What are the best exercises for overall health and fitness?

You can stay active, mobile, and in fantastic shape with regular strength training, stretching, balance, and cardiovascular activity.

To maintain a healthy body, exercise is essential. However, we usually stick to the same few pastimes over and over again. Physical therapist Rachel Wilson from the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School notes that people tend to "do what they enjoy" or "what feels the most effective," while neglecting other areas of exercise and fitness. The truth is that we could all benefit from regular aerobic, stretching, strengthening, and balance training. With your doctor's OK, we detail the various forms of exercise and provide some suggestions for getting started.

1. Aerobic exercise

Many bodily processes benefit from the increased heart rate and breathing rate associated with aerobic exercise. It's a great way to strengthen your cardiovascular system and boost your stamina. "If you're too winded to walk up a flight of stairs, that's a good indicator that you need more aerobic exercise to help condition your heart and lungs and get enough blood to your muscles to make them work efficiently," says Wilson.

Aerobic exercise has many health benefits, including vascular relaxation, blood pressure reduction, fat burning, glucose control, inflammation reduction, mood improvement, and elevation of "good" HDL cholesterol. Losing weight also helps reduce "bad" LDL cholesterol. Aerobic exercise lowers the long-term risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes type 2, breast and colon cancer, depression, and falls.

Get in at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week. Exercising can be as simple as going for a stroll or as involved as signing up for a step aerobics class.

Marching in place

Standing tall with feet together and arms at sides is the starting position.

Raise your legs and lift your arms in a sweeping motion as you bend your elbows.

A variety of marches:

Do a little marching in place.

Repeat a four-step forward, four-step back march continuously.

Do a wide-footed march in place.

March with your feet wide apart and then together in alternating steps.

Advice and methods:

Maintain a focused gaze ahead of you and a firm core.

Relax your jaw and release any clenched fists you may have.

Reduce the difficulty by marching more slowly and with bent knees.

Raise the difficulty: Raise your knees, quicken your pace, and pound the ground with your fists.

2. Strength training

Muscle mass decreases with advancing years. Recovery through strength exercise. Carrying groceries, gardening, and lifting bigger objects around the house can all be easier and more enjoyable if you engage in regular strength training. Wilson explains that if you do strength training, you'll find it easier to climb stairs, get out of a chair, and so on.

Muscle strengthening has many benefits, including increased strength, reduced risk of injury, better balance and posture, reduced stress, and alleviated pain in the lower back and joints.

A physical therapist can help you create a strength training routine that you can practise twice or three times per week at the gym, at home, or even at the office. Squats, push-ups, and lunges, as well as exercises using resistance from a weight, a band, or a weight machine, are probably going to be a part of it.

To ensure you are adequately working or training a muscle group, Wilson advises that you "feel some muscle fatigue at the end of the exercise."

Squat

Standing with your feet hip-width apart and your arms at your sides is the starting posture.

Movement: Lower your buttocks about eight inches, as if you were reclining back in a chair, by slowly bending your hips and knees. Swing your arms forward to stabilise yourself. Maintain an upright posture. Reverse course and head back to square one. Do so 8-12 more times.

Advice and methods:

The weight needs to be shifted to the heels.

While standing, squeezing your buttocks can improve your stability.

Ease the burden: Place your feet hip-width apart on the edge of a chair and your arms across your chest. Stand up straight by contracting your ab muscles. Sit down slowly and calmly.

Raise the difficulty: You can go even lower, but stop just before your thighs are parallel to the floor.

3. Stretching

Flexibility may be kept up with regular stretching. When we're younger and our muscles are stronger, we tend to forget this. However, as we become older, our muscles and tendons become less pliable. Muscles tighten up and lose their normal range of motion. That makes it more difficult to go about regular activities like bending down to tie your shoes and raises the risk of muscular cramps, soreness, muscle injury, strains, joint pain, and falls.

Similarly, regular stretching makes muscles longer and more flexible, improving mobility and lowering discomfort and injury risk.

Stretching should be part of your daily routine, or at least something you do three or four times a week.

First, spend a few minutes warming up your muscles with dynamic stretches, such as marching in place or doing arm circles. That brings oxygen and circulation to the muscles, making them more malleable to training.

Then, stretch the calves, hamstrings, hip flexors, quadriceps, and the muscles of the shoulders, neck, and lower back by performing static stretches (holding a stretch posture for up to 60 seconds).

But don't force a stretch into the point of discomfort. "That's counterproductive because it tightens up the muscle," explains Wilson.

Single knee rotation

Starting position: Lie on your back with your legs extended on the floor.
Movement: Relax your shoulders against the floor. Bend your left knee and place your left foot on your right thigh just above the knee. Tighten your abdominal muscles, then grasp your left knee with your right hand and gently pull it across your body toward your right side.
Hold 10 to 30 seconds.
Return to the starting position and repeat on the other side.

Tips and techniques:

• Stretch to the point of mild tension, not pain.
• Try to keep both shoulders flat on the floor.
• To increase the stretch, look in the direction opposite to your knee.

4. Balance exercises

If you work on your balance, you'll feel more secure on your feet and be able to avoid dangerous stumbles. It becomes increasingly crucial as we age, when our balance-supporting eyesight, inner ear, and leg muscle and joint systems begin to fail. "The good news is that training your balance can help prevent and reverse these losses," explains Wilson.

Classes in tai chi and yoga, which emphasise balance, can be found at many senior centres and fitness centres. Even if you don't think you have balance issues, starting this kind of workout is a good idea.

A physical therapist can evaluate your current level of balance and strength and provide workouts tailored to your individual needs. "That's especially important if you've had a fall or near-fall, or if you have a fear of falling," says Wilson.

Common balance drills involve walking heel to toe or standing on one foot, either with or without your eyes closed. In addition to squats and leg lifts, the physical therapist may have you practise joint flexibility exercises, practise walking on uneven surfaces, and strengthen your leg muscles. Do not do any of these at home without first receiving sufficient training.

Standing knee lift

Starting position: Stand up straight with your feet together and your hands on your hips.

Movement: Lift your left knee toward the ceiling as high as is comfortable or until your thigh is parallel to the floor. Hold, then slowly lower your knee to the starting position.

Repeat the exercise 3-5 times.

Then perform the exercise 3-5 times with your right leg.

Tips and techniques:

• Keep your chest lifted and your shoulders down and back.
• Lift your arms out to your sides to help you balance, if needed.
• Tighten your abdominal muscles throughout.
• Tighten the buttock of your standing leg for stability.
• Breathe comfortably.

Make it easier: Hold on to the back of a chair or counter with one hand.

Make it harder: Lower your leg all the way to the floor without touching it. Just as it is about to touch, lift your leg up again.