Looking to stay active in between your busy schedule? Read along to learn the benefits of doing simple daily exercises along with some ideas on what to implement into your day-to-day life!
Benefits of being active
- Increased circulation: Physical activity gets your heart pumping, which, over time, improves your heart’s ability to circulate blood throughout the body. Increased circulation delivers more oxygen to the rest of the body.
- Improved stamina: Maintaining a routine that integrates physical activity can improve your stamina over time, which raises your tolerance for the length of time in which you can work out or do strenuous activity.
- Reducing stress: Physical activity can be a healthy outlet for nervous energy you may carry around with you. Additionally, exercise releases endorphins, neurotransmitters produced in the brain that increase feelings of pleasure and well-being.
- Increased lung capacity: increased lung capacity can help with resilience down the road if you’re exposed to smoke or viral infections. Mainly, increased lung capacity can help with your stamina.
- Maintaining a healthy weight: while your healthy weight may be different from someone else’s, increased weight gain can be associated with diabetes, heart failure, and many conditions that can be handled through weight loss.
- Increased muscle strength: as we age, our muscles don’t have the capacity they once did. Light resistance training can help elderly people maintain healthy levels of muscle mass, which can help them thrive independently for longer.
Simple exercises to try
The easiest exercises you can do daily are those which don’t require going to a gym to use their equipment. Exercises you can do anywhere that don’t require a lot of space are jumping jacks, squats, pushups and sit-ups. Exercises that you can do in most places that require little equipment are using a jump rope, doing wall sits and jogging or running outside. For those who want a calming, less strenuous exercise, yoga can be a great option that you can do from home if you have a towel, mat or carpeted flooring. You can watch free guided tutorials on YouTube for yoga stretches and can cater your routine to the level of exercise that works for you depending on your physical abilities and level of experience exercising. Remember to make sure to consult with your doctor first before trying out changes in your exercise routine to avoid potential overexertion or injury.
Dr. Barbara Edwards, a Princeton MD is the Academic Director for the Ambulatory Residency Program at Penn Medicine Princeton Health, providing quality care to uninsured and under-insured New Jersey residents in Mercer and Middlesex counties