I can remember clearly what our Physical Education teacher taught us: do some stretching before exercise, and have some too as the last stop before we take a sit.
I never understood why we have to do it before and after workout. I was like, “Isn’t it a bit redundant?” But I never knew the answer then because it seemed like complaining had I to question the order of our teacher.
Years after that, I found myself doing my exercise regularly but missing out on this important step. I would remember doing them before, but missing out on completing what our teacher’s guidelines on how to stay injury free during workout.
Upon being getting used to and being obliged to do exercises in our secondary school (and even in tertiary), I found myself loving sweating it out even outside of school.
I tried jumping ropes – I did at least a thousand a day. Or if I am too tired to pick the rope from the cabinet, I would substitute them with jumping jacks. Not bad. They seem to have the same effects to our bodies – only more effort is needed to hold onto the rope and I have to synchronise the hand and foot movements with the former. But my main goal actually is to have my heart racing and sweat a bit.
When I am tired of doing both, I would grab to our 4 pound dumbells and do some arm lifting (is my term even correct? Correct me if I am wrong haha) to tone and workout some muscles.
Little did I know that these two different workout are two of the three essential workouts we need for a more balanced body.
Let me share the little knowledge that I know. Our bodies have different parts and we have to put them into action by doing our favorite exercise. But sometimes we forget that there are some parts that need our attention too.
We have to make sure to at least do the three types on a weekly basis, namely:
- Cardio workouts
- Muscle toning
- Stretching
For the first one, we need to make sure that we keep our hearts active and young (yes, for a younger you!) by working it but not too much. We put our hearts working and pumping more blood when we feel that we are in need for more oxygen breathing in and out. This way, we keep the blood flowing freely everywhere around our body. The more we inhale, the more keep our bodies alive and the more we exhale, the more we clear our bodies of toxins.
Muscle toning do not mean we have to lift kilos and kilos of weights to gain them. By lifting some kilos (it depends on you, just make sure you can lift it but you still feel the heavyness – I am not sure with the exact numbers though), we force our body tissues and muscles be built to gain more energy. One plus here is that, when we have more muscle, we burn more calories even while on our resting state – it means, even without doing anything we get to burn some calories. I bet now you can’t wait to gain more huh?
Stretching – Are you familiar with bladder stretching? This means that we stretch the capacity of our bladder to be able to keep from urinating more often. This one they said can be done by holding our pee upon waking up in the morning for at least 5-10 minutes before hitting it to the toilet bowl. What significance is this with our exercise stretching you ask? Analogy wise, what I just want to imply is that when we stretch our muscles, they become more flexible and gets more flexible than before just like with our bladder. You get the idea? Basically for easier understanding, the logic here is just like in yoga.
So there. Simple enough? Yes. Why not try them. You might be surprised with how your body would react and make you feel livelier and more energetic soon. 🙂