Newer studies showed that your body wants three forms of movements every week. We all are familiar with walking. 2300 steps per day is the minimum that you need to walk to avoid dying from cardiovascular disease. 7000 to 8000 steps daily are even better for you. If you prefer to go to a gym, you can walk on a treadmill for 30 minutes instead. Another form of exercise is weight bearing. Some people like to lift weights, this will strengthen your muscles. But any gym has many weight bearing machines that train specific muscle groups. This type of exercise helps you prevent osteoporosis. Here is an article that reviews this topic.
Three forms of exercise
Melissa Boyd is a certified personal trainer and coach with Tempo, an online personal training platform. She is based in San Francisco.
She explained that it takes three forms of exercise to become fit: “First is the movement your body is owed or requires every day, such as walking, stretching and bending. Second is athletic movement, which you can do a few times a week to improve your fitness or to train for a sport. Third is social movement that you do for fun or to connect with others, such as dancing or playing volleyball.”
An evening of dancing is worth as much as one hour at a fitness studio. Half an hour of a brisk walk is a good start for a workout, but 1 hour of a brisk walk is better. Ideally your step counter in the health app of your phone will show 7000 to 8000 steps. If this is not the case, you must increase your walking.
An example of what you can do to stay fit
Here is my personal way of staying fit. My wife and I go to three different dance events per week in our town. As we know 12 ballroom and Latin dances, we hardly ever sit out, instead we dance most of the dances. This gives us the equivalent of a 1-hour workout at a fitness studio. On three of the other week days, we work out at a gym on the days where we have no dance. A fitness workout starts with 30 minutes on the treadmill followed by 30 minutes of work with 10 different weight machines. This type of exercise gives us a combination of cardiovascular training and resistance training. If you take a spin class, you will get cardiovascular training combined with resistance training. This strengthens your heart muscle and your skeletal muscles.
Conclusion
Your body likes it best when you do a combination of different exercises. Go for a brisk walk for 30 minutes to 1 hour. This is a good aerobic exercise that trains your heart and lungs. You also need resistance training like from exercise machines in a gym. A spin class combines cardiovascular training with resistance training. This strengthens your heart muscle and your skeletal muscles. Melissa Boyd, a certified personal trainer and coach is based in San Francisco. She stresses that we also need a third form of exercise, namely ballroom dancing or playing volleyball. These activities connect you to others and are fun at the same time. A program like this is easy to do, keeps you fit and also slows down the aging process. In addition, these activities also result in preventing illness.