Resistance Band Exercises For Seniors

As we get older, it becomes more important for us to be doing resistance training.

In this article, I am going to look at the best resistance band exercises for seniors.

As we age, we lose muscle strength and muscle mass and if we don’t do any sort of strength training along with our aerobic, stretching, and weight-bearing exercise, we will end up suffering as a result.

Prioritizing resistance band exercises for seniors is especially important for women because of the changes that come in midlife through menopause. Men are a little luckier as they naturally have more muscle than women, but remember gents, if you don’t use it you will lose it.

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There’s a simple tool that can help us do resistance training at home or even when we’re traveling – resistance bands.

I’m a huge fan of these and take my mini resistance bands everywhere! Here we take a look at some of the best resistance band exercises for seniors (and younger) that get you the best bang for your buck in terms of impact and time needed to achieve results. This isn’t about how you look, but how strong and mobile you stay.

What Are The Benefits Of Doing Resistance Training?

Any resistance training will help us to maintain muscle mass which is good for our metabolism as well as as our general strength and mobility as we get older. It’s a fundamental part of an active lifestyle. Resistance bands make it that much easier.

Resistance exercises can help us maintain lower and upper body strength. When we’re able to strengthen all muscle groups, we maintain our mobility in later life, as well as our ability to lift things. We won’t have to rely on other people to lift our luggage into the luggage rack, for example. Nor have to seek assistance when getting up from a seated position when we get older.

When we do resistance training we mobilize and strengthen our joints. These are likely to get more painful as we get older, but regularly moving and training them will reduce that and make them even stronger.

Our balance and stability reduce as we age so it’s really important to work on these. Resistance training can be used to strengthen our whole body because we are strengthening individual muscles making the whole body more stable.

When we do resistance training and maintain our muscle mass, that keeps our metabolism from dropping as it naturally does with age.

Remember this, muscle burns calories way faster than fat and it’s much healthier to have lean muscle rather than fat accumulating on our bodies. Having more muscle and a higher metabolism, helps us maintain a healthy weight as we get older.

We can also support our bone density by doing resistance training as well as weight-bearing exercises such as walking, running, or jumping.

An easy way to incorporate resistance exercise into daily life is to use resistance bands in your exercise routine. Dumbbells and other weights like kettlebells are all useful things to have in a home gym, if you have enough space. But resistance bands are the lightest, easiest, most versatile way to do resistance training without needing big heavy weights. You can also take them with you when you travel, which you can’t do with dumbells.

Resistance bands can be easily and cheaply purchased online, and come in a variety of forms. The most popular types of resistance bands are smaller round bands which often come as mini bands.

You also get longer ones with handles on the ends of the resistance band. Longer bands can also be attached to a wall or over a closed door using door attachments to enable a full-body workout.

Resistance Band Exercises For Seniors

Remember to do a short warm-up before you start these exercises, and afterward, it is a good idea to have a stretch.

If you’re creative, you can make use of resistance bands for a full-body workout even when you’re away from home and not at the gym. You can strengthen every major muscle group with them and replicate many traditional dumbbell exercises. Just by kneeling on a mini band, you can then do a full bicep curl, for example.

Here are a few resistance band exercises for seniors that you can try at home. If you feel you do not have good form while doing these exercises or you are not doing them correctly. please consult a personal trainer to check you are doing the exercises properly.

If you are not sure how many reps to do, do it until your muscles are burning or fatigued, and in this way, you know that you will get stronger over time.

Deadlifts

When it comes to deadlifting, it’s important to get your form right to avoid injuring the knees and the back.

To do this, stand with your feet flat on the floor, and feet hip-width apart with your weight balanced over your midfoot. This will put you in the most balanced and stable position, allowing you to be in the strongest position possible.

To start the deadlift, stand on a long resistance band, with your feet in the middle and your hands holding on to each end of the band. The nearer your hands are to your feet, the higher the resistance will be as you stand up.

The deadlift is a hip-focused exercise, so most of the movement should be at the hips, with a relatively small amount of bending at the knees and ankles.

To get into your deadlift starting position, lean over as far as you can, keeping your shins roughly vertical (a little bend in the knee is okay, but this is not a squat), and your back should be flat. Make sure the back stays flat during the exercise to ensure you’re working the hip muscles and not the back.

Once you’re in your starting position, stand up while holding onto the band with your arms down by your sides. As you stand, the resistance will increase and you should feel the band stretch as you get to the end of the rep. Make sure you’re performing each deadlift in a slow, controlled movement and not rushing to complete each rep. Once you’re standing tall at the top of the movement, return to the starting position by bending at the hips.

Note that the deadlift is not a squat. It needs to come from the hips.

Bicep Curls

Place the band under your feet or under one foot and do bicep curls. You can either do this one arm at a time or with both arms together.

Tricep Curls

Place the band under your foot, lean forward slightly, and take your elbow behind you. Stretch and bend the lower arm keeping your upper arms behind you.

Clam

Lie on your side with your legs bent slightly in front of you with the band around your leg just above your knee. Now open up the top knee as wide as you can without the top hip rocking backward and lower as many times as you can. Repeat on the other side.

Side Steps

Place the band around your ankle and walk across the room sideways by taking a big step to the side and closing the feet with the knees bent and repeating. Remember to do this on both legs.

You can also stand on one leg and lift the other either to the front, side, or back with the band still around both ankles.

Here is a full thirty-minute workout you can try using your band and it is geared especially at seniors.

There are lots of resistance band workouts online, especially on YouTube, for all different levels, and if any appear too strenuous for you, they can always be adapted to suit all ages including older adults.

Remember that resistance band exercises for seniors needn’t be complicated or hard. Keeping it simple and effective is the key here.