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| Simple Exercises |  Most people find it difficult to start exercising. If they choose an activity not well appropriate to them or overdo and suffer an injury, they quickly give up and return to the armchair. If you can pass the start-up phase, you gain more chance of success and will soon start to feel the benefits. You have to remember one important rule: start slowly and listen to your body.
First of all, you have to assess your current fitness level and add more motion to your daily activities.
1. Do you bend easily? Try to build aerobic capacity by adding additional things to everything you do, for example, park the car further from the shop, climb your stairs as many times as you can each day, walk your pet instead of letting him out on his own.
2. Do you feel like your strength is reducing? Have you gotten into the habit of letting other people do things instead of you? Carry that bag with groceries by yourself. Make certain that it’s a light one. During the next trip to the store, take a heavier one. And so on.
If it is difficult for you to get up from a chair, you should rise more slowly pushing with your arms as gently as possible and only as far as necessary. Try to put your weight onto your quads, not your knees.
Focus on those large muscles flexing and lifting you. Within a few days you will notice that your legs don’t need as much support.
3. Is your range of movement getting shorter and shorter? Is it difficult for you to turn your head enough to back up the car? Can you make a wide circle with each arm, raising it in front of you to overhead and bringing it down behind you?
If it’s muscle tightness that is limiting your range, the muscles will extend again when pushed to the point of gentle straining. You’ll be surprised at how quickly this occurs.
Day by day you will notice a difference. If your range is restricted by arthritis, you will feel a little pain when you push beyond your current range, so just go little by little.
4. Do you lose your balance? Here’s some good news: activities you adopt to improve these fitness essentials will also work to improve your balance.
Caution: you must do this consistently and gradually. Don’t strain yourself too hard. Don’t forget how many heart attacks occur after a major snowstorm when people go beyond their limits?
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