The title Motor Fitness or Motor skills includes speed, agility, balance, co-ordination, power and reaction time.
Having motor fitness is important for spatial awareness, everyday performance, sporting performance and provides a reduced risk of injury.
We all know that reaction time is important when we're driving, or we're trying to stop something from falling (including ourselves). Nearly everything we need to be able to co-ordinate our movements. We need to have hand/foot and eye co-ordination. We need to be able to co-ordinate our arms and legs for walking. Even eating requires co-ordination - what a mess we would be in if we didn't open our mouths in time to take the food from the fork or spoon!
As we age it is important that we maintain the above-mentioned skills to some degree as we lose muscle tissue, bone density and have an increased risk of falls.
To maintain these skills we need to perform functional activities for everyday tasks, include balance activities and perform core stability exercises as well as co-ordinate our body’s movement, move at difference speeds, change direction easily.
Sounds like Dance classes might be ideal don’t you think? As long as it’s not too complicated so you trip over your own feet (or someone else's) of course. Dance or exercise classes are great way to exercise, work on your co-ordination/agility/balance skills and burn some calories and meet people. Don't be shy, even if your co-ordination is rubbish (as is mine) - move like no-one is watching ... just try not to knock over the person next to you.
Just one word of advice, if you're new to a class the best place to be is IN THE FRONT so you can watch the Instructor, not at the back watching the person in front of you, who might be like me and therefore going in the opposite direction to where they should be or who, again like me, has no sense of rhythm and therefore totally out of sync with everyone else.
In the front watching the Instructor is the best place to be. I'm sure my Group Ex friends will agree with me???
Any questions PM me.
Karen is a qualified personal trainer and nutrition coach living in Cyprus near Paphos with her husband Mal and their cat Dave. She has been a personal trainer for 14 years and a qualified nutrition coach for over 2 years. She is passionate about working with people of any age and fitness level to improve their health and wellbeing.
Click here to see more of her posts.
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