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Boost Your Health with Exercise: How Much Exercise Do You Need?

It is true that any physical exercise is better than none. However, many people today read into this fact that even the barest hint of a workout can boost your health. Whilst in a way this is true in that exercising even a little is beneficial for your body and mind, in reality the benefits arising from minimal activity are negligible.

To put this another way, performing a dozen sit-ups before settling in front of the television won’t help you in any meaningful way in the long term. If you want to make your body healthier through exercise you need not only to work out regularly for no less than thirty minutes each time, but also to learn how to combine different types of exercises in order to achieve maximum health benefits. You need also to find ways to fit that exercise routine into your life so that you can actually stick with it rather than losing your motivation.

How Much Exercise Do You Need?

According to the recommendations of the Department of Health and Human Services the average adult needs to perform 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week and a strength workout for every muscle group twice a week.

That’s the barest minimum you need in order to enjoy the benefits of exercise for the brain, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk of metabolic disorders (obesity and diabetes).

Note that if your goal is to lose weight, you’ll need to double that daily exercise minimum at the very least. As the health benefits of working out with obesity are very high, it is essential to put in the effort. Even getting the recommended standard minimum exercise will serve your body well. It won’t help you burn fat in any significant measure, but it will help to improve your general well-being.

It is acceptable to replace the recommended 150 weekly minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise with 75 minutes of high-intensity training. Plus, as the level of intensity is very difficult to measure, it is always an idea strive to do more.

Your strength training must be intense enough for you to truly tire out your muscles. you need to work muscle groups one at a time so as to reduce the overall stress on your body and avoid injury from over-training.

How to Stick with Daily Workouts When You Lead a Busy Life: 4 Effective Tricks

1. Set up a home gym

Few people have the luxury of having enough free time and money to be able to enjoy a daily workout at the gym. You can however get it at home as this way you’ll save both time and money. Choose the right kind of home exercise equipment for fitness and you’ll be able to do highly effective workouts at a minimal cost. In fact, you can start with bodyweight trainingwhich requires no equipment whatsoever. Then start building up your home gym, beginning with dumbbells and an ab roller wheel.

2. Find workouts you enjoy

It should be noted that the recommended forms of exercise to boost your health are defined as ‘aerobic activity’ and ‘strength training’. Did you know that jogging, rowing, dancing, and swimming all constitute aerobic activities? There are many other types of exercise that also fall into this category, and the same goes for strength training. It is not difficult to find formats for workouts which you will genuinely enjoy. It will be much easier still to stay motivated, and both to find time for working out and to find the strength to keep doing it consistently.

Never force yourself to do any type of exercise that you intensely dislike as this will have the effect of lowering morale, which will make it harder to start working out as a whole. Do though be sure to practice a variety of exercise types and games in order to facilitate your motivation.

3. Measure your activity and progress

Today we live in a world of specialized gadgets like fitness bracelets, advanced exercise equipment, and even smartphone apps to track how much energy we burn during the day. It is essential to gauge this progress in order to understand whether you meet your established daily quotas of healthy exercise.

You also need to measure and monitor your progress with weight loss if that’s the goal of your exercising. This will help boost motivation a bit. However, the most important goal here is to understand whether your workouts are effective or whether you need to change them.

4. Don’t settle for anything but the best

Researchers say that minimal physical activity offers health benefits, even if that activity is simply standing instead of sitting for twenty minutes. Whilst this is true, the benefits of investing such little commitment are also minimal. Are you willing to settle for this when you could have improved physical and mental health with a great figure to boot?

Motivation is all about setting the right priorities in your mind. To remain motivated to find time for daily workouts, you need to remember that by not doing so you will be consciously settling for scraps. Are you happy to place your health on the line by doing this?