Fitness
Fitness expert shares 5 exercises your parents need to do in their 60s for strong knees. All you need is a chair

As your parents grow old, their joints start aching, and bones become weak. While walking and simple daily activities are great for keeping them active, it is also important for them to strengthen their bones. Fitness expert and nutritionist Rishabh, who often shared workout videos to help his followers become active, recently shared a clip in which he shared five exercises he designed for his mother to help her strengthen her knees at 62.
5 exercises to strengthen your parents’ knees
Rishabh shared the clip with the caption, “5 exercises I get my mother to do to have her build strong knees. Share this with your parents, friends and anyone else who can make use of this routine. I hope this helps.” He even shared the steps to the workouts. All you will need is a chair. Here are the five exercises he suggested:
1. Calf raises
To do the calf raises, the fitness expert made his mother move the entire weight onto the toes while going up. While coming down back to her heels, he made her slow down the descent. He suggested doing the exercise for 18 to 20 repetitions.
2. Hip flexor lift
Take a chair and sit down. Now, lift one leg at a time using only the hip. Keep alternating for 20 repetitions.
3. Seated toe raises
Make your parents sit closer to the edge of the chair and ask them to plant their feet on the ground. Now, they will have to raise their toes completely off the ground, as much as they can manage. Slowly bring the toes back down and do the exercise for 20 repetitions.
4. Knee extensions
Place your feet firmly on the ground while sitting on a chair. Then, extend your kneed parallel to the ground, one at a time. Pause your leg for a fraction of a second in the air, and then apply some resistance on your parent’s leg from the top. Ask them to push it back. Then, slowly bring the leg down to the ground and repeat the exercise.
5. Hamstring curls
For this exercise, stand while holding the back of the chair for support and bend the knee to a 90-degree angle [parallel to the ground]. Then, do the same drill. Apply some pressure on the leg and ask them to push back and slowly bring their leg down. Repeat.
Things to keep in mind
In the end, the coach added that he finishes off the routine by asking his mom to do a 5-minute backward walk. Additionally, he suggested that if you are assisting your parents, make sure the surroundings are safe and clean to avoid any injuries.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.

Fitness
Remembering Red Lerille

“Hello, goodbye, and toilet paper.”
According to Lloyd “Red” Lerille, owner of Red Lerille’s Health & Racquet Club in Lafayette, Louisiana, those are the three most important things in business. Considering his successful 63 years in the health and fitness industry and his induction into the HFA’s inaugural Hall of Fame class, it’s hard to argue with his wisdom.
From Humble Beginnings to Industry Pioneer
Red’s journey began as a three-time high school wrestling champion in New Orleans. Inspired by his uncle Harold, Red saw fitness as transformative. In 1953, he trained at Ajax, Joe Gold’s New Orleans gym, honing his skills in bodybuilding and business. He began competing in contests and won the Mr. America title in 1960, before serving a stint in the Navy.
“When Red got out of the Navy, Mike Stansbury had him manage his gym in Lafayette,” recalls Red’s daughter Kackie Lerille. “He came with a bag of clothes and a unicycle. All he ever wanted was to own a little gym like that.”
With a $200 loan from his father, Red and his wife, Emma, opened Red Lerille’s Health & Racquet Club, a 3,500-square-foot gym in Lafayette, in 1963.
“The first club was small. We joke it was the size of a racquetball court,” says Kackie. “It was really a labor of love. My dad built his own equipment because you couldn’t buy any.”
He eventually moved to his current location in 1965, upgrading to 4,000 square feet. But, as with bodybuilding, staying small was never part of the plan. In 1968, Red made his first addition, adding a vinyl pool. There was no going back.
“Red decided early on he was going to reinvest in the club and do something new every month,” says Mark Lerille, Red’s son, who now manages the property. “It didn’t matter if it was something small or something that would take time to finish, he was going to do something every month.”
It’s a tradition that continues to this day.
Fitness
Exercise 'sweet spot' you need to hit to live longer – it's less than you think

SCIENTISTS have revealed the exercise ‘sweet spot’ you need to hit to live longer.
It’s no secret that working out is a key part of staying healthy for longer – but you don’t need to spend hours at the gym each week to reap the benefits, scientists from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland said.
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In fact, moderate levels of activity could be enough to lower your risk of death, they suggested.
Finnish researchers studied the exercise habits of 22,750 twins, following up with them after 15 and 30 years to assess their biological age and risk of mortality.
They split participants up into four groups:
- Sedentary
- Moderately active
- Active
- Highly active
Moderate-movers seemed to reap the most benefits from exercise, with a seven per cent lower risk of death compared to people who didn’t work out.
Though higher levels of exercise were found to lower the risk of mortality in the short-term, it actually brought no additional benefit in the long-term, researchers said.
They found that highly active participants didn’t get any more benefit to their mortality risk – essentially, more is not necessarily better.
Associate professor Elina Sillanpää from the Faculty of Sports and Health Sciences suggested that the idea that ‘being sedentary increases the risk of death’ is incorrect.
Instead, he says: “An underlying pre-disease state can limit physical activity and ultimately lead to death, not the lack of exercise itself.
“This can bias the association between physical activity and mortality in the short term.”
The twins participating in the study were all born before 1958 and their physical activity was assessed through questionnaires in 1975, 1981 and 1990.
Over a third (38.8 per cent) of the participants from the sedentary class died during the 30-year follow-up period, compared to 30.8 per cent of the moderately active group, 29 per cent of the active group and 25.4 per cent of the highly active group.
Moderately active and sporty participants had a 16 and 24 per cent lower risk of death compared to the sedentary group.
But after researchers factored in lifestyle-related factors and participants’ body mass index, their risk was only reduced by seven and nine per cent.
“But the moderately active and active classes exhibited lower risks of all-cause mortality compared to the sedentary class and highly active class within all pairs,” researchers wrote in the study published to Nature.
How researchers worked out activity levels
Participants’ levels of physical activity were measured using questionnaires, which looked at how much they moved or worked out each week, how long for and how intense the bouts were.
Each answer was assigned a score, after which participants were divided into their four groups.
The questionnaires differed slightly between 1975 and 1981, and 1990.
Here’s what the one used in 1990 looked like:
The following questions are about your physical activity during leisure time or during your daily journey to work during last 12 months.
How many hours in week you engage in physical activity corresponding to each intensity level?
Intensity levels:
- Walking
- Alternatively walking and jogging
- Jogging
- Running
Duration:
- Not at all
- Less than 30 minutes a week
- Between 30 minutes and less than an hour a week
- Two to three hours a week
- Four hours of more a week
The researchers also investigated whether following the World Health Organization’s physical activity guidelines affects mortality and genetic disease risk.
The guidelines advise adults to do 150 to 300 minutes of moderate or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity weekly.
The study found that meeting these guidelines did not lower people’s risk of death or change their genetic risk.
Even for twins who met the recommended levels of exercise over a 15-year period, there wasn’t a difference in mortality rates compared to their less active twin pair.
Finally, researchers estimated the biological age of participants, looking at how it changed according to exercise levels.
They did this by taking blood samples from participants to get a sense of how fast the cells in their bodies were ageing.
Biological age – the age of our cells – measures how well your body functions and how much wear and tear it’s experienced.
It may be a better indicator than chronological age of how long we’ll will live and be in good health for.
Prof Sillanpää said: “We found that the association between leisure-time physical activity and biological aging was U-shaped.
“Biological ageing was accelerated in those who exercised the least and the most.”
Highly active people were on average, 1.2 years biologically older than the moderately active group and 1.6 years biologically older than the active group.
What counts as moderate exercise?
Moderate activity will raise your heart rate, and make you breathe faster and feel warmer.
One way to tell if you’re working at a moderate intensity level is if you can still talk, but not sing.
Examples of moderate intensity activities include:
- Brisk walking
- Water aerobics
- Riding a bike
- Dancing
- Doubles tennis
- Pushing a lawn mower
- Hiking
- Rollerblading
The NHS recommends that adults between 19 and 64 should aim to:
- Do at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity a week
- Spread exercise evenly over four to five days a week, or every day
- Reduce time spent sitting or lying down and break up long periods of not moving with some activity
- Do strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms) on at least two days a week
Examples of vigorous activities include:
- Running
- Swimming
- Riding a bike fast or on hills
- Walking up the stairs
- Sports, like football, rugby, netball and hockey
- Skipping
- Aerobics
- Gymnastics
- Martial arts
Source: NHS
Fitness
Green exercise: why an outdoor workout will make you fitter and slimmer

Going for a run in the sunshine or doing some stretches under the trees in the park is certainly a more pleasant experience than working out under the strip lights of a windowless gym. And according to scientists it could also be much better for your mind and body.
Dr Carly Wood, a senior lecturer in sport and exercise science at the University of Essex, is a researcher in “green exercise” and says the power of outdoor workouts should not be underestimated. “There is so much evidence that by switching to doing your exercise outside you can boost your body and brain,” she says. “In our research we have found powerful mental health benefits from working out under an open sky, especially when surrounded by nature. But there are additional physical gains too compared to exercising indoors.”
Here’s how exercising outdoors can improve your health and wellbeing.
You burn more calories and blast more fat outside
Taking exercise outside, with its wind resistance, more demanding trails and soft or uneven surfaces such as grass, really does add to the energy demand. Six weeks of running outdoors, when compared with running on the predictable conveyor belt of a treadmill, was found to improve leg muscle strength by researchers reporting in the journal PeerJ, and “induce greater physical fitness improvements”, including a bigger reduction in body fat.
Take strength training outdoors to get stronger quicker
Most studies comparing indoor and outdoor exercise have looked at aerobic activity such as running, swimming and cycling, but last year Henrique Brito, a human performance researcher at the University of Lisbon, examined whether environment makes a difference when it comes to resistance training. Brito and his colleagues tracked 53 adults as they did a body-weight circuit indoors, and another 51 adults who did the same strength workout in a park surrounded by trees. The results, published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, show that the outdoor exercisers achieved “better performance output”, demonstrated by the fact they typically completed a higher number of repetitions of each exercise — about two more crunches, squats and lunges — in a set time than the indoor group. Brito concluded that this could make a real difference to fitness and strength over time.
Outdoor workouts can reduce anxiety
Wood describes one study conducted by her colleagues at the University of Essex which showed that huge “psychological gains are experienced during physical activity in nature”. Published in the Applied Psychology of Health and Wellbeing journal, the team found that outdoor workouts reduced anxiety, anger and hostility and boosted energy. “Aspects of nature have a huge influence on our mental state,” Woods says. “Taking your workouts outside provides additional benefits for the mind and has therapeutic effects for low mood.”
Researchers from Norway and Florida asked participants to walk 500m twice: first along a tree-lined track, then on a treadmill facing a blank wall. On each occasion they were asked to wear a device that measures brain activity. The results, in the International Journal of Psychophysiology, show a dramatic difference in brain responses and activity outdoors, with participants displaying increased connectivity between brain regions involved in reasoning and attention as well as brainwaves that indicated they were feeling more relaxed.
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You are more likely to stick with exercise if you do it outdoors
A recent OnePoll survey conducted by Ordnance Survey revealed that 46 per cent of the 2,000 British adults questioned said they feel more motivated to exercise outdoors, compared with just 22 per cent who felt the same about using a gym regularly. A review of evidence by Wood’s colleagues at the University of Essex found the mood-boosting effects of exercising in nature to be the reason for better engagement and sticking at it in the longer term. “People find they enjoy exercising outside and because of that are more likely to keep it up,” Wood says.
Running indoors really does take more effort for the same fitness gains
Staring at a treadmill screen rather than absorbing the sights and sounds of nature can make running and walking feel like harder work, but a review of 55 studies involving 1,005 participants in the Journal of Sports Sciences last year found that indoor running and walking really does take more effort for the same fitness outcome. On a treadmill people inadvertently tweak their technique, chopping their stride when running and shortening their step length when walking, which results in an increase in the amount of oxygen they use to complete the activity. “Even if the intensity of exercise is comparable, people tend to find it easier outdoors than inside,” Wood says.
There’s another reason to hop off the treadmill and on to the trails: it could reduce injury risk. A study in the journal PLoS One shows that too much treadmill running at too high an incline stresses the body in a way that could lead to injury.
Forget spin classes — for real muscle gains you need to cycle outside
You might think your spin class pushes you to physical limits, but research suggests that you actually work harder cycling outside. When scientists at the University of Nebraska compared physiological and psychological responses to stationary biking in a lab environment and outdoor cycling for a paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, it was the outdoor workout that won, with cyclists able to pedal at a higher intensity. Others reporting in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance have shown that elite cyclists produce much higher levels of muscle power when cycling outdoors compared with performance on an indoor bike.
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Open water swimming can boost mood and reduce hot flushes
Swimming anywhere is a great whole body workout, but taking a dip in rivers and lakes has a proven effect on mood. Dr Heather Massey is a senior lecturer in sport, health and exercise science and a member of the extreme environments laboratory and clinical, health and rehabilitation research team at the University of Portsmouth. Her research found that novice outdoor swimmers who took part in a ten-week introductory course had acute and chronic reductions in negative mood as well as a boost to wellbeing.
Meanwhile, Joyce Harper, a professor of reproductive science at University College London, surveyed 1,114 women, all of them regular cold water swimmers and 785 of whom were going through the menopause for a paper in Post Reproductive Health. Harper and her colleagues discovered that 46.9 per cent of the women reported a significant improvement in anxiety, 34.5 per cent in mood swings, and 30.3 per cent in hot flushes as a result of regular swims outside. “Women said they felt it was mainly the physical and mental effects of cold water that helped their symptoms,” Harper says. “For many the effects are lessened if water is too warm, as it would be indoors, and it is both the outdoor environment and the water temperature that has particular benefits.”
Just a 15-minute session outdoors will boost your vitamin D stores
Exercise outdoors from spring to autumn and you get exposure to natural daylight that boosts your mood and vitamin D stores — exposure that you simply don’t get with artificially lit exercise studios. Vitamin D helps to regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body, which is vital for healthy bones, teeth and muscles. Schedule a walk for between 11am and 3pm when the sun’s rays are at their strongest, exposing some skin such as the forearms, face and legs. According to dermatologists at the British Skin Foundation, a daily 10-15 minutes outdoors for lighter skin types and 25-40 minutes for darker skin types from April onwards tops up your vitamin D supplies while also minimising the risks of sunburn and skin cancer.
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