Let's extend our healthy lifespan! Care exercises to stay active and energetic forever
As we get older, it can become harder to move our bodies, and we may feel our stamina declining.
Some of you might be thinking, “I want to take preventive steps before my body becomes less mobile.”
In this article, we introduce exercise routines for elderly adults to help maintain a healthy body!
We’ll cover a wide range of exercises—from simple routines you can do while seated to slightly more challenging ones.
Use these ideas as fun ways to extend healthy life expectancy, perfect for day services or recreational activities in care facilities!
- [Seated] Fun Health Exercises for Older Adults and Seniors
- [For Seniors] Recommended Easy Strength Training
- [For Seniors] Hand and finger play roundup: Finger exercises that lead to brain training
- [For Seniors] Easy and Fun Core Training
- [For Seniors] Let's try customizing the usual Pa-Ta-Ka-Ra exercises!
- Summary of exercises for seniors: introducing preventative care movements by body part.
- [For Seniors] Rehabilitation exercises targeting each body part: Introducing easy routines you can incorporate without strainNEW!
- Recommended simple exercises for recreational activities for the elderly
- For Seniors: Fun and Lively Exercise Recreation
- [For Seniors] Stretching Exercises: Easy and Safe to Do
- Grip strength training for seniors: Introducing gentle exercises, stretches, and strength workouts you can stick withNEW!
- [Today's Recommendation] Gentle Health Exercises for Seniors
- [For Seniors] Fun Exercises You Can Do While Seated
Let’s extend our healthy life expectancy! Care exercises to stay active forever (71–80)
Autumn Song Calisthenics
Autumn is the season when it starts to feel chilly, isn’t it? It’s also a time when older adults may feel reluctant to move their bodies.
So how about trying a singing exercise with an autumn theme? If it’s a seated singing exercise, even seniors who find standing difficult can participate.
Autumn songs include pieces like “Tsuki” (The Moon) and “Donguri Korokoro” (Acorns Rolling).
By singing them during exercise, older adults can also get a sense of the season’s atmosphere.
In addition, exercising while singing can help activate the brain and relieve stress.
If you’d like, please use this as a reference and give it a try.
Shoulder Stiffness Relief Ball Exercise
This exercise involves moving a rubber ball while seated to focus on joint movement and how you apply force.
If you pay attention to holding the ball with one hand, you can train how you exert force.
By pressing the ball with both hands and by throwing and catching it, direct your awareness to your arm joints and shoulder blades to help relieve shoulder stiffness.
It’s also important to maintain proper posture so you can minimize strain on your body and apply force efficiently.
If you drop the ball and rush to pick it up, you may tense up unnecessarily, so it’s important to stay relaxed during this exercise.
Erector spinae stretch
The erector spinae is a muscle that runs from the neck down to the lower back.
It runs vertically in a long, narrow band around the center of the human back.
It’s an essential muscle for maintaining an upright posture and keeping the back straight while walking.
When this muscle weakens, it becomes difficult to maintain good posture, which can lead to rounded shoulders or cause lower back pain.
In erector spinae stretches, you can sit and place your hands behind your head and bend your body forward, or interlace your fingers and lift your arms overhead while opening your chest.
Just these movements can help loosen a stiff erector spinae.
Great for brain training! Recommended for recreation too: hand and foot exercises
This is a recreation activity where everyone forms a large circle and passes a ball around inside the circle.
The person throwing the ball can strengthen their shoulder and arm joints, while the person catching it can train their focus and dynamic visual acuity.
If you make it more challenging by adding variations—like incorporating footwork when throwing—you can also gain brain-training benefits from planning movements.
Playing music and having participants pass the ball in time with it can make it easier to find a rhythm.
There are various tips, such as keeping the shoulders and arms moving smoothly and getting a feel for the rhythm, so offer advice as you go and let everyone enjoy passing the ball.
Ashi-fumi A-I-U-Be exercises
Let’s do “marching in place” while practicing the “Ai-U-Be” mouth exercise.
This routine is recommended for older adults who are already comfortable moving their mouths into “A” and “I” shapes with the Ai-U-Be exercise.
By adding marching, you can also strengthen the iliopsoas at the hip and the abdominal muscles.
It can even help train the gluteal muscles.
This supports balance in older adults and helps prevent falls.
The key points are to move your mouth widely and stick out your tongue when vocalizing.
Exaggerating the movements a bit more than you would in normal conversation—within your comfortable range—can enhance the benefits.
Please make good use of this exercise.
Bound cushion
To make walking smoother, it’s important to train both the ability to lift your feet and the power to step down.
Among foot training methods, this one focuses on developing your stepping power.
By repeatedly pressing down hard with both feet on a cushion that has a springy, rebounding structure, you can build that stepping strength.
The cushion’s size, which allows both feet to be placed on it, is also key—use it to pay attention to balancing the strength between your left and right foot.
If you concentrate on the instant of the step, you can train explosive foot power; if you let the compressed cushion return slowly, you can work on strength endurance.
Oral muscle training
Training the muscles inside the mouth is really important.
Exercises that use the tongue and cheek muscles not only help you enjoy your meals, but also prevent choking.
For older adults, oral muscle training is essential for maintaining a healthy diet.
It can help prevent coughing or choking and improve swallowing strength.
To keep it fun and sustainable, try doing the exercises to music or while looking in a mirror.
Why not incorporate them into your daily routine?