Maintaining strength and fitness as you age is an essential element of staying healthy and living well.
The average Australian’s lifespan has increased by around 11-years over the last 50-years, and with advancements in modern medicine and screening techniques this trend is going to continue. We are living longer than ever, but it’s not really about how LONG we live (lifespan), it’s about how WELL we live (healthspan).
Losing independence
Being confined to a chair or having no capacity to socialise with friends or loved ones is the slippery end of the ‘don’t take action’ slope. We need to be proactive. It is how we choose to act, the lifestyle decisions that we make, and the health habits that we create now that will influence how well we live in the future.
The good news on this front
Is that exercise may be the most potent and accessible way of influencing your healthspan. Regular physical activity and exercise combats age related decline, prevent chronic disease and illness, and will help to keep your physiological age (how you move, act and feel) considerably less than your chronological age (the number.)
This is about growing stronger, not older!
Having the freedom in your body to be able to do the things you want do, when you want to do them, is closely tied to quality of life and good health.