Sport at home: gymnastics, yoga, strength training
Gymnastics, yoga, strength training: this sporty trio offers several advantages. On the one hand, you can do this sport at home or together with others outdoors, in a club or in a gym. So you are independent of when and where you can do your sport. Secondly, these sports contribute to your health on several levels. Your muscles are strengthened, your cardiovascular system is supported, your performance is trained and, on top of that, you make a positive contribution to your mental balance.
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Why is exercise important?
Exercise is important at any age. After all, exercise helps to improve physical and mental health. With increasing age, exercise can also counteract the onset of decline, which helps to maintain mobility, mental abilities and independence for longer.
And these are the most important reasons for getting more exercise in your everyday life:
- Increased fitness: exercise has a positive effect on the heart, circulation, muscles and joints.
- Emotional balance: Exercise contributes to a reduction in stress and thus to a positive basic attitude.
- Cognitive performance enhancement: Exercise helps the brain function better.
- Strengthening the immune system: Regular exercise is a good preventive measure against colds.
- Improves sleep-wake rhythm: Exercise helps you sleep better at night and be more alert during the day.
- Weight reduction: Exercise helps reduce excess weight and also prevents the so-called yo-yo effect.
- Visual rejuvenator: Regular exercise contributes to beautiful skin and toned muscles.
With advancing age, exercise becomes more and more important. This is because exercise contributes to a slower progression of numerous age-related degeneration symptoms. This refers, among other things, to overweight, which affects more than a third of people over 60. In addition, exercise is a good prophylaxis when it comes to diseases such as diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis and arthrosis. And balance disorders can also be reduced in many cases through exercise.
What is gymnastics?
Gymnastics refers to different exercises that all have the same goals: By performing the exercises regularly, movement sequences are to be facilitated or restored. The aim is to make the exerciser more physically and mentally flexible, or to keep him or her as flexible as possible for as long as possible. Most exercises focus on
- practising new or relearning old forms of movement,
- training breathing,
- strengthening the cardiovascular system,
- stretching and strengthening the entire musculoskeletal system,
- coordination skills and
- the motivation for one's own movement, detached from the exercise programme.
What is Yoga?
Yoga is part of the 2000-year-old Indian health teaching Ayurveda. It aims to bring body, mind and soul into a harmonious unity, or to maintain this unity. Special emphasis is placed on the interaction between psyche and body. Therefore, practising yoga has positive effects on many different areas, including the following in particular:
- Relaxation
- Inner balance
- Upright posture
- Tightening of the body
- Improving concentration
- Improving the quality of sleep
Important to know: Many people think of yoga as a worldview. However, yoga exercises can be performed detached from any worldview concept.
What is strength training?
When many people think of strength training, they first think of muscle-bound bodybuilders showing off their tanned bodies. Yet strength training is something that has long since become a popular sport. And for good reason. Strength training not only defines the body, but also contributes to health in many ways. The positive effects of strength training are in particular:
- Reduction of body fat and build-up of muscle mass: this counteracts the natural muscle loss that occurs in the course of life.
- Increasing body strength: Strength training is therefore particularly important for older people in order to remain able to perform for a long time.
- Metabolism: By building muscle and reducing fat, strength training also has an effect on the metabolism.
- Bones: Strength training helps to keep the bones strong for as long as possible.
- Cardiovascular system: The heart of a trained person works more economically than that of an untrained person.
- Brain: Strength training contributes to protection against degenerative changes in the brain.
Strength training can - but does not have to - be done in a club or gym. You can also do strength training at home, even without equipment.
How do you find the right sport or mix?
Even though weight training, gymnastics and yoga all pursue similar training goals, they are different sports. It therefore makes sense to combine individual exercises from the three sports with each other: This creates a training programme that is as multi-layered as possible. And you also bring variety into your sports programme.
Unless there are physical reasons why you cannot do one of the sports or certain exercises, you are basically free to choose the type of sport you want to do. The more you enjoy sports, the easier it will be for you to do them regularly and the greater the training success will be. If you are unsure which sport is best for you, then try out each sport. Alternatively, you can try out individual exercises on your own at home. Gymnastics, yoga and strength training can also be done at home without equipment.
When combining the individual exercises, either from one or all three sports, you should make sure that a balanced training programme is created. If in doubt, you should seek the expertise of a personal trainer to put together an individual sports programme that is tailored to you.
At home or in a group: What is possible/what is useful?
The Corona pandemic has shown us that sport in the club, in the hall or in the fitness centre is not always possible. Nevertheless, you don't have to - and shouldn't - miss out on regular exercise. And even under Corona conditions, you can choose whether to do gymnastics, yoga and strength training in a group or at home. All three sports can also be done outdoors. So you can meet like-minded people in the park to practice your favourite sport - even if sports in gyms are not possible. If you want to train alone, without a trainer or instructor, you should familiarise yourself thoroughly with the exercises. If exercises are done incorrectly, they can lead to overload, which can harm your health instead of helping it.
Here's how you can find out about exercise:
- On the internet you can find sites that describe exercises from different sports in detail.
- You can also find films on the internet in which exercises are clearly presented.
- Alternatively, you can buy exercise videos and watch them on DVD players to guide you through your exercises.
- And of course there are books on the individual sports in which exercises are presented with drawings and explanations.
Gymnastics, yoga and weight training are very good ways to exercise at home. Exercises can be done in the garden or on a sufficiently large balcony or in rooms.
Depending on which exercises are performed, gymnastics, yoga and weight training can be practised at any age. It is important that the training programme is adapted to the individual's level of fitness.
Gymnastics as well as yoga and weight training can be done without equipment. In some cases, furniture such as a chair or table is used to increase the severity of exercises.
Even though all three sports are somewhat different, they all have positive effects, both on the body and on the psyche. It is also important that the exercises are done regularly and that they are appropriate to one's level of fitness.
A training plan can be composed of building blocks from the areas of gymnastics, yoga and gymnastics. Care should be taken to ensure that the individual exercises complement each other in a meaningful way.
