Feel good now and preserve youthful vitality throughout your life by performing daily exercises. Maintain a healthy immune system, strong cardiovascular system, healthy bodyweight, muscle tone and flexibility through aerobic exercise, core training, strength training and stretching. Each of these is vital to your long-term health. Start with these basics and learn more as you go.
Pilates
Pilates helps maintain a healthy spine, improves flexibility and gives you core strength. Try the corkscrew exercise. Lie on your back with your arms by your sides and your knees bent and raised. Inhale to prepare for the exercise. Exhale and flatten your abdomen down toward your spine. Keep this abdominal compression. Circle your knees. Inhale as you circle down and around. Exhale as you contract your abdomen and circle around and up. Continue for 15 repetitions before reversing. Make it harder by straightening your legs. Avoid arching your spine and avoid allowing your spine to come off the mat.
Cardio
You need a healthy heart, and since your heart is a muscle, it needs exercise. Your cardiovascular system needs a minimum of 20 minutes a day of sustained aerobic exercise. Your aerobic intensity should feel somewhat hard while you move. Choices of aerobic exercise at home are indoor or outdoor cycling, step aerobics, a cardio DVD or brisk walking. If you do not have a stepper, use the bottom step of your stairs. Try this sequence: step up with your right foot and lift your left knee. Step down. Step up with your left foot, lift your right knee. Step down. Continue alternating for one minute. Repeat this footwork, but lift your leg out to the side and repeat for one minute. Then lift your heel up to your buttocks and repeat for one minute. Repeat the sequence for 20 minutes.
Strength Training for Arms
Strength training gives you strength, muscle tone, strong bones, raised metabolism and improved body mass, which is the ratio between your lean mass and your fat mass. Use resistance machines such as the chest press, peck deck, incline press, lat pulldown, seated row, triceps extensions, biceps curls and shoulder press for your arms. If you have a set of dumbbells, the overhead press strengthens many muscles in your arms and upper body. Hold a dumbbell in each hand up to your shoulders. Turn the back of your hand toward the front of your shoulder. Compress your abdomen and straighten your spine. Exhale as you push the dumbbells up toward the ceiling. Inhale as you slowly lower them down. Continue for three sets of eight to 15 repetitions every other day.
Strength Training for Legs
Leg machines help you learn correct positioning and technique. Try the leg extension, leg press, leg curl, low cable crossover adduction and low cable crossover abduction. Strengthen your legs at home with forward lunge walks. Take a large step forward and lower your back knee down to the floor. Use your leg muscles to stand and raise the other leg. Continue to alternate legs until you feel leg-muscle burn. Do standing heel raises for your calf muscles. Do the step sequence for leg toning while you also get your cardio workout. Stretch when you are finished.
References
- "YMCA Personal Training Manual"; YMCA of the USA; 2006
- "The Pilates Body"; Brooke Siler; 2000
- "YMCA Cardio and Step Aerobics Instructor Manual"; YMCA of the USA; 2005
- Wellness.MA; Strength Training For Teenagers; Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D., Cynthia J. Long; 2005
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