5 Exercises to Start Your Daily Exercise Habit
Daily exercise is extremely beneficial . It can help you lose weight, lower your blood pressure, and increase blood flow, just to name a few. However, if you're like most Americans, you're busy, you have a sedentary job, and you haven't fully established your exercise habits yet. Good news is, It's never too late to start. You can begin softly, and gradually include more physical exercise into your daily routine. You should strive to acquire at least the suggested amount of exercise for your age.
Here are 5 easy-to-begin exercises that you can start doing today to help create better exercise habits.
Walking
You don't have to be an Iron Man triathlete to get your blood pumping. Any action that increases your heart rate is beneficial to your health. This includes going for a nice walk.. Walking is good because it encourages the creation of new blood vessels in your legs, which improves blood flow. Over time, walking can help to strengthen your heart and improve your cardiovascular health. A healthy cardiovascular system is important for proper circulation and overall health. There are several other benefits to walking, which you can read here.
Stair Climbing
Spend ten minutes of your day walking up and down a flight of stairs. Use a step or platform if you don't have access to a staircase. Exercises of all kinds have been shown to increase endorphin production,which can improve your mood. Stair climbing accomplishes the same goal! Stair climbing provides benefits like healthy weight loss along with strengthening the heart, lungs and lower body. It's also sure to boost your self-esteem and confidence from all the new endorphins you’ll be stepping into.
Chair workouts
Use that gaming chair and conduct a sitting workout for 10 to 15 minutes multiple times a week. Even though you’re sitting, chair workouts benefit your upper body and lower body.
These are also great if you have an injury and can’t stand, or if you have knee problems. Seated knee exercises can strengthen joints while also reducing arthritic pain, edema, and stiffness.
You can do chair workouts while sitting, but if you want to get out of your chair, you can also find chair workouts that use your chair as a tool to intensify the exercise.
Jumping Jacks
Jumping jacks aren’t just for grade-school PE. Jumping jacks are an efficient workout since they build and condition your body at the same time. Jumping jacks activate nearly every major muscle in the body: your legs, arms, shoulders, chest, back, and abs will all get a workout. And a great thing about jumping jacks is that you can do them nearly anywhere with no equipment.
If you’re looking for stronger legs, jumping jacks can improve your glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, hips, calves, and shins by working all of the key muscles in your lower body. The more force and strength you build, the higher and faster you jump. To boost the intensity over time you can wear a weighted vest.
Jumping jacks are a great way to get your heart rate up, promote circulation to your muscles and connective tissues, and work as a sort of dynamic stretching for your hips, shoulders, and back.
It’s so easy to get up and do jumping jacks, you can even work them into your game time when you’re waiting for levels to load.
Stretching
Stretching on a regular basis can help you improve your flexibility, which is important for your general health. Improved flexibility can help you not only accomplish regular tasks more easily, but it can also help postpone the loss of mobility that comes with aging. Muscle imbalances are widespread, and they can result in bad posture.
Stretching is especially important if you spend a lot of time sitting while gaming. Over time, sitting can shorten and weaken the muscles that we need to maintain good posture, and bad posture can lead to muscular pain. If you have back pain, neck pain, or hip pain, or general discomfort in those areas, introduce stretching into your routine to counteract the negative effects of sitting.
According to one study, a combination of strengthening and stretching certain muscle groups can help with musculoskeletal discomfort and alignment. This, in turn, may aid in the improvement of your posture and reduce pain and discomfort.
Whichever exercises you choose to do, the important thing is to get started. If you want more ideas on how to improve your health as a gamer, check out my post on 5 Ways to Be Healthier While Gaming
Mo Rider is a lifelong gamer committed to bringing health to the gaming world. A Fitness Madden Streamer on Facebook Gaming, his gaming community, the Sweaty Mob combines health, fitness, and positive mindsets along with our extraordinary passion for all things gaming. He holds a Bachelors in Biology with a minor in Chemistry.