For the athlete: Exercising, Health and Sports
Thank you for reading! You know working out in addition to your team practices is important for keeping your body strong and healthy, but why else should you want to? Your parents, coaches, teachers, and friends all expect stuff from you. So asking you to exercise is no big deal, right? Well exercise is a big deal. Keeping up a workout schedule will help you in several ways.
It’s easy to go into a text book and read the various reasons why exercise is good for your health, like keeping your heart healthy and reducing the risk of injury, but there are dozens more reasons why you should work out.
1. Stress reduction: We’re talking about mental stress here, not physical! Whether it’s trying to get the 10 homework assignments that you have done or attempting to fit in all of the fun activities you can on a weekend (basically anything that can cause time constraints!) stress is produced. Exercise has been shown to lower stress levels and to help you cope better with day-to-day stresses. This, in part, is due to chemicals that are released into our brains as we exercise.
2. Increase confidence and self-esteem: Think of a time that you accomplished something that you weren’t sure you could do. Feels pretty good, right? Reaching a new level of athleticism or getting a new personal record will all lead to an increased sense of confidence in oneself.
3. Easy weight maintenance: Every person has their or metabolism, and everyone differs. the good thing is, your metabolism is dictated not only by your genetic makeup, but also by what you do throughout your day. If you workout on a regular basis, doing both weight training and cardiovascular exercise, you are in essence keeping your metabolism revved up. With a higher metabolism, it is easier to maintain one’s healthy weight.
4. Increased mental focus: Recent studies have shown that exercise can have a short-term effect on mental fitness. The brain’s ability to solve problems and make decisions fast and effectively in addition to increased concentration and focus were all found to be a direct effect of exercise. (Tomporowski PD, Effects of acute bouts of exercise on cognition.
Acta Psychologica (Amst). 2003 Mar;112(3):297-324) Maybe your soccer practice should be right before your test during 5th period?
Acta Psychologica (Amst). 2003 Mar;112(3):297-324) Maybe your soccer practice should be right before your test during 5th period?
5. Increased quality of sleep: Whether you’re a teenager or young adult, you always want to have good, quality sleep. According to a new study, athletes get better quality of sleep, take less time to fall asleep, and have fewer times where they wake up in the middle of their sleep cycles. Better sleep? Yes, thank you.
6. Better posture: Unfortunately, things throughout our day-to-day life puts our bodies in a bad position. Literally. Sitting at a desk during school, driving in a car, writing out papers and taking notes… all of these things predispose us to having bad posture. These factors will continue to be there as we age, but exercising can help us prevent succumbing to the external factors and can fight against bad posture!
7. An awareness of exercise and fitness: As fitness professionals, we see people come to us who all too frequently have NO idea about fitness, weight training, etc. By getting into it as a teenager, you’re ensuring that you’ll know enough to help you throughout your athletic career and beyond.
If you need more information or have ANY questions, email me at Jenn@impactfitnessdc.com
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Very usefull Info Thank You for sharing
Wow, did you write this article yourself or pull it from somewhere else, its great!
Carrol, I did write this article. The goal of the article is to inform my athlete clients about other important aspects of fitness training.