When you have to roll out of bed and have to bend over slowly to pick things up, you can feel older than you are. You think that you should be able to move freely, but your body just won’t cooperate. Years of having a sedentary job sitting in front of a monitor or laptop may be causing pain in your lower back that needs treatment. The more it hurts, the less you feel like doing physical activity, drawing you into a cycle of physical pain and poor mental well-being.
The first thing to do if there’s any pain or ache you feel around your body is to get professional treatment. Getting it seen to early prevents the initial ache from worsening and also prevents other pains around the body from developing. Then, when you can, get active to keep yourself, limber, pain-free, and able to enjoy life to the maximum.
Warming up
If you’ve decided to do something and start exercising, don’t make the mistake of not warming up. Warming up is critical to get the most out of exercising and will make it much less likely that you will injure yourself during exercise.
If you’re coming back from exercise after a long time of minimal physical exertion, a warm-up may feel like an exercise. Simply stretching your joints and muscles will heat them getting them ready for more rigorous activity. Simple brisk walking for a few minutes increases your heart rate. It raises your body temperature and increases blood flow to the muscles allowing you to perform at a higher rate. In effect, you’re tapping into your body’s systems that will enable you to fight or take flight; there may be no discernible threat, so you must activate your body without your nervous system doing it automatically for you.
Yoga
Some of the greatest modern sportsmen do yoga to keep themselves in the best shape. Of course, you don’t need to be an elite athlete to benefit.
Yoga is growing in popularity because it has a host of benefits for who anyone does it.
- It increases your flexibility, making you more limber.
- It improves your core strength and makes your muscles toner and stronger.
- It’s easy to do anywhere; you just need a small space and a non-slip floor surface.
Yoga is also strongly linked to mental and spiritual balance and well-being. There’s a strong element of focus, discipline, and calmness. Meditation and controlled breathing are a big part of yoga; it’s a much more holistic activity compared to sports. There are plenty of online classes available, too, if you want to make the experience a shared one. It has the benefit of making you more likely to keep up a yoga practice and not miss sessions, and it also makes yoga more fun.
It doesn’t matter how old or young you are; it’s never too late to get active again. Ease into it. When you first decide to become active, you might be filled with intense enthusiasm, but the worst thing you can do is push too hard. The body will very quickly ramp up your improvement with regular exercise. The more regularly you exercise, the better you’ll begin to feel creating a healthy cycle of development.
