Fitness: Effective Workouts and Tips for a Healthier Lifestyle

Exercising regularly, every day if possible, is the single most important thing you can do for your health. In the short term, exercise helps to control appetite, boost mood, and improve sleep. In the long term, it reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, depression, and many cancers. Many people strive to be fit. Fitness, after all, is synonymous with health. Having a high level of overall fitness is linked with a lower risk of chronic disease, as well as a better ability to manage health issues that do come up. Better fitness also promotes more functionality and mobility throughout one’s life span. And in the short term, being active can help your day-to-day functioning, from better mood to sharper focus to better sleep. Simply put: Our bodies are meant to move, and they tend to function better when we’re more fit.

That said, it’s also important to know that there are many different ways to be fit (think of a ballet dancer versus a bodybuilder or a sprinter versus a gymnast). And fitness does not have a singular “look.” In fact, appearance can’t necessarily tell you about someone’s habits, whether they’re actually physically active, or even whether they’re fit at all.

What It Means to Be Fit

According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans set forth by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), there are five components of physical fitness:

Cardiorespiratory Fitness Your VO2 max is a commonly used measure of this. It’s your body’s ability to uptake and utilize oxygen (which feeds all of your tissues), something that is directly related to your health and quality of life, says Abbie Smith-Ryan, PhD, professor and director of the Applied Physiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Musculoskeletal Fitness This includes muscle strength, endurance, and power.
Flexibility This is the range of motion of your joints.
Balance This is your ability to stay on your feet and steady to avoid falls.
Speed This is how quickly you can move.

Fitness: Effective Workouts and Tips for a Healthier Lifestyle.

A frequently cited peer-reviewed research paper from 1985 defined the difference between the terms “physical activity” (bodily movement resulting in energy expenditure), “exercise” (planned and structured physical activity), and “physical fitness.” The paper defined physical fitness as a set of attributes that people have or achieve that determines their ability to carry out daily tasks with vigor and alertness, without undue fatigue. Cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular endurance, muscular strength, body composition, and flexibility are components that can be used to measure fitness, also according to that paper.

Types of Fitness

Fitness: Effective Workouts and Tips for a Healthier Lifestyle There are a few main components of fitness, all of which are important for building a well-rounded exercise routine. Below, you will find the ones included in the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, which HHS highlights as the components that should be included in weekly exercise. (It’s worth noting that many definitions of fitness include other components as well, such as endurance, muscular endurance, power, speed, balance, and agility — as mentioned above.)

Aerobic (Cardiovascular) Exercise

Aerobic exercise is the foundation of every fitness program — and for good reason. Also called cardiovascular exercise or cardio, this type of physical activity increases your heart rate and breathing rate, which improves your cardiorespiratory fitness, according to the American Heart Association. Aerobic exercise includes activities like brisk walking, running, cycling, swimming, aerobic fitness classes (like kickboxing), tennis, dancing, yard work, tennis, and jumping rope, per the Physical Activity Guidelines.

Strength Training

Strength training is an important way to improve mobility and overall functioning, particularly as you get older. “As you age, you lose muscle mass, which can have a significant impact on the quality of life. Strength exercises build bones and muscle, and more muscle protects your body from falls and the fractures that can happen in older age,” says Robert Sallis, MD, a family medicine doctor at Kaiser Permanente in Fontana, California, and chairman of the Exercise Is Medicine initiative with the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

According to the ACSM, the definition of strength or resistance training is exercise that is “designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a muscle or a muscle group against external resistance.” Activities that answer this call include lifting weights, using resistance bands or your body weight, carrying heavy loads, and even strenuous gardening, per the Physical Activity Guidelines from HHS.

Flexibility and Mobility

Flexibility and mobility are both important components of healthy movement, according to the International Sports Sciences Association. However, they are not synonymous. Flexibility refers to the ability of tendons, muscles, and ligaments to stretch, while mobility refers to the body’s ability to take a joint through its full range-of-motion. There is no specific recommendation for the number of minutes you should do activities that improve flexibility or mobility (such as stretching), and the health benefits of those activities are not known because of a lack of research on the topic, according to the Physical Activity Guidelines from HHS. But the guidelines note that flexibility exercises are important for physical fitness.

What to Eat Before During and After Exercise

Fueling your body with adequate and healthy foods also plays an important role in exercise. Before Your Workout If you’re exercising shortly after you wake up in the morning, listen to your body’s hunger cues, says Jackie Dikos, RDN, a sports dietitian in Westfield, Indiana, and author of Finish Line Fueling. If you ate a heavier or later dinner the night before, you may not need anything. If you have an intense workout ahead of you and are hungry, you may need a small snack.

Eating easy-to-digest carbohydrates, such as a banana or some cereal just prior to a workout, or a combination of carbs and protein (e.g., toast with nut butter) 30 minutes beforehand will fuel you up for the work ahead. If you recently ate a meal, you may be able to skip the snack entirely.

Why is exercise so important for seniors?

Whether you were once much more physically active or have never been one to exercise regularly, now is a great time to start an exercise and fitness regimen. Getting and staying in shape is just as important for seniors as it is for younger people.

Why is exercise important for older people? Getting your heart rate up and challenging your muscles benefits virtually every system in your body and improves your physical and mental health in myriad ways. Physical activity helps maintain a healthy blood pressure, keeps harmful plaque from building up in your arteries, reduces inflammation, improves blood sugar levels, strengthens bones, and helps stave off depression. In addition, a regular exercise program can make your sex life better, lead to better quality sleep, reduce your risk of some cancers, and is linked to longer life.Many older adults hesitate to get moving because they’re unfamiliar with the types of exercise and fitness that are effective and safe, and aren’t sure how much exercise they need to do.

The good news is that any kind of movement is better than being sedentary, so there’s nothing wrong with starting small and working your way up to longer workouts. Your goal should be no less than 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity per week, but if you can’t start at that level, work up to it (and then past it). While there are many dedicated forms of exercise and fitness for adults, you also want to stay physically active throughout the day by taking the stairs, doing yard work, and playing with your grandkids.

Tips for Getting Started and Staying Motivated to Exercise

It can be tough to get into (and stick with) an exercise routine. Here are some tips:

Break It Up Fitness professionals have changed their tune on this over the years. The current Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans says that everything counts toward those weekly activity targets (as long as the intensity is high enough). You can take a 5-minute walk up the block, climb the stairs in your home a few times, or stand up from your desk and do a set of squats. “More recent data shows that there are health benefits to accumulating activity. Those short ‘exercise snacks’ add up,” says Sallis.
Increase Slowly Jumping into a busy and intense exercise routine can set you up for mental and physical burnout — and it puts you at risk of injury, too. Sallis recommends beginning where you are comfortable (in terms of distance if you are walking or jogging, or in terms of weights if you are strength training) and slowly increasing the duration and intensity over a period of weeks or months. Getting on an exercise program (look at apps or small group training) or finding a personal trainer can help with this progression.
Do ‘Non’-Exercise Exercise Do you count playing with your kids in the backyard, cleaning the house, doing yard work, dancing in your kitchen, and taking the dog out as exercise? You should — because they can all count toward your movement quota, says Sallis. Look at those everyday activities as opportunities to help you get fit and keep moving.
Schedule It Exercise is as important as any other activity. And while small bouts are good, you’ll also probably get to a point where you want to do longer durations. And that’s where looking at your schedule, finding a time that works during your day, and adding it to your calendar (as a “nonnegotiable” meeting) will help, says Smith-Ryan.
Consider HIIT High-intensity interval training (HIIT) can be great for beginners, including those who are sedentary or are overweight or obese. “In our lab, we have almost 100 percent compliance with interval training. HIIT is really easy to buy into and stick with,” Smith-Ryan says. HIIT calls for a shorter duration of exercise than traditional workouts (with the same benefits), resulting in less time commitment and fewer injuries overall, she explains. (Plus, it can be done without equipment, in your home.) Even though it is “high-intensity,” you’ll move at a pace that’s appropriate for your fitness level, and you’ll only do short bouts of the more strenuous type of movement at a time. Recruiting a personal trainer to help you structure a HIIT workout can be a great help.

While there are endless forms of exercise, experts categorize physical activity into four broad types based on what each calls upon your body to do and how the movement benefits you.

Aerobic exercise is marked by an increased heart rate. Although most aerobic exercises require you to move your whole body, the main focus is on your heart and lungs (Aerobic exercise is often called “cardio” because it challenges and benefits your cardiovascular system). Activities like walking, swimming, danc ing and cycling, if done at sufficient intensity, get you breathing faster and your heart working harder. Aerobic exercises burn fat, improve your mood, reduce inflammation and lower blood sugar.

Strength training, sometimes called resistance training, should be performed two to three times a week. Squats, lunges, push-ups and the exercises performed on resistance machines or using weights or bands help maintain and even build muscle mass and strength. Strength training also helps prevent falls, keep bones strong, lower blood sugar levels, and improve balance. Do a combination of both isometric and isotonic exercises. Isometric exercises, such as doing planks and holding leg lifts, are done without movement. They are great for maintaining strength and improving stability. Isotonic exercises require you to bear weight throughout a range of motion. Bicep curls, bench presses and sit-ups are all forms of isotonic exercise.

How much exercise you should be getting depends on several factors, including your current level of fitness, your fitness goals, the types of exercise you’re planning to do, and whether you have deficits in such areas as strength, flexibility or balance.

As a general rule, 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity (or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise) is recommended as a weekly minimum. As you become more fit, you’ll want to exceed that in order to reap maximum benefit. A natural way of splitting up the 150 minutes might be to do a 30-minute session five times per week, or you can break it up and do two 15-minute sessions during a single day. Adopt whatever schedule fits your lifestyle.

For strength exercises, aim to work all your major muscle groups twice to three times each week, leaving 48 hours between each workout for recovery. If you do “total-body” workouts, that’s two sessions per week. If you choose to split your workouts to target a specific muscle group (e.g., “leg day”), that will require more frequent workouts. Just make sure you’re leaving 48 hours of rest before you re-work a major muscle.

If you have noticed problems with your balance, such as unsteadiness, dizziness, or vertigo, talk to a healthcare provider for recommendations about balance-specific exercises. Get in three half-hour workouts each week in addition to a 30-minute walk at least twice weekly.

It’s best to stretch after you have warmed up for a few minutes, or perform stretching exercises after you have completed your workout. When stretching each muscle group, take it slow and steady, release, repeat again.

A smartly designed exercise program will benefit your body and mind in innumerable ways.

The benefits of exercise on mental health are well documented. For example, one major study found that sedentary people are 44% more likely to be depressed. Another found that those with mild to moderate depression could get similar results to those obtained through antidepressants just by exercising for 90 minutes each week. The key appears to be the release of brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine, which help lift mood and combat stress. We’re all familiar with exercise’s ability to improve cardiovascular health. But how does exercise lower blood pressure? Interestingly, when you stimulate your circulatory system through aerobic exercise, you’re temporarily increasing your blood pressure by forcing the system to work harder—but when you’ve finished exercising, your blood pressure drops to a lower level than it was before you began.

Everyone can and should do some form of exercise, even if they face severe limitations. Experts have designed specific exercises for seniors that are low-impact, safe and able to be done even from a sitting position if necessary.

If you’re concerned about fall risk, balance exercises for seniors can be done holding onto a chair or doorframe. For example, standing behind a chair, you can hold its back and lift one leg to about the height of the middle of the calf of the other leg while tightening your abdominal muscles. As you progress, you might try holding the chair with just one hand and eventually letting go of the chair.

Even core-strengthening exercises for seniors can be adapted to those with limited abilities. For example, a standard plank is done by holding yourself parallel to the floor with only your forearms and toes touching the mat. An easier version allows you to also place your knees on the mat. But a still easier method is to do the plank while standing and leaning forward. You put your elbows and forearms on a desk, table or wall while resting on the balls of your feet and keeping your back straight.

The best exercise program will incorporate both aerobic and strength training, since that’s the best way to strengthen your entire body, improve your endurance and ensure your long-term health. But if your main concern is how to improve cardiovascular health, then you should put a premium on cardiovascular exercises that force your heart and lungs to work harder, sending oxygen to your cells. While strength training certainly does have cardiovascular benefits, cardio workouts excel when it comes to reducing blood pressure, maintaining the health of the inner walls of your arteries, releasing enzymes that break down blood clots, and even promoting the growth of new arteries feeding the heart.