You might wonder how much and what exercises you, your kids or even your parents need to stay healthy?
Essentially, everyone would benefit from doing two kinds of exercise a week. Aerobic exercise and strength training.
For those aged 5 – 65, we should aim for 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week. Undergoing a variety of activities over the week will help develop and maintain a healthy heart, muscles, bones and mind.
Ideally, we should be reducing the amount of time we spend sitting down. We do this in long periods despite overwhelming scientific evidence pointing to a downward spiral in our health.
If we aimed to spread our activity out throughout the day, we would achieve 150 over the week. The activity itself, as a rule of thumb, should leave us breathing faster and feeling warmer.
What is moderate activity?
An activity that is moderately intensive will make your heart rate and temperature rise and your breath faster.
If you’re still able to talk, but not sing, this is the sweet spot.
We’ve come up with some suggestions to help you get this activity into your week, without needing a gym membership.
You’ll start seeing the health benefits, have some fun and even see a lift in your mood. Plus, it doesn’t have to cost the earth.
Once you start getting your 150 minutes a week, you’ll start to love how you feel. We recommend pairing any activity with a smartwatch or fitness tracker so you know you’re on target.
We hope you find something here that’s enjoyable and therefore you can work it into your routine as part of a healthy lifestyle
Let’s begin.
Walking
Did you know walking is one of the best types of exercise? It’s available to almost everyone. Also, it’s cheap because you don’t really need much other than some comfortable shoes!
It’s easier than you might think to increase how much you walk. You can get friends and family involved by walking with them or even joining a walking group.
Walking triggers your cardiovascular system. Meaning, your lungs and heart start working hard to provide you with good circulation. Your muscle endurance improves, too, especially in your legs and hips.
Smartwatches like the Apple Watch Series 5 or more the budget-friendly Fitbit Versa 2 will send you reminders not just to get up and walk. They also have GPS, allowing you to map where you’ve been, count your steps, know the distance you walked as well as count how many calories you burned!
Working out at home
You can burn some calories, lose some pounds and boost your mood using just ten minutes a day to exercise at home. Sound good?
There is no end to the number of workouts you can access from your smart TV, smartphone, laptop, desktop or tablet. Simply go to YouTube and try searching for any of the following workouts, starting your search with “ten minute” that you can do in the comfort of your living room, garage, garden or home gym, if you have one:
- Cardio
- Toning workout
- Bums and tums
- Hips and thighs
- Upper arms or upper body
- HIIT
There’s nothing stopping you from doing more than one of these workouts if you want to to 20 minutes, half an hour or up to an hour of exercise. You’ll be getting a great full body workout this way.
The Coros Apex would be a fantastic workout buddy for this. It has all the features of a premium smartwatch at a fraction of the price. Additionally, it has a great 35 hour battery life so you can focus on recording your workout and not worry if it’ll need charging.
Jogging or running
Going for a run is demanding on the body, more so than walking. If you’re new, you must take your time to build your speed and endurance and therefore your duration of runs. If you like the idea of starting up but you’ve been fairly sedentary for a while, you’ll find running programmes like C25K really helpful.
The NHS scheme was designed to help total novice runners to run 5k within 9 weeks. You might find investing in a fitness tracker can help you exponentially We wrote about the best running watches in an article, here, which will help your decision making on what to buy
Cycling
Cycling is a great cardio exercise that gets your lower body working hard. If you want to devise a regular cycling routine for yourself, ensure your bike is the correct size and your handlebars and saddle are also correctly positioned to support your height.
Cycling isn’t necessarily a solo activity. For example, you could get the family together on a Sunday morning for an hour’s ride and enjoy seeing your local area. There will also likely be some local cycling groups you could join. Most of these cater to people of every ability so you don’t have to be intimidated by pro cyclists going at a speed you can’t keep up with.
We recommend you head to our article that tells you everything you need to know about buying a cycling-specific smartwatch, after which you’ll be ready to read our review of the best beginner and semi-pro cycling watches.
Swimming
After walking and running, swimming is the third most popular sport, for the people of the UK, at least. Most swimming pools offer beginner lessons if you’re not totally confident or just want to improve.
Swimming is a wonderful full-body workout. It’s widely used by people whose goal is to lose weight and tone up.
Putting in just a few laps will work most of your muscle groups as well as being a great aerobic exercise.
If you have a regular swimming session and put in a consistent pace, you might start to notice a few pounds dropping off.
Again, you don’t have to do this solo. There will be groups you can join to suit your ability, classes for more novel workouts that require a bit of splashing around or you can bring your kids and watch them have a whale of a time whilst you patrol the lengths.
We’ve taken the liberty of writing a buyer’s guide for swimming watches and then helped you on the journey even further by reviewing the best swimming watches for 2020, check it out here.
Summary
There are five ways to get you thinking about how you can increase your exercise to stay fit. Every one of them can be enjoyable, and you don’t have to go at it alone. Find a workout buddy and make it a social event. Grab a fitness tracker that will work with you to help you achieve your goals and you’ll be there in no time.
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