There are plenty of reasons why people want to lose weight. Some are for the aesthetic pleasures and others for their health. Whatever your motivation, it’s never too late to change. Age is one of the biggest barriers stopping people from exercising. Worries that their bodies can’t handle to much strain. Well, we’ve searched the internet to find the internet’s best exercises for women over 40.
Brisk walking
What puritans might call the sibling of running, Brisk or Speed walking, is a great sport to keep active. It’s strenuous, gets the heart pumping but doesn’t push our bodies too hard. It’s great as a low impact sport meaning it’s physical on your joints but doesn’t over exert you or put you in harm’s way. This is great to strengthen bones and joints and reduces the chances of arthritis and osteoporosis in later life.
A lot of people ask whether brisk walking is the same physically as walking and the answers no. Brisk walking raises your heart more significantly than walking. The different rates at which our hearts beat work different elements of the body and brisk walking hits the sweet spot: around 60% considered the fat burning region.
Sprints and jogs
Brisk walks are a great way to get you into jogging, another one of our best exercises for women over 40. We’re called jogger because jogging is great. It’s an easy way to lose weight when your diet is healthy too. You don’t need any special weights, have extensive knowledge of any difficult exercises, just get out there!
Adding sprints to your runs is a way to add another class to your workouts. Adding intensity burns more fat around the body and sprints are a great method of doing so. To some sprints might mean different things however in this case, we like to look at it more like Fartlek/Interval training.
While your running along set yourself a goal. Choose that your going to sprint or drastically increase your speed for say 20 seconds at every set of traffic light. Or sprint between every other lamppost. Adding sprints will help you get the most out of all your workouts.
Core exercises
Working the mid-rift directly address the problem many of us want to solve. Lose belly fat. I’m sorry to say that doing your crunches won’t shed inches off your waist but doing a core workout plan will help you sculpt your tummies.
Here are some of the best exercises for women over 40 we recommend to get an aesthetic, slim waistline. No fear, we’ve missed out the crunches.
- Plank – works the overall core. Get into a press-up position and rather than resting on your hands, rest on your forearms. You can do this with or without your knees on the floor.
- Side crunch – a crunch but not as you know it. Lie on your side and put your arm nearest the floor out in front of you. This is to help you keep balance. Put your other hand on your head. Use this hand to pull your head off the floor with your elbow pointing towards your toes. At the same time, lift your knee to touch your elbow.
- Neck rollers – Lie flat on your back and lift your chin to your chest bringing your shoulder off the floor. Keeping it tight in that position, roll your head from one side to another to feel a tight contraction on the top of your core.
If these are to difficult in isolation then it’s possible to incorporate an aid.
Low-impact, low-stress activities
Cycling and swimming are two of the best. Great exercises that scorch calories and use large muscle groups. Swimming uses the entire body, therefore it burns a tremendous amount of calories. Cycling uses the large muscles of the lower body to break a sweat and burn calories. Cycling is easy on the joints and does not put pressure on the back.
Exercises like these are great to keep you ticking over and making sure everything is running as it should.
Perhaps in the not to distance we can look at getting you triathlon ready.
