Summer Series Part 2

In the second part of the summer series I thought it would be good to share the importance of exercise whilst on holiday. Keeping active is another important part to maintain our health, as well as eating well, here is why: 

What is Physical Activity? 

Physical activity is the ability to function effectively throughout our daily life,  performing our activities, and still have enough energy left over to handle any extra stresses or emergencies which may arise. This can be achieved faster by understanding the five parts of physical fitness and how this links together

The components of Physical Activity are:

•  Cardiorespiratory (CR) endurance - the effectiveness that the body delivers oxygen and nutrients needed for muscular activity. 

 

• Muscular strength - the greatest amount of force a muscle or muscle group can provide in a single effort.
•   Flexibility - the ability to move the joints or any group of joints through an entire, normal range of motion.

 

•   Body composition - the percentage of body fat a person has in comparison to his or her total body mass.

 

Improving the first three components of fitness listed above will have a positive impact on the body composition and help to reduce fat. Excessive body fat affects other fitness components, reduces performance and negatively affects our health.

 So I have explained the importance of exercise, especially on holiday, so now how can we adopt this into our lifestyle with minimum effort? We do not need to become the next Mohammed Farrah or Anthony Joshua to be in the best shape possible, however we can aim to become the best version of ourselves, or at least aim to become like that! 

So what can we do?

 

• Exercise often 

 

To achieve the maximum results, we must exercise often. We should exercise at least three times a week. Infrequent exercise can do more harm than good. Regularity is also important in resting, sleeping, and following a sensible diet.

 

• Progression

The intensity (how hard) and/or duration (how long) of exercise must gradually increase to improve the level of fitness.

 

• Balance

To be effective, a program should include activities that address all the fitness components. 

 

• Variety

 

Providing a variety of activities reduces boredom and increases motivation and progress. 

This is where being on holiday can really influence us to exercise more. There are many ways to get our physical activity in there including going for a long walk, long walks on holiday are a great start to increasing our fitness.  

Unfortunately there are some myths about exercise which I would like to share which are simply not true:  

• Exercise is tiring. This idea is not true as long as it refers to consuming all of our energy (muscular and hepatic glycogen), but that does not mean that exercising would make us exhausted and slow down the process of recovery for the body. Even in performance sports, the purpose is to have effective than exhausting training, so that the body can get the stimulation necessary to qualitative progress from one training to the next.
•  Exercise takes too long. Exercise can be achieved within 20-minutes, 

 

•  You're older? No more exercises! 

This is true only if we refer to extremely demanding efforts (really heavy weights, fast running, jumping, etc.). There are lots of exercises to suit different ages. Their role is to keep and improve health, including improving physical shape. The development of movement parameters for older people refers especially to muscular and cardio-vascular resistance as well as mobility of the joints. Because the final purpose of training is not preparing for a competition, the exercises can be organised gradually according to their difficulty, eliminating the risk of accidents. Because it's based on perseverance, fitness can be adapted without problems for older people and even for people suffering from different affections specific to old age.

 

 

Photo courtesy of Luke Porter on Unsplash

Photo by Luke Porter on Unsplash