescents and adults, but also for adults that are aging and getting older. With maintaining an exercise routine in your life, it can often lead down the path of improved posture for your body, increasing your range of motion with your neck, arms, legs, and back, and it can bring more functionality to your entire body and life! Most people in the world have neck or back pain, and exercise can be the treatment that you need to help these underlying sources with this pain, and help stop the chronic pain from occurring. First here are some tips to know and wrap your mind around before you go down the path of a vigorous exercise routine.
- Seniors want to be strong – Getting older doesn’t mean that you can’t lift any weights or attain greater muscle mass than what you already have. You will need to incorporate some type of free weights into your workout routine, as there can be simple ways to help build and maintain muscle mass. You can keep the weights small and do more repetitions that will help not only gain muscle mass but deter muscle from wasting away. It will also build up stabilizer muscles to help with everyday activities and allow your body to not strain the smaller muscles that help the larger muscles work.
- It is important to remain independent – As people age they tend to be more reliant on other people to do things, but this is sometimes a hard concept to not rely on other people for everything, because you can do it! Keeping your mind sharp with word games, crossword puzzles, and other types of mind games will continue to keep you sharp. As we all know if you have a sharp mind you are more capable of relying on yourself to do everything you want to do mentally and physically.
- The important part of training is to NOT sweat the small stuff – People generally get discouraged when some things don’t go their way, especially when your working out and you can’t do the things that you use to do. This can affect your mood and ability to continue the path of working out and training your body. Some tasks like picking up balls from the ground and putting them in a basket, getting up out of chair multiple times, or putting things up on a shelf and taking them down, as these are all ways that they can do the same training that there were doing with weights and still work out the muscles that are important for everyday life.
- Learn not to be paralyzed by my own fear of getting injured – As everyone is always afraid of getting injured when they are getting around on a daily basis, you have to twist your thinking of don’t be afraid of getting hurt. Something you could do is make sure you prepare your mind and body for the task and then just perform the task without thinking, because the fear of getting injured outweighs the body’s ability to overcome the mental block of getting injured.
- The idea of being weak is incorrect – When we all age with time and our bodies are starting to loose what they once had. You need to be aware of your own personal strengths and weakness in certain areas, and work on the areas you think you’re weak in and then strengthen the personal strengths that you already have. To maximize your areas of strengths and weaknesses, make a list of what your strengths and weakness and work on those areas that you would like to improve upon.
- Education is from trial and error – This is a simple idea that hasn’t changed over time, as if once you don’t succeed try and try again. There are certain things that you will not be able to do right from the beginning, but by putting a twist on the workout routine, exercise, or mental sharpening, you can achieve a positive result by trying other ways. You could keep a log of what you’re able to do, as this will make sure you are doing everything get over the hump of certain aspects to limitations. Also this will allow you to reach the goal of what you were trying to achieve in the first place.
- Focus on What You can do versus what you can’t do – You can work on building up that skill so it will become stronger not only mentally but also physically in that area. What you don’t want to do is focus on what can’t you do as this will leave you with negative thoughts around these certain skills. Everyday you need to work on positive reinforcement in the areas that you are already doing great in, as this will strengthen these areas and always give yourself a positive attitude that you can do anything you put your mind to.
- Is it safe? Is it fun? Are you making measurable progress? – These questions are generally what you should answer to yourself before and after each exercise you are doing. This will give you a sense of which parts of your exercise you are enjoying, and how much are you are able to do now with these exercises. Writing down general progression points that you have made is a great way to achieve your goals with every exercise routine.
- Forever Young – This approach is a mindset of how you are looking at life at any age. Telling stories about your life with fun activities that you have enjoyed along the way. This is an easy way to see what you like to do and try and incorporate those ideas or activities within the workout exercise routines. This will enable you to believe you are always forever young with doing things that make you more physically and mentally sound.
- Embrace new challenges – It creates a new challenge to overcome with exercises and you can master the ability you already knew you could. Think about exercises that you have already done, and then come up with new and inventive ways to do that same type of workout. This will make you have a new outlook at these exercises not only for physical preparation but also for mental preparation on how you look at exercise in general.
After reading and looking over these 10 tips to help get you in the right mindset, there are different types of physical activities that allow your body to maintain and reap the benefits of exercise. With so many areas to focus on, there are four types of exercises that you will need to look at and address, which are endurance, balance, flexibility and strength. We will go into further details on these 4 areas of exercise on the next post, to be able to address what is needed and what each type of exercise entails.
At PrimeSpine we focus on making sure your body is ready for the task at hand, it could be training for a cause, staying fit, or just keeping your body ready for life itself. We look at the structure of the spine and body that all of your muscles are attached to, to make sure everything is moving properly and in the proper position with its function. Give us a Call Today at (425) 590-9619 to make sure your body is ready for the exercise and life that you wish to live. Let us take care of your spine and body so you can live the pain free life you deserve.
