Strength and endurance exercises.
Will they weigh you down?!

Benefit from strength and endurance exercises.

It’s natural for people to feel cautious about working with/against resistance during exercise, particularly if they have a health issue that they worry about making worse. But the truth is, strength and endurance exercises are essential components of our overall health and fitness.

Did you know that national recommendations advise we ought to be doing 2 to 3 strength-based exercise sessions each week? This is in addition to our aerobic exercise and balance training.

For an exercise or activity to have a strengthening impact, it needs to be challenging. It needs to feel like your muscles require a little rest before continuing and trying again. Kind of like recharging your batteries!

Although aching after exercises might sound or feel scary, it’s actually a really good sign (providing it’s a muscle ache rather than a pain or discomfort). It can be a good indication you’ve worked in the strength zone and that you’ll be having a positive impact on your muscle strength and bone health.

Take a moment to think about whether you’re achieving this routinely each week. If not, it’s never too late to start.

Why we need strength training.

If we don’t continue to build our strength and endurance our muscles get weaker. This can make doing the things we love more difficult, whether it’s going for a nice long walk or enjoying a day in the garden.  It can also make us more susceptible to breaking a bone if we fall. Keeping strong also helps protect our joints and can often be the best way to manage conditions like osteoarthritis.

For example, the stronger our thigh muscles are, the better our knees will feel. We regularly see clients with knee pain in our physiotherapy clinic. The best course of action to help them relieve and manage it is – you guessed it – strength training.

In fact, we naturally lose 3-5% of our muscle mass each decade we age unless we work hard to preserve it. So, although it doesn’t seem fair, we have to do more as we age to prevent this from happening. The good news is, it’s entirely possible, given the right exercise programme.

So, perhaps you’re ‘sold’ on the need to do regular strength and endurance exercises, but don’t know how to go about it. Well, here are a few tips:

• Consider any health conditions you may have:

• Particularly if you have osteopenia or osteoporosis, and seek professional advice (i.e. from a chartered physiotherapist like us) before embarking on unsupervised or unregulated exercise. Some gym and fitness professionals – although often well-intended – don’t know enough about musculoskeletal problems and can put you at risk of further injury. There are some ‘do’s and don’ts’ in relation to conditions such as osteoporosis and it’s important you’re clear and confident about how to exercise safely. This can be why physiotherapist-led classes may be a better choice for you.

• Always remember to maintain a good technique:

• Quality over quantity should always prevail. If you’re unsure how to do an exercise properly, seek advice or search the web for reputable guidance. (We post demo videos regularly on the Plus Health Company website so we naturally recommend checking in with us regularly for on-demand how-to guides on various pilates moves and exercises.)

• Start with light resistance and gradually increase it:

• Listen to your body and respond to it accordingly. As a rule of thumb, we ought to be working with approx. 8 to 12 repetitions of an exercise and aiming to repeat it up to 3 times (also known as ‘sets’). By that time, we should have sufficiently fatigued the working muscles when doing strength and endurance exercises! If not, we need a higher level challenge to accomplish the desired impact.

• Keep it interesting:

• Your body likes variety and will stop making progress if it always does the same thing. Sometimes changing the direction of your daily walk (and perhaps adding a weighted backpack!) can be all you need to do to take yourself to the next step. Unless you keep making changes to your workouts, your body will eventually plateau and stop making gains. Here at Plus Health Company, we pride ourselves on our ability to ‘mix it up’ and are always happy to give helpful tips and guidance on what you need, because one size does not fit all.