Why do we need to exercise

Being active for can achieve optimum health: If you want to reduce your risk of suffering from coronary heart disease, obesity or mental health problems, then research indicates that you should be physically active and need to exercise.  To achieve these health benefits does not require the same intensity of exercise benefits training that is required to become fit. You can simply build physical activity into your daily living through for example brisk walking or cycling.

How to little exercise can I do and still get health benefits?

For who people find it very hard to start and stick to an exercise program need to know why we need to exercise.

For many people, their views on sport and exercise benefits  were shaped during school PE lessons or through early involvement in youth sports. Sometimes as a result of these experiences, they are left with the impression that only strenuous sport and exercise is beneficial for health.

In fact there is a well established and growing body of knowledge that shows mild to moderate physical activity is the best way to a healthy lifestyle. So instead of asking how much exercise is good for you should we be asking how little we can get away with?

Health and Fitness are different things!

It’s just too difficult

For some people either the thought of doing a 30 minute brisk walk, or the practicalities of finding the time, is just too difficult.

If this is the case, then consider accumulating this duration by shorter bouts of more frequent activity. Small steps to try to get exercise benefits:-

• Using the stairs rather then the escalators or lifts at work or in the shopping centre,

• Parking your car in the parking bay furthest away from the entrance of the supermarket, and not using the remote control to change TV channels.

If you want to know how much exercise is enough, you need to be clear about what you want to achieve. Do you want to be fit or healthy? It is easy to confuse the terms ‘fitness’ and ‘health’. They are often used together and it can be assumed that they are the same thing. However, they are different in both physiological and psychological terms.

Fitness has been defined in relation to a concept called physical work capacity. This relates to how much work the body can do. A person’s fitness can be determined in a laboratory by looking at how much energy they can produce on a cycle ergometer when cycling at a specific heart rate, or on an athletic track by looking at how far they can run in a set time. Fitness can also be understood in relation to a number of components such as endurance, flexibility, strength and power. You need to be fit to play many of our most popular sports such as soccer, hockey and tennis.

Health is a broader concept that includes being free from and resilient to disease, mental and spiritual wellbeing and the quality of our social relationships. Normally, being fit and being healthy go hand in hand. But this is not always the case. For example you can be very fit, through for example playing football, but be suffering from a major health problem like alcoholism.

Understanding the difference between fitness and health is important because the level of exercise you need to do to be healthy is less than that which is needed to get and keep you fit.

Training for fitness  — different from being active for health

Because fitness and health are different things, they can be achieved in different ways.

Training for fitness: Many people need or want to be fit because of the job they do (e.g. Police Officers), the sport they play (e.g. Basketball) or because they want to achieve a body shape that they aspire to (e.g. through resistance training).

If you want to be fit then you normally need to follow a structured training programme. This will often take place in a specialised facility such as a Sport or a Leisure Centre and it may be supervised by an Exercise Leader. One of the key variables in achieving a high level of fitness is the intensity of the exercise programme. If you want to be very fit then you may need to exercise at a moderate or even high intensity.

Common examples of fitness training include circuits, running and weight training. In achieving one’s fitness goals through these programs, most people will also become healthier. However, if you don’t want to be fit but just healthy, then you don’t have to exercise as hard.

You can do this mild to moderate activity either as a form of ‘active commuting’ or in the comfort of a modern health club. The main message is that it ‘doesn’t have to be hell to be healthy’.

Unfortunately, some people are put off becoming more active because they think they have to workout at a high intensity, compete with others or wear a designer tracksuit. None of these things are necessary. Even simple steps like taking the stairs instead of the lift can be a way of accumulating your weekly ‘dose’ of physical activity.

Why do we need to exercise benefits  of course is to achieve optimum health.  However little doses of exercises practiced with an intended purpose could keep you healthy as well.  All you need to remember is just to keep exercising.

Little Doses of Free Yoga positions for  yoga for beginners can help you to achieve optimal health through easy effort.

Related posts:

1. What is the best exercise program?
2. Why do we need to exercise
3. What is the meaning of wellness