3 Surprising Benefits of Exercise
Why do you work out at Curves? To lose weight? Protect your health? Tone your body from head to toe? Maybe you want to build strength and stamina to play with your kids or grandkids or continue to enjoy your favourite physical activity, be it hiking, kayaking or golf. Or perhaps you regularly engage in your workout plan to improve your memory.
Yes, research shows that exercise strengthens not only your body, but your brain. And if that doesn’t blow your mind, we have a few more scientific findings that might. There are many benefits of exercise, and the full body workout at Curves is designed to maximise all of them. Here are three surprising benefits:
Exercise can help you achieve life balance.
How many times have you heard someone say, “I just don’t have time to exercise?” Probably quite a few. Sure, life is busy. Especially now that we have mobile devices that allow anyone and everyone—the office, the kids, the spouse—to contact us anywhere, anytime, day or night. Work intrudes on home life, and home interferes with work. So, of course you want to know that taking time out of your already busy day for a full body workout is worth it. Well, for so many reasons, it is! In fact, the among many other benefits of exercise, engaging in a regular whole body workout with Curves or MyCurves On Demand helps boost your energy and productivity, and it helps you better juggle all you have to do in your busy life. Plus, with Curves, you’re getting a total body workout including strength training, cardio, and stretching in just 30 minutes! How’s that for efficient?
Researchers surveyed 476 working adults1 and found that those who worked out regularly felt they were more capable of creating balance between home and office. The researchers speculate that because exercise takes you out of those environments, it allows you to psychologically detach from those places and their demands. It gives you some space to refresh and achieve mind-body balance. The scientists also point out that working out makes us feel good about ourselves. And when we feel good about ourselves, we’re much better at untangling any challenge that comes our way.
A whole body workout can slow arthritis and reduces pain.
Don’t let painful joints keep you from your full body workout at Curves. Not only will regular exercise slow the progression of arthritis, it will help ease the pain.
In fact, according to the Arthritis Foundation2, exercise is the most effective non-drug treatment for reducing pain and improving mobility in people with osteoporosis. By strengthening the muscles that support your joints in the Curves Circuit or with MyCurves On Demand, you transfer workload from your joints to your muscles, which not only slows damage but relieves pain. Regular exercise also helps you manage your weight—fewer pounds equal less pressure. Finally, daily stretching keeps muscles flexible and maintains good range of motion in your joints. Talk with your doctor about your workout plan so together you can track your progression and tweak your weekly routine for the best possible result.
Exercise can help improve and restore memory.
Remember this benefit from the beginning of this piece? If not, you might want to go work out. Research has previously shown that aerobic exercise, like running, helps boost memory, but a recent study at Georgia Tech3 found that resistance training, like the whole body workout you engage in as part of the Curves workout, also sharpens recall. Participants in the study looked at 90 images and were then divided into two groups—one that performed 50 reps on a leg extension machine, and a control group that went through the motions but didn’t exert any effort. Forty-eight hours later, both groups were given 180 images to look at—a mix of 90 new images and the 90 previously viewed photos. The non-exercisers remembered 50 percent of the photos, and the exercisers scored higher at 60 percent.
More evidence supporting the brain-building power of exercise comes out of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute4, where, in 2012, researchers put 41 stroke patients on a six-month exercise program that included walking and resistance workouts. At the end of the program, patients showed improvements in memory, language, thinking, and judgment by almost 50 percent.
Now that you know a few more of the many benefits of exercise, you have additional reasons to get to Curves. As you exercise next to inspiring, supportive women like yourself, know you are doing your body all kinds of good!
The Curves women’s gym workout is convenient, combining strength training and cardio plus stretching – all in just 30 minutes – to strengthen your whole body. For more information about Curves and the full body workouts the Curves Circuit provides, visit ‘Why Curves’.
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