In an earlier blog, we marked Older Americans Month by explaining the benefits of physical therapy to those in their Golden Years. To continue that theme, today we’re going to cover four tips for the aging athlete:
Account for the Effects of Aging.
No matter how heathy your lifestyle is, there will be certain effects on your body from growing older, and these will impact your athletic ability. Some of those include decreased sensation and balance, decreased lung capacity, decreased heart rate and vision loss. Accepting these changes and finding a way to work around them is better than denying that they’re happening at all.
Stay hydrated.
As we age, we can start to lose a sense of thirst, so make sure you’re staying regularly hydrated. Even a one percent fluid loss can cause the heart to beat three to five times greater each minute. Given that 42.4 million older Americans have cardiovascular disease, getting enough water during your workout is crucial to maintaining overall health.
Give Yourself Time to Recover.
You may remember the days when you were able to get in the game on just a handful of hours of sleep and still perform well. As we get older, however, those recovery times between workouts become more crucial to helping us perform well. Sleep restores the breakdown caused by an increased in intensity, so not getting enough of it could set you up for aches, pains or injury.
Choose Intensity over Duration or Frequency.
Workouts can usually be divided in three ways: frequency, duration and intensity. Of these, an aging athlete is often best-served by the last one in the list. That’s because intensity can help increase testosterone, which in turn increases muscle mass.
While the effects of time come for us all, that doesn’t mean you have to give up your athletic lifestyle. If you’re having difficulties with things such as balance or dizziness as you grow older, don’t hesitate to reach out to the experts at Core PT! Our vestibular therapy program can help you become steady on your feet again.