5 fitness tips for optimal performance

Improving your overall health & fitness should never be looked at as a short-term endeavour.

If you’re over 60, regular exercise is crucial in maintaining your health and independence and ensuring you have the energy to do more of what you love, like playing with the grandkids. Not only does regular exercise help you maintain an active lifestyle, but it can help to decrease the risk of developing serious conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis, while helping to lift your mood and improve your mental health as well as your immunity.

If you want the most from your body, here are 5 ideas & tips that can help you perform optimally at any age.

Be consistent! 

If there is one single factor that determines whether or not a person achieves their health & fitness goals, is their discipline in remaining consistent. Now, each week before you plan any work, family or social occasions, plan your training sessions and do your absolute best to stick to them!

Also, training with a friend is one the best ways to keep you accountable for being consistent and achieving your goals.

Circuit training

Don’t be scared to throw a few weights around to help improve your overall fitness.

One of the best way’s for anyone over 60 who may or may not have a lot of experience with exercise, is to conduct circuit style training. A balanced exercise circuit will work all the major muscle groups in one session, which will in turn, burn calories, strengthen the body as a whole and not just individual muscles; and believe it or not, they can also be fun.

I can’t stress the importance of resistance (think weights) training, especially for women, to combat certain afflictions such as osteoporosis. Find a place that specialises in exercise for mature adults, as these trainers will be the experts on age adjusted exercises.

What do you do with the other 97 per cent of the time?

If you do four exercise sessions a week, let’s say for 45 minutes each, that’s four hours a week out of 168 hours in a week that you aren’t moving your body, burning calories and being focused on your health & fitness. That’s around 97 per cent of the time away from the gym, so it’s all well and good that your training your butt off in those 4 x 45 minute sessions at the gym.

But, if the rest of your 164 hours is spent, being stressed, being inactive, consuming excess calories, drinking excessive alcohol, and getting inadequate sleep, it will be very hard to achieve and maintain a good level of health & fitness.

Take ownership for your actions, be accountable, and be responsible for your own health all of the time.

What is your ‘why?’

You ‘why?’ is the singles biggest factor for motivation to train, especially on those days that it’s cold, wet, you haven’t slept well, and your bed is oh, so comfy. Is it: you want to do your first 20km race; you want to reduce your diabetes medication; you want to lose two dress sizes and fit into that dress for your daughter’s wedding; you want to show the ex what he’s missing out on or; you want to be able to keep up with your children/grandchildren in the back yard?

Think of your ‘why?’, write it down, and on those days when you simply can’t be bothered, refer back to this and get the hell out of bed!

Education

Be an absolute sponge for education, the more you learn about health & fitness the more you will know how to improve your overall wellbeing.

Try not to get distracted by the new shiny toy (e.g. washboard abs in 10 days, or lose 10 kg in 10 days type programs), these thing simply don’t work ,or worse, they work for a bit and then you rebound and end up back where you started.

Exercise can be challenging, and you need to be patient as real results can take time, but trust me, with education, discipline and consistency THEY WILL HAPPEN!

Make a commitment to yourself. It’s not enough just to attend your training sessions. Set goals, challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zone, and get your body moving!

IMPORTANT LEGAL INFO This article is of a general nature and FYI only, because it doesn’t take into account your personal health requirements or existing medical conditions. That means it’s not personalised health advice and shouldn’t be relied upon as if it is. Before making a health-related decision, you should work out if the info is appropriate for your situation and get professional medical advice.