Practical Tips for Maintaining your Fitness
Staying active can be challenging, especially in later life when faced with mobility issues and other limiting factors. Finding a way to maintain your fitness levels comes with many speed bumps. As health care professionals, our training, along with real world practicalities, allows us to understand the exact precautions that need to be taken and create tailored care plans for those within Oakland Care homes.
Starting your fitness journey
Getting started can be the hardest part. But it can be as easy as a gentle walk. Which, as we get older and start to feel a bit more unsteady on our feet, can often be the best means of exercise.
In fact, staying active and improving mobility and fitness levels may actually help reduce your risk of having a fall due to the improvements made on your health from exercising.
Tips for maintaining your fitness
Here are a few easy ways you can work on your fitness, without the need to do any sort of heavy weights-based exercise:
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Be conscious of your time spent sitting down
Just being aware of your time spent sitting can improve your time spent moving. And the very act of standing up and sitting down requires us to use muscles in our legs such as our quads and glutes.
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Start with just 10 minutes
When the advised 30 minutes of exercise seems too daunting, why not break it down into 3 bursts of fitness at 10 minutes each.
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Yoga and Pilates count too!
The more strenuous activities don’t always have to be taken on. A nice gentle pilates or yoga session can be equally beneficial for your physical and mental health.
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Chair-based exercises
There are many videos out there, such as this one from fitness guru, Joe Wicks, which is dedicated to seniors. You can watch the video here and follow along at home.
Using just a chair and a few tins of beans, Joe’s video lasts just over 10 minutes – the perfect amount of time to dedicate to improving your fitness each day.
Staying active at home
At Oakland Care, we have teams dedicated to coordinating activities and providing everything from games and art-based pursuits, to fitness classes. Our Lifestyle Managers come up with optional weekly activities for those to partake in at the home, removing the stress of figuring out how to exercise.
At home, this can be more challenging, especially for those living alone later in life. With limited mobility, access to online resources such as Joe Wick’s video above can be incredibly helpful. This does rely on technologies such as an internet connection and a device to watch it on.
Along with the iPad, a firm favourite by many, other options are available, such as the Facebook Portal or the Grandpad. Both of these allow users to easily connect with family members via video calls, and can be used to prompt loved ones to keep active via the means of remote messaging.
Are you worried about falling?
Having concerns about falling is natural. As we continually lose suppleness in our joints with ageing, the impact of a fall is more damaging for our bodies. Not to mention the effect it can have on our confidence levels as anxiety levels rise.
That being said, getting older may be inevitable, however falls are not. Following guidelines set out by care professionals and other sources, can help you remain more secure on your feet.
Age UK created a guide on keeping active and reducing your risk of falling which provides some excellent insights into keeping yourself or your loved one safe. You can download this here.
Whilst living in the comfort of your own home can seem like the most appealing option, there often comes a time when it may not be the safest of choices. If a care setting is something that you are considering for your family member, why not get in touch with us at Oakland Care.
