Are you getting sick of doing the same routine every day?
Are you getting rundown and sore because you are not giving your body a break from the same type of exercise?
This blog explains how you can break up your week with 5 easy ways to get the most out of your exercise schedule and thus improve your overall health.
Cardio
Cardiorespiratory exercise as the name suggests works to speed up your heart rate and breathing, it is important for many body functions. It gives your heart and lungs a workout and increases your endurance.
Cardio also helps relax blood vessel walls, lower blood pressure, burn body fat, lower blood sugar levels, reduce inflammation, boost mood, and raise “good” HDL cholesterol. Combined with weight loss, it can lower “bad” LDL cholesterol levels, too. Over the long term, this form of exercise reduces your risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, breast and colon cancer, depression, and falls.
The world health organisation guidelines suggest aiming for 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity activity. Try brisk walking, swimming, jogging, cycling, dancing, or classes like step aerobics.
Strength
The simple saying if you do not move it you lose it comes from the basis of strength. As we age if we aren’t keeping physically active, we begin to lose muscle mass. Strength exercise allows us to continue to keep building muscle mass. Regular strength exercise will allow you to be able to perform your every day living tasks safely and confidently.
Not only does strength work to build muscle it also helps in stimulating bone growth, lowering blood sugar levels, assisting in weight loss and control, improves posture and balance and reduces stress and pain in your joints.
Your Physiotherapist can design you a strength program that you can do 2-3 x weekly, consisting of things as simple home/work exercises right to a full gym routine dependent on what you are after. It will likely include body weight exercises like squats, push-ups, and lunges, and exercises involving resistance from a weight, a band, or a weight machine.
The main thing about strength exercise is that it is important to feel some muscle fatigue at the end of the exercise to make sure you are working or training the muscle group effectively.
Flexibility
Stretching is the most common way we can maintain flexibility. We often overlook this in younger years, when our muscles are healthier. Unfortunately, aging and prolonged positions such as sitting lead to a loss of flexibility in the muscles and tendons. Muscles shorten and don’t function properly. That increases the risk for muscle cramps and pain, sprains and strains, joint pain and it also makes it tough to get through daily activities, such as bending down to pick an object from the floor or tying your shoes.
Likewise, stretching the muscles routinely makes them longer and more flexible, which increases your range of motion and reduces pain and the risk for injury.
You can receive a very simple, quick and easy home stretch program from your physiotherapist targeting your main muscles. Otherwise if you are wanting to perform flexibility as more of an exercise session attending activities such as body balance, Yoga and Pilates will be of more emphasis to this type of exercise.
Although your physical health is important so is your mental health. Pain is a whole person condition. Biophysical factors are often not the reasons why pain persists in a person. As pain progresses towards chronic other factors such as psychosocial contributors become the leading contributors to this condition. The next two ways are to help you with keeping you relaxed and happy. Here is a useful link explaining chronic pain simplistically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_3phB93rvI
Relaxation
It is important to add a form of relaxation strategy for your mental health. Common examples of this is meditation, mindfulness training and progressive muscle relaxation therapy.
Relaxation techniques may be helpful in managing a variety of health conditions, including anxiety associated with illnesses or medical procedures, insomnia, labour pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea, and temporomandibular joint dysfunction. Psychological therapies, which may include relaxation techniques, can help manage chronic headaches and other types of chronic pain in adults, children and adolescents.
The goal is similar in all: to produce the body’s natural relaxation response, characterized by slower breathing, lower blood pressure, and a feeling of increased well-being.
YOU time
Ensure with everything going on in your life whether it is work, family or other commitments always set aside time in your week to do something you enjoy. Starting a hobby can allow for this to occur. Hobbies can arise from all sorts of areas but if you can find something you can enjoy that is of a physical active nature then you will be further benefiting your health. Unsure where to start? Join a social club or sporting team, research up on something that has always been of interest to you and never be afraid to step out of your comfort zone.
Handy tips: Some exercises can combine these areas discussed above which will allow you to maximise getting the most out of your fitness sessions. We luckily currently offer a few of these options such as Hydrotherapy, Pilates and Combination training to find out more book into one of our classes today.
Brooke Lavell
Physiotherapist
