Your health and fitness, every day is a choice!
It’s
not just our abilities that define us but our choices too. It’s wise to choose to stay fit and live a healthy life. Those who are living a sedentary lifestyle should start the change by including any basic physical activity in their daily lives. It can be as simple as choosing to commute via walking or cycling, keeping self busy with some occupational work, with activities like dancing, gardening, sports, household chores and other leisure time activities, or getting involved in community activities.
Age is not a bar for exercising, all you need to do is follow specific guidelines. Here are some tips that will help you get started the right way: Always start exercise with warm- up and end with cooldown. A good warm- up prepares the body for the intense activity and helps in preventing injuries by dilating the blood vessels, ensuring enough supply of oxygen to the muscles for optimal performance.
Warm- up exercises should include a set of multiple stretches for both upper and lower body. Cool- down is necessary after every workout session. 5- 10 minutes of walk, stretches and relaxation breathing gives time for body temperature, respirations, and heart rate to return to baseline.
Our physical activities should be a combination of moderate and vigorous intensity activities, with a mix of aerobic endurance, muscle strengthening, flexibility, balance and agility.
You can perform moderateintensity aerobic
( endurance) physical activity for a minimum of 30 mins on five days each week or vigorous- intensity aerobic activity for a minimum of 20 mins on three days each week. We should indulge in muscle strengthening on atleast two non- consecutive days in a week. Initially, keep the focus on muscle endurance followed by muscle strengthening, involving major muscle groups of body.
Similarly, we should include flexibility, proprioception and agility in our regime for atleast 10 minutes a day for two days in a week. Breaking the monotony is necessary. Choose your own days of rest and workout. Space the workout with alternate days of aerobic and muscle strengthening, squeezing in flexibility, balance and agility in between.
Irrespective of age, one should get a thorough medical screening done for undiagnosed and previously diagnosed medical conditions, and musculoskeletal disorders. Pre- participation evaluation can prevent unforeseen medical mis happenings and can be life- saving. It also prevents injuries due to predisposing extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Doing more than the minimum recommended physical activity, under medical supervision, will lead to enhanced results in fitness, reduce unhealthy weight gain and keep lifestyle diseases at bay. ‘ You will never know your limits unless you push yourself to them!’
The writer is a medical doctor,
sports medicine, AktivHealth