The benefits of exercise extend well beyond strong muscles and bones. Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise helps prevent or control weight gain and lowers blood pressure and blood sugar. It also improves mental health and encourages brain-boosting chemicals that enhance memory and learning.
Set realistic goals and reward yourself when you reach them. Aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic activity most days of the week.
Endurance
Endurance means being able to keep going during a workout or training session despite discomfort, fatigue and pain. Developing endurance helps athletes excel in their sport of choice and can help people of all fitness levels perform daily tasks more easily.
Endurance is made up of several components, including muscular and cardiovascular endurance. Muscular endurance is the ability of skeletal muscles to sustain repeated contractions against resistance, which is important for sports like running or swimming. Cardiovascular endurance is the capacity of the heart and blood vessels to deliver oxygen and nutrients to working muscle groups during prolonged physical activity.
Exercise is one of the best ways to improve endurance. But it’s important to not train too hard, as excessive endurance exercise can lead to three major risks: overtraining syndrome, increased susceptibility to injury and hormonal imbalances. To avoid these problems, try to incorporate a variety of exercises that challenge your body in different ways.
Strength
Strength is one of the four types of exercise that everyone agrees you need to stay healthy and fit. Fitness professionals will often talk about increasing your strength to help you run faster, jump higher, hit harder or lift heavier weights at the gym.
But what is strength exactly? A dictionary definition simply says that strength is the ability to overcome resistance or to move a load. That doesn’t tell us much.
Ideally, muscle-strengthening activities should be done on 2 or more days per week and should target the major muscles of the legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, core and arms. Performing these kinds of exercises will build strength, help slow disease-related muscle and bone loss and improve balance and reduce the risk of falls. It will also make everyday tasks, like carrying groceries or chasing your kids around the park, easier to complete. Managing your weight and improving your strength can also reduce the symptoms of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and arthritis.
Flexibility
Flexibility is the ability of muscles, joints and connective tissue to move through a full range of motion without restriction or pain. It allows you to perform movements and play sports with efficiency, promotes correct body alignment, maintains appropriate muscle length and balance and decreases injury risk.
Like the other components of fitness, flexibility is highly specific to joints and muscle groups. For example, a person may be very flexible in their shoulder joint but very tight and inflexible in their hips. This makes it difficult to establish a relationship between a single flexibility test and a health outcome.
In addition to increasing performance and decreasing injury risk, flexibility exercises can help reduce discomfort in confined spaces such as a car or airplane seat. For best results, stretch after your warm-up and resistance training. Always stretch within your comfort level and avoid overstretching. Aim for symmetry (both sides of your body should be equally flexible). For more information, see NSCA’s Essentials of Personal Training, Second Edition.
Balance
Balance exercises are a good addition to any exercise routine as they improve the body’s ability to remain steady. They help increase body awareness, which reduces the risk of falling and injury. Balance training is also beneficial for athletes of all ages and fitness levels.
It has been proven that balance training decreases the time needed to recover from injuries and improves athletic performance. Balance exercises also improve proprioception, which is the body’s ability to sense limb movement in space and to control it.
Performing balance drills does not require any special equipment or a gym membership. However, they can be made more challenging by increasing the amount of weight a person must hold onto or by closing one’s eyes. Balance drills can also be incorporated into daily activities, such as standing on one leg in a Crane Pose while brushing teeth or walking up and down stairs. Unlike other types of exercise, balance training is not considered aerobic and does not make the heart beat faster.Hälsa och träning