Stay healthy at different stages of your life

Stay healthy in your 30s

• Heart and lungs
  • Increase your aerobic activity by cycling or running to work. Take the stairs instead of the lift and run up the escalator to push your heart rate up. Variety will help you stick to your plan, so try adding a class or two as a great way of supplementing your programme.
• Muscles
  • Try exercises such as rowing on a machine to build strength and endurance in your legs, arms and back. Increase the resistance on it every two week, or try to row further each time. With weights exercises, try 8-12 repetitions on a moderate weight for a week, followed by 15-25 repetitions per exercise the next week. This combined approach strengthens muscles and tones the limbs. Consult a trainer to assess the right weights for you.
• Bones
  • Impact activity, such as aerobics and Body Pump (exercising with barbells to music with an instructor), will give your skeleton the jolt it needs to build more bone. Try circuit training in a park, running in-between benches and doing a different exercise after every short burst of activity.
• Flexibility
  • Your muscles will respond well to stretching as part of your exercise workout. Remember, though, never stretch to warm up, as it may damage your ligaments and tendons. Your muscles will be more elastic at the end of a workout.
• Stress
  • Deep breathing exercises will help you unwind at the end of an exercise session. The endorphins you release during exercise will give you an enormous sense of well-being, too. Exercise helps combat the stress hormone cortisol, which can lead to heart disease, so remember to switch off and relax at the end of the day.
• Weight
  • Your daily activities all help keep your weight in check. It is easier to balance the amount of muscle and body fat you have when you're in your 30s. By putting the work in now, research shows it will be easier to maintain your ideal weight in your40s and 50s.

Stay healthy in your 40s

• Heart and lungs
  • Do regular aerobic exercise to keep your heart and lungs healthy. Your heart is a muscle and responds well to any exercise which makes it beat faster and makes you breathe more heavily. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 12-15 minutes of aerobic exercise three to five times a week for the first four to six week of an exercise programme. Adapt this and build up slowly if you're new to exercise. During the next five months, the intensity is gradually increased until you can exercise for half-an-hour. After six months, set new goals, as repeating the same programme won't show results.
• Muscles
  • Weight-training will tone muscles and help to maintain strength, and combined with aerobic training to build muscular endurance, it makes your muscles more efficient at burning calories, too. Walking and cycling are great for building strength in the legs, but do nothing for your upper body. So incorporate some upper-body work as well. Try swimming or aqua-aerobics classes that involve running through water. Water has more than three times as much resistance as air and supports your body, taking the weight off your knees and hips.
• Bones
  • Runners are shown to have increased bone density at the top of their legs. So get out into the great outdoors at weekends and try to get a mile or two under your belt. By building bone, you can help offset the natural toss of bone over the next few decades. Use exercise classes, such as yoga, Pilates and Swiss-ball (giant bouncy rubber ball) classes, to keep joints supple and move your body through a full range of movement. Use it or lose it!
• Flexibility
  • Incorporate regular stretching into your daily life. Remember, though, never use stretching as a warm-up. Your muscles need to be warm before they can be stretched. Flexible muscles mean greater levels of relaxation can be achieved, too. More blood can now reach the areas you've stretched, which means healthier skin and better circulation. A stretching session should take 10-15 minutes.
• Stress
  • Exercise creates the body’s own feel-good drugs, endorphins. Try yoga, t'ai chi and Pilates to completely de-stress and balance the body and relieve depression, tension and nervous headaches. For a more vigorous approach to stress relief, you might enjoy knocking seven bells out of a punchbag at a Boxercise class.
• Weight
• By combining endurance exercises, such as brisk walking, with weight-training, you’ll be able to effectively reshape problem areas, such as thighs, backs of arms and buttock. After pregnancy, weight-training exercises that work the chest muscles can significantly enhance the appearance of your bust which tends to lose size and shape after pregnancy and during the menopause.

Stay healthy in your 50s

• Hear and lungs
  • Your aim is to try to maintain the fitness levels you had when you were younger. Try a more varied approach to your aerobic training now as constant repetitive movements can lead to injury. Cycling puts far less stress on your knees than running, while aqua classes and swimming keep the muscles in a warm environment. This stimulates increased circulation to the working muscles and makes the heart and lungs work harder due to the increased resistance of the water.
• Muscles
  • The most important muscles to keep strong and healthy are the muscles of the legs and upper back. The most common sites of weakness in the bones can be at the top of the leg and the upper spine. Resistance exercises can help build new bone in these areas. Pilates is especially beneficial to those who may be at risk of back problems as a result of bone loss.
• Bones
  • Bones start to thin at an increased rate at this age. If you feel running is too energetic, don’t worry, as brisk walking, incorporating the odd hill, can help increase bone density without putting heavy impact on your joints. Even light weight-training can help protect against bone thinning, as the gentle pulling of muscle attachments on your bones stimulates bone-building cells.
• Flexibility
  • Your flexibility may not be quite as good as it was in your40s, but it can still be improved. Try to use visualisation when stretching, to increase the effectiveness of the stretch. For example imagine the muscles you re stretching as large elastic bands gently increasing in length. Dance classes will gently move your muscles and joints through a fuller range of movement and also build balance and awareness of your body. T'ai chi is also good, as it builds balance and good body awareness as well as flexibility and agility.
• Stress
  • Exercise is one of the most effective ways to relieve stress. Use relaxation techniques at the start and end of an exercise session. Pilates and yoga classes use music to enhance relaxation. Try Chi ball, too - it uses a small ball and t’ai chi moves to mobilise stiff joints improve coordination and control your heart rate. If your mind is free from worry, the body can function more effectively. Relaxation has also been proven to reduce blood pressure, which helps protect against heart disease.
• Weight
  • Gentle exercises, such as Pilates and yoga, will give you a different focus to your training and challenge your mind and body at the same time while helping you retain a long, toned figure. Or why not have a go at dancing? Try classes in salsa and ballroom, which are great for building poise and coordination.