Why Warming Up Is Important for Seniors

Warming up is important for everyone, but especially important for senior individuals. Performing a thorough warm up doesn’t need to take a long time, but it is a crucial part of any training session. Warming up, firstly, strives to prevent injury, it does this through progressively loading the body with load. This enables the muscles and joints to be ready to take on challenging loads. Secondly, the warm up serves to improve performance, this is done through preparing the body for challenging loads, meaning the body is able to perform when the challenging is presented. If the body is not ready as it has not been warmed up, it will result in poor performance.

All Seniors Are Different

It is important to understand that when we group together seniors, that we realise that there can be very high levels of individual difference. Some seniors will be in amazing condition and find these exercises very easy while for some others these exercises will be far too challenging. If you are a senior and reading this article you need to take into consideration your current ability before attempting any of these exercise, they may be far to challenging for you. In this article I am striving to write the for the middle ground, for seniors who are not in excellent shape but also individuals who have the capacity to perform some basic movements and are not movement impaired.

Why Is Warming Up Essential for Seniors

Lack of Mobility

Senior individuals usually have poor levels of mobility, this is from not moving their bodies through its ranges of motion for long periods of time. Individuals with poor levels of mobility, including seniors, need to be putting emphasis on improving their mobility in their warm ups. Warm ups are an excellent way to target the mobility of the movement patterns you are about to attempt to strength, we open up the range on motion, then we gain strength in it.

Long Periods of Sedentary Behaviour and Muscle Loss

Elderly individuals who are beginning there resistance training journey have usually been through a long period of sedentary behaviour. This is by no means the case for every individual as some people remain active through sport etc. Yet even these behaviours will not prevent the muscle loss that is associated with aging. This means that a great deal of seniors will have lower levels of muscle mass and strength than younger individuals. This is crucial when designing training sessions for elderly individuals, they should not require high levels of strength.

An example of a warm up exercise that you would not give to a elderly individual is a tall plank controlled articulation. This warm up exercise requires high levels of strength that the vast majority of the seniors population is not able to perform.

Require Higher Emphasis on Technique

The mixture of loss of muscle mass, reduced mobility and long periods of sedentary behaviour often result in skill acquisition being very challenging. This is why focusing on technique during the warm up is crucial, to get more repetitions on the skill that is being acquired.

What Type of Exercises Do Seniors Need for Warm Ups

Seniors need exercises that do not require high levels of strength, exercises that put emphasis on mobility and finally emphasis on technique. The technical part will depend on what is being performed during the session, if an the session is an upper body strength session, it would not make sense to warm on squat mobility in the warm up. Below is an example warm up an elderly individual could use prior to squatting.

Try These 10 Warm Up Exercises for Seniors