20 Minute Quick Treadmill and Strength Workout for Over 50s

Prioritizing fitness as you age is essential if you want to promote longevity and maintain your overall well-being. But workouts don’t have to take forever: a simple 20-minute treadmill routine, done regularly throughout the week, can help you achieve your health and fitness goals.

Current physical activity guidelines for Americans recommend getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week, and that’s a good signal to follow. Cognition declines as we age, but keeping up with your exercise routine can help you stay alert.

This quick treadmill workout will improve your cardiovascular fitness, strengthen your core, and activate your posterior muscle chain (those at the back of your body). To make it more challenging, we’ve included dumbbell exercises that build upper body strength and coordination.

Engaging your mind while you’re on the treadmill is also a good idea. Studies have long shown that doing cognitive exercises at older ages has beneficial effects on the brain, and mental multitasking during a workout could amplify them. You can test this theory by listening to an educational audiobook or memorizing new vocabulary words while you exercise. Of course, the challenge of learning a new routine, as you are doing here, has its own neurological rewards.

Here’s the plan for our 20-minute workout and its associated dumbbell exercises.