Winter is now over, the sun is shining and it is time for some spring cleaning. I’m not talking about household chores or gardening, I’m talking about for your body! Do you have some lingering body pain or muscle tightness that you can’t shake? Has winter kept you indoors and on the couch majority of the time? Or has the weather made you drive to work instead of riding/walking? Well this spring clean is for you!
Our muscles weren’t designed to stay in one position for too long. Movement is what keeps our muscles healthy, strong and free from stiffness and tightness. Heat packs and massages can help with short term relief, however, if you want to truly minimise and prevent these feelings of tightness and stiffness give your muscles what they want. And they want to move! Now how they move, that is up to you. Whether that is swimming, walking, running or resistance program, the best exercise is the exercise that you enjoy doing – because you are more likely to actually do it. Which leads us into the next question everyone is dying to know, how much do I have to exercise? Well, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommend for adults age 18-64 they should be engaging in 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity. Seems hard? Think again. That equates to approximately 20 – 30 minutes a day of cardio-based exercise (jogging, swimming etc.) spread though out the week. Or you could less days but do longer sessions, it is completely up to you and your lifestyle.
Now we know about how much cardio-based exercise we should be doing, what about resistance training? In other words lifting weights, pilates-based resistance work etc. The WHO recommends adults complete 2 days of muscle resistance activities. This is so we can make sure our muscles are strong, after all a strong muscle is a happy muscle. Going back to what we said earlier, when a muscle isn’t happy it can lead to pain and stiffness. Us here at Align Health Collective are well-trained in finding what resistance exercise is best for you. So, if you don’t know where to start or have some niggly aches and pains you want to get checked before you start a new exercise regime come in and have a chat to us!