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Senior Living
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| By: Chris Fritz, Chetek Community Senior Center Director |
June 10, 2009 |
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I am sometimes puzzled why more people don't take part in exercise programs. After all, I love exercise and think everyone else would, too, if they just gave it a chance. But telling someone something is fun is often not a very successful tactic. Telling them it is useful sometimes works better.
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I suspect that many older people don't think that exercise would be very useful for them. They think that exercise is only useful if you are young and want to have a terrific-looking body. Is exercise useful for anything that would be of interest to a mature person? It turns out it is.
Exercise can help reduce your risk of falls. Falls are sometimes caused by environmental factors, such as a throw rug or an electrical cord. But having strong muscles will prevent falls that occur from simply getting slightly off-balanced. Having good balance is partly a matter of having strong muscles in your legs and hips, muscles that will right you if you start to lean one way or the other. These muscles will also keep you from falling if you do trip slightly over a rug or a cord. Think of times when you have almost fallen in the past. What made the difference between almost falling and falling completely was the ability of your leg and hip muscles to support your body weight even as you were thrown off balance. This is not something a younger person thinks about much. But as you age, it is an important issue. Exercising these legs and hip muscles can make the difference between being incapacitated by a fall or being able to avoid falls and maintain your independence.
Exercise can help you maintain independence in other ways, too. When extra weight begins to accumulate as we age, our legs are called on to work harder to do simple things like getting up from a chair or getting out of bed. Arm strength is needed to open jars and doors and lift pots and pans. Keeping muscles strong is key to being able to do the simple activities of daily life, but muscles don't stay strong on their own. An exercise program of some sort is necessary, since muscle naturally decreases as we age.
Exercise helps us feel better in other ways. It keeps our digestive tract moving. It helps us sleep better. It improves our mood and is helpful in treating depression. Exercise actually helps you look and feel younger.
There are several components to a good exercise program: aerobic exercise, which causes our heart rate to increase and conditions the cardiovascular system; strength training, which keeps individual muscles strong; and stretching, which keeps joints and muscles loose. Two other things are also considered important-balance exercises and relaxation. The current recommendations for aerobic exercise is daily for about 30 minutes. Strength work should not be done two days in a row, so two or three times a week is generally sufficient. Stretching is usually done after aerobic exercise.
For more information on how you can get started in some exercise classes at the Chetek Community Center, stop by or call us at 924-3121.
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©The Chetek Alert 2009
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megan Pfaff |
Jun, 13 2009 |
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