In 2019, Nuffield Health surveyed 2,000 Brits aged 55 and over to explore people’s attitudes to fitness. The study found that one in 10 Brits said the reason they didn’t attend the gym more regularly, if at all, was out of fear of injury.
Has the fear of injury been preventing you from beginning your exercise journey? Have you convinced yourself you’re too old to start exercising?
It’s easy to slow down and to become more sedentary with age, but incorporating exercise into your lifestyle as you move into your 40s and 50s is more important than ever to your health. Physical activity is a key contributor to longevity, it really can add extra years to your life.
Adding more activity into your life will help to boost your energy, maintain your independence, protect your heart, and manage symptoms of illness or pain as well as your weight. It’s also a natural way to calm your mind, and to enhance your mood and memory.
Why do people assume they’re going to injure themselves?
One of the main factors is when an older person enters a gym and sees someone who’s literally loaded half their body weight onto a barbell, it can negatively impact their mindset. Instead of feeling fired up with motivation and determination to reach this same level of fitness, it can fill you with self-doubt and trigger you to feel deflated because you imagine you’ll never be able to achieve such a goal. It can also add fuel to the thoughts you may have about how lifting heavy will immediately throw your back out, or worse, result in a long-term injury. Jumping to these types of conclusions is the worst you thing you can do. Once you let fear overtake you, it can be difficult to move through it.
Each person’s exercise journey is personal to them. You should never compare your abilities to the person next to you, or to the abilities of a friend or loved one who’s been exercising for years. Gym related injuries can be avoided if you move towards your fitness goals at a pace that suits only you.
When working with a personal trainer or jumping on a personal fitness journey, you must ensure you always warm up, you don’t lift beyond your means, that you are using the correct form, and that you always cool down.
To assume exercising isn’t for you due to the fear of injury is such a damaging mindset to have. It can lead you to missing out on some of the fantastic benefits of exercising. Following a strength training programme that has been designed to meet your personal needs is actually one of the things that will help you avoid injury as you move into your more mature years.
What are the benefits of strength training?
- It will increase your lean muscle tissue. This will help you burn more calories when you’re resting which will combat weight gain.
- It will improve your range of movement in your joints, which will decrease any joint pain that you suffer from.
- It will improve your overall recovery rate.
- It will reduce your chances of getting injured.
- It will reduce the impact of illness and chronic disease.
- It will enhance your flexibility, mobility and balance.
- It will improve your sleep, mood and brain function.
Due to the fear of injury, mature people often feel more comfortable turning up to a HIIT class or sticking to cardio sessions instead of following a structured strength training plan. Whilst HIIT and other forms of cardio may be good for helping to improve endurance, doing too much can actually lead to overtraining and even muscle loss in extreme cases. This is why strength based training should be your exercise of choice. With the support of a personal trainer, or through careful practice alone, you can increase your ability to perform weight-bearing activities and create a stronger relationship between your upper and lower body.
What do you need to perform strength based exercises efficiently?
- Good mobility
- Good core strength
- Good joint stability
- Good posture.
The above factors should be non-negotiables for people over the age of 40. You should be making an effort to practise exercises that encourage mobility, core strength, joint stability and good posture on a daily basis, regardless if you’re strength training or not.
Strength training might initially fill you with unease, but it genuinely has no age limit. It can benefit anyone no matter what their current ability looks like. Once you find what works for you, you will soon realise the benefits of strength training outweigh your fear and self-doubt.
If you’re ready to see a positive change in your physical health that takes your past and present injuries and limitations into consideration, get in touch and let’s work together to add more vitality into your life.