As you have aged, you may have noticed you are taking more sick days. You may catch the flu and colds more easily than you did when you were younger. Also, it is probably taking you longer to recover these days.

It is common for the average man or woman over 50 to catch 2 to 4 more colds yearly than someone between ages 20 and 40. Many times this can escalate into sinusitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, or worse. Seniors make up more than 60% of the annual 36,000 flu related deaths. Long waits, inaccurate formulas, and shortages means that you cannot rely on a vaccine to protect you.

If you do not want to become one of these statistics, it is important that you boost your immune system. Fitness over 50 is one of the best natural ways to improve your immune health. In fact, many fitness experts recommend bodybuilding as a method to improve your overall health and increase your immune system.

Bodybuilding increases your muscles which boosts your immune system in several ways. Muscles burn more calories than fat which prevents weight gain. Doctors have learned that people who are overweight commonly have poor immune health and get sick more frequently. Bodybuilding improves your entire cardiovascular system, strengthens your heart and lungs, and thickens blood vessel walls. This means your antibodies and nutrients travel easily throughout your body to fight infections, colds, flu, and other ailments. This means that you can better resist illnesses and recover more quickly.

Rest is a very important part of bodybuilding over 50 and boosting your immune system. Many of the opponents to bodybuilding claim that it can harm your immune system. However, the fact is that overtraining hurts your immune system, as well as the rest of your body. Those who perform high intensity workouts in short cycles do not give their body adequate rest and are more likely to get sick with longer healing times. This is because they rest only long enough for their body to make minimal muscle repairs. Therefore, the body is forced to focus only on building muscle and must ignore the immune system.

Bodybuilders using low intensity training have the opposite experience and substantially decrease their number of sick days each year. This is because their training schedule allows for both muscle improvement and total body renewal, including your immune system. When you get older, you require more time for rest and renewal. It is ideal for you to have a longer training cycle that includes one day of rest to each day of training.

You also should eat a diet that supports your bodybuilding goals and boosts your immune system. Proteins and complex carbohydrates are preferred. You will also want to include foods rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and mineral. If you do not get these in your diets, then you should take supplements to give yourself a boost while training.

You cannot totally avoid ever catching a cold or flu. You can control how many times you do get sick and how long it takes to recover. When you are over 50 a cold can have serious repercussions. Staying healthy throughout cold and flu season means that the time to focus on fitness is now.

For more tips on over 50 bodybuilding, pay a visit to Scott Fishers authoritative website in the above mentioned link. Scott Fisher writes regularly on themes related to fitness over 50.

This topic came to me this evening, while I was talking with a friend of mine. He went into this whole story of why he didn’t se the need to work out, because he never “notices” the results in the mirror. Now people, you might be under the illusion that getting results is all about how much weight you can push on the bench press, for the P90Xers out there it could be how many pull ups/ push ups you can knock out, but the simple truth is that’s a very small portion of it. The ONLY way you going to get the results you desire is by changing what you eat. P90x and Tony Horton set up a nutrition plan, to go along with the videos. Now you don’t have to use the P90x nutrition guide, but you will need to make some changes to your diet, to achieve maximum results.

You can exercise all you want, and lift all you want, but if you’re not doing some kind of nutrition you’re not going to get true visible results***RIPPED ABS!, don’t get me wrong you’ll get in shape, but you’re not going to have the amazing definition. When I started P90X I went a little far, I completely cut out soft drinks, processed foods (for the most part), sugars, fast food, and anything else I thought was junk. Now I know that’s not realistic for everyone, but everyone can make little changes to get them on the path. So I thought I would lay out what I eat, not saying what I eat is right, but it is what works for me.

I can’t think of anything more important than what I’m about to tell you, so pay close attention because this is the key to a good nutrition planmake SURE you eat breakfast every day. I know that everyone is in a hurry in the mornings, and a lot of times breakfast is the last thing on our minds, but the truth is by not eating breakfast you’re sending your body into starvation mode. Now think about this, you should stop eating 3-4 hours before you go to sleep, now assuming you do that, and most people get at least 6 hours of sleep, and you decide to skip breakfast and eat lunch some where around 12:00, and you went to sleep at 10 the night before and stopped eating at 7, that’s 17 hours you went with out eating. That sends you body into starvation mode, slows your metabolic rate, and you body becomes extremely efficient, and doesn’t like to burn calories unless absolutely necessary, that means there are less calories being burned and more fat being stored, which is extremely counter productive. The purpose of that huge run on sentence up there was to explain why breakfast is soo important .so eat something in the mornings!!!

For me breakfast is always the same, just rotates through out the week: Turkey sausage, some kind of fruit, slice of wheat toast, and a glass of juice **the rest of the day it’s nothing but water** Protein shake and fruit 8ox Oatmeal, fruit, and juice 3 egg whites with chopped onions/mushrooms/ham, slice wheat toast, and a glass juice. And that’s it for breakfast, it’s one of those 4 things everyday.boring I knowbut like I said it works for me. In between breakfast and lunch I’ll have a snack, now by snack I don’t mean a crispy kreme, or candy bar. Snack’s are fruit, nuts, turkey jerky, or a protein bar/shake.

Sadly to say lunch never changes for me, I’ll have a can of all white albacore tuna, I don’t mix it mayo and pickles and all that, I just eat the tuna, sometimes I’ll put a little balsamic vinegar on it, with a salad. If I can’t get home, and have to eat lunch out, I’ll normally find a deli, have a half of some kind of sandwich on wheat, along with a salad.

Dinner is the most important meal of the day, because in the past I would eat just to have something to do , so I make sure that dinner is good, so I don’t have to go looking for something to do in a couple of hoursJ For example I would do a tuna steak on sear it on both side for a couple of minutes, maybe some steamed vegetables, and either brown rice or wheat pasta. Something along those lines would be a good dinner that would keep me happy till morning. I cut a lot of red meat out of my diet now, so it’s mostly tuna, pork, chicken. Now I’m not saying red meat is bad, it was just a personal decision, and I still love a great steak, just not as many as I used to love. Do whatever works for you, like I said this is what works for me, the important thing is to put some kind of plan into action, and follow through..GOODLUCK and STICK WITH IT!!!!!

Everyone wants to look great, who doesn’t? You get more admiring glances and you even get special favors once in a while; but more than anything you feel better about yourself. If you weren’t born with a wrestler’s body, thank God that would be too scary. However, if you are naturally skinny or hefty, you still can a great physique if you have enough determination, motivation and maybe get a little bit of kick out of physical pain-the good kind only.

We will begin with learning the science behind how to build bigger muscle. When you exercise, the heavy weights that the body lifts put tears in the muscles. Rest, especially a good night’s sleep, help restore and build up the tissue to endure the stress put upon it-hence the bigger muscles that physical training results in. Here is an effective weight lifting workout designed to help your body pack on the muscles you’ve always wanted.

Always do some warm up exercises before working out. This stimulates blood flow to your heart, lungs and muscles; moreover raising your body’s temperature for optimal training performance. If you plan to bulk up, do only 10 to 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. Stretch before, during and after your workout to minimize soreness the next few days.

There are many exercises and equipments that are available to aid you in your training. What you need to focus on is a plan wherein you can take advantage of the muscle groups trained that day. Study and determine the best program that will specify the frequency of your workouts, the appropriate reps and sets used, and the weight load you will be lifting.

Beginners should do around 2 to 3 sets of 12 reps of lower weight loads. The weight should be heavy enough that the target muscle will be unable to lift the weight after the 12th repetition. Experiment on what this would be for you. If your goal is to build bigger muscle, take only 60 to 90 seconds of rest in between sets.

Ask any professional trainer and they will advise a two to four day split training on specific muscle groups. You can either split between the upper (arms, back, chest, shoulders) and lower (legs, stomach) body; or between muscles that work together. Always train the bigger muscles and work your way down to the smallest to ensure that you get the most out of each workout session.

Here are some of the drills you can use: Back: deadlifts, T-bar rows, lat pull downs Chest: bench press (flat, incline and decline) Shoulders: military press, dumbbell rear felt flyes Arms: barbell curls, dips, close-grip bench press Legs: squats, front squats, leg press, lunges Stomach: leg raises and crunches

Never neglect your fluid intake especially as you begin your training regimen; drink around 10 to 12 glasses of water per day. Take time to cool down and stretch well after workouts; it will do your body good. If you have any pain in your body that is clearly not muscle soreness, go to your therapist as soon as you are able. Your weight lifting workout is ready-start it today and see the results early. Enjoy!