Why Is Exercise Important?
Exercise is essential in keeping your body fit and your mind healthy.
It's shown to greatly benefit one's health —regardless of your age, sex or physical ability (1).
It also bears both short and long term benefits.
Here are just a few specific examples of how you can benefit from exercise.
Lose weight, gain lean body mass, reduce fat, and lower your risk of many chronic diseases (2, 3, 4).
Regards to health specifically, Michael R. Bracko, chairman of the ACSM put it perfectly. "Exercise is the magic pill that can literally cure diseases including some heart diseases."
It's bold, but not entirely overstated.
Exercise has helped countless people prevent and recover from certain types of cancer, arthritis, and other diseases (5, 6).
In fact, according to the International Journal of Epidemiology which studied mortality of nearly 1 million people, 30 minutes of daily moderate-intensity activity reduces the risk of early death by 19%. Taking up a notch, 7 hours per week of moderate activity can reduce the mortality risk by 24% (7).
This clearly shows just how a little bit of exercise can improve your health significantly and add years to your life (8).
Mental and emotional health is also no stranger to exercise benefits (9).
It's scientifically evidenced that exercise can prevent and reverse depression, which over 3.3 million American adults suffer today (10).
The health benefits of exercise are hard to ignore.
Exercise is incredibly powerful and can transform your life.
Takeaway: Making time to exercise can boost your mental health, lower the risk of diseases, and help you achieve a healthy weight.
There are various types of exercise, but two main types are cardio and resistance training.
Cardio
Cardio is any of type of exercise that raises your heart rate.
If you think it's too broad, that's because cardio points to a really wide range of activities including swimming, running, biking, and bodyweight calisthenics such as jumping jacks, high knees.
Even walking up the stairs can be cardio if you do it for an extended period of time.
The purpose of doing cardio is to condition the heart, lungs, and your whole cardiovascular system, so they can become more efficient in delivering oxygen to your muscle cells.
Cardio when done regularly also decreases your blood pressure and resting heart rate.
This is a good thing for your entire body. You can learn more about the benefits of cardio exercises here, and how it can improve your overall quality of life.
A well rounded fitness program usually includes cardio.
Resistance Training
Resistance Training is a type of exercise that includes training methods like weight training, strength training, and muscle strengthening.
Resistance training collectively helps to increase lean body mass and build strength by making your muscles work against force and resistance (11).
Resistance training is based on the principle that muscles of the body will work to overcome a resisting force when they are required to do so. As a result, when you do resistance training repeatedly and consistently, your muscles become stronger and your body becomes leaner.
The Physical Activity Guidelines for healthy adult Americans recommends that adults do muscle-strengthening activities at least two to three days per week (12).
There are several popular ways to apply resistance in your training:
- free weights
- weight machines
- resistance bands
- own body weight
Regardless of how you go about adding resistance to your workouts, the common goal is to work your muscles to strengthen them.
Exercise Program
A good exercise program should have both strength and cardio training as they offer different benefits.
Strength training improves joint functions, bone density, muscles, tendons and ligament strength, while aerobic exercise helps improve your heart health, lung fitness, flexibility, and balance.
Beginners are recommended to train 2 to 3 times per week to gain the maximum benefits (13).
Thanks to many exercise program creators in the fitness industry, there are countless programs already have both cardio and resistance training built in.
You may recognize many of them. You may even have tried a few yourself in the past.
Different Exercise Programs
Exercise programs: Calisthenics are basically weight-free exercises. They are also known as bodyweight exercises which require no gym or exercise equipment and performed at a medium intensity. This can be anything from burpees, squats, planks, and push-ups.
They are extremely beginner friendly and adaptive to various fitness levels. Performing 30 minutes a day of bodyweight workouts can help you get the benefits of both cardio and strength training.
HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training): This type of exercise program alternate short bursts of high-intensity movements with low-intensity movements followed by a short rest period. The 7-Minute Workout Challenge and Tabata Training are two great examples of HIIT workout.
Balance training: This type of training strengthens muscles and helps develop your balance. Stability ball exercises are a good exercise of this type of training.
Flexibility: Flexibility training helps with muscle recovery, reduces the risk of musculoskeletal injuries, and improves range of motion. Examples would be both static and dynamic stretching and yoga. If getting your body moving again is your goal, start here to work on your flexibility and prepare your body for a more elevated activity later on.
The activities mentioned above can be done independently or together. What's important is to find a fitness program that best suits your needs and goal.
I've learned over time that choosing an exercise plan is also about your personality, likes, and dislikes too.
I feel an enormous satisfaction out of going through a fast tempo HIIT. I can hit both cardio and resistance training doing it and get a good sweat in 30 minutes.
I love it.
Some may enjoy a longer stretch of flexibility and muscle-stretch movements by practicing Yoga moves.
Also, it's about lifestyle choices too.
Working out at home? Bodyweight workouts and strength training with resistance bands offer convenience as they require no additional equipment other than light-weight bands.
The takeway: You can do a variety of different types of exercise to get in shape. Find what works for you and mix and match workouts to really create a complete plan for your needs and goal.