Exercise For Older Adults

These recommendations also apply to older adults, assuming they're healthy and mobile enough to manage them.

In fact, older people should take particular care to retain their mobility through daily activity. Specific activities to improve strength, coordination and balance are particularly beneficial for older people.
Safety first - avoiding illness and injury

Remember you're taking up exercise to improve your health, not to make yourself ill or injured. Bear the following in mind:

* Start slowly. If you haven't done much activity for some time, it's important to build up to the recommended activity level over a few weeks. This might mean starting with a walk of just five minutes.
* If you're not sure how hard you can work because of any health problems you may have, talk to your GP or practice nurse for help and advice. You shouldn't assume because you have, say, a heart condition or a bad back that you can't exercise. In fact, there are many conditions for which certain exercises are positively beneficial. But it may be that you need to rule out certain activities, or build up more gradually than other people, so get medical advice first.
* Pregnant women should also take medical advice about exercising. Exercising during pregnancy can be excellent for posture, and strengthening your abdominal muscles and pelvic floor, but there are also signs that mean you should consult a doctor first, such as bleeding, headaches or nausea, or if you have pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, or have had more than one miscarriage, for example.
* Eat sensibly. Often when we talk about a sensible diet, we mean eating a little less, but once you start exercising there's also the danger of eating too little and having too little energy. We all need a healthy, balanced diet that contains the right vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and proteins, but if you're exercising you're burning energy so you need to make sure you have enough 'fuel'. Again, if you're unsure about the best diet for you, talk to your GP.
* Don't get dehydrated. During exercise our bodies get hot, and our main way of cooling down is to sweat, which means we lose fluid. On average, we lose one litre of fluid for every hour we exercise. The longer and harder you work, the more you'll lose and there's no way to be exact about how much you should drink. Try to drink 300ml to 500ml of fluid in the 15 minutes before your workout, then about 150ml to 250ml every 15 minutes during exercise. For moderate exercise of about half an hour, water is fine – for longer, more strenuous workouts, specialist sports drinks may be better.
* Warm up and stretch. Again, this is more important the longer and harder your planned exercise is, but it's a good habit to get into if you want to prevent injuries, such as pulled muscles.