It is believable that you must know what sarcopenia is. For normal people, their physical fitness reaches the peak in their thirties. However, after this age, the quality and quantity of their muscle begins to drain. If you feel that the quantity of your muscle and your strength begin to get lessen and worsen, you start to have a hard time balancing yourself and a postural instability, and your physical fitness becomes far weaken than it was, these could be a sign of sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia could be related to malnutrition. Even though you pay high attention on the choice of your diet and regularly add protein to it, it is still hard to maintain the quality and quantity of your muscle. With you getting older and older, the production of hormone begins to change, the number and the connection of your nerve cell get lessen, you have to notice that besides diet, resistance exercise must be added to your schedule because you have to rely on strength training to maintain the quality and quantity of the muscle.

Other than preventing the happening of sarcopenia, researches have shown that elders between 65-75 start to do strength training once a week, the infection of their body would start to decrease and the statistics of blood pressure and blood sugar would also improve. Strength training is good to all of your body.

When mentioning of strength training, or to say, weight training, most people would start to think of gym training, like using dumbbell, barbell or other equipment to increase loading.

Of course, gyms nowadays has all kinds of well-designed equipment, usage under watched would definitely be a great way to enhance your muscle; however, as a newbie, using weight of yourselves to reach the goal of muscular training could also be considered. This is a relatively safer way to using equipment and a great start of home training.

In this article, ten great home-training gestures would be taught. All of them are movements that usage of equipment won’t be needed. Wanting to save the quality and quantity of muscular, you could start to be trained like this. If you want to do some further workout after you practice all of them greatly, you could see this article—Step by step to increase the intensity of workout. In this articles, you can learn the way of enhancing your muscular training of ways like increasing the groups of your workout, increasing your loading, changing platform, increasing imbalance… . All of the ways can add difficulty to your workouts and enhance muscle strength.

●Glute-bridge

Owing to glute-bridge, the training of the biggest muscle group can be done. People nowadays often sit a lot and lack the strength of their hips, so it’s important to find ways to train the muscle of your hips. So, glute-bridge can be a great way of your training.

First, lay on the floor or a mat, with your hands on both side of your body, you knee bend, and your feet on the ground. You have to tighten up your hips, not arching your back, until your shoulders to your knees are perfectly straight. Stay in this position for 20-30 seconds, and in the process, feel the tightness of your hips and your core, and make sure that your spine is always in the middle.

●Lie down and draw circles with your leg

In this action, the quadriceps in front of your thigh and the hamstring at the back of your thigh can be trained. The gesture is also important to the health of your hips.

Of doing the gesture, you have to lie down on your left or right side first. You have to keep your body and your legs straightly, with it not leaning forward or backward. Stretch your hand below to the front of your head. For the hand above, it could be a support in front of your chest. It could also be on your waist or pointed to the ceiling. You should raise the above foot 30-50 cm away from the floor, then draw circles in the clockwise or counterclockwise direction. You can do it in a slow pace and feel the way you control your muscle.

●Kneel down and balance yourself

Kneel down with your hands and knees on the ground. The distance of your hands should be the same as your legs. And, your hands should be below your shoulders, while your knees below your hips. Tighten up the muscle of your belly and lift your right hand to the same height of your shoulder. Your right palm should be towards the floor, and when you could balance yourself, lift your left foot up backwardly. Don’t loosen the muscle of your hips and thigh, at the same time, your right hand, back and your left foot should be at the same height. Only your left hand and your right knee should be on the ground.

Get back to the beginning position and practice in the opposite side. In the process, make sure that you could balance yourself.

●Stand with one of your feet on the ground

For most people, it is simple to stand on one of your feet. However, it’s an effective gesture to train your hips and legs. If you perform it well, you can balance yourself better and decrease the possibility of falling down and getting hurt.

In the beginning of the practice, you can stand near a wall, steady table or chair. In that case, you could balance yourself when you feel like you’re about to fall in the practice. Keep your body straight and your feet the same width as your shoulder. Then lift your foot up to the front or to the back. Practice slowly until you can stand still for 60 seconds. You can also close your eyes to make it harder.

●Lean on the wall and do squats

Squat is a perfect exercise to train the strength of your gluteal muscle, especially the quadriceps at the front of your thigh. But you may not perform squat well when you first try to do it, you can try to lean on the wall while doing squats or squat until you sit on a chair.

Lean your back on a undecorated wall, and stand away from it for 50-60 cm. Lean back until your shoulders are on the wall, then put forth your strength from your core. In the situation of your feet stick to the ground tightly, move your body downwards until your hips and your knees are in a straight line, make sure that your thigh is 90 degrees away from your calf. Stop for 30-60 seconds, then go back to the original position.

If you can’t stay in a low position for so long, you’re free to lean on the wall and do half squats. After a few practicing, your thigh will become stronger than before, then you can start to do lower squats.

●Do a squat down to the chair

Stand in front of a steady chair, and open your legs to the same width of your shoulders. Make sure that your back is totally straight, and then give strength to your body from your core. You can put your hands cross in front of your chest. Push your hips backwards and sit down until you touch the chair. When you touch the chair, you can go back to the original position.

●Push up against the wall

Stand still in front of the wall and keep a distance of 30-60 cm. Stretch your hands straight forward, with your palms staying at the height of your chest and sticking to the wall. Then move your shoulders downwards, bend your elbows, lean forward until your forehead touches the wall. If you feel that it isn’t intense enough, you can stand farther to the wall. The farther you stand from the wall, the more strength you need to finish the action. You can also change it to push up beside the table to train your body better.

●Curl

Lean down on a mat with your knees bend and your feet step on the ground. You can cross you arms in front of your chest or put them behind your head. Lift up your upper back, let your ribs come closer to your hip bone, make sure that your shoulders must leave the ground and your body should be 30 degrees away from the ground. Then slowly put down your back, not to go back to the original position but continue to practice for 20-30 times. In the process, your lower back should stick to the ground.

●Bridge

Bridge, also known as “plank”, its basic gesture is to face toward your mat, put your elbows right under your shoulder, and use your hips and core to support your body. In the moment, only your tiptoe, your elbows, and your arms is on the ground. Don’t lower your head or look up, your eyes should be concentrated at the mat 20-30 cm away from you. This is called “bridge support by elbows”. You can also straighten up your hand and support your body by your palms, this is called “bridge support by palms”.

●Side plank

Side plank is a great exercise that can train your abs, gluteus and shoulders, also, it doesn’t stress your neck and lower back. It is good for balancing, coordination, and stabilize your hips. First, you should lie down on your right side, and put your right elbows right under your right shoulder. Your right forearm should stick to the ground. Your calf should stick to the mat. Lift up your hips and support your body, make sure that your body is straight and maintain for 30 seconds. If you can do it well, the position can be changed to only your right elbow and right foot on the ground.

From the age of forty, many people would start to feel that their physical strength has been worsen than before, and so does their strength. That’s why you should start to add some little changes to your daily life. The choice you have is to add some muscular training. Even though you could only practice one of the actions in the beginning, as long as you could keep practicing these ten actions and try to challenge yourself, you could maintain the quality and quantity of your muscle and decrease the loss of your bone. There are much more advantages than that: your gesture could be better, you can stabilize your body better, the falls could be prevented, you could have a better statistics of blood sugar, and the chronic of yourself would be better. 

source：照護線上