Research shows that exercise is critical to your ongoing health and your ability to enjoy a high-quality life as you age. The simple truth is that ageing causes your muscles to lose strength, exercising regularly can boost your muscle strength and improve your cardiovascular health.
That’s going to help you stay mobile, reduce the risk of falls, and lower the likelihood of common age-related diseases.
The problem is that most people don’t know where to start with exercise. There are so many pieces of advice and an array of latest fads that it can be difficult to know what exercise routine is really going to work. The end result is people tend to try something, do it for a while, then stop and do nothing.
You need to find an exercise routine that suits you and one that you can sustain in the long term.
1. Assess Your Time & passions
If you’re going to create a sustainable exercise routine you need to commit time. That’s something that is generally in short supply. It’s best to keep it simple and aim for 20-30 minutes each day. You have a good chance of being able to fit this in.
Think about your current passions and the things you do out of habit. You’ll find a little piece of time you can spare. All you have to do is commit to this being your exercise time. It can help to write it into your daily schedule. It makes it more like any other meeting or appointment you need to attend.
2. Speak To Your Physio
Before you start exercising, especially if it’s been a long time or you’ve suffered an injury, you should chat with an expert, such as this sports physio Concord. They can assess your weakest areas and help you to decide o an exercise plan that suits your needs and current abilities best.
They’ll even help you develop specific exercises to build strength or flexibility as needed.
3. Make It Fun
If you want a sustainable, long-term exercise routine then it has to be fun. If you love running then great, that’s something you can do several times a week. But, if you hate running or the thought of running, you’re going to struggle to stick to it for the long term.
In other words, you need to think about the activities you enjoy and choose one of them to help you build an exercise routine. If you’re not sure you can always try several different ones and either pick one or mix it up each week.
4. Listen To Your Body
Finally, many people are afraid to start exercising because they are concerned about injury. However, if you start slowly and build your abilities while listening to your body, it’s unlikely that you’ll suffer an injury.
Listening to your body means knowing the difference between an ache caused by exercise and pain caused by injury. The first is a surprisingly pleasant feeling. The second means to stop and recover properly before you go back to your sustainable exercise routine.
