Exercise Challenge Week 5: Exercising Outside of the Box

Mixing It Up:

Yes, we have spent the past few weeks working on you actually getting consistent with your exercise, but today we want to talk to you about why varying your exercise from time to time is beneficial to both your physical and mental health. 

The two primary reasons are: 1. To prevent boredom from doing the same things every week and 2. To avoid reaching a plateau in your workout and training results. Research also shows that adding variety to your exercise program improves adherence.

Also, by varying your workouts you can stay physically challenged. Many of our body’s systems, such as the muscular and cardiovascular systems, adapt to an exercise program within 6-8 weeks. So to continue to challenge yourself, we have four ways to do so:

1. Increase the intensity. We discussed how to measure your intensity last week; use that knowledge to up the difficulty of your workout by a small amount every couple of months.
2. Try something different! If you’ve never ran, try a half mile run. If you have kids, try a bike ride. There are a ton of workouts online- try one for free!
3. If you typically only do cardio, add strength training. Too often we just concentrate on cardio and ignore any type of resistance training. Adding that in will lead to a more toned body, faster weight loss, and healthier body.
4. Change the frequency. If you typically do three days, add another day in. If you typically do one 20 minute walk, add another 10 minute walk at lunch. Whatever it is, add just a little more to the week to increase the amount of exercise you do.

Week 5 Workout

Workout Link (36:00 workout)

Weekly Challenge:

Exercising Outside of the Box: New Exercises Challenge

Why It’s Important: Doing the same kind of exercise week after week can lead to a few issues, including overuse injuries, boredom, and reduced fitness benefits. Changing it up once in a while can help you find something new you can enjoy and include in your arsenal of workouts to do each week!

Your Challenge: Join us this Tuesday, August 4th at 7:00 pm on Zoom for a fun, different 30-minute workout!