In today’s busy lifestyle, a fitness regimen is now required to prevent rapid health decline, aging, brain deterioration and many other negative health factors. Most people tend to walk their way to fitness especially if they work near an office area. But walking isn’t enough to get you fit and healthy.
What if you knew that there is something completely free, totally accessible no matter where you are, and proven to help improve your sleep, mood, metabolism, immunity and overall health?
Well, you probably guessed it by now, I am talking about bodyweight exercises.
Why Bodyweight Exercise is the Most Ideal Regimen for You?
Despite all of the aforementioned above, there are tons of valid reasons why you should do bodyweight exercises as your main fitness routine. Most people cite reasons such as lack of time, no gym course membership, lack of knowledge in using gym equipment, and many others. If this sounds like you, then you can simply do bodyweight exercises instead.
First, bodyweight exercises doesn’t require gym equipment, it is totally free and not as difficult as weight lifting or other forms of strength training.
Second, bodyweight workouts are proven effective in maintaining strong metabolism and helps keep your weight from creeping up.
Strength or weight lifting causes more stress on your body as you try to lift heavy loads just to get stronger and grow some muscle tissues.
But a lot of people don’t realize that bodyweight exercises can also trigger muscle mass increase, boost strength, endurance and stamina, while enhancing your overall physical performance.
Bodyweight exercises are ideal for you because it promotes the following:
- More lean muscle mass
- Healthier blood sugar and cholesterol levels
- Reduces joint and body aches
- Reduces metabolic waste from muscles during resting periods
- Increased oxygen used by muscles
- Better sleep and more energy
- Lower stress levels and enhanced mood
- Reduces your risk of cardiovascular diseases
Some of the bodyweight exercises that you can do are calisthenics, full-body strength workouts, high intensity interval training or HIIT, and common exercises such as planks, pull-ups, push-ups, lunges, squats and many others.
Now that you know why bodyweight exercises are good for you, let me tell you 5 essential benefits of this workout regimen.
5 Practical Benefits of Bodyweight Exercises
Getting fit is your primary goal, though you also want to get your immunity in tip-top shape in order to prevent chronic diseases. Yes, bodyweight exercises go far beyond just improving your overall physique.
Let me elaborate further on some of the benefits that I mentioned above to give you 5 of the most ideal benefits of bodyweight exercises.
1. Build the Right Amounts of Lean Muscle Mass
Weight lifting is a proven way to gain muscle mass but you can overdo it on the right amount of muscle fibres to gain once you get accustomed to the weight that you are lifting because you want to add more weights as you progress. This is natural for most lifters. The results are excessive muscle tissue growth, making your appearance and look more embarrassing and unnatural in the process.
Bodyweight exercises give you the opposite effect as it stimulates the right amounts of muscle tissues that “fits” every part of your body. This helps you to have a ripped appearance with small body fat ratio. Plus, bodyweight exercises are sure ways of increasing your body’s testosterone production naturally.
2. Improve your Cardiovascular Health
This is a no-brainer as we all know that all exercises are beneficial to the heart. But did you know that bodyweight exercises are much more ideal to more commonly used exercises like jogging or cycling?
Doing bodyweight exercises won’t just trigger muscle mass increase, but it will also improve your heart, which effectively reduces blood pressure and cholesterol levels naturally. So bodyweight exercises help you to prevent stroke, heart attack and even cancer.
3. Reduce your Risk of Diabetes
Again, this is another no-brainer. Exercise is a natural aid for diabetes. Bodyweight exercises helps flush out glucose from your blood, and transfers it to your muscles to be stored as glycogen and used for energy at a later time. Reducing your blood sugar via exercise also helps prevent excessive amounts of glycation end products from accumulating in your bloodstream. This is the reason why couch potato individuals are much more prone to blood vessel, organs and tissue damage.
4. Enhances Mental Health
Exercises can help improve your mood and overall brain function. But did you know that bodyweight exercises are much more effective in preventing depression and stress reduction?
Yes, bodyweight exercises can help improve self-esteem, confidence, memory, mood, focus, mental alertness and many other cognitive functions. When you exercise, your body releases endorphin hormones, the chemicals that influence your mood. So bodyweight exercises can reduce your risk of brain-related disorders.
5. Improves your Joints and Bones
As you do bodyweight increases, you naturally develop muscle mass across your body parts. This in turn provides protection of joints and bones. So the stronger muscles you gain, the less pressure on your joints and bones so you can freely move around and exercise more.
Bodyweight exercises also help improve back pain as well as ankle, hip and knee ache. Experts also suggests that working out can help increase bone density and strength, which lowers your risk of osteoporosis.
Conclusion
While other workout programs such as cardio, weight lifting, aerobics or yoga are all beneficial, nothing compares strength training through bodyweight exercises. It is the safest form of workout, the cheapest, the most convenient and above all, it is ideal for both men and women at any given place and time. Most people tried to denounce the muscle-building effects of bodyweight workouts, but we now know that these claims are myths.
So if you love your body and need to improve your overall health, do bodyweight exercises and be satisfied with the results!
About the Author
Noah Rodolfo is a health and fitness enthusiast and a blogger by profession. He loves to share useful and informative content such as health issues, food and nutrition tips, fitness and many other health topics on his social media profiles and his blog sites.
References/Photo Credits:
- US National Library of Medicine: 1, 2
- WebMD
- Free Digital Photos - 1st Photo
- Man Doing Push-up (2nd) Photo
