Improve your Strength and Flexibility

 

Now it the time to boost your strength and Strength and flexibility exercises will help you increase muscle strength, maintain bone density, improve balance and reduce joint pain. A strength exercise is any activity that makes your muscles work harder than usual. This increases your muscles' strength, size, power and endurance. The activities involve using your body weight or working against a resistance.

Exercises that improve leg strength, balance and co-ordination can help people maintain and improve their muscle mass and avoid falls as they get older. For an activity to be muscle-strengthening, it needs to work your muscles to the point where you may need a short rest before continuing. For example, if you’re lifting weights, you would have to put the weight down after doing a number of lifts before carrying on.  

Flexibility exercises are activities that improve the ability of a joint to maintain the movement necessary for carrying out daily tasks and physical activity. There is strong evidence of the health benefits of muscle-strengthening activities. These include maintaining the ability to perform everyday tasks and the reduction in bone and muscle loss associated with ageing. There is also a reduction in the number of falls.

Unlike aerobic and strength exercises, the specific health benefits of flexibility activities are unclear. However, health professionals believe that improving your flexibility can improve your posture, reduce aches and pains and lower your risk of injury. Good flexibility can also help you to continue carrying out everyday tasks.  It's a good idea to do muscle-strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week. No specific amount of time is recommended, but a typical training session could take less than 20 minutes.

Exercises should be performed to the point at which it would be difficult to do another repetition without help. A repetition is one complete movement of an activity, like lifting a weight or doing one push-up or one sit-up. Try to do 8 to 12 repetitions for each activity, which counts as one set. Try to do at least two sets of muscle-strengthening activities, but to gain even more benefits, do three sets. Remember to start gradually and build up over a period of weeks. There are no specific recommendations for how much time you should spend on flexibility exercises.

No, time spent doing strength exercises does not count towards moderate intensity aerobic activities, according to Department of Health guidelines. Aerobic activities such as walking or cycling do count towards your 150-minute weekly target.   Some aerobic exercises, if performed at a vigorous intensity, will also strengthen your muscles.  For general health, try to do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity a week, and in addition, muscle-strengthening activities on two days a week.

However, if you’re doing vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, you should be able to get all your week’s aerobic and muscle-strengthening requirements from 75 minutes of activity. Now it the time to boost your strength and Ignite Magazine provides more and more information about Boosting Strength. For more information visit the site http://www.ignite-magazine.com/ .