The warm and sunny weather makes this time of year the perfect time to take your exercise outdoors for runs, walks and bike rides. Circuits and exercise classes often move outside this year and the green spaces of villages, towns and cities see sporadic football pitches springing up as people get active in the sunshine.
Those same children may also have missed out on getting regular exercise. While we heard a lot about people taking the Covid time to exercise at home and go for long walks, this wasn’t true of everyone. For every young person who did hour long walks with their family, there were many youngsters who were shut in their rooms, with only a computer for company.
We need to help this generation fall in love with exercise and, through that, find self confidence and a positive self-image.
For a bunch of people who know precisely how to train, people performing at the top of their game are often unaware of how to recover. And this is a problem because the body’s systems need time to recover from the trauma of training and performing.
Once you have the all-clear to get back to an exercise programme, the advice is straightforward – begin with light work and only raise the intensity when your body is able to cope.
Light intensity means exercise that barely leaves you out of breath, so walking, gardening, yoga or stretching exercises.
Gradually increase the intensity as your fitness levels begin to normalise.
Whether you are having a well-deserved rest after completing the London Marathon; or putting your feet up after a mammoth cycling challenge or congratulating yourself for a first Park Run nailed, you need to understand the importance of recovery.
Whether you are looking to knock seconds off your pace or move up to half marathon or marathon distance, the building blocks of your new running programme should be about increasing your aerobic capacity. This means the ability to keep running for longer.
At the same time, training your muscles and bones (musculoskeletal system) is important so that your body can cope with the extra load you are putting in under.
While the ability to keep going for a long time is the foundation of distance running, being able to tap into your anaerobic fitness is also important. Preparing your body to tackle hills, sprint for the finish line or simply up the pace a bit is all part of the runner’s fitness toolkit.
If you are looking for a quick exercise session to fit into a busy schedule, then this dumbbell work out might be just what you are looking for.
Using just a pair of dumbbells and 10 exercises, you can really hit all parts of your body in a 30 minute session.
Perform 10 repetitions of each exercise back-to-back, with little to no break in between. If it is a one-sided exercise like a single arm press, do 10 on one side, then 10 on the other.
Once you have finished all 10 exercises, take a 90 second active recovery by jogging on the spot or doing star jumps or burpees and then repeat the sequence. Do a total of three rounds.
A well-devised circuit training programme will include elements of arms, leg and core body work, so the whole body is given a work out. The circuit can be loaded towards certain parts of the body depending on the requirements of the person doing the training. For example, if someone was looking to increase leg strength, the emphasis of the circuit would be on doing more leg-focused exercises.
Yoga is an activity that helps increase balance and flexibility. However, evidence from Harvard Medical School has suggested that Yoga can also help to lower blood pressure significantly.
By joining a fitness challenge, participants instantly join a community. This in itself is a bonus. All the evidence suggests people achieve better health outcomes when they exercise with others, rather than on their own. They tend to be more motivated and push themselves for longer periods of time.
