Exercises for Over 60

Exercise plays a vital role in maintaining health, strength and physical fitness. Regular exercise can battle obesity and support your respiratory and circulatory systems. As you approach your golden years, it becomes especially important to perform exercises that keep you physically active to combat the natural effects of growing older.

Stretching

If you find yourself needing help putting on your socks or zipping up your dress, then you may be seeing signs of a decline in the flexibility of your joints. As you age, loss of elasticity in your skin and connective tissue occurs. Muscles shorten and tighten, joints lose range of motion and flexibility decreases. However, according to Dr. Karl Knopf, author of "Stretching for 50+," seniors who regularly perform stretching exercises have the ability to delay and even reverse flexibility problems. Stretching can improve your posture and your ability to move, walk and breathe properly. To keep your joints loose and limber, Knopf suggests head tilts, torso twists from side to side, toe touches and shoulder rolls.

Strengthening

As age creeps up on you, muscles become rigid. They lose tone, and you may even lose muscle tissue. Since, as the University of Maryland Medical Center points out, "Muscles provide the force and strength to move the body," it is vital to perform strengthening exercises to help rebuild muscle mass. In addition, not only do they accelerate your metabolism, but strengthening exercises help ward off obesity and diabetes -- substantial health issues for seniors. The National Institute on Aging recommends simple repetitive arm raises, standing on your toes and standing from a sitting position to help tone and strengthen weakened muscles.

Balance and Coordination

In the United States, one in every three adults over age 65 falls annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2009, falls, including head traumas, hip, ankle, hand, pelvic and spine fractures, amounted to 2.2 million non-fatal injuries. Furthermore, falls account for the largest percentage of injury fatalities for senior citizens. More than 18,000 older adults died from accidental falls in 2007. Balance and coordination exercises can help prevent falls among the elderly. Many of the strengthening exercises, such as standing on your toes and standing from a sitting position, can do double duty as coordination exercises. Additionally, walking heel to toe and side leg raises can yield balance benefits.

Endurance

Endurance exercises increase your vitality and energy while supporting the health of your heart and lungs. They help improve your stamina to accomplish routine tasks such as climbing stairs, shopping, lifting laundry and vacuuming. Endurance exercises not only aid in the delay of such diseases as diabetes, colon cancer, heart disease and stroke, but, according to the National Institute on Aging, they reduce hospitalization and death rates among the elderly. Any activity that accelerates your respiratory rate -- walking, dancing, ping-pong, swimming or pushing your grandchild on a swing -- can build endurance.