Physical therapists aren't just for people that are injured or have had surgery. Physical therapists can also help healthy people improve their fitness. Here are 5 reasons why you should consider seeing yours.
1) YOU WANT A BASELINE
Most people know that physical activity is important. In fact, not getting enough has been linked to illnesses like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure and lung disease. So the important question is not if you need to be doing some form of physical activity to protect against diseases like these, but how much is enough?
The US Department of Health and Human Services answered that question for us in 2008 with their recommendations for physical activity. To improve or maintain health, adults over 65 need to do 2 types of physical activity: aerobic exercise and strengthening.
You know exercise is important to your health. It helps you feel better physically, gives you energy, and helps you deal with the stress of your busy life.
But what do you do when life gets too busy to take an exercise class, go for a run, or get to the gym?
It’s easy to start skipping exercise when life gets busy, but that leads to less energy, and aches and pains cropping up. This makes you feel like exercising even less, and leads to a downward spiral. That means that finding time to exercise when life is busy is even more important.
Strength training is an important type of exercise, but becomes even more important as people age. Without resistance training, we begin to lose somewhere between 0.5% and 1% of our muscle mass each year.
With this loss of muscle mass comes higher levels of arthritis pain, more difficulty with things like getting out of a chair or going up steps, higher risk for falls and injuries, and eventually the possibility of loss of independence.
Research has shown that people of any age can benefit from strength training, so just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean that you can’t get any stronger. When many people hear “strength training” they automatically picture someone straining under a heavy barbell. However, strength training can be performed with resistance bands, machines, dumbbells, barbells, and many other types of equipment. The key to strength training is that the resistance gets stronger as you do.
