Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/1498053
www.AbbysHealthFood.com | # 56| Page 25 difficult because of the way muscle tissue changes with aging. That's why it's more important to engage in exercises that build the kind of strength your body needs to accomplish daily tasks like walking, jumping, carrying weight, and using the stairs. To build the best functional strength, use exercises that mimic daily activity. The Stairmaster is a great exercise machine for building useful strength. If you do stair-climbing exercises with the proper form, you can spare your knees some pain and reduce the likelihood of knee injuries in the future. Exercises with multiple components for building balance and gait as well as overall strength are the best for more functional strength. Simple exercises like glute bridges, push-ups, and squats are great for a warm-up or newcomers to fitness. Single-leg Romanian deadlifts, front squats, and full-body workouts like deadlifts are some of the best for more experienced lifters. 4. Beware of Overtraining Exhaustion after a hard workout is one thing, but sustained exhaustion and short rest periods that don't afford your body enough time to recover can have incredibly negative effects on your mental health and prevent you from continuing with your workout routine. The signs of overtraining are fairly obvious. Unusual and sustained muscle soreness during or after a workout is one sign. Delayed recovery and the inability to complete exercises are also common in people who have overtrained. General fatigue frequently accompanies overtraining. For people who have been exercising for years, continuing at the same pace when your muscle mass has decreased can lead to an overworked body. Listen to your body. The most important thing is coordinating the self-image in your mind with the real abilities and limitations of your muscles. Don't forget to take days off for your body to recover after workouts and drink plenty of water to increase hypertrophy. 5. Keep Your Exercises Varied Just as you should keep your rep range changing to keep your body from getting used to the exercise, it's also important to target different muscle groups throughout your workout routine. Don't forget your lower body and smaller stabilizing muscles in your core and glutes. Balance weightlifting exercises with leg presses and lunges so important muscle groups in your lower body like the hamstrings, quads, and glutes can also get a workout. Full-body workouts like deadlifts involve muscle groups throughout your body and also build muscle in your upper body. The back and core are two other areas that lifters tend to only exercise incidentally while targeting other muscles. Increasing your pull-up count and targeting large muscles like your latissimus dorsi with exercises like lat-pulldowns are a great way to get a broad back and strong shoulders. 6. High Reps Are Key As we age, our single-lift max and ability to lift more weight may reduce. For older people who are losing muscle mass, high reps are the best way to make up for a reduction in maximum strength. It's more effective to lift less weight more times and you'll feel much more effective during your workout as well. With the right exercises, you can keep your heart rate up for longer periods with more reps even when you use less weight. Maintaining a good heart rate without putting the heart under too much pressure will make it operate even better and lead to better cardiovascular health overall. You might have to build up to higher rep counts if you're new to regular exercise or spent more time trying to deadlift more weight rather than building endurance. Lifting heavier weight with fewer reps has its place in the routine as well. You should be doing twice or three times as many high-rep exercises as heavy lifting ones. When you hit your goal rep count, stop the exercise. Sometimes we get pumped up on our success and push past the goal we set for ourselves. That's not guaranteed to doom you, but it can lead to injury if you aren't careful about it. If you're really doing well at our strength training, get through the whole routine and then add another set of an exercise of your choice. In any case, it will always be better to improve at a good pace over time than to cram additional work into your workout routines without planning for it. 7. Embrace Exercise Variations If you haven't already been using different variations of classic moves like dumbbell rows and squats, you should add them to your strength training routine. Not only do they keep your body from adjusting to the traditional versions of these exercises, but they also move your body in different ways and activate muscles that otherwise aren't targeted. For example, Bulgarian split squats are a single-leg variation of the squat that give your leg muscles a much more complicated workout. You can also change the position of your feet during leg presses to target your quads or glutes more. Using variations doesn't mean you have to leave the traditional moves out of your workout routine completely. Just don't forget to balance your routine to make sure you don't exhaust muscles too early. When you do single-leg or arm exercises, remember to work out each side of your body so you develop the same amount of strength and muscle everywhere. 8. Mind Your Spine The joints aren't the only part of your body you should be careful with when you're strength training. Lifting weights also takes a toll on your spine. To prevent painful injury, make sure you don't overload your back with weights. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to lift less weight. Just be mindful that you shouldn't be loading huge amounts of weight onto your lower back and spine every time you go workout. A great way to manage this is to pack all your spine-loading exercises into one day of the week so that your spine has plenty of time to recover for the next time. Sit-ups and back extensions are two great examples of exercises that load weight on your spine. Protracted periods of unusual posture can cause the tissue to go away and lead to injury. The good news is that, provided you do the right exercises, building muscle and strength around your spine makes it stronger. Strength training can even relieve back pain if it's done correctly. 9. Train Outside the Gym, Too If you want to build strength in your body, you should be active as often as possible, even when you aren't working out. Simple adjustments like taking the stairs and going for after-dinner walks can help you get as many as 10,000 steps a day and keep away pesky fat. Walking and getting fresh air do wonders for your