4 Types of Exercises
Physical activity and exercise fall into 4 basic categories:
Endurance | Strength | Balance | Flexibility.
Most people focus only on one of these types and think they’re doing enough. Mixing up all four types will prevent boredom and will give you the most benefits.
Endurance | Strength | Balance | Flexibility.
Most people focus only on one of these types and think they’re doing enough. Mixing up all four types will prevent boredom and will give you the most benefits.
1. Endurance
|
Endurance and aerobic activities increase your heart rate and breathing. These exercises improve your fitness and can help you in your everyday tasks. Endurance exercises can also help you to improve the health of your heart, circulation system and lungs and might even prevent many diseases that are common in older adults such as heart disease and diabetes. Examples for this type are biking, swimming, jogging, brisk walking and dancing.
|
|
2. Strength
|
Strength exercises help to make your muscles stronger. Even just very small changes in muscle strength can already make a difference. Stronger muscles can make it easier to do everyday things like climbing stairs, open jars, get up from a chair, carry groceries or even play with your grandchildren. You can increase your muscle strength with bodyweight exercises, resistance bands or lifting weights.
|
3. Balance
|
Balance exercises can help to prevent falls. Nearly any activity that keeps you up on your feet and moving can help you to mainatin good balance. Yes, even just walking can help. But there are also specific exercises how you can train your balance very easily: For example balance on one leg while standing for a certain period of time (e.g. start with 10 seconds, go up to 20 second, 30 second up to a minutes or more). Also sitting on a Stability Ball can make a difference, or you could try Tai Chi, which is a form of movement training and has proven to help enormously with stability and balance.
|
|
4. Flexibility
|
Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and can help your body to stay agile. They give you more freedom of movement for your physical activities and are also handy for everyday activities, such as reaching for objects on a shelf or getting dressed. These exercises include for example shoulder or neck stretches, back stretches, calf stretches etc.
|
Let professionals explain you how to do basic exercises:
|
Endurance Workout
|
Strength Exercise
|
|
Balance Exercise
|
Flexibility Exercise
|
