Moving more is easy
Just do it, move more. Difficult? No, it is not. Ard Schenk and Edwin van den Dungen have written a book about it and will help you on your way. The goal: get fitter and healthier.
Are you moving enough? That is to say: do you go for half an hour of ‘moderately intensive’ walking, cycling, doing odd jobs or doing the housework at least five days a week (but preferably seven)? Good. Then you meet the so-called Dutch Standard for Healthy Exercise from the government. A very modest standard, but still quite a few people have difficulty with that.
But just like all those other people, you do yourself a disservice if you don’t exercise enough. You can win a lot by turning the button from today and moving more. Regardless of your age and current physical condition.
If you have led a mainly sedentary lifestyle for years, and from now on you will consistently exercise for half an hour a day five times a week, you are doing your health a big favor. Even if you only start with a daily walk of ten minutes. If you extend that to half an hour over the course of a few weeks, you meet the Healthy Exercise Standard. The result: you maintain your current health level.
Happy and healthy
But by exercising more often, differently and more intensively, you can achieve more than ‘maintaining your level’. You can become much healthier that way than you are now. The advantages are obvious:
• Less chance of diseases. By exercising regularly, you immediately reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseasescancer, type 2 diabetes, dementia, osteoporosis, stroke, depression and obesity. With just one extra hour of exercise per week, for example, you lower the risk of diabetes by 35 percent and the risk of a stroke by more than 25 percent.
• Less chance of bone fractures. Aging inevitably leads to weakening of the bones. And the weaker the bones, the more chance you have of fractures in a fall. Scientists have shown that bones stay strong for longer if they are regularly loaded.
• More energy. If you exercise regularly, you will immediately feel more energetic and relaxed. This has to do with the happiness substances (endorphins) that the brain produces when you train. But it also has to do with the fact that exercise is a good distraction from everyday life.
• Enjoy longer. If you stay fit, you will be able to do everything you love well into old age: play tennis, golf, travel long distances, visit cities or simply take the grandchildren for a day out.
• Living independently for longer. If you make sure that you stay in good physical shape, you will still be able to do your own shopping, run your household, wash and dress yourself and get in and out of bed in ten, fifteen or twenty years. It’s all possible, as long as you stay fit and flexible.
This is how you get really fit
But you can only achieve those benefits if you really get fit. And you are only that if you have good stamina and flexible, strong muscles. You get this by doing something extra on top of the Healthy Exercise Norm. Not too much, but structurally. You get enough stamina, for example, if you go briskly twice a week for half an hour to walk or cycling.
Weight training
And to get strong muscles, you have to put on half an hour to three quarters of an hour twice a week weight training to do. With age, the muscle mass in our body automatically decreases and with it muscle strength. Around 50 percent of your body weight is made up of muscles. But once you get past 75, only 25 percent of that is left. For men this means losing an average of 20 kilos of muscle mass and for women on an average of 15 kilos of muscle mass.
You maintain your muscle strength by training the muscles. The goal is not to look like a bodybuilder, but to be able to get up from the chair later on and carry your bags yourself.
Sources):
- Plus Magazine
