Guidance for Prescribing Exercise

Guidance for Prescribing Exercise

HWE 200: Introduction to Health and Wellness

Guidance for Prescribing Exercise

Studies have shown that living a sedentary lifestyle is not beneficial for older Adults because of the lack of metabolic energy and cardiovascular health. Studies done by the American College of Sports Medicine has determined that by adding a healthy and safe prescribed exercise program with some of the fitness components to your weekly routine, can be very beneficial to adults of all ages. Developing and maintaining a healthy designated fitness program has been recommended to help avoid health risks and diseases such as cardiovascular disease and obesity in older adults.

Prescribed exercise with some fitness components will help maintain a healthier lifestyle. By developing and maintaining a healthy guided fitness program could help avoid health risks and diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity in older adults. When incorporating some of the components of physical fitness into physical activity could be very rewarding for older adults and their cardiovascular system. Some of the components of physical fitness include cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular strength, and muscular endurance, flexibility, and neuromotor fitness. Living a sedentary lifestyle is unhealthy for Older Adults, and it could cause health consequences later in life. Incorporating a prescribed exercise into a sedentary lifestyle could be beneficial when properly maintained.

Regularly engaging in physical activity three to five days per week by changing from a sedentary lifestyle or a lifestyle with insufficient levels of physical activity can decrease the risk of stroke, type 2 diabetes, Congenital heart disease, and some forms of cancers such as colon and breast cancers, (p. 1337). Congenital heart disease is when a person is born with a malformation of the heart or blood vessels near the heart (p. 1337). The cardiovascular system is composed of the heart, blood vessels, and blood and it responds predictably to exercise. With few exceptions,

the cardiovascular response to exercise is directly proportional to the skeletal muscle oxygen demands for any given rate of work, and the harder one trains, the harder the heart works to pump blood through the heart and oxygen to the brain. These components can decrease the chance of abdominal obesity and risks of poorer health such as morbidity and Cardiovascular disease mortality (p. 1338).

Including flexibility in an exercise program is beneficial because it targets and stretches larger muscles and tendons, and joints in the body that will be used in the fitness program, and will also improve the range of movement (p. 1344-1345). Including flexibility also helps enhance posture and balance especially when used with resistance exercise (p. 1344). A flexibility exercise includes methods that are dynamic and use slow movement stretching, static stretching, and involves a gradual transition from one body position to another. Yoga and tai chi are examples of flexibility exercises (p. 1344). Holding a stretch for 10-30 seconds or to a slight discomfort when the muscles are tight enhances joint range motion (p. 1344, para. 7).

The benefits of resistance training are maintaining and improving muscular fitness and muscular endurance, which is beneficial for people that are interested in overall muscular conditioning (p. 1343). Resistance training for older persons should consist of 8-12 sets of light to moderate intensity of repetitions to prevent to enhance strength, balance, and power. Improving balance and strength will help to cut down on falls and further bone and hip injury from falls, although more studies need to be done to provide definitive guidelines for exercise prescriptions for power training in older individuals (p. 1344, para. 1). Meta-analysis shows that resistance training should be performed two to three times per week (p. 1343, para. 8). Meta- analyses show that optimal gains in muscle function and size can occur with training two to three

times per week. Resistance training can be effectively achieved with “whole body” training sessions completed two to three times a week or by using a “split-body” routine where selected muscle groups are worked during one session and the remaining muscle groups in the next session. A rest period of 48 to 72 h between sessions is needed to optimally promote the cellular/molecular adaptations that stimulate muscle hypertrophy and the associated gains in strength.

In conclusion, Adopting an activity into a less active or a sedentary lifestyle, that a person enjoys, has been recommended for exercise because of beliefs that a person will exercise more if they enjoy the type of activity that they have chosen. However, there is minimal evidence that supports a person’s behavior of how one may enjoy the exercise they have chosen. Physical training or physical activity could help decrease the chances of getting cardiovascular disease, obesity, and metabolic diseases by implementing some components of physical fitness. Fitness components such as Cardiovascular and flexibility have shown positive physical results for older adults. Reasons for a healthy fitness program include decreasing the chance of causing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

References

Garber, C. E., Blissmer, B., Deschenes, M., Franklin, B. A., Lamonte, M. J., Lee, I., Nieman, D. C., & Swain, D. (2011). Quantity and quality of exercise for developing and maintaining cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and neuromotor fitness in apparently healthy adults: Guidance for prescribing exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 43(7), 1334-1359. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21694556, doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e318213fefb

Hassandra, M., Psouni, T., and Theodorakis, Y. (2016, Apr. 27). Scientific Research: An Academic Publisher. Exercise and Healthy eating intensions and behaviors among normal weight and overweight/obese adults. Retrieved from http://www.scirp.org/(S(czeh2tfqyw2orz553k1w0r45))/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?Pa

perID=65904. Doi: 10.4236/psych.2016.74062

Physiologic responses and long-term adaptations to exercise. Center for Disease Control.

Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/sgr/pdf/chap3.pdf