People think that as you age, your body will have a hard time improving or maintaining its athletic performance. But the truth is, it all boils down to the basics: getting enough sleep, eating healthy diets, drinking ample amounts of water, and avoiding any vices, including tobacco use.
Aside from all of these, there are a lot more things you can do to maintain your physique as well as physical capabilities.
To help you learn more, here are five ways to maintain and improve your athletic capabilities so you can live your life to the fullest.
Do Warm-Ups and Cool-Downs
Stretching and light movements, including doing warm-ups and cooldowns, can help prime your body for stress and loosen those tight muscles so, in case of sudden movements, your body will not experience injuries of any kind. This is especially true when you have a monotonous and sedentary job, where you sit for long periods of time in front of your computer every day or if you are about to start or end your workout.
According to Harvard Health advocates, stretching before and after an exercise can significantly decrease the negative effects of stress in the body, especially focusing on the lower extremities: your hip flexors, hamstrings, quadriceps, and calves. This is because these extremities are used in all physical and athletic activities. So before starting, you need to prepare them first to avoid any type of injury.
Do HIIT Workouts
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workouts highlight activities that are short fragments of intense exercise, alternating between recovery periods, then followed by intense activities. In the course of 20 to 30 minutes, this exercise pattern is repeated depending on the intensity or HIIT workout goals you have.
Doing HIIT workouts won’t require you to use heavy and expensive equipment and will definitely keep you interested as this type of workout only lasts for at most 30 minutes. But HIIT is not for everybody, so always seek medical advice before starting this kind of workout.
Use Foam Rolling and Massage
As you age, your body becomes more prone to stress. So you need to make sure that you know how you can properly cope with stress and how you can implement adaptive recovery strategies to effectively help your body, especially your tendons, joints, muscles, and your overall nervous system, to heal. You can achieve this through a massage.
Another active recovery technique that you can do is self-myofascial release or SMR. This technique is more effective than stretching in terms of relieving muscles and reducing tension. By applying pressure on the fascia tissue using a foam roller, you are able to support the lymphatic drainage and stimulate proper blood flow throughout the body.
Apply Steam Therapy
Steam therapy has been part of any athlete’s recovery process. Together with heat, this therapy can reduce muscle tightness, increase flexibility, and help in the performance of athletes.
Those who train regularly in their homes can use steam showers to achieve warm recovery.
Do Weightlifting
Adding resistance to exercise through weightlifting can improve strength and increase bone density and muscle mass. Also, according to research, lifting weights can improve your overall health, such as blood sugar levels, especially for men within the age of 65 to 75.
Do Breathing Exercises and Meditation Techniques
Doing meditation and breathing exercises can help you feel more relaxed and calm and can even improve your athletic performance.
This is because, according to research, the telomeres in your cells start to rebuild and lengthen when you meditate. These telomeres are vital in slowing the aging process of cells.
Also, in one study, it was found out that “mindfulness meditation appears to improve physical health symptoms and functions across a variety of disorders, and increases measures of mental health, including reduced negative effect and increased quality of life.”
Conclusion
Aging is an inevitable part of a person’s life. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t maintain or improve the quality of your athletic performance. You can, and there are easy and proven ways on how you can do that. As long as you do the fundamentals of living a healthy life and do the tips we shared in this post, then age will just be a number.
Hello Meg Parker is an intentional health coach working on all types of individuals, from general citizens to World elite athletes. She specializes in many areas of massage, including sports massage and deep tissue massage. Set up a free discovery call today if you are interested to learn more about recovery exercises and how they can improve your overall athletic performance.
