How to stay Young! Outsmart aging with these 3 essential tips
How to stay Young! Outsmart aging with these 3 essential tips:
Aging can sometimes make us feel like we need our own personal massage therapist as we get older. Our joints and muscle get stiff and we feel it’s a drag to move against the force of gravity!
Here are 3 tips to help get your body feeling younger:
This is the reason why a self-massage tool in your house can
TIP #1: Help your Body Recover!
Self-massage tools can help free up tension from major muscle groups – quads and hams and back muscles – that get tight day after day. These rehab tools can also serve as a great prevention strategy for joint inflammation and stiffness. The tools below will go a long way and save you a lot of money from healthcare services:
a) The Foam Roller: Whether it’s a bumpy or smooth foam roller, this will surely get the tension out of your muscles. Roll on it and arch back on it to self-massage knots and tender spots and perform your own fascial release.
Foam rolling will make your joints more responsive to stretching and mobility work as well.
b) Lacrosse Ball or Tennis balls: These balls are not only for tennis and lacrosse, they are for trigger points!! Trigger points are tender spots on the muscle. They are tender because the muscle is overused and there’s more scar tissue formed there. The lacrosse ball will apply direct pressure to these trigger points and workout the disorganized scar tissue by stimulating circulation. Try putting the ball under your thigh while sitting (ball between your thigh and the chair), then slowly straighten your knee 20 times. Read more Lacrosse Ball Trigger Points Exercises.
TIP #2: Include Intervals in your Workout Routine
Instead of running for 45 minutes or an hour, run for 25 minutes and include sprints! Sprints are interval training – for an interval of time, your heart pumps at its max and then slows down. This makes your heart work harder because it has to pump to its max and then recover in a short amount of time. Interval training can be done on the treadmill and bike and even without any equipment (ie. 20 seconds of burpees). Interval training will also jump start your metabolism and will have you burning calories hours after you’ve worked out. Your body has to recover for the work done in the absence of oxygen so it’s going to burn some fuel to repair muscles! If you are interested in burning body fat and keeping your heart and lungs healthy, intervals are a must in your exercise regimen!
TIP #3: Jump!
Jumping and agility exercises are not only fun but keep your nervous system awake! Not to mention the benefit it has to your balance and muscle development which naturally slows down as we get older. Think about it, the amount of energy it takes to lift 140 pounds up in the air in 1 second is a lot! – Your muscles will get tired in no time and the landing effect is a quick deceleration to your muscles which also requires energy. It’s kind of like giving your body the benefit of playing sports because in sports the acceleration and deceleration that your muscles experience is similar to that of jumping. So there you go, jump!
