Lifting after 60
It’s no secret that movement is medicine at this day and age. We all now understand the benefits of staying active and living a healthy lifestyle. But what we often misunderstand is why certain training methods are more beneficial to us as we age. You see, there’s a lot that happens deep within the body as we take more trips around the sun. We start to experience a decrease in muscle mass and bone density. Our metabolism begins to slow, joints become stiff and essential bodily functions begin a gradual decline.
We say all of this not to make aging sound scary, but to encourage you to take action and ownership for your health and wellbeing to maximize your years here on this big rock.
What can we do?
Lift. Strength train. Resistance training. Functional Movement.
All of these forms of exercise are excellent in sustaining/building healthy muscle mass and bone density. Adding not just years to your life but quality years. Years of more mobility and independence. Years or more opportunity and experiences. Years of joy.
Where can we begin?
Find a gym or personal trainer who is well versed in the world of functional and safe lifting. When we say functional we mean lifting that will be beneficial to your everyday movement partners. For example, we deadlift so that we learn how to safely pick heavy load up off the floor without throwing out our backs. We squat so that we have the strength and stability to take seat and stand up without assistance. We clean so that we can have safe and effective movement patterns to load items into the back of the truck bed. These are just a few examples of how lifting can be beneficial to our everyday movement patterns.
It doesn’t need to be extremely heavy in order to be effective. We just want to regularly practice these movement patterns so that when they do pop up in our daily activities, we have the body awareness to move through them without the fear of being incapable.
No one looks forward to the day that we have to move into assisted living or have a child switch roles with us and oversee our care. Therefore it is our responsibility to take action now and set ourselves up for longevity and optimal mobility as we add years to our lives.
An object in motion stays in motion. Sir Isaac Newton said that, and he was pretty smart…so there’s that :)
