Heart Healthy Workouts For Retirees

Heart Healthy Workouts for Retirees

3 Fun Ways to Exercise

Walk 10,000 steps a day. If you haven’t heard the 10,000 steps mantra by now, you haven’t been paying attention. The 10,000 steps program is part of a concentrated effort to encourage Americans to get active and stay fit. According to many recent studies, engaging in moderate exercise three to five times a week can help reduce the risk of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes and arthritis. Coupled with a balanced diet, exercise is the number one way to get healthy and stay healthy.

This message is especially important for those over the age of fifty-five, says the American Heart Association. Because regular exercise helps maintain weight and tone all the body’s systems, it’s one of the keys to avoiding the most common diseases and disorders affecting older Americans. Many seniors, though, mistakenly fear that vigorous exercise will do more harm than good. Not so, according to the experts.

Aerobic exercises get the circulation moving and the heart pumping. That helps tone the heart muscle, lower blood pressure; reduce your risk of heart attack, control blood sugar and increase alertness and overall well-being. According to the National Institutes of Health, the best exercises are those that increase the heart rate and maintain elevated heart rates for at least ten minutes – aerobic exercises. That gives your heart time to get pumping and spark your metabolism so that it keeps working that extra bit harder for as much as an hour after you finish exercising. The general recommendation for a workout is ten minutes of warm-up and stretching, ten minutes of moderately vigorous exercise and ten minutes to cool down and stretch.

If the term ‘aerobic exercise’ has you shaking your head at the thought of bouncing around the gym in skin-tight shiny spandex, you can relax. Aerobic exercise is ANY activity that can get your heart to work out along with your other muscles. Among the exercise that the American Physical Therapy Association recommends for seniors are golf, gardening, walking, swimming and jogging. There’s almost no physical activity that you can’t turn into a heart healthy aerobic workout. Choose your sport and try one of these workouts from the American Physical Therapy Association.

Golf

If you haven’t played golf in a while – or if you’re just starting and haven’t been active – start exercising a few weeks before you go into full swing. Exercise about the same time of day that you’ll be golfing so that you’ve got similar conditions. Take a twenty minute walk three or four times a week. Spend some time practicing your swing, starting with a shorter, lighter club and gradually working your way up.

Before you head out onto the green, take ten minutes to stretch. The APTA recommends calf and hamstring stretches and upper body twists to loosen up the muscles you’ll be using the most.

Gardening

Gardening can give your heart a surprisingly energetic workout. There’s digging and bending and lifting and carrying – and that’s before you even get out of the shed with all your gardening equipment. To turn a gardening session into a heart healthy workout, the APTA suggests that you start with a series of stretches to help loosen up the muscles. Once you’re warmed up, do some ‘aerobic gardening’ – activities that use your whole body – for 15-20 minutes. Raking and hoeing are two good choices for aerobic gardening, but any activity that gets your heart and lungs working at full capacity works just find too. After your workout, cool down with some more sedentary gardening – trimming flower heads or picking vegetables.

Water Aerobics

Water fitness classes are among the best aerobics exercises you can do, especially if you suffer from joint stiffness or arthritic pain. Because you’re in the water, there’s no impact shock, making water exercises the ideal form of low-impact aerobic exercise. Water is kind to your joints and bones – but the weight of the water adds an extra layer of resistance to your movements. You can get a full workout that includes jumping jacks and all the benefits of cross-country skiing in deep water aerobics – with less than 10% of the stress on your joints. Do take it easy, though, warn many fitness experts. Because exercising in water is so easy, it’s also easy to overdo and strain muscles.