Physical Activity for Healthy Aging (2024)

Aerobic physical activityor “cardio” gets you breathing harder and your heart beating faster. Try a few of these activities:

• Mow the lawn or rake the leaves
• Learn a new dance
• Walk to the store
• Hike a trail
• Do active forms of yoga
• Ride a bike (stationary or outdoors)
• Join a water aerobics class

How do you know if you’re doing moderate or vigorous aerobic activity?

On a 10-point scale, where sitting is 0 and working as hard as you can is 10,moderate-intensity aerobic activity is a 5 or 6. It will make you breathe harder and your heart beat faster. You’ll also notice that you’ll be able to talk, but not sing the words to your favorite song.

Vigorous-intensity activity is a 7 or 8on this scale. Your heart rate will increase quite a bit, and you’ll be breathing hard. You won’t be able to say more than a few words without stopping to catch your breath.

You can do moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or a mix of the two each week. Intensity is how hard your body is working during aerobic activity. A rule of thumb is that1 minute of vigorous-intensity activity is about the same as 2 minutes of moderate-intensity activity.

Everyone’s fitness level is different. This means that walking may feel like a moderate-intensity activity to you, but for others, it may feel vigorous. It all depends on you – the shape you’re in, what you feel comfortable doing, and your health condition. What’s important is that you do physical activities that are right for you and your abilities.

Besides moderate or vigorous aerobic activity, you need to do things to make your muscles stronger at least 2 days a week. These activities will help keep you from losing muscle as you get older.

To gain health benefits, do muscle-strengthening activities to the point where it’s hard to do another repetition without help. Arepetitionis one complete movement of an activity, like lifting a weight or doing one sit-up. Try to do 8-12 repetitions per activity, which counts as 1set. Try to do at least 1 set of muscle-strengthening activities, but to gain even more benefits, do 2 or 3 sets.

You can strengthen your muscles many ways, whether it’s at home or the gym. Choose activities that work all the major muscle groups of your body (legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms). You may want to:

• Lift weights
• Work with resistance bands
• Do exercises that use your body weight for resistance (push-ups, sit-ups)
• Dig in a garden
• Do some yoga postures

Balance activities [PDF-14.5MB] help prevent falling which reduces the risk of injuries such as bone fractures. Walking backward, standing on one leg, or using a wobble board are examples of balance activities. Strengthening back, abdomen, and leg muscles also improves balance.

Learn more about balance activities for older adults [PDF-762KB].

• Some physical activities include a combination of moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, muscle strengthening, and balance training. These multicomponent physical activities can be done at home or in a community setting as part of a structured program. Examples of multicomponent activities include dancing, yoga, tai chi, gardening, or sports are because they often incorporate multiple types of physical activity.