You and your senior's doctor may have wanted to help her learn to incorporate more exercise into her life and that can be tough to do. These ideas can help her to make exercise a priority that she enjoys. Even if exercise hasn’t been a big part of her life before, she can benefit now.
Make it a Part of Every Single Day
When you make exercise a big part of your senior's routine every day, it starts to feel right to work out. Your senior will start to feel odd if she doesn't exercise, especially if she's seeing the benefits right away. The goal here is to just add some movement to every single day. Elderly care providers can help your senior to set up and follow a schedule that hits all of her goals for the day.
Start out with Exercise
One of the easiest ways to help your elderly family member keep exercise a part of every day is to start out with movement. The reason behind this is that when she gets up and eases into exercise, she's already done it. Everything else that she does that day is the same as always and she won't need to rearrange them because she's already exercised.
Shake Things up a Bit
To start with, your senior might want to stick with one particular type of exercise, like using resistance bands. But she needs to incorporate different types of exercise whenever possible to give herself some variety. Ideally, she'd choose activities that help her with flexibility, balance, strength, and stamina. So shaking things up now and again with walking, swimming, yoga, and other types of exercise can be really beneficial.
Plan for Interruptions
As much as you want to develop a strong exercise routine with your aging adult, there are still going to be interruptions. Your senior might have a cold or she might have visitors. Any of these situations and more could cause her to fall out of her normal routine and therefore miss some exercise. That's got to be something that's okay, because every day doesn't go exactly how everybody wants it to go.
Make sure that you keep your senior's doctor in the loop. Definitely make sure she's okay to start exercising, but follow that up with additional talks to see how the exercise is working for her. You can easily monitor and adjust her exercise routine depending on how she feels and the results she's getting.
If you or an aging loved one are considering hiring elderly care in Pittsburgh, PA, please call the caring staff at Home Helpers. Call today (412) 385-4286.