Exercises for the Elderly: Safe & Gentle Exercise for the Elderly to Improve Heart & Cardiovascular Health
Getting Started
Exercises, such as running, biking, and swimming are known as cardio exercises. They help speed up the heart rate and breathing for a prolonged period of time. This helps make the heart stronger, and increases its endurance.
If you are just starting up a fitness routine, you’ll need to gradually get into it. You can start out with a 5 minute cardio workout and then gradually increase your workout time. First check with your doctor to make sure that your body can handle cardio exercises.
Do all of your stretching at the end of your workout. This is when your muscles are more capable of handling being stretched. It will also ease any tearing and pain that occurred during your workout.
Although cardio exercises increase breathing, you should still be able to carry on a conversation while doing them. They should not cause dizziness or chest pains. If this happens, you are working yourself too hard. This is your body’s way of telling you to slow down your pace.
Start with exercises that don’t require a high level of intensity. This includes walking, dancing, gardening, swimming, and even doing house work.
It’s important for your body and muscles to have an adequate amount of time to adjust to the increase in physical activity. It can take months to gradually get into a cardio exercise routine, especially if a person has been very sedentary.
If you are already relatively active, you can do cardio exercises that are a little more demanding. You should still check with your doctor to make sure that this won’t be harmful to your health.
Higher intensity cardio exercises include jogging, brisk bike rides up hills and racket ball.
Developing a Fitness Plan
A beginner can start out with a 5 minute routine that consists of low to moderate intensity exercises. A workout should be challenging but not excruciating.
Over time, you can work your way up to a more vigorous routine. You will know it’s time to go to the next level when your routine no longer challenges your body.
A good workout routine should last for 20-30 minutes. If that doesn’t work for you, you can do a series of mini workouts throughout the day. These workouts should last for at least 10 minutes each. It’s important that each session last long enough for you to feel your heart rate and breathing speed up.
After you get to the point where you are comfortable doing cardio exercises for 30 minutes straight, you can add more time to your workout or increase the number of activities during your routine.
This will allow you to exercise new muscles and give the other ones you’ve been using a break.
Try to enjoy your cardio routine. Get an exercise partner, or join a class. This will increase your chances of sticking to your routine.