Exercise Benefits

Exercise Benefits

What are the benefits ?

  • Maintenance of health and well-being

  • Increased energy levels

  • Reduced risk of disease

  • Increased physical work capacity

  • Increased cardio and respiratory efficiency

  • Change in metabolism

  • Delayed effects of ageing

  • Stress relief

  • Increased self esteem

  • Increased function of muscles, joints & tendons

  • Social interactions

  • Beneficial for depression & anxiety

Resistance Training

Resistance training, also called weight training or strength training, involves putting muscles against a resistance such as a weight – for example, a dumbbell or barbell – or other type of resistance to build the strength, anaerobic endurance, and/or size of skeletal muscles.

A well rounded program of physical activity includes strength training to improve joint function, bone density, muscle, tendon, and ligament strength in addition to aerobic exercise for improving heart and lung fitness.

Strength training aims to improve the efficiency of the muscular system by placing the muscles under a load, i.e. weight. Doing this forces the muscle to strengthen, thereby improving a person’s overall strength or ability to lift weight.

The benefits of strength training include:

  • Increase in muscle size

  • Increase in bone mineral density

  • Increase in ligament and tendon strength

  • Aiding in the correction of postural challenges

  • Decrease in the chance of osteoporosis

  • Slowing the effects of muscular atrophy

  • Improved rehabilitation of injuries

Cardiovascular Training

The most common type of exercise is cardiovascular exercise, also called aerobic exercise, which utilises oxygen and helps burn fat.

This type of exercise has consistently been shown in numerous studies to improve cardiovascular and respiratory health.

As a result, this type of exercise conditions the lungs to be able to use more oxygen while increasing the heart’s efficiency by decreasing heart rate.

Cardiovascular programming aims to improve the delivery and utilisation of oxygen.

Aerobic physical activity improves the heart, lungs, and vascular system. It is recommended that the most effective exercises for improving the cardiovascular system should employ large muscle groups in activities that exceed 20 minutes.

Some of the benefits of cardiovascular training include:

  • Increase in VO2 max

  • Decrease in resting heart rate

  • Increase in heart stroke volume

  • Decrease in blood pressure

  • Decrease in body fat

  • Improvement in cholesterol

  • More effective transport and use of oxygen

  • Improvement of glucose metabolism