Lifestyle Retirement Village with Fitness Acitivities

The Waterford has developed an extensive fitness program that runs six days a week from Monday to Saturday. There are many studies which show the positive effects of fitness for seniors such as improving heart health, strength, cognitive function and increasing muscle mass. One of the key benefits of increased muscle mass is that it contributes to balance and bone strength, without which one fall can lead to lost mobility and independence.

Therefore, it’s great that The Waterford has such an great fitness program to keep residents happy and healthy. Exercise routines change each day to keep things fresh and to allow residents to enjoy a variety of activities, which range from stretches, resistance training, exercises with light weights, chair yoga and balancing exercises. For a complete breakdown of the fitness program at The Waterford, direct from one of the recreation coordinators, please see below.

On Mondays they take it easy and focus on stretches, back related workouts, breathing and more simple routines using resistance bands.

On Tuesdays, instructors look to pick up the pace a little bit, focusing on body movement such as torso, bicep and triceps extensions. They also do a set of stand-up exercises including movement of the legs and squats at a level that’s comfortable but challenging for the group, using weights ranging from 1 – 5lbs.

On Wednesday they have a lovely lady named Laura Sampson come in to teach chair yoga, which offers a change of pace as well as some variety to the program. Laura has her group get into their ‘zen mode’ and focus on breathing exercises and slow movements of the body.

Thursdays; instructors look to get the blood flowing in the legs and arms and have deemed it ‘balance-beam Thursdays’ where they set up the chairs faced in a line (for participants to hang-on to for support) as they ‘walk-the-line’ in many different fashions; straight walk, but-kicks, high-knees, high-leg kicks, walking backwards and so on.

On Fridays they look to just let loose and have fun and many residents look forward to ‘Fun-Fridays’. Depending on the group’s ability they do many diverse workouts with a bouncy-ball including focused range-of-motion, ball toss and bounce exercises (similar to basketball or handball), footwork drills (soccer) and (an instructor favorite) running communicative ball tossing, bouncing or kick passing drills. At the end they let residents toss the balls at the instructor or aim for a bucket and plenty of laughs are had by everyone.

On Saturdays they often have other people come in and do a variety of classes such as Tai-Chi!