Lift your way to health

SOMEONE, somewhere, decided that we all need to do 10,000 steps a day to remain healthy. And then someone, somewhere else, decided to put a step-counting app on our smartphones.
The result is that many of us are now in danger of obsessing over step counts and ignoring some of the other measures we can take to protect our health.
And just who are “we” in this context? Surprisingly enough, anyone over 40.
It is a fact that there is a steady decline in muscle tone and bone strength once we are into the fifth decade of our lives, which accelerates after the age of 65 in men and post-menopause in women.
While walking is very good for us, especially if we find a hill like Knockma to climb and get the heart pumping harder, it does little or nothing to counter the age-related degeneration of our muscles and bones.
The answer? Weight training, or to give it the proper title, resistance training.
Which puts many people off right away. “Go to the gym, surrounded by toned bodies and strong young athletes? No thanks!”
That would be my reaction, and yours too, I suspect. And that is why Croí, the Heart & Stroke Charity, started its Nifty Lifters programme.
This is where you can come and learn at the hands of experts how, why, and what to lift to get those bones and muscles into the state they should be in.

Read the full feature in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald