How to Avoid Exercises That Age You Faster

Limit your high-intensity workouts. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a great workout. However, if you only do high-intensity workouts and do them too often, you can injure yourself.^[1]

• HIIT workouts put more wear on your body and may cause your body to wear down faster without proper rest in between.
• Rest around two days between your HIIT routines to allow your body time to recover.

Refrain from only doing cardio. Cardio exercise is beneficial in a lot of ways, like heart health and lowering blood pressure. However, if that’s all you do, it may age you. Cardio exercise doesn’t do anything to help build muscle mass, which is important as you age.^[2]

• As you age, you lose muscle mass. This is a problem because it can lead to a higher risk of falls. Losing muscle mass also slows your metabolism and weakens the skeleton. This means you should include muscle strength training into your workouts.
• You should include two and a half hours of moderate aerobic, cardio activity every week along with at least three days of strength training.^[3]

Focus on low-impact workouts. Doing low-impact exercises such as walking is safer than doing high-impact workouts as you get older. High-impact workouts such as running may even increase your risk of needing a hip replacement or developing osteoarthritis, especially if you have a high BMI.^[4] This is because high-impact exercises cause more pounding and wear on the hip, knee joints, vertebrae, and intervertebral discs. Doin this to your body over and over causes the problem.

• To stay healthy and avoid potential complications from high-impact exercise, limit exercises such as running, jogging, or jumping rope.
• Another option is to mix it up. For example, you can do two days of a low-impact workout, such as cycling, followed by two days of brisk walking workouts, and then finish your week with a high-impact workout, such as jogging.^[5]

Use caution when performing shoulder exercises. If you are recovering from a shoulder injury or if you are prone to shoulder problems, then you may want to modify your shoulder strength training. Keeping your shoulder muscles strong is important, but some exercises can put strain on your joints and back.^[6]

• For example, you can use elastic resistance bands instead of a machine to do latissimus dorsi pulldowns. Or, you can use dumbbells to do shoulder presses.
• Always follow your doctor's instructions for exercises and other movement guidelines following a shoulder injury or surgery.

Avoid movements that are more likely to cause an injury. Certain exercises are more likely to lead to a bone fracture, especially in those who have weak bones. If you have osteoporosis, then you should avoid these exercises. However, you may also want to avoid them if you are concerned about injuring yourself. These exercises include:^[7]

• abdominal exercises with lots of spine flexion, such as sit-ups.
• twisting motions, such as swinging a golf club.
• bending motions, such as a dead lift.
• explosive or high impact movements, such as jumping up onto platforms.