Exercise for adults
Adult life tends to get a bit serious, even for those of us who have tried to escape responsibility for most of our lives! Key areas tend to include career, finding a spouse (starting a family) and maybe even taking on significant financial commitments such as house ownership. Of greatest relevance in Western society is the issue of busyness – ‘being time poor’. This can have a dramatic impact on adult participation in physical activity/exercise and leads to the invariable decline in health and increase in disease risk.
Key exercise tips for adults
The Australian physical activity guideline makes some key recommendations for adults –
- Accumulate 150 minutes (or 75 minutes of vigorous) cardiovascular exercise each week
- Do strengthening exercises twice per week
- Minimise prolonged sitting
My biggest tip would be to ‘plan’ for exercise. Work out what you are going to do, when you are going to do it and lock it in your diary. This is the single biggest factor to making sure your health doesn’t decline in this age of responsibility.
Get some accountability – a friend to exercise with, an exercise diary or a real person (PT!) to assist you with your exercise.
Where your medical situation permits, try and incorporate some higher intensity work into your exercise sessions – much more time effective.
Incorporate cardiovascular, strength and mobility/flexibility components into your exercise sessions. Be aware of your sitting posture and do things to counteract this in the gym
-Kristin Lewis