Older people often do without sport. However, this is exactly the wrong way to protect the joints. Because especially after a certain age, the musculature breaks down rapidly. That can be dangerous. But with simple training, you can retain your strength into old age.
If you still want to have strong muscles and joints in old age, you should start training early.
All you need is a program of endurance, flexibility and strength endurance training.
Who rests, rusts. There is a lot of truth in this banal wisdom – especially when it comes to joints and muscles. Young people often integrate sport into their lives as a matter of course. But as people get older, they often give up. This is fatal.
Because it is precisely in the third decade of life that there is a clear drop in performance, e The muscles begin to break down. This is exactly where you have to hold back.
The orthopaedist is certain: “With good training, even at the age of 70, I can still have the muscles of a moderately trained 30-year-old. Because the healthy old reacts to stimuli in the same way as the healthy young.”
If you don’t do anything, you lose your muscles. But it can also be trained back quickly.
From the age of 55 the muscles break down faster, from the age of 70 very quickly. “That means by the age of 70 about 40 percent of muscle mass has been lost if you do nothing. As a result, people lose strength, endurance and speed. A lack of mobility, coordination and balance increases the risk of falling.
This is how much sport people should do in old age
An optimal exercise program in old age would be a combination of 60 percent cardio training, 30 percent training in mobility and agility and 10 percent strength-endurance training (a combination of strength and endurance training with which the various muscle groups are trained with low weight and many repetitions).
The prerequisite for intensive physical activity is, of course, that it is safe for the doctor to put strain on the circulatory system,” adds the joint expert. The pulse should not exceed certain limits. This is especially true for the untrained.
Endurance training has the greatest health effect: 45 minutes three times a week. As a result, everyone slowly but steadily builds muscle. If you want to supplement this with strength training, make sure that you do not fall into forced breathing.
Exercise program to build muscle. Flexibility training is important to keep the joints flexible. For example, do swing, twist, or pendulum exercises three times a day for 15 minutes. Coordination can be excellently trained through games, dancing or similar sports.
Nobody is too old to exercise
By the way, the skeletal muscles can be trained at any age, so that targeted exercises can stop and reverse the loss of muscles. Heller is familiar with experiments that have shown that even people over the age of 90 can build up muscles again – even if they no longer reach the status of a 50-year-old.
“It is essential that the elderly person concerned remains active,”
emphasizes the orthopaedist.
Regular sport no longer has to be there, but everyone should move.
At least avoid those
- inactivity traps,
- escalators,
- elevators and
- treadmills
Instead of this:
- Better to walk for shopping.
- Use the bike instead of driving.
Engage in challenging hobbies: hiking, swimming, dancing and gardening.
That’s what every old person is excellent at and they should do without technical aids. If at all possible, the lawnmower should be pushed, and it does not have to be a ride-on mower.
Strengthen muscles and joints to prevent falls
Sport and exercise in old age not only keep you fit, but also make a decisive contribution to preventing falls. Because older people often fall down. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that their joints are no longer so stable. On the other hand, the muscles lose strength.
When all this comes together and people see and hear worse, it becomes dangerous. For this reason, training and sport are of inestimable value, especially for stopping aging.