The Woe’s of Aging

As the body starts to age, bones become very fragile and the muscles become weak. In some cases just lifting a small amount of weight directly impact the muscle tissues in your body, leading them to break down from excessive strain. Eventually, the situation becomes too dire that you cannot move and even if you try to move and lift the weight you will have an injury. This is quite common among women as they go through a hormonal change in old age and due to this the bones and muscles become very frail. The good news about all of this, is that there are things you can do.

What Can I Do?

Experts believe that although a good diet is important there is no way you can get good results without focusing on the workout. This is where focusing on the mobility and strength of your skeletal muscles comes in. when choosing the right workout you also need to support your workout with the right diet. Start with a good healthy protein rich diet adding in any supplements that your doctor may recommend. This will help in making the muscle fibers thicker and stronger so the movement will become easier. Also, you can easily notice that with the right low-impact workouts in older age, you will be strengthening your body and pushing for better life quality.

Best Stretches to Improve Mobility in Older Age

With the help of this article, we will mainly focus on the simple low impact yet effective workouts that are ideal for old age. Our focus will be on strength building and stretching so the workouts can be used by everyone regardless of the intensity they choose or the problems they have.

If you are already facing pain and you know that bones and muscles are frail, your focus should be more on simple low impact stretching based workouts. These workouts should have a very good pattern system starting with simple stretches that will work as warm up and then you can move to little extreme workouts. The basic idea is that you have to offer your body enough time to settle rather than pushing your body fully till it starts getting painful.

Here is a progressive yet simple stretching and mobility-based workouts that will eventually help you get the desired results that you are looking for.

Full Upper Body Basic Stretch

You will start on a chair or the floor. Now extend your legs fully so they are in a relaxed position. Lift your shoulders and make sure the spine is fully straight otherwise you might feel the strain in the back. Now extend the hands right in front of you by using the wrist, and focus on rotating them 360 degrees clockwise. Now repeat the same with anti-clockwise. Similarly, you have to work on neck muscles, shoulders, and arms as well. This workout is so simple yet it serves the purpose so well that you will feel your muscles getting relaxed within a few minutes. Think about completing “rotations” with each of these joints when doing the movement.

Hamstring Stretch

For this stretching process, you will sit down on the floor extend your legs forward, and then extend your arms forward in an attempt to touch the toes. At the start, you will feel the tug in your back as well as the shoulder muscles but as time will go and your body will stop reacting, you will notice that you will be able to touch the toes. Over time, as you develop flexibility, try to keep your arms by your side and touch the hip bones on both sides while you try to touch the head to the knee. This is a little extreme yet very effective yoga stretch which is commonly known as the forward bend. This workout is very good for lower back pain and it has a healing effect on the body.

Lunge Stretch

For these stretches, you will use some of the most common cardio-based poses and use them for your mobility. Start with a simple lunge stretch where you will get into the lunge position and rather than continuing the lunge you will simply stretch and hold the pose.

Bird Dog Hold

Now, after that, you will work on a simple pose style derived from the crawling position. However, once you get on all fours, make sure that your elbow and knee are at a right angle with your body. Now lift the opposite arm and leg and extend them fully. This will create a balance in the body but after a few seconds you will feel the tug near the shoulder and hip region, so breathing should be very balanced. After that just maintain this pose and repeat it with the other side as well. Your overall goal should be to hold poses for longer so your breathing needs to be balanced. For the stretches, you must also consider using a medication-based deep breathing technique.

Bottom Line

To sum it all up, as you get old things may become. You may feel pain in your muscles and connective tissue. Eventually, this lowers your quality of life and could lead to consuming a large amount of medicine. However, if you take control of your health, by eating healthy food and starting workouts, this will not only slow down the aging process but will also help you reduce chronic pain in the long run. The best thing about opting for these workouts is that even at extreme old age, you will be able to move without feeling pain and your body will be able to adapt to extreme life conditions that might otherwise become extremely painful and challenging for you.

This article was written by in part of a guest blogging series by Mike and his team at elitesports.com.

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