Longevity and Healthy Aging
Lately, I’ve been thinking (and talking with a lot of friends and family) about longevity and healthy aging.
It makes sense: our population is aging, and people are living longer than ever. I’m in my early 60s now, and my parents are in their 90s - now how did that seem to happen so quickly?
For about 15 years, I’ve been teaching 3 popular weekly run classes for active seniors, supporting the physical and also mental, and social needs of participants ranging from 60 to 90+ years in age.
From this experience, I’d like to focus on a very essential topic:
Balance, hip stability and mobility.
I recently came across an Instagram post and podcast that said,
“Everyone who does yoga should lift weights, and everyone who lifts weights should do yoga.”
I am a huge fan of most lineages and styles of yoga and I also believe in weight training for stability, strength and bone health as we age. I know that one of the greatest areas of concern for people as they age is balance and the fear of falling.
Below is just a taste of a few exercises adapted for an older population to address hip strength and hip mobility.
3 moves for hip strength:
1. squats using body weight and adding dumbell weights
2. hip bridges holding on and pushing up from a chair.
3. warrior 2 yoga pose
3 moves for hip mobility: (hold for 20-30 seconds)
seated figure 4 stretch
lunge in a chair
holding ankle quad stretch in a chair