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Wellness Series: The Importance of Staying Active for Seniors

Staying active is an essential way to help improve your overall mental and physical health. By simply exercising regularly, you can raise your mood, improve your strength and mobility and increase your mental capacity. Exercising can also help prevent physical and emotional problems and memory decline.

There’s no doubt that staying fit and active can help you enjoy your retirement years even more. But how can you do that if you’re stuck at home due to social distancing or your busy schedule keeps you from getting out as often as you’d like? Find out ways you can continue to be active at home and other fitness tips to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle.

4 Ways Seniors Can Stay Fit at Home

1. Free Workout Videos. You can stay fit by watching a variety of free workout videos available online. Youtube is a great free source for videos and allows you to customize your search.
2. Go for a Walk. You can always stay active by going for walks through your home or around your neighborhood. The distance and length of the walk don’t matter, as long as you’re staying active. If you’re able to go to a local park to walk outside, that’s also a great way to get some fresh air and a change of scenery. 
3. Get Creative with Household Items. You can easily incorporate items around the house into a workout if you don’t have access to traditional weights. For example, you can use Gatorade or canned goods as weights. You can use these items to do reps of different exercises standing up or sitting down right in your home.
4. Silver Sneakers. This is a great resource to use to work out at home on your own time. This site offers over 200 workout videos for adults 65 and older. Check your eligibility and start working out today.

5 Senior Fitness Tips

Whether you’re just beginning to exercise, or you’ve been working out at home for a while, we can all benefit from following best practices. Here are some great fitness tips for getting started and staying motivated to workout at home.

1. Be Kind to Yourself. Be patient with yourself, especially if you’re new to working out. It is going to take some time for you to develop coordination and balance. Trust yourself and give yourself time to adjust.
2. Listen to Your Body. Make sure you don’t push yourself too hard or too far. You don’t want to injure yourself or cause any discomfort. If you are new to exercising, consult with your doctor to get their recommendation on activities you can safely do.
3. Choose the Workout that’s Right for You. There are many different workout options, ranging from beginner to experienced. If you’re a beginner, you can stay active by walking, using a treadmill, cycling and swimming. There are also a variety of workout classes for beginners including chair yoga, vinyasa yoga and Pilates. For a more experienced level workout you can try a barre class, spinning class or Zumba class. All of these classes can be found for free on YouTube. Choose an appropriate level for yourself and work your way up to something more challenging.
4. Build a Healthy Habit. Make exercise part of your weekly routine. Incorporate your workout into your day to day activities and hold yourself accountable for sticking to it. You can make exercise a habit by setting a reminder in your phone to workout daily, keeping a workout journal that you fill in everyday and choosing a consistent time to work out daily. This will help you to continue to work out and live a healthy lifestyle.
5. Mix Up Your Workouts. You can easily choose a variety of different ways to stay active. Maybe you go on a walk twice a week and do yoga on the other days. By switching things up, it will be more interesting and fun to continue to stay fit.

If you’re looking for more ways to stay fit at home, tune into our weekly Wellness Wednesday videos. Our Wellness Coordinator creates a new video each week to show you creative ways to stay active at home.

Stay Healthy and Active at Peabody

At Peabody Retirement Community, you can enhance your wellness by becoming a member of our state-of-the-art fitness center. We welcome residents and non-residents that are 55 and older to join our Peabody Gold Club.

As a Gold Club member, you will be granted full use of our Billie Jane Strauss Wellness Center, which provides residents a variety of opportunities for staying active and achieving a higher level of wellness.

Gold Club membership includes the following benefits and privileges: access to state-of-the-art fitness equipment, ability to log mileage outdoors on walking trails, group exercise classes, ability to swim and workout in our HydroWorx indoor aqua therapy pool, personal training sessions, community events and much more.

Contact us today to learn more about how you can stay healthy and active at Peabody Retirement Community, and for more information on how to join our Gold Club.