Exercising not only benefits your physical wellbeing, it can also benefit mental wellbeing too. Exercise lifts your spirits, reduces stress and promotes better sleep quality.
Physical activity and exercise can help protect you against diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. Not only that, but it also helps keep your weight under control as well as maintain healthy cholesterol levels.
Strengthens Muscles
Strengthening your muscles can make daily tasks like lifting groceries in the car or bending down to pick something up easier. Not only that, but stronger muscles also make walking, moving around the house and standing up after a fall easier.
Building muscle strength necessitates repeated, intense exercise of your muscles over a sustained period. This involves manipulating repetitions (reps), sets, tempo, exercises and force to overload these muscle fibers and produce desired changes in strength, endurance, size or shape.
To maximize muscle growth and adaptation, it’s essential to follow the progressive overload principle – gradually increasing weight or resistance by five to 10 per cent each workout. Additionally, adjust rest intervals between sets so your muscles have time to recover and adapt.
Muscle-strengthening exercises can also improve your resilience, helping you cope with difficult times better. Furthermore, regular exercise has been known to reduce the risk of depression and anxiety.
Increases Flexibility
Flexibility training helps keep the body flexible and increases range of motion. Aging can cause the human body’s range of motion to decrease, but can be improved through regular exercise and stretching routines.
Flexibility makes daily tasks such as standing up from a chair or sitting at your desk easier, plus it makes exercising simpler and can help protect against injuries.
Flexibility can also make a difference when performing more strenuous sports, according to Polly de Mille, an exercise physiologist at HSS’s Sports Rehabilitation and Performance Center.
Stretching before exercise increases blood flow to muscles and helps reduce muscle soreness. Aim for at least 30 minutes of stretching every 2 or more days a week, but even just a few minutes can be beneficial.
Lowers Blood Pressure
When it comes to controlling your blood pressure, exercise regularly. This is especially pertinent if you already have hypertension (high blood pressure) or are at risk for developing it.
Exercise regularly will not only help lower your blood pressure by strengthening the heart and lungs, but it will also enhance overall wellbeing, protecting against diseases such as cancer.
According to the new CDC guidelines, adults should strive for 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each day. This could include walking or jogging on a treadmill, cycling, swimming, dancing or other aerobic exercises.
Aerobic activities like these can reduce systolic blood pressure by up to 10%, but it’s essential to remember that these effects only last a short time.
Reduces Stress
Exercising is one of the best ways to reduce stress and boost mental wellbeing. Not only will it alleviate symptoms such as depression and anxiety, but it can also raise energy levels, elevate your mood, improve memory recall, and make sleep easier at night easier.
At least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity each week (brisk walking, jogging or cycling) is recommended for general health benefits. Even if you can’t spare an entire hour for exercising each day, small amounts of movement throughout your day – taking the stairs instead of taking the elevator, working out at your desk before or after work, running up and down stairs on your way to your car – can help reduce stress levels and enhance mental wellbeing.
Studies have also demonstrated that exercise can help mitigate the physical effects of stress by suppressing cortisol, a hormone produced in response to stressful situations. Furthermore, it may increase your resilience towards stress, equipping you with greater tools for dealing with difficult circumstances.
