Older Adult Contents - 3-minute read

• Inform - How to keep your bones healthy and strong

• Motivate - Give Boxing a try

• Boxing fun facts

Exercise is good for us. It challenges our heart and lungs which keeps them healthy. Our bones are living tissue and also requires regular exercise to maintain their strength. The more you demand of your bones, the stronger they get. Unfortunately, the less you demand of your bones, the weaker they get which can lead to osteopenia and osteoporosis (bone thinning) So how do we stimulate our bones to ensure we prevent bone injury or fracture ? There are 2 areas we need to explore:

Exercise that puts weight through your skeleton, stimulates the bones. Exercise can be categorised into high, medium or low impact.

• High impact - This includes activities such as star jumps, burpees, basketball and volleyball

• Medium impact - Activities such as skipping, hopping, tennis, stamping and jumping from a low height

• Low impact - Activities such as walking, stair climbing and marching

Resistance exercise is moving with weights or against pressure. This can be using your body weight such as press-ups, or using weights like dumbbells, pilates rings or resistance bands. As you stimulate your muscles to work hard, this pulls on the bones which in turn stimulates them to react and grow stronger. As your body gets stronger, you can cope with a higher weight and you progressively improve. This is thought to be the best way to achieve bone health

Resistance exercise works best on alternate days. Try to aim for 20 mins each session 2-3 times per week.

Aim to complete 3 rounds of 8-12 repetitions of each exercise focusing on legs, arms and spine. If you can manage more repetitions than that, then it’s time to up the weight.

You can always challenge yourself and your bones even if you aren’t that mobile (yet 😁 ) Just start where you are.

If you don’t have osteoporosis then aim for 50 impacts most days such as hopping, small jumps or jogging steps.

If you can’t manage higher impact or have osteoporotic fractures such as spinal fractures then aim for 30 minutes of walking on most days

If you aren’t as mobile as that, then aim for a few minutes of standing every waking hour

Give it a try your bones will love you for it 😄 If you would like to find out more about your bone health then see the link below:

Wednesday's exercises focus on balance reactions to help keep you on your feet. This week we practice some moves while reducing our base of support Give it a try.

We all need some inspiration to keep us motivated but boxing I hear you say? Is that an ideal sport for my age group? Actually yes it is. As we have come to understand above, boxing can give us the impact exercise we need to keep our bones healthy. It also focuses on balance, co-ordination, strength and cardiovascular fitness, so it ticks all the boxes. Now before you go challenging Tyson Fury to a duel, boxing doesn’t have to mean striking an opponent. We have box excise which is boxing type drills and usually done in a group format. Did you also know that boxing groups are also a popular choice for people with Parkinson’s disease? Parkinson’s disease is a movement disorder but rhythmic exercise like boxing can have a beneficial effect. If you would like to see the movements in action then see the link below 😀 

• Boxing is one of the oldest sports in the world , tracing back to Ancient Greece and Rome

• It was first introduced as an Olympic sport in 688BC!

• English Boxing Champion Jim Mace introduced the first boxing gloves in 1866

• Queensbury Rules comes from John Sholto Douglas who introduced the boxing rules and he was , guess who ? The 9th Marquess of Queensbury

• Women’s boxing was first introduced as an Olympic sport in 2012.

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