Fit For Life
- Jun 4, 2020
- 2 min read

Fit For Life Exercise Newsletter 1 :)

Updated: Jan 11, 2021

Exercises to help Older Adults keep moving from Fit For Life!

During these challenging times its vital to keep moving and maintain our fitness and mobility levels! We want to help nursing home residents and the care team with this by sending regular exercise suggestions!

In this newsletter we will briefly remind ourselves of some of the guidelines, types and benefits of exercise for Older Adults. And there is a sample exercise program below!

* UK Chief Medical Officers' Physical Activity Guidelines (September 2019) downloaded from https://gpnotebook.com/simplepage.cfm?ID=x20130601152548685340 on 17/4/2020.

Types of exercise recommended for Older Adults

Research has demonstrated that Older Adults are recommended to do:

Cardiovascular (CV) or aerobic exercise: this type of exercise is vital for maintaining a healthy heart and lungs and it benefits circulation. To enable mobile residents to maintain their CV health, you could set up our 'Walk & Talk Program' (email info@fitforlife.ie and we can send to you)! And please see below for an exercise program that will enable residents to do some CV training whilst sitting.
Range of motion (ROM) or flexibility exercise: this type of exercise enables us to maintain movement around our joints.
Strength exercise is vital for Older Adults to maintain or improve their functional ability or independence and helps to maintain bone health. And as we age, loss of muscle tissue speeds up. Strength training can help to negate this effect and helps to prevent sarcopenia (muscle wasting) and frailty. Improved lower limb strength also helps to decrease falls risk!
Balance exercise: this type of exercise enables us to train our balance system and decrease the risk of falls!
Multi-component exercises e.g. dancing, tai chi, gardening. During these exercise sessions Older Adults complete exercises that work multiple components of fitness e.g. during set or social dancing you will be having FUN whilst working on CV fitness, muscular endurance, balance, co-ordination etc!

Fit For Life Weekly Exercise Program

Newsletter 1 exercise program: The program below contains a variety of exercises that are suitable for most Older Adults and can be completed in sitting or standing (if safe to do so) on most days of the week. You could complete them in a group or individually!

We suggest that you do each exercise for 10-30 seconds for 2-3 sets and take rest breaks as required e.g. 1-3mins between sets.

Complete the exercises in a slow and controlled manner and work within your max. pain free range of motion!

Some people with recent hip surgery should not flex knee higher than their hip! NB to check the individuals’ physio guidelines.

Fit For Life Exercise Newsletter 1 :)

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