Keeping fit: How to do the right exercise for your age

by Julie Broderick, The Conversation

Credit: zhu difeng/Shutterstock

The effect of exercise on health is profound. It can protect you from a range of conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. But the type and amount of exercise you should do changes as you age. To ensure that you are doing the right type of exercise for your age, follow this simple guide.

Childhood and adolescence

12jan 2019--In childhood, exercisehelps control body weight, builds healthy bones and promotes self-confidence and healthy sleep patterns. The government recommends that children should get at least one hour of exercise a day. As a tip:

• Children should try a variety of sports and develop skills, such as swimming and the ability to hit and kick a ball.
• Lots of non–scheduled physical activity is great, too, such as playing in playgrounds.

Exercise habits tend to steadily decline during teen years, particularly in girls. Getting enough exercise promotes a healthy body image and helps manage stress and anxiety. You can also:

Encourage teenagers to keep one team sport, if possible.

For teenagers who are not into team sports, swimming or athletics can be a good way to keep fitness levels up.

In your 20s

You are at your absolute physical peak in your mid-20s, with the fastest reaction times and highest VO2 max – the maximum rate at which the body can pump oxygen to muscles. After this peak, your VO2 max decreases by up to 1% each year and your reaction time slows each year. The good news is that regular physical activity can slow this decline. Building lean muscle mass and bone density at this age helps you retain them in later years.

• Vary your training and keep it fun. Try tag rugby, rowing or boot camp.
• If you are a regular exerciser, get advice from an exercise professional to build "periodisation" into your training regime. This involves dividing your training regime into progressive cycles that manipulate different aspects of training – such as intensity, volume and type of exercise – to optimise your performance and ensure you peak for a planned exercise event, such as a triathlon.

In your 30s

As careers and family life for many intensify in their 30s, it is important that you maintain cardiovascular fitness and strength to slow normal physical decline. If you have a sedentary job, make sure you maintain good posture and break up long periods of sitting by forcing activity into your day, such as routing your printer to another room, climbing a flight of stairs to use the bathroom on another floor, or standing when taking a phone call so you are moving every half an hour where possible.

• Work smart. Try high-intensity interval training. This is where bursts of high-intensity activity, up to 80% of your maximum heart rate, such as sprinting and cycling, are broken up with periods of lower-intensity exercise. This kind of workout is good for the time poor as it can be done in 20 minutes.
• For all women, and especially after childbirth, do pelvic floor exercises, sometimes known as Kegel exercises daily to help prevent incontinence.
• Diversify your exercise programme to keep it interesting. Try boot camp, spin class or yoga.

In your 40s

Most people start to put on weight in their 40s. Resistance exercise is the best way to optimise calorie burning to counteract fat accumulation and reverse the loss of three to eight percent of muscle mass per decade. Ten weeks of resistance training could increase lean weight by 1.4kg, increase resting metabolic rate by 7% and decrease fat weight by 1.8kg.

• Try kettlebells or start a weight-training programme in your gym.
• Take up running, if you don't run already, and don't be afraid to start a more intensive exercise programme. You get more bang for your buck with running versus walking.
• Pilates can be useful to build core strength to protect against back pain, which often starts in this decade.

In your 50s

In this decade, aches and pains may crop up and chronic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, can manifest. As oestrogen declines in postmenopausal women, the risk of heart disease increases.

• Do strength training twice a week to maintain your muscle mass.
• Weight-bearing exercises, such as walking, is recommended. Walk fast enough so that your breathing rate increases and you break a sweat.
• Try something different. Tai chi can be excellent for balanceand relaxation.

In your 60s

Typically, people accumulate more chronic conditions as they get older, and ageing is a major risk factor for cancer. Maintaining a high level of physical activity can help prevent cancers, such as post-menopausal breast cancer, colon cancer and cancer of the womb, and it reduces the risk of developing chronic conditions, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Physical activity tends to decline with age, so keep active and try to buck this trend.

• Try ballroom dancing or other forms of dancing; it's a fun and sociable way to exercise.
• Incorporate strength and flexibility exercises twice a week. Aqua-aerobics can be a great way to develop strength using water as resistance.
• Maintain cardiovascular exercise, such as brisk walking.

70s and beyond

Exercise in your 70s and beyond helps prevent frailty and falls, and it's important for your cognitive function. If you have a period of ill health, try to keep mobile, if possible. Strength and fitness can decline rapidly if you are bed bound or very inactive, which can make it hard to get back to previous levels.

• Walk and talk. Instead of inactive visits from family and friends, go for a walk together. It will keep you motivated and boost your health more than solitary exercise.
• Incorporate some strength, balance and cardiovascular exercise in your regime. But get advice from a physiotherapist or other exercise professional, especially if you have several chronic conditions.

The main message is to keep moving throughout your life. Sustained exercise is what benefits health most.

Provided by The Conversation

Move more, sit less – great advice, but how can we make time for exercise?

It doesn’t matter what exercise you choose, just move. Credit: robuart / SHutterstock.com

It's that time again. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services just released a new edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. That sound you hear is Americans collectively sighing.

10 dec 2018--Let's be honest: Physical activity guidelines can be tough. As behavioral scientists with expertise in exercise motivation, we will be the first to admit that maintaining a physically active lifestyle isn't easy. This is what we do, and we don't even always hit the goal. Life is messy and often gets way of even the best intentions. Let's take a deep breath, unwrap these new guidelines and talk strategy.

The guidelines

The guidelines recommend that all adults do at least 150 minutes per week of physical activity at an intensity that elevates the heart rate. Older adults should add balance exercises. And with the exception of women who are pregnant or nursing, adults should lift weights using all major muscle groups at least twice a week.
The guidelines also recommend that school-aged children and adolescents be active for 180 minutes per week. Preschoolers should be active throughout the day. Right now you might be thinking, who has time for all this exercise?

The good news

The good news is that the guidelines now recognize that fitting in big blocks of time for exercise is not necessary to get health benefits. For the first time, the guidelines don't require that physical activity occurs in bouts of 10 consecutive minutes or more to be valid. All activity counts. So that climb up and down the stairs at work every day counts toward your goal (as long as you're raising your heart rate).
The new guidelines also emphasize a "move more, sit less" message to encourage everyone to do just a little more physical activity and to spend a little bit less time sitting. Physical activity isn't all or nothing. Every little bit comes with health benefits, so if reaching the guideline seems overwhelming, that's OK. Just try to do a bit more than you did yesterday. Improvement counts as success whether you meet the guidelines or not.

The new guidelines suggest that adults lift weights at least twice a week. Credit: bunnygraphy / Shutterstock.com

But how? And when?


If you feel the guidelines are overwhelming, you are not alone – this is one of the most common complaints about the guidelines we hear from the thousands of people we have studied and counseled in exercise programs. People often feel hopeless about changing their lifestyle dramatically. One way to tackle a large goal is to break it down into smaller pieces.
Consider a marathon runner. No new runner starts off running 26 miles; each one has to build up to it. They break monstrous goals into smaller pieces that increase steadily over many months. You can approach the new physical activity guidelines in the same way. By tracking your progress, using incrementally more challenging goals, and celebrating milestones of achievement, you can move yourself closer to reaching the big goal.
The first goal you set should be a pretty easy goal – so easy you should be thinking, "Oh, come on! That is too easy!" Say, for example, you get about 30 minutes of exercise per week. Could you increase to 35 minutes per week for the next three weeks? Once you've nailed 35 minutes for 2-3 weeks, bump it up to 40 minutes. The idea here is that you are building slowly, getting used to each step before moving onto the next step. Each step is also enhancing your physical fitness and conditioning so the next step won't feel much more difficult than the one before. From a time management perspective, sneaking in an extra five minutes here and there is also far easier than finding time blocks of 30 to 60 minutes.
If you are far from 150 minutes right now, forget about 150 right now. Come up with a goal that is "Oh, come on!" easy and then go from there. You can track your progress with wearable devices, smartphone apps or good old-fashioned pen and paper. However you track your progress, it is important to have a plan that you can track and keep trying to raise the bar for yourself – ever so gently.

The best thing you can do for your health

The experts call physical activity the "best buy" in public health. And the guidelines are based on evidence from thousands of studies. Based on this evidence, an expert panel concluded that exercise increases our lifespans, prevents that sneaky annual weight gain and reduces the risk of almost every chronic disease: cardiovascular disease, diabetes and many cancers. No other single behavior can do as much good for your health. By investing some time into exercise now, you get to cash in later. Think of it as the 401K for a long, healthy and happy life.
Of course, we don't always make decisions in our long-term self-interest. We are wired more toward immediate rewards, and many health benefits of physical activity take years to appear. Some may be hard to notice at all, like preventing heart disease.
Fortunately, exercise has many immediate benefits. One of the biggest is the "feel good" effect afterwards. People consistently feel more focused, less stressed and more energized after physical activity. In fact, studies now show that regular physical activity can actually reduce anxiety and depression – with effects equal to antidepressant medication or psychotherapy. We are all just one workout away from feeling better than we do right now.
One word of caution: Be careful not to push too hard too soon. Exercising hard can feel unpleasant. Most people don't repeat activities that feel unpleasant. Find something you enjoy and keep it fun if you want that behavior change to stick. When you hear all the news about the new physical activity guidelines, try not to let it discourage you. Set the numbers aside for now and just ask yourself, "How can I move a little more and sit a little less than I do now – and how can I make it fun?"
You got this.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Provided by The Conversation

Step count prescription strategy can up steps/day

27 jan 2017—A physician-delivered step count prescription strategy with an individualized rate of increase can result in an increase in step count/day, according to a study published online Jan. 11 in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.

Kaberi Dasgupta, M.D., from the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, and colleagues examined the effects of physician-delivered step count prescriptions and monitoring. Participants were randomized to a control arm or an active arm, in which they were provided with pedometers and recorded step counts. Physicians reviewed their records over a one-year period and provided a written step count prescription with a goal of a 3,000-step/day increase (individualized rate of increase). Participants in the control arm were advised to engage in 30 to 60 minutes of physical activity per day. Seventy-nine percent of the 347 participants completed the final evaluation.
The researchers found that there was a net increase of 20 percent in steps/day for active versus control participants (1,190 steps). Inconclusive changes were seen in carotid femoral pulse wave velocity. Among participants with type 2 diabetes, active versus control participants experienced a lowering of hemoglobin A1c (−0.38 percent). The active versus control arm also showed a decrease in homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance (−0.96 in all participants not treated with insulin).
"A simple physician-delivered step count prescription strategy incorporated into routine clinical practice led to a net 20 percent increase in step counts, though below the 3,000 steps/day targeted increment," the authors write.

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Making patients move requires the right exercise advice

COLUMBIA, Mo. 24 july 2008-- knowledge that regular exercise supports physical and mental well-being. Despite this and recommendations from health care providers, the majority of patients with chronic illnesses remain inactive. In a new study, University of Missouri researchers found that adults with chronic illness who received interventions focused on behavior-changing strategies significantly increased their physical activity levels. In contrast, interventions based on cognitive approaches, which attempt to change knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, and are most commonly used by health care providers, did not improve physical activity.
"The information that physicians are giving patients isn't working. Patients are not motivated when they hear 'exercise is good; it will improve your health.' What works is providing patients with simple, action-orientated strategies to increase their activity levels," said Vicki Conn, professor and associate dean of research in the MU Sinclair School of Nursing.
Behavior strategies include feedback, goal setting, self-monitoring, and stimulus or cues. Self-monitoring, any method where participants record and track their activity over time, significantly increased awareness and provided motivation for improvement, Conn said.
"It is important for care providers to set very specific, manageable goals with patients," Conn said. "For example, ask them to exercise for 20 minutes, three times a week and track their progress by writing it down. Have them schedule exercise on their calendars, or prompt them by setting their walking shoes by their doors. Ask how they can reward themselves if they accomplish the goal. This will help incorporate activity into their daily routines and provide them with a sense of accomplishment."
Conn completed a meta-analysis incorporating data from 22,527 participants in 163 research reports. No previous analysis has examined physical activity levels following interventions among adults with diverse chronic illnesses. Conn found that interventions were similarly effective regardless of gender, age, ethnicity and socioeconomic status.
"Behavior interventions increased participants' activity by an average of 48 minutes per week, which is enough to provide them with health benefits," Conn said. "People may feel overwhelmed by the thought of exercise, or think they have to work out 60 minutes, five days a week, but doing just 12 minutes per day may get them started toward better health."
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The study "Meta-Analysis of Patient Education Interventions to Increase Physical Activity Among Chronically Ill Adults," was published in Patient and Education Counseling. Conn's research is funded by a more than $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.