As a senior adding core and resistance training into your wellbeing habits can be one of the most effective ways to improve your health. If you are looking to stay active throughout your later years try these 10 exercises which are perfect for seniors. We have also created a core workout and full body session for seniors to try today.

Benefits Of Core Exercises For Seniors

1. Prevents Loss Of Muscle Mass

Loss of muscle mass is one of the major effects ageing has on the body. This loss of muscle mass can cause a lot of health issues, most notably the risk of falling and causing a serious injury. Improving core strength and full body strength can reverse this muscle loss and drastically reduce risk of mortality whilst improving quality of life.

2. Day To Day Quality Of Life

Adding core training and resistance training into your routine as an older person can be one of the most powerful ways to improve your lifespan and quality of life. This can be the difference between being able to stand up out of a chair or not, which can have a huge impact on your quality of life.

3. Prevents Fall Risk

Using core exercises will also help improve your balance, this will in turn help prevent falls and injures. Falls and injuries can have long term impact on both quality of life and length of life. As they cause a further reduction in movement they are very dangerous for elderly populations.

How Should Seniors Train The Abdominal Muscles?

Seniors should follow all the same principles as anyone else using resistance training. They may want to be extra careful especially if they have a previous injury or have not exercises for an extended period of time. Core training can be implemented in two main ways:

1. Stand Alone Core Session

This involves doing a 15-20 minute stand alone core workout 1-2 times a week.

2. Full Body Resistance Training Session

This includes a long full body strength training session in which core training is incorporated.

Which Is Better?

This really depends on how much time and effort you want to put into resistance training. Both are excellent ways to develop core strength but the full body resistance training will have a much greater impact on general health and wellbeing of seniors.

Other Consideration

1. Exercise Selection

The most important thing to consider when getting started is picking exercises which match your current ability to enable to to create a sustainable training programme, with exercises you can perform with good technique.

2. Progressive Overload

Finally you should use progressive overload to make your training slowly more and more challenging. There is no rush here, no need to make big leaps in difficulty or complexity, try to be methodical and patient with using progressive overload, this will prevent injury and allow sustainability.

The 10 Best Core Exercises For Seniors

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