Seniors need regular exercise to maintain muscle tone, boost endurance and gain independence. Workouts render several other benefits that keep the elderly living longer and staying away from disease. You should draw the perfect exercise program that adequately suits your capacity and needs. Here are some tips to get you started.
What They Can Do
The primary rule is only to provide enough exercise that will stimulate adequate blood flow to all the vital organs and maintain muscle mass. Muscle tends to atrophy during the later stages of a person's life. It would help if you kept hard-earned tissues through cardiovascular exercises, stretching routines, and weight training. In the beginning, you must do an overall assessment of the senior citizen first to ensure that they can do all the exercises without much trouble.
Very strenuous exercise can be detrimental to the overall condition of seniors. You need to check their response by listening to their verbalizations and observing how they cope. If you find negative signs such as heavy breathing, profuse sweating, loss of balance, droopy eyelids, and mild to severe pain, immediately stop the activity.
Being Flexible
Personalized exercise routines are best, which means that one program should only be appropriate for a single individual. This approach significantly reduces the risk of overtraining as it removes the majority of what causes overtraining. You can also map out progress more efficiently by giving the exact type of exercises, the number of repetitions and sets, and the duration of each workout. Use a logbook and fill in all the details of every training.
Exercise programs should be very flexible, in the sense that the routines and movements change every week or so, depending on the patient's response. If possible, your goal is to maintain or boost strength, flexibility, and strength, so the exercises need to be upped as the individual gets more robust and better.
Getting a Professional
Suppose you happen to be a concerned son or granddaughter taking care of a senior citizen in your home. In that case, it is always helpful to get a professional's opinion when creating your exercise plan, so you can select the right type and intensity that suits the needs of the patient. Professionals include dieticians, gym instructors, physical therapists, nutritionists, nurses, and physicians who will check if the program is acceptable or too strenuous.
During the first few sessions, you can ask the professional to help you assist the senior through the different movements. Proper execution is crucial to attaining the various objectives and goals. Professional help is essential every now and then, especially when you're already supposed to evaluate the senior's response to treatment.
Other Sources
When defining the exercise routine, you can refer to exercise DVDs that cater to seniors, visit online forums and watch videos online. You can also visit senior centers to learn how a typical routine goes. Take some tips from instructors and the experts about evaluation and adjusting the way for the patient. Over time, you will develop the skill of keeping the seniors comfortable while giving them a truly sensible workout. Be reminded that diet and rest are the other two components that will sufficiently support the exercise program for seniors.
