Physical Vs Mental Fitness
There is but one way to live life to its fullest- being fit. Understanding the benefits of all-round fitness and knowing how active you should make it easier to improve the overall quality of your life. To help you live better, here’s how you can benefit from mental and physical exercise regardless of your age, sex or physical ability.
When talking about fitness, both mental and physical fitness come into play. More often than not, physical fitness gets plenty of attention, and for a good reason. A healthy body can counter conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, and help you maintain confidence as you age.
However, mental fitness is just as important as physical fitness, and should not be neglected in your self-betterment plans.
Mental fitness means having a brain and emotional health in tip-top shape. It may not necessarily mean training to ace an IQ test, but a series of exercise that helps slow down, decompress and boost a flagging memory.
Aerobics (cardio)
Aerobics involves maintaining an increased heart rate for an extended period of time. Types of cardio exercises include running, swimming, biking, rowing, dancing, and jumping rope.
Strength
Also called Resistance Training. It’s a physical activity with the purpose of increasing muscle strength and mass. Examples include weightlifting, dumbbell and bodyweight exercises.
Balance
This is where you activate your abdominal muscles for stability and control of your body. Balance exercises can include yoga, tai chi and stability ball exercises.
Flexibility
Bragging about how much you can bench is no fun if you have trouble tying your shoes. Flexibility saves you from tight hips, hamstrings, hip flexors and makes you as strong as you can be.
Why you need to be fit and importance of physical fitness
Weight control leads you towards fitness
Along with diet, exercise plays an essential role in managing your weight and preventing obesity. To maintain your weight, the calories you are taking must equal the energy you burn. To lose weight, you must utilize more calories than you eat and drink.
Manage your sugar and insulin levels
Exercise can reduce your blood sugar level and help your insulin work effectively. This can lower your risk for metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. And if you already have one of those diseases, exercise can help you to maintain it.
Feel Happier through fitness
Exercise has been shown to improve your mood and reduce feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress. It produces variations in the parts of the brain that control stress and anxiety. It can also boost brain sensitivity for the hormones serotonin and norepinephrine, which relieve feelings of depression.
Better Mental Health and fitness
Regular exercise can have an extremely positive influence on depression, anxiety, ADHD, and more. It also relieves stress, increases memory, helps you sleep better, and boosts your overall mood. You don’t have to be a fitness fanatic to reap the benefits – browse through our site and discover how to reap these benefits.
How to Achieve Mental Fitness
Be positive with yourself and improve your fitness
Affirmation, or positively talking to yourself, involves strengthening neural pathways to bring your self-confidence, well-being, and satisfaction to a higher level. To start, make a list of your good qualities. Remind yourself that you don’t have to be perfect. Set goals for what you want to make better and start small to avoid becoming confused.
Stop Multitasking
Many think that multitasking enables you to get more things done at once, but it creates more problems than it solves. Focusing on one task at a time will improve your concentration and help you to be more productive.
Try Something Different
New practices can also set you on the way to mental fitness. You can fit new approaches into your daily life by trying new foods, new ways to accomplish routine tasks, traveling to new places or trying a new route to the grocery store.
Read More
Reading is great for your brain. Your brain processes every word you read, including this one. Beyond the mechanics, reading helps you visualize the subject matter on the pages before you, and imagine what voices sound like in the written dialogue.
This can also be a great relaxation technique
Top Fitness Tips for Mental and Physical Exercise.
General physical fitness and targeted exercises to improve stability can prevent falls. But so can staying mentally ready to maintain brain health. A sharp mind helps you to think — and stay — on your feet. Join us and learn to strike a balance.
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150 Exercises You Can Do
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How Running Changes Your Body
Among the most effective aerobic routines, running is one. Notable for working out the entire body muscles and increasing the heart rate, it is one of the most practiced routines among fit fam. Running helps burn body fat and develop lean muscles. As you perform more running, you have a high chance of developing appealing thighs and beautiful stomach appearance. More so, running changes your body and an effective routine for building endurance and improving metabolic rate. By combining running with a balanced diet, you will lose weight faster than planned.
Without any doubt, running benefits body shape in several ways through constant practice. In this piece, we’ll discuss how running changes your body.
Havard’s article “Running for health: Even a little bit is good, but a little more is probably better” found that as little as 5 minutes per day of slow jogging can extend your life by a number of years. Essentially Harvard Health is telling is we should exercise to help our health.
Before then, it’s salient that you understand the relationship between running and body shape/system. Enjoy reading!
How running benefits body shape
As you become stronger, you will experience increased bone density, metabolism, and improved overall wellbeing. Fat is not entirely a harmful element in the body; after all, it helps balance the hormones and assure your body that you have enough to cope with during famine or unexpected situations. However, keeping the fat in the right balance is essential.
Generally, the amount of energy accrued against the amount of energy expended determines your weight. When you consume a balanced diet, engaging in running activities can cut down excess calories, and facilitate fat loss as you expend more energy. However, at some point, your lean muscles will not increase anymore with running. The reason is that you must have accrued enough lean muscle to sustain the exercise. Thus, you need to combine weight training and running to experience a specific body composition and shape. Remember you need to have good runners shoes to avoid any injury.
How running changes your body system
During and after running, your rate of the caloric burn will be on the high side for some time. Consequently, it will boost your metabolic rate and improve your endurance level. As you practice the exercise more so would your body learn to cope with the exercise better. As a result, your muscles will be encouraged to create more energy efficiently. Also, running will boost the most vital organs in your systems, most notably the heart. As your heartbeat continues to rise for a consistent period during the exercise, it will strengthen the cardiac muscles and improve the distribution of oxygen-rich blood to the entire body.
In other words, as the lung performance increases and the blood vessels dilate, the circulatory system will also improve. As you practice more running, the ancillary systems, including capillaries, cells, vessels, and lungs, will adapt to expending more energy, and as a result, improve the efficiency of the systems at the same time. Overall, cardiovascular health will improve.
Now that you understand how running can influence your body composition and systems, let’s share some specific effects of running on the body shape – while most are beneficial, some are downsides.
1. Toned Thighs
If you would like to get rid of excessive fats on your thighs, then ensure that you include running in your workout plan. You will hardly find any regular runner without toned legs. So, endeavour to keep your thigh in shape with some consistent runs.
Its does take time if you are not currently a runner. It will take you about 12 months of running 3-4 times per week for 30 minutes to see a transformation. You will be so happy with the results.
2. Reduced Body Fat
As you must have learned from our discussion earlier, weight loss is a product of energy accrued and expended. You should burn off some calories by covering some miles. Bear in mind that when you run, you get to burn double the amount of fats that you would lose while walking. With a regular running habit, you will be losing a considerable amount of weight in no time.
3. Develop Impressive Calf Muscles
If you want to develop some envious calf muscles, you should start running during your gym time. Running helps build calf muscles to have well-shaped legs. The only disadvantage is that you may need to change from skinny jeans to moderately sized products.
4. Shrink arms
Here is a downside of running, most especially if you intend to lose weight. When you run regularly and intensely for a long time in a bid to lose weight, some already slim muscles will shrink. And usually, arm muscle is one of them. However, you can keep your arm muscles in shape by combining yoga with running. Also, you can try any good workout that adds weights to the arms.
5. Develop a Nice Butt
Every region below your waist will be toned when you run consistently. While running, you will be working out your gluteal muscles, which can lead to an impressively shaped butt without having to get a gym membership.
6. Better Night Sleep
Generally, fitness exercise helps increase your sleep duration and manage insomnia issues. During the early hours, you should try to get some runs. You will reap the benefit when it is sleep time. However, refrain from performing an intense activity a few minutes before bedtime.
I find it takes a couple of hours to get rid of all the adrenaline after any type of exercise. It helps removes any stress and typically helps to sleep soundly.
7. Generate the feel-good factor
Since running helps stretch almost every muscle in the body, it gives vitality and energy. With consistent running, you will develop confidence and feel more like walking around. You will start feeling nice and cool about how your body has changed significantly. Besides, getting better legs to make a few runs to catch the bus and using your body maximally can make you feel awesome.
8. Avoid Overthinking
Running helps release more endorphins. With this hormone, you will naturally feel high and energized. It’s a feel-good hormone having no adverse effects. Whether it’s your appealing physical appearance or the feel-good hormones, you will surely free your mind of negative thoughts. You will learn not to overthink as you free your mind during and after running.
How running changes your body shape and its benefits: FAQ
Does running affect a woman’s body?
Also, running will help tone your legs and make your butt perfectly shaped. If you want your boobs to become slightly succulent, running will do the trick, but you need to be wary of intense running. Otherwise, the boobs may start sagging eventually. Lastly, as a woman, you will feel refreshed, energetic, and confident after a good run.
Does running improve shape?
As an effective aerobic exercise, combining running with a balanced diet helps achieve many body goals – one of which is the shape. Running helps develop many muscle groups in the body, most notably those below the waist. Also, it enhances stomach shape and gives a beautiful shape to the butt.
However, you should add some workouts that can add muscles to your arm as running tends to neglect muscles in those regions – Yoga or arm workout routine will come handy.
What could be the outcome of running daily?
As an athlete, you should take a day off for relaxation. By so doing, during the other days, you will be able to maintain your speed and distance. However, as for the beginners, you are best advised to run in alternate days; run today, rest tomorrow. If you run daily, you won’t give your body enough time to recover and re-energize for another day. Eventually, you may become injured. With time, you can develop into running one or two miles a day. And in the long run, you will surely relish the cardio benefits, most notably when it comes to reducing the risk of heart disease. Also, remember that running is a great way of getting a beautiful shape.
Final Say
In this way, you will remain focused and be consistent. Also, don’t overlook the downsides of running, and try to consider the recommendations on how to avoid it. Before long, you will have a great body shape and endurance level to boast among your colleagues.
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