How can I exercise?

If you’ve ever wondered what the best way to exercise is, you would not be the first one. Often, people see the muscle-heads at the gym, yoga classes with stretchy young adults, or no-vacancy tennis courts and have a feeling of nervousness that they don’t know what they’re doing or won’t fit in.

The best ways to exercise can play into your everyday life and activity. All you need to do is increase your heart rate to gain benefits from activity. This could be clearing out the house, joining a gym, or doing simple activities to move.

Walking is one of the most accessible ways to increase day-to-day movement and has amazing results on promoting circulation, mood, productivity, cardiovascular health, and so much more. Daily walking programs can also be a fantastic way to get out of the house/office and break up your sitting or work cycles. Walking can take the form of walking a pet or walking through a park or joining a walking group with friends.

Grocery bag weight lifting, taking the steps instead of the elevator or escalator, using your child/nephew/niece for bicep curls, playing an extended battle of tug of war with the family dog... all of these movements can become exercise when making them strenuous to the muscles. One grocery bag lift won’t put a lot of physical demand on your arms or shoulders but repeated lifts will cause micro tears in the muscle to help it grow bigger and stronger. One sit-to-stand won’t make you as muscular as Arnold Schwarzenegger when we won Mr. Olympia. One walk a day won’t make you a triathlete. But all of these small movement victories will help you move, reach, play, and do the simple things in life.

A person smarter than me once said; “motion is lotion, rest is rust”. And with that said, I’ll stop sitting and writing this post and get a move on 😉.

Move well,

Dr. Cole Maranger, DC

(image from: https://healthunlocked.com/standup2oa/posts/141144588/have-you-thought-about-joining-or-starting-a-walking-group)