You have always been one to put in occasional effort where exercising is concerned, but now you think it is time to become serious about getting in shape. Sure, you catch an hour on the treadmill at the gym once or twice a week and lift some weights now and then, but what would really benefit your body is if exercising became more of a lifestyle than such a small part of your weekly routine. One way to make this happen is to aim to get more out of becoming physically fit by taking your exercise interests outdoors. Outside is where some of the best calorie burning is taken to the next level.
Walking After Meals
If you want to improve your metabolism and help your body maintain a healthy weight, taking a 30-minute walk outside after each meal is an excellent place to start. When you sit or lay down after eating a meal, your body does not utilize the nutrients of your meal as efficiently. This promotes the accumulation of more unwanted belly fat. However, a brisk 30-minute walk after each meal helps to counteract these problems. Plus, walking increases circulation, gets you breathing fresh air and you get more sunshine to help your body produce more virus repelling vitamin D3. If everyone instituted just this change alone, it could significantly reverse trends of illness, obesity and diabetes in modern society. However, if you are exercising outside after your lunch break at work, just be sure to not be stuck outside without your security key fob and everything should be okay.
Playing Sports
While everyone else you know is wasting time being sedentary inside, you have decided to take advantage of the day by playing sports outside. The great thing about sports is that it is a natural way to keep your body active. Something else sports provides you with is high intensity bursts of intermittent exercise. High intensity intermittent exercise helps you to make significant gains in aerobic power and helps to improve your overall endurance too. So, while you are outside having fun playing sports, this form of exercise is actually helping you to build a stronger, healthier body in the process.
Swimming
Since summer is right around the corner, it is about time to get outside and into the cool, refreshing water. Swimming is a nice low impact form of exercise that helps you burn calories while building muscle. As you swim, you are actually provided with a perfect opportunity to engage your entire body in the process. This can be somewhat different from other forms of exercise that isolate and focus on improving a specific muscle group.
Building Genuine Upper Body Strength
Sitting in front of the television munching on cookies and chips is not going to add anything to your upper body strength, but there are exercises you can do outside that will. One of the best outdoor exercises for improving your upper body strength is rowing a boat. The repetitive action of speed rowing against the current of a body of water is a workout that your body will not soon forget. Not only will this get your heart pumping and help you to build solid arms and shoulders, but the improvements this kind of exercise can make on a person’s mental health are encouraging too. The simple fact is that lack of exercise has created a modern epidemic of people suffering unnecessarily with depression and other anxiety disorders. In many cases, this is just your body screaming to get outside and to find enjoyment and purpose in a good, healthy physical workout: one that helps the brain out as well. When you exercise, you are pushing a number of biochemical processes into motion from the release of endorphins to the production of proteins called neurotrophic or growth factors. These proteins work by encouraging nerve cell growth and lead to forming more neurological connections in the brain.
The Accumulating Benefits
Even when people work out indoors, chances are they are not giving their body quite the workout they could be getting outside. In addition, indoor workouts tend to be deficient in many of the health promoting factors that are associated with outdoor activities. In most cases, indoor air is not generally the best air quality to be breathing. When you are exercising outside, you get both fresh air and the full benefits of sunlight. Outdoor exercises tend to utilize more muscle groups than when performing muscle group isolation training in a gym. The end result is that outdoor exercise is the modern prescription to a healthier, happier you.
