Exercising regularly — every day if possible — is the single most important thing you can do for your health. In the short term, exercise helps to control appetite, boost mood, and improve sleep. In the long term, it reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, depression, and many cancers.
The best exercise program will incorporate both aerobic and strength training, since that’s the best way to strengthen your entire body, improve your endurance, and ensure your long-term health. But if your main concern is how to improve cardiovascular health, then you should put a premium on cardiovascular exercises that force your heart and lungs to work harder, sending oxygen to your cells. While strength training certainly does have cardiovascular benefits, cardio workouts excel when it comes to reducing blood pressure, maintaining the health of the inner walls of your arteries, releasing enzymes that break down blood clots, and even promoting the growth of new arteries feeding the heart.
Regular aerobic exercise also significantly lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes. Although diabetes usually isn’t thought of as a heart problem, a lower risk of diabetes also lowers the risk of heart disease, since high blood sugar takes a toll on blood vessels and the nerves that control the heart. When you exercise, you call on your body’s cells to take glucose (sugar) out of the blood, which they do by becoming more sensitive to insulin, the hormone crucial to glucose metabolism. That means your cells remain insulin-sensitive long after you’re finished exercising. And since obesity is a significant risk for diabetes, exercises that help you shed fat — especially around your middle — will help you keep diabetes at bay.
What are some other benefits of exercise?
A smartly designed exercise program will benefit your body and mind in innumerable ways.
The benefits of exercise on mental health are well documented. For example, one major study found that sedentary people are 44% more likely to be depressed. Another found that those with mild to moderate depression could get similar results to those obtained through antidepressants just by exercising for 90 minutes each week. The key appears to be the release of brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine, which help lift mood and combat stress.
We’re all familiar with exercise’s ability to improve cardiovascular health. But how does exercise lower blood pressure? Interestingly, when you stimulate your circulatory system through aerobic exercise, you’re temporarily increasing your blood pressure by forcing the system to work harder, but when you’ve finished exercising, your blood pressure drops to a lower level than it was before you began.
Many people think of exercise as an integral part of weight loss, and although diet is also extremely important, they’re not wrong. But what exercise burns the most calories? Generally, aerobic exercises (cardio) are great for expending calories and reducing fat. But don’t overlook the effectiveness of strength training, which optimizes your body’s ratio of lean muscle to fat (It’s also the best exercise for bone strength).
There’s no Holy Grail when it comes to a single best weight-loss exercise. The best exercise to lose weight is the one you’ll do consistently. Whatever gets your heart rate up and gets your body moving — while having fun and staying motivated — is the exercise that will help you shed pounds.
How much exercise do I need?
How much exercise you should be getting depends on several factors, including your current level of fitness, your fitness goals, the types of exercise you’re planning to do, and whether you have deficits in such areas as strength, flexibility, or balance.
As a general rule, 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity (or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise) is recommended as a weekly minimum. As you become more fit, you’ll want to exceed that in order to reap maximum benefit. A natural way of splitting up the 150 minutes might be to do a 30-minute session five times per week, or you can break it up and do two 15-minute sessions during a single day. Adopt whatever schedule fits your lifestyle.
For strength exercises, aim to work all your major muscle groups twice to three times each week, leaving 48 hours between each workout for recovery. If you do total-body workouts, that’s two sessions per week. If you choose to split your workouts to target a specific muscle group (for example, “leg day”), that will require more frequent workouts. Just make sure you’re leaving 48 hours of rest before you rework a major muscle.
What are the best types of exercise?
While there are endless forms of exercise, experts categorize physical activity into four broad types based on what each calls upon your body to do and how the movement benefits you.
Aerobic exercise is marked by an increased heart rate. Although most aerobic exercises require you to move your whole body, the main focus is on your heart and lungs (aerobic exercise is often called “cardio” because it challenges and benefits your cardiovascular system). Activities like walking, swimming, dancing, and cycling, if done at sufficient intensity, get you breathing faster and your heart working harder. Aerobic exercises burn fat, improve your mood, reduce inflammation, and lower blood sugar.
Strength training, sometimes called resistance training, should be performed a minimum of two to three times a week. Squats, lunges, push-ups, and the exercises performed on resistance machines or using weights or bands help maintain and even build muscle mass and strength. Strength training also helps keep bones strong, lower blood sugar levels, and improve balance.
Do a combination of both isometric (exercises that involve contracting and engaging muscles without changing their length, essentially holding in a static position) and isotonic exercises (exercises that involve changing a muscles length). Isometric exercises, such as doing planks and holding leg lifts, are done without movement. They are great for maintaining strength and improving stability. Isotonic exercises require you to bear weight throughout a range of motion. Bicep curls, bench presses, and sit-ups are all forms of isotonic exercise.
Stretching exercises keep your muscles and tendons flexible, preserve your posture, and improve mobility, especially as you age. Stretching can be done every day.
Balance exercises call on the various systems that help you stay upright and oriented, such as those of the inner ear, vision, muscles and joints.