My wife and I recently were able to spend a few days with some friends in Galveston. Our friend told us that he had attended his Aunt Sarah’s 90th birthday. He asked her how she got to be 90 years old and could still get around so well. She told him, “Motion is the lotion” to which some of her like-aged friends wholeheartedly agreed.
Is it necessary to track our heartrate to 80% of our maximum and keep it there for 20 minutes to get any benefits from exercise? Absolutely not. It is terrific if that is what you enjoy. High intensity interval exercise is also beneficial. However, this post is about low intensity exercise – movement, motion. There is a lot of growing research on the benefits of low intensity exercise.
Walking may be one of the best low intensity exercises, but any movement is good – yoga, tai chi, hiking, pickle ball. You don’t need to think of it as exercise. Working in the yard, cutting the grass, gardening are great ways to incorporate movement into your life. Swimming is too, even if it isn’t organized laps. Play a yard game.
There are positive side effects of low intensity exercise such as:
· ease of starting
· greater likelihood of continuing the activity
· being able to do them with another person or group of people
· less strain on joints
· bringing down blood sugar
How much low intensity exercise do you have to do? Ten minutes is better than none. Thirty minutes is a nice round number. You be you.
Get some low intensity movement this week. Leave a comment if there is a low intensity movement others might like to try. Let me know in the comments section if there is a topic you would like us to talk about.
Happy Thanksgiving
I subscribe to a blog from a company called levels (levelshealth.com). They sell subscriptions to continuous glucose monitors and have really good blog articles. Today's blog was on "The Metabolic Benefits of Slow, Steady, Zone 2 exercise". Wow. Do you think they read ours from last thursday? After last Thursday's blog, my mom asked me if her chair pedaling would be low intensity exercise. I asked her if she could carry on a conversation while she did it (she told me she talks on the phone all the time). In the Levels blog, they said Zone 2 exercise is where you could talk.
Their article has a lot of good detail if you want to check it out.
Walking is such a great way to keep moving and reset my mood! I love going out for a walk and getting lost in thought.
What I like about low intensity workouts is, like you mention, the likelihood of continuing the activity. Especially if it is something you really enjoy. One of my favorite "low intensity" workouts is just strolling on my bike. Thank you for reminding us 10 minutes of "motion" is better than none...sometimes we fall into the trap of not doing anything because there is not enough time.